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A search committee has been appointed to identify candidates for the position of vice provost for educational equity, a post that will be left vacant by the return to the faculty ranks of James B. Stewart. John J. Romano, vice provost and dean for enrollment management and administration, is search committee chair.
The vice provost for educational equity reports to the executive vice president and provost of the University and is responsible for planning, developing, coordinating, articulating and advocating the University's goals, policies and procedures pertaining to equal opportunity for underrepresented students, faculty and staff at all locations, including oversight of the implementation of the University's Diversity Strategic Plan.
The vice provost for educational equity is responsible for numerous academic support activities, such as Disability Services; Equal Opportunity Planning Committee; Multicultural Resource Center; Project Growth; and Veterans Affairs. The vice provost works closely with the University Faculty Senate to promote curriculum integration and in the evaluation of intercultural and international competency courses. The vice provost works with the Graduate School to promote increased support for students. The vice provost facilitates cooperative research and encourages faculty to conduct research, especially evaluative research, of programs operated as part of Penn State's diversity efforts. The successful candidate will also promote international exchange in cooperation with the Office of International Programs.
Through the work of the EOPC and the President's Opportunity Fund, the vice provost works to enhance and expand programs of minority faculty exchange. In addition to these activities, the vice provost has responsibility for the management of the President's Opportunity Fund, coordination of the Campus Environment Team, control of access to data identified by ethnic code, reporting to government agencies regarding the University's plan for equal opportunity, and representing Penn State in appropriate bodies associated with the Alliance for Undergraduate Education and the Committee on Institutional Cooperation. The vice provost also provides support for the activities of the Commission on Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Equity; Commission on Racial/Ethnic Diversity; and the Commission for Women.
The position requires an individual who has the skills and the vision to lead a large complex university into the 21st multicultural century, and who has demonstrated abilities and a personal commitment to function across racial, cultural and gender barriers in a multi-campus university setting. It is preferred that the candidate have academic credentials and achievement equivalent to a tenured faculty appointment. The candidate should have a thorough familiarity with the philosophy and responsibilities of a large, research-oriented, land-grant institution. Prior experience in academic administration with responsibility for personnel, programs and/or resources is required. Salary will be commensurate with experience and qualifications.
Nominations, applications and inquiries should be submitted to Romano, chair of the Search Committee for the Vice Provost for Educational Equity, 201 Old Main, Box PSI, University Park, Pa. 16802. In addition to a paper copy, the search committee would be pleased to receive applications or nominations that include a full vita on a Word or WordPerfect formatted diskette, or by e-mail sent to PSUSearch@psu.edu. The search committee will begin to review applications and nominations on May 1 and will continue to receive them until the position is filled.
Other members of the search committee are: Barbara E. Bullock,
associate professor of French and linguistics; Alicia Bunnell, contracts
and proposal specialist, Office of Sponsored Programs; Brian C. Clark,
director of veterans programs; Tineke J. Cunning, counselor in Career
Development and Placement Services and chair of the 1997-98 Commission for
Women; Nancy L. Eaton, dean of the University Libraries; Susan
C. Faircloth, graduate student in educational administration; Gail
A. Hurley, director of Residence Life; Kala Krishna, professor
of economics; Deena J. Morganti, associate librarian, Penn State
Berks-Lehigh Valley; Joseph M.
Puzycki, director of Judicial Affairs; Betty J. Roberts, assistant
vice president for Business Services; Robert Secor, vice provost
for academic affairs and personnel; Joseph M. Selden, coordinator
of minority programs, College of Communications; Joshua S. Smith,
president of Academic Assembly and undergraduate student in energy, environmental
and mineral economics; John W. Tippeconnic III, director of the American
Indian Leadership Program and professor of education; and Lawrence W.
Young, director of the Paul Robeson Cultural Center.
The Penn State Beaver Hotel, Restaurant and Institutional Management (HRIM) Program has opened the Nittany Cafe in the church hall of St. Francis Cabrini Catholic Church in Center Township near the campus.
The one-day-a-week cafe is open to the public every Tuesday from 5 to 7 p.m. through April 28, and features a variety of upscale menu items.
The Nittany Cafe is part of an HRIM course being team-taught by Karen L. Monath, instructor in HRIM, and Art Mange, executive chef of the Wooden Angel restaurant in Beaver. Monath and Mange prepare some of the food items and oversee the operation of the restaurant, while students staff the restaurant as hosts, servers and food preparers. An important part of the HRIM program at Penn State Beaver is testing students' ability to apply the skills they have learned in class.
For more information on the program, call Monath at (724) 773-3885.
William Styron, A Life by James L.W. West III, will be published by Random House on March 23. West's initial research for the project began in 1985, while he was doing research for a book on the background of some of Styron's early works.
By Alan Janesch
Public Information
One way to get to know William Styron is to walk with him. That's what James L.W. West III, distinguished professor of English, says in his forthcoming Random House biography of Styron, the author of Sophie's Choice and four other novels, as well as short stories, essays, a memoir and a play.
