In 2004 the Association of American Universities, the consortium of 63 leading research institutions in North America, issued a detailed report on the status of humanities research and teaching in the United States. Titled Reinvigorating the Humanities: Enhancing Research and Education on Campus and Beyond, the report was based on a 2002 survey of "best practices" in the humanities at AAU universities, including UCSB. The report contains a series of recommendations designed to strengthen humanities research, teaching and outreach on individual campuses as well as the national level. The full report is accessible on-line at the AAU Homepage.
In January 2005, Dean David Marshall convened the UCSB AAU Humanities Task Force to review the AAU report, identify emergent trends in humanities research and teaching on our campus, and develop proposals to secure funding for initiatives that will enhance and make more visible the work of humanities faculty and students, both on campus and in the wider community. The first stage of this process has been to open a campus dialogue on topics of contemporary concern to humanities scholars, including the integration of a global perspective into a wide range of humanistic disciplines, the prospects for more extensive community partnerships for humanities research and teaching, and the development of new models for collaborative research within and across academic disciplines.
During the second planning phase the Task Force is developing specific strategies to advance humanities research and teaching at UCSB, drawing on ideas that have emerged during the campus conversations. The Task Force will also submit a follow-up report to the Association of American Universities and the American Council of Learned Societies, which are jointly collating and circulating responses from individual campuses in preparation for a national summit on the humanities to be held in May 2006.
http://www.ihc.ucsb.edu/events/event_files/past/_spring05/aau.html
