College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Iowa State University

Reluctant no more

After a semester as the interim director for the Center for Excellence in the Arts and Humanities, Brenda Daly is shedding the temporary tag.

No way was she going to become the director of the Center for Excellence in the Arts and Humanities (CEAH) on a permanent basis.

After all, Brenda Daly was already the editor of the National Women's Studies Association Journal.

"I didn't think this would be possible," she said. "I was concerned that my year-round administrative responsibilities with the Journal would limit what I could accomplish at the Center and that my own scholarship would suffer.

"It wasn't as if I could just find replacement teachers for my classes in order to assume responsibility for directing the Center."

Daly, University Professor of English, did agree to hold the position on an interim basis for the fall semester. It was that experience that made her realize that she might be able to manage it all after all.

A strong support staff at CEAH and an outstanding steering committee gave Daly the incentive she needed to take the plunge as director on a more permanent basis. Her appointment was recently announced by the Office of the Vice Provost for Research.

"I lean a lot on Molly Helmers, the Center's program assistant," Daly said. "She has great ideas and is wonderful with the details.

"And while the steering committee is full of very busy people, they are passionate about the Center and willing to work hard to support our goals."

Daly says that the goals of CEAH will be somewhat different in the coming years. When CEAH was first established, a strong programming series was established to create visibility for the organization while engaging faculty, students and the community in exciting events in the arts and humanities.

"We're going to cut down on the programming somewhat in order to focus more on grant applications and fund raising," Daly said. "We plan to raise money to support scholarly and creative activity by faculty and students."

Daly will coordinate the grant applications, while Ingrid Lilligren, CEAH associate director, will oversee the fundraising events.

Collaborative projects between faculty in the arts and humanities and the University's scientific faculty will be encouraged.

"We shouldn't do the same thing at Iowa State as at the University of Iowa," Daly said. "Science and technology are very important here, and we will continue to partner with the sciences on campus."

One of those collaborative projects is the Genome Anthology, an anthology initiated by Distinguished Professor Max Rothschild and funded by the Center for Integrated Animal Genomics and the CEAH. The anthology will feature creative and critical writing on animal and human genomics as represented in literature, art and film.

Another collaborative project, an exhibit of work by artist-scientist teams, "Breaking the Creative Barriers: The Arts and Sciences in Collaboration," will be held at the Octagon Center for the Arts in Ames April 4-16.

Programming will continue to be a CEAH focus, with the organization already planning activities around Veishea this spring. Future goals include linking an interdisciplinary course on "Place" to the Center's programming series in 2006-2007.

Cross-disciplinary collaboration will continue to be a primary function of CEAH. Daly longs for the day when an actual space is available where faculty from across disciplines can come together to discuss their work.

"The most exciting scholarship often occurs at the crossroads of disciplinary boundaries," she said. "In addition, we need to integrate the Center's activities to support more in-depth scholarship among both faculty and students."

"We can't stay the same. We have to constantly monitor the needs of the arts and humanities at Iowa State and increase the Center's potential to help meet those needs."