Luce puts Oberlin in elite company

Prestigious Professorship to focus on emerging arts

There are few things which can be said to be unique to Oberlin. Drag ball and quarter beers may come to mind - or more serious things like the Allen Memorial Art Museum and the Experimental College. These are Oberlin's own. And starting next year, there will be one more Oberlin trademark: the as yet unnamed Luce Professor in the Emerging Arts.

This position will be funded by a grant from the prestigious Henry Luce Foundation, which will provide up to $1 million. The position created by this grant is the Henry R. Luce Professorship in the Emerging Arts, an academic appointment which will straddle the Conservatory and the College of Arts and Sciences. This will be the first time in almost 30 years that the college and the conservatory will share a faculty member.

The Luce Professorship Program, which was established in 1969, encourages interdisciplinary approaches to higher education in American institutions. In its proposal to the foundation, Oberlin proposed that the proliferation of new media arts (digital imagery, computer-generated sound, video footage and audio clips) required an entirely new sort of arts curriculum.

Speaking of the benefits of this inter-disciplinary approach to academics, Visiting Assistant Professor of Art Stan Mathews said, "I think the benefit of a liberal arts college takes place in that kind of study. The arts in particular are really ready for that kind of study."

The Luce Professorship in the Emerging Arts will be devoted to just that: examining the criticism, theory, ethics and aesthetics of new modes of creating art. A search committee, headed by Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences Clayton Koppes, will select the new professor within the coming year, and his or her tenure will be supported by the Luce Foundation for at least six years, with the grant renewable for an additional three years.

Oberlin was one of two recipients of the grant for this year. The other school to be awarded a grant was Washington University in St. Louis, which will hire a professor in Collective and Individual Memory. Previous recipients have included Brown University, which holds a Luce Professorship in Transnational Organization and Johns Hopkins University, which has a professorship in Bioethics and Moral and Political Theory. The Luce Foundation strives to foster the most innovative interdisciplinary efforts, and therefore aims to fund only the most cutting-edge endeavors. Safe to say, they try not to repeat themselves.

Oberlin presented its proposal to the Luce foundation on Feb. 23 of this year. The proposal was the result of a collaborative effort between Director of Sponsored Projects David Love, Director of Corporate Support Pam Snyder, Professor of Art William Hood, Assistant Professor of Art Lynn Lukkas, Professor of Philosophy Norman Care and others. Several other faculty members assisted with generally at least one representative from each artistic department on campus. Faculty and students met with representatives of the Luce Foundation during their visit to campus last May. The award was announced this summer.

The Luce Foundation was established in 1936 by the late Henry R. Luce, co-founder and editor-in-chief of Time Inc. The work of the Luce foundation reflects the interests of four generations of the prominent American family. The advancement of interdisciplinary higher education is only one of their goals. The total expenditures of the Henry R. Luce Professorship Program for 1996-'97 were $3,915,000. The foundation itself has assets of about $670 million.