November 29, 2011
To: the PPC committee
From: Linda Wolfe, Department of Anthropology
Re: Response to the PPC evaluation of Anthropology
I am dismayed by the placement of anthropology in the lowest performing group in the university. There is much to examine with regard to how the scores were determined but for present purposes we focus on examining the scores in figure 9 of the report. The review suggests that an argument can be made for raising the rank of anthropology. That is, it is hard to see a significant difference between the mean scores of the evaluative criteria of at least three programs in group 4 (PHIL, POLS, and BIOS) and anthropology.
For example, looking at productivity the mean score of anthropology (24) is equal to or greater than POLS (23) or BIOS (24). Likewise, looking at quality, anthropology (26) scores higher than both BIOS (24) and PHIL (25). With a centrality score of 21, however, anthropology falls well below those three programs and that score may have been more heavily weighted by the reviewers.
On the other hand, it is difficult to comprehend how anthropology is not central to the mission of ECU. The first point under ECU's mission statement is "Preparing our students to compete and succeed in the global economy and multicultural society".
Anthropology is unique in that our primary focus is providing students with a global perspective on cultural and biological diversity. How then is anthropology not essential to achieving this mission then? Moreover, anthropology offers 6-7 ANTH 1050 Global
Understanding courses a semester, more than any other department. Moreover, the
Provost Sheerer underwrites the salary of two of the anthropology faculty members who teach ANTH 1050. I doubt that the Provost would pay the salary of these faculty members if she did not see these courses as central to ECUs mission. As an aside, we are to be held harmless in calculations of FTE/SCH calculations because these courses out of necessity are low enrollment but high demand courses. Anthropology is the only department to offer courses that expands a student’s total understanding of other cultures, the archaeological history of humans and human biological evolution. All of our foundation curriculum courses and upper division courses are courses on other cultures, archaeological history, or biological evolution and promote cross-cultural and global understanding. We educate students in all these areas. Moreover, a recent article in
Diverse Perspectives on Social Science and Medicine (Nov. 20, 2011), predicts robust job growth for anthropology in the next decade .
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that employment opportunities for all anthropology majors will grow by 22% between now and
2018, and for students with an MA degree there will be 28% growth. A recent article from
Career.com lists Anthropology at number 6 out of the top 10 fastest growing careers for students with an MA degree.
We also have a difficult time trying to understand why we would have been ranked low on centrality as we teach the most courses on cross-cultural understanding one of the missions of ECU. Anthropology faculty members teach in many areas outside of the
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department. We teach in women’s studies, International studies, the MAIS program, Asia
Studies, Religious Studies, the
Second Life early high school program and honors (two courses in the spring). I doubt that any other department teaches in that many courses outside of their departments. I think this is strong evidence of our centrality. Our faculty members serve on PhD programs in Nursing and the CRM program. Three of our faculty members have chaired
PhD committees in the CRM program.
In the draft PPC document of November 15, the department of Anthropology was placed in the fifth category, “Systemic Weakness.” Here is what we think a department with
“Systemic Weakness” would look like:
1. Frequent turn over of faculty for any number of reasons.
2. Frequent turn over of chairs.
3. Frequent questionable tenure/promotion decisions.
4. Frequent disputes within a department over tenure/promotion decisions
5. Failure to meet funding formula requirements.
6. If a MA program is in a department, students are only recruited from within the department.
7. Never have graduate students attend or present papers at professional meetings.
8. A department that over or under spends it operating budget.
9. Assessment documents are not up to date.
10 No increase in the number of undergraduate majors.
11. Failure to write grant proposals and/or fail to obtain grants.
This is a short list of traits of an unstable weak department. None of these traits characterize the Department of Anthropology. We have had only one faculty member to leave since becoming an independent department in 1993 and one retired. All of our faculty who have come up for tenure and promotion were highly regarded by external reviewers, faculty and administrators who reviewed their PADs. There have been no disputed tenure or promotion decisions. All of research faculty members have written grant proposals that were not funded due to lack of federal research dollars or have obtained external funding. Anthropologists generally engage in field research, which takes longer to write up than social science survey research. With few exceptions, all of our graduate students are recruited external to ECU and have higher GPA and GRE scores higher than the mean for other programs. The fact that we can recruit graduate students external to ECU speaks to the quality reputation of our program by faculty outside of ECU who recommend our MA program to their students. Each semester graduate students go to professional meetings and present papers. With a growing amount of money in our Foundation account, we are able to assist students to attend professional meetings. We have grown from having 15 majors in 1993 to over 100 majors by 2011 in a discipline that is not well known in North Carolina. There has never been a problem with the department’s end of year operating budget and our assessment documents beginning in 2008 are up to date. Most importantly, we have met the funding formula requirements.
The above facts speak to a department that is not showing signs of systemic weakness.
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Contrary to any misconception concerning the nature of anthropology, which is part natural science, part social science and part humanities, we are not a “social science research discipline” but a typical anthropology department like our has cultural anthropologists, archaeologists and biological anthropologists. Currently have two full time cultural anthropology researchers and both engage in research with other units particularly the BSOM and Pitt County Memorial Hospital. In fact, they have three students now who are working with faculty in the BSOM/PCMH on their thesis projects right now. I have been told that there are two departments thought to engage in departmental social science research (ie multidisciplinary research)-Univ. of Colorado and
Colorado State University that our department should use as a model. However, the websites of the anthropology departments at these universities indicate that they are typical anthropology departments like ours and not “social science research” departments.
That is, these departments have a few cultural anthropologists, a couple of archaeologists and one or two biological anthropologists. Moreover, the faculty members according to their websites engage in research in an area appropriate to their subfield. Finally, putting archaeologists and biological anthropologists into a department with sociologists as the original EPPC report suggested is not going to result in the archaeologists or biological anthropologists engaging in social science research that is outside their areas of expertise. It would be a mistake to see anthropology as the discipline it is for the subfield of cultural anthropology whose members do occasionally work with other social scientists here and at other universities. Having anthropologists (ie cultural anthropologists, archaeologists, and biological anthropologists) in a sociology department did not work the first time anthropologists were placed with sociologists and it will not work the second time. The sociologists concur with this assessment. I know of no departments of sociology and anthropology in which either the sociologists or anthropologists are happy with the situation. I should also point that UNCW and UNCC sociology/anthropology departments have also been divided because of the basic incompatibility of the two very different disciplines.
Currently we have 2 full time cultural anthropologist researchers, 3 biological anthropologists including the chair and one who may not return in the spring and 5 archaeologists (most of our BA and MA students are interested in archaeology/bioanthropology). The archaeologists engage in research with those in Maritime
History/underwater archaeology and geology as appropriate. All are well-known and wellpublished. Those who do their research in the Middle East (Israel and Jordon) are well connected and internationally known in their fields and are on executive boards of their professional organizations. Dr. Megan Perry works with the PCMH Morgue and collects in a crime scene skeletonized remains when called to do so by local law enforcement and processes the skeletons for the morgue. She does 3-5 of these crime scene analyses a year. These factors do not indicate a department with a “systemic weakness.”
The anthropology department is the youngest, smallest and least well understood of the departments in the THCAS. This is not unusual for a department of anthropology as the discipline itself is not a large discipline and is broken into several disciplines each with its own history and professional organizations. As the youngest of the departments in the
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THCAS we have been in the process of building a department. For most its history, which began in 1993, most of the faculty were tenure-track faculty just beginning their careers (we left sociology with 5 anthropology faculty members). We should not be compared to larger ECU departments with longer histories at ECU and a different mix of tenure-track faculty and faculty members with mature careers.
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