CAS serves as campuswide ‘interdisciplinary catalyst’
By Craig Chamberlain, Staff Writer (217) 333-2894; cdchambe@illinois.edu
There may not be another place quite like it on any other large research campus. At least that’s the perception of Bill Greenough, director of the Center for Advanced Study. The center, begun in 1959, does not focus on one broad area of study, such as the sciences or humanities, as similar centers do at other institutions. And the faculty members it honors are not just honored but made a part of things. “I don’t think there’s anything that’s a campuswide interdisciplinary center, in the same sense that we are, at any campus that I know of,” said Greenough, a professor of psychology. And CAS, from Greenough’s perspective, is not just a center, but an “interdisciplinary catalyst” for the campus. One CAS publication describes the center as at the “intellectual heart” of the campus, “bringing together scholars from diverse disciplines and backgrounds, encouraging and rewarding excellence in all areas of academic inquiry.” As Masumi Iriye, the center’s associate director, puts it, “You throw a bunch of really smart people in a room together, regardless of their background, and something interesting is going to happen.” Greenough thinks the emphasis on crossing disciplines is all the more important now in a time of diminished resources. “The universities that are going to be outstanding are the universities that see these interdisciplinary possibilities, that bring new combinations together.” He takes particular pride in the role that the center has played in the development of Chancellor Nancy Cantor’s 11 cross-campus initiatives. The center helped in selecting the working groups, hosting the initial planning retreat and other meetings, and in evaluating the ideas. “I would not say that this couldn’t have happened without us, but I can say that this did happen with us,” Greenough said. At the core of the center are the CAS professors, chosen for their outstanding scholarship and from every area of the campus. The diversity of disciplines showed even among the five most recently selected, whose appointments started this fall. They came from electrical and computer engineering, Germanic languages and literatures, journalism, microbiology and physics. The other disciplines represented by the 13 other CAS professors range from American literature to entomology, from music to cell biology. Among the 13 are winners of numerous prestigious awards – including, just this year, two Nobel Prizes, the Crafoord Prize, and a National Medal of Technology. The center also selects CAS associates and fellows – tenured and untenured faculty members, respectively – based on research proposals submitted in an annual competition. Those selections are made by the CAS professors, “and every year it seems the pool (to choose from) is just stellar,” Iriye said. “It’s increasingly difficult for the professors to whittle down the list from the number of applicants to the final selections.” The associates and fellows are given release time from teaching in order to pursue their research. They’re also brought together with the CAS professors for lunches, research discussions and presentations, all in the interest of collaboration and supporting research. The center also sponsors a select few graduate students as Bardeen Scholars, though this will be the last year for the program, Iriye said. “The money simply isn’t there for them any longer,” she said. There will be fewer associates and fellows next year too because of budget cuts. All of those efforts, along with others, also connect with another CAS priority: “optimizing” the environment for faculty generally. “One of the purposes of the center is to make life here attractive,” Greenough said, “and to provide things to the campus at large that range from perks to programs that make people want to stay at Illinois.” Among the programs is the MillerComm lecture series, perhaps the most well known of the center’s activities. MillerComm commonly sponsors or co-sponsors at least 30 lectures a year. The center also has sponsored annual initiatives, such as a current one on the interaction of health policy and social welfare policy, and another continued from last year on globalization. The initiatives usually include a faculty and graduate student seminar as well as public lectures by guest speakers. The Miller endowment also funds a visiting professors program that can bring someone to campus to serve within an academic unit – most often for a week, but sometimes as long as a year. Despite some cutbacks because of decreased funding, Greenough and Iriye said the center will stay active in its interdisciplinary efforts, especially since they think those efforts are more important than ever. “The notion that you can bring disciplines together, and have a whole that truly is more than the sum of the parts, is exactly what research in universities should be all about,” Greenough said.
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