After a summer hiatus and in concert with the beginning of a new academic year, we resume publication of Focus, our monthly e-newsletter designed to provide information on current events and happenings in the arts and humanities. Each month, we feature stories that celebrate the accomplishments of arts and humanities people and highlight some of the more prominent activities and events sponsored by our academic programs. In this space, I present my reflections on various issues that impact our work in the arts and humanities.

This academic year promises to be a decisive one in the continuing effort to reconfigure the arts and sciences. With the arrival of new Executive Dean and Vice Provost for Arts and Sciences, Dr. Joseph Steinmetz, we anticipate a dramatic increase in the pace of change. Before the end of the academic year, we should see the completion of the task begun almost five years ago of transforming five separate colleges into a College of Arts and Sciences. The culmination of this process will have important implications for the future prosperity of the liberal arts at Ohio State. We all recognize that a strong College of Arts and Sciences is essential to the realization of President E. Gordan Gee's vision of eminence for the university.

Although the road to change has been frustrating at times, few have doubted that we could eventually achieve meaningful change. As academics, we realize that change in institutions such as ours is often slow yet ongoing and essential if we are to grow and prosper. Universities are almost by definition places of transformation where we attempt to effect change in our students, our disciplines, and even in ourselves. They are dynamic places where comings and goings are inevitable; where the giddy exhilaration of students venturing onto the campus for their first college classes is nicely balanced by the nostalgic and frequent return of alumni seeking a reconnection to a place and perhaps a time that no longer exists. Under our quarter system, every ten or eleven weeks we stand ready to welcome a new group of students into our classrooms, every four years or so we see pretty much a total transformation of our student body, and every autumn we have an incredible opportunity to begin again and, more importantly, to get it all right this time around. Interestingly, it is the possibility of change and renewal that brings us back each year; that gives us our strength