Part II. Program Data Template, Short Narratives August 15, 2011
Department of Anthropology, Submitted by Linda Wolfe with faculty assistance.
(A) Productivity. The research faculty (S. Arps, C. Avenarius, E. Bailey, T.
Boudreaux, R. Daniel, C. Ewen, D. Griffith, H. Mathews, L. Mazow, M. Perry, B. Saidel) of the Department of Anthropology are highly productive. They publish in the respected top journals relevant to their subdiscipline and in books published by university presses.
The numbers of citations in row 87 is the number of citations divided by all T&TT faculty.
However, the numbers in row 87 are misleading because the numbers include two faculty with high teaching assignments who do not publish and tenure track faculty just beginning their careers. Moreover, faculty had very little time to find all of their citations.
If one considers just the research active T&TT faculty the citation numbers are much higher (2008-2009 36 [range 1-121] citations, 2009-2010 39 [2-126] citations and 2010-
2011 37 [2-136] citations). Moreover, if only the mature full professors are considered the number of citations is even higher (2008-2009 56 [9-126] citations, 2009-2010 62 [8-
126] citations and 2010-2011 58 [5-136] citations). I think these citation numbers are indicative of a highly productive and respected faculty. Finally, all tenure track faculty have easily obtained tenure and/or promotion because of their stellar publication records as noted by their external reviewers (C. Avenarius, M. Perry, and B. Saidel were tenured and promoted, R. Daniel and E Bailey were promoted to full professor).
Because of both the recent financial down turn in federal funding and the fact that anthropology is a not known for its large external funding sources, our faculty have not brought in large grants except for David Griffith (who is half anthropology and half ICSP).
It should be noted that Dr. Griffith has been at ECU and developing his career for nearly
30 years and during most of that time never taught more than a couple of courses each spring semester. Dr. Griffith has indeed developed a wonderful career and demonstrates the kinds of investments that ECU must make in faculty to facilitate their career development if they want to develop research faculty like Dr. David Griffith.
Other anthropology faculty have also actively submitted proposals to NSF. Dr.
Avenarius with a colleague at the University of Florida, for example, submitted three proposals to NSF that were well received but not funded. Tony Boudreaux (tenure track faculty) obtained a grant for an archaeology research project in Mississippi from their
Development Authority for $209,720. Dr. Boudreaux’s project funded several graduate students over the course of two years. Other faculty have received grants from Health
Disparities BSOM, Center for Diversity (sociology), and the Graduate and Research division. Research is ongoing.
(B) Centrality. The first ECU Mission Statement is that ECU is “Preparing our students to compete and succeed in the global economy and multicultural society.” Moreover,
Globalization is prioritized in the current EC Strategic Directions 1.1. Anthropology provides the academic home for the Global Understanding program and provides 6 or 7
ANTH 1050 Global Understanding courses a semester. ANTH 1050 essentially meets and/or exceeds all of the goals within 1.1 of the strategic plan and the Globalization aspect of the ECU Mission. The GU program has received a number of awards, most notably the Andrew Heiskell Award in 2008 given out by the Institute for International
Education. In addition, all of anthropology courses involve people, past and present, in a cross-cultural global perspective.
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Another part of the ECU mission states that ECU is about “Saving lives, curing diseases, and positively transforming health and hearth care” and is numbered 3.1 to
3.4 in the ECU Strategic Directions. The Department of Anthropology faculty are about improving the health of the region by addressing health issues facing the region and increasing external funding. For example, Dr. Holly Mathews is affiliated faculty with newly established Interdisciplinary Center for Health Disparities. Mathews has joined with a team headed by center director Hope Landrine to obtain an internal RDA funding to complete a pilot project developing culturally appropriate breast cancer education messages for an innovative breast cancer kiosk. Dr. Mathews is also affiliated with the
Breast Cancer Research Group at Leo Jenkins Cancer Center. She has collaborated with Dr. Jim Mitchell and others in the field of gerontology to submit a R21 grant to the
National Institutes of Aging to explore the reasons for disparities in morbidity and mortality among the rural elderly in eastern North Carolina. They have involved coordinators from six area agencies on aging in the design of the project and as cofacilitators of the project.
Medical anthropology faculty have been actively recruiting more MA students with a focus on health care. We have developed a set of internship opportunities for these students in local agencies and formalized a contract procedure. We have four graduate students out of 11 graduate students from the class of 2010 currently doing thesis research/internships in medical anthropology at the BSOM, Pitt Memorial
Hospital and working among fishermen and their families on the coast of eastern NC.
