Stanford Report, December 6, 2006

President Hennessy announces new discretionary funding for humanities faculty

5-year pilot program will ensure each tenured, tenure-track humanist gets a minimum of $5,000 every year for research

BY BARBARA PALMER

A new five-year pilot program will ensure that every tenured and tenure-track faculty member in the humanities has a minimum of $5,000 in discretionary funding available to support research every year, President John Hennessy announced at the Nov. 30 Faculty Senate meeting.

Hennessy said he had met over the past year with humanities faculty looking for ways in which the university might provide additional assistance in support of humanities research and scholarship.

"We live in a time when, I think, the challenges of the world will make humanities as important, if not more important, than they've ever been," Hennessy said at the meeting. At the same time, humanities faculty do not have access to some of the financial resources available to faculty in the professional schools or from external funding agencies, he said.

The funding program will affect the approximately 220 active, tenure-line faculty with an appointment in the humanities, but does not include visiting faculty, lecturers or emeriti faculty, said Maria Riasanovsky, academic program associate for the humanities. The Office of the Dean of Humanities and Sciences will be sending out a memo detailing eligibility and implementation, she said.

A letter will be sent to each eligible faculty member shortly, Hennessy said, noting that the new program funding will be in addition to the funding supplied through the presidential junior faculty research grants program.

The additional funding will allow humanists to work more effectively, said Stephen Hinton, senior associate dean for the humanities and professor of musicology in the Department of Music.

Humanities scholars "do a lot of our work on our own, writing articles and books, and we don't tend to work in teams. At the same time, we belong to communities of scholars." These activities will be supported by the new program, he said.

Most humanities faculty up to this point have received no more than $1,000 a year in research support from the university, Hinton said. For scholars who are traveling to archives or attending conferences, the funding didn't go very far, he said. "But five times the amount opens up some exciting possibilities."