West describes Styron's strenuous daily walks in the book's "preamble"
-- West is punning deliberately
(pre-amble) -- and says that sometimes during his walks Styron speaks
about himself. On the many walks that Styron took with West, Styron was
articulate, perceptive and witty. But he revealed little about himself,
West says -- there were no glimpses of his ambitions and desires, obsessions
and fears, fantasies and dreams.
The best way to understand Styron, West says, is through "his immensely and painfully self-revealing" works of fiction. It seems odd to hear West, whose 487-page biography of Styron will be published on March 23, suggest that a biography isn't the best vehicle for getting to know its subject. But West is well aware of the shortcomings of the form.
"Biography is a mongrel form, a false form," West says. "In biography you create out of your own head a pattern that seems to fit the evidence of a person's life. No biographer should be arrogant enough to think he can truly penetrate a complex personality like Styron's."
West solves the problem of illuminating Styron's personality by letting Styron reveal it himself -- through excerpts from Styron's books and manuscripts, interviews and previously unpublished letters.
"I try to serve as kind of a straight man for Styron ... framing quotations from his letters and his interviews and letting him speak for himself rather than trying to do it through straight exposition," says West.
West also traces the connections between Styron's real life and the events in his novels, but he tries not to overplay it. "I don't use heavy-handed exposition to point out parallels between the life and the writings. I simply present them and pass on."
Styron grew up in Newport News, Va., and was educated at Davidson College and Duke University. He spent time in the Marines (which spawned a novella, The Long March), went to New York, and ultimately settled in Connecticut, where he developed strong friendships with James Baldwin, Philip Roth, Peter Matthiessen, James Jones and other literary figures.
Styron is perhaps best known for Sophie's Choice, his 1979 novel about the Holocaust, which was made into a 1982 movie with Meryl Streep and Kevin Kline. In addition to the Holocaust, Styron has also addressed other major issues with forthrightness and power, including slavery and his own searing bout with depression.
In the biography, West covers Styron's active political life and delves into his involvement in Eugene McCarthy's campaign for president, the Chicago Democratic convention of 1968 and the war in Vietnam. He also details Styron's long-running feud with Norman Mailer, explores his battles with alcohol and depression, and critiques his major works.
"If the biography has a theme, it is Styron's stubbornness. He has overcome a great many difficulties," West says. "In some ways he seems to be fortune's child; he's had lucky breaks in his career. But he has also had psychological difficulties all of his life. What I admire about him is his doggedness, his self-discipline. He has fought to a draw alcohol and depression and intermittent writer's block, and that's no mean feat. He's continued to write and be innovative."
West most admires Styron's capacity as a writer to take on difficult and self-damaging projects. "He lets it rip when he writes," says West. "I don't mean with an excess of emotion or bathos. But he really goes after it, through word and emotion, and he's had to pay a price: a great deal of self-doubt and psychological trauma. One of the patterns that emerges is that after each of the major works there is a period of great personal travail and psychic despair into which Styron sinks. Then he recovers and begins again."
West says that writing the Styron biography was the most satisfying work he's ever done, "particularly because I was dealing with people who know or have known Styron. With living witnesses there's a kind of unpredictability, a volatility about what they'll say, which makes it very quickening to the intellect."
The biography is not West's first foray into Styron territory. A highly regarded editor, textual theorist, biographer and critic of 20th-century American literature, West has edited and written an introduction for Inheritance of Night, the published early drafts of Styron's 1951 novel, Lie Down in Darkness (Duke University Press, 1993) and edited "Conversations with William Styron" (University Press of Mississippi, 1985).
"In 1985, I was doing research for a book on the background of Lie
Down in Darkness, interviewing
Styron's old friends, classmates and teachers," says West. "I
became aware that I was gathering the kinds of material that a biographer
would gather, and I was a little uneasy. I feared I was intruding into Styron's
personal life. I saw him later that summer, and I said, 'I appear to be
writing a biography of you. If you want me to stop, I will. If you don't,
I'll go ahead.' He said, 'Well, why don't you just go ahead, and we'll see
what happens.'"
So West proceeded, eventually gaining complete access to Styron's literary papers, letters, manuscripts and friends. Styron never asked to read West's drafts while the work was in progress, fearing it would alter his own memories, which he draws on heavily in his work. But once the manuscript was completed, Styron read it -- declining to suggest stylistic or interpretive changes and only pointing out some two dozen factual errors.
The title of West's book is simple -- William Styron, A Life -- but he started out with something much weightier. "The working title was 'Inheritance of Night: The Life of William Styron,'" West confesses. "I rejected it for two reasons. The first is that I thought it was too portentous, and the second is that it had a colon in it. I have taken a solemn oath never again to publish anything that has a colon in the title. The practice is endemic to literary studies, but I've sworn it off."