Another example is Dr. Eric Bailey who has obtained external funding to develop and implement a graduate certificate program in the Department of Public Health in Ethnic
Health Disparities. Moreover, Dr. Perry works with local law enforcement and the faculty of the morgue to recover and analyze skeletalized remains from possible crime scenes. Since 2008 Dr. Perry has investigated 11 skeletalized remains. Finally, many anthropology courses involved health and disease (eg., psychological anthropology, death and disease, disease ecology, forensic anthropology, modern human variation and adaptation).
Quality. The BA and MA programs offer solid courses in theory, methods, anthropological ethics, writing skills, and knowledge in cultural anthropology, archaeology and biological anthropology. We have an excellent set of video/DVDs, and fossils and primate casts. Each year the number of undergraduates that come to major in anthropology increases so that now we have 66 majors according to BIC and are advising 112 majors. The number of anthropology majors has increased every year since we became an independent department in 1993. While we do not have an anthropological linguist, we do offer an undergraduate course in language and culture. Each year we conduct assessment on our foundation courses, and our BA and MA program. For example, in April 2011 25 graduating anthropology majors were given an assessment exam. The exam consisted of 61 questions spread evenly over bioanthropology, archaeology and cultural anthropology. The criteria were set at
70% of the student answering correcting 70% of the questions. Sixty percent of the BA students met our criteria. Of those who fell below the 70% mark of correct answers only two were below 60% of correct answers. In the action plan for the future, the areas that students seem to have difficulty with will be
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addressed in our courses. On a similar MA assessment exam, all students met criteria but we are working on the problem areas. Since fall 2008 we have had
18 undergraduate students on the Chancellor’s list, 36 on the Dean’s list and 50 students on the honor roll.
We encourage both undergraduate and graduate students to carry out research and present the research results at local and national meetings. Last academic year we spent about $500 from the foundation account to send students to meetings. We recruit graduate students from outside ECU both by sending out a poster each year to 150 universities on the east coast and at professional meetings. However, we do occasionally take our own BA students if they are competitive (i. e. have at least 1000 on the GRE and at least a 3.2 GPA). Each year qualified BA and MA graduates go on to other MA programs, PhD programs and professional graduate programs. We have had BA and MA students win awards during research week and MA students have given competitive papers/posters at regional and national meetings. We offer two undergraduate certificates, Forensic Anthropology (which brings into the department students from criminal justice) and Cultural Resource Management (which help students obtain employment with archaeology corporations). All of the research active faculty have served various roles in their professional organization (e.g. Drs Ewen and Griffith are currently editors for journals published by their professional organizations).
One unique feature of our program are the faculty who specialize in the Near
East (B. Saidel [ethnoarchaeology, the Levant], M. Perry [bioarcheaology, Jordan] and L.
Mazow [religion and biblical archaeology]). In fact, a Near East professor at Liverpool in
UK wants to set up a cooperative program with our anthropology faculty. Benjamin
Saidel is on the Board of Trustees of the W.F. Albright Institute of Archaeological
Research, Israel, and Megan Perry is on the Advisory board of the American Center of
Oriental Research, Jordon.
(D) Opportunity (SWOT). As a result of our 2011 external review:
A Facebook site was developed and frequently updated.
A committee is designing a YouTube video about the department.
We are working on updating the anthropology website. (However, Technical support for the development of new website is needed.)
We have redesigned ANTH 6501 for graduate students as a brown bag internal lecture series.
Encourage faculty, especially cultural anthropologists, to develop more applied courses and research/service agendas.
Funding student travel to meetings from our ECU foundation account.
Encourage students to become members of honors societies.
As budget allows revive department colloquium series to bring in external speakers, especially speakers on the topics related to the Near East.
Developing more internship opportunities for students (BA and MA level).
Encouraging our students to have a study abroad experience.
Encouraging students, especially graduate students, to present research at the
ECU Research Week and professional meetings.
Developing a plan to offer an ethnographic field school for graduate and undergraduate students to provide training in ethnographic research.
Encourage faculty to apply for outside funding to support research.
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Encourage linkages between ECU research institutes and the department.
Needed resources to meet the vision of the department:
More tuition waivers and more assistantships to offer high quality graduate students (at present we loose attractive students to other universities who offer assistantships and tuition waivers)
Request return of two graduate assistantships to assist with summer field school in archaeology
Additional graduate assistantship are needed to offer a summer ethnographic field school
Hire an applied cultural anthropologist. For more information on positions for anthropologists see www.aaanet.org/profdev/careers .
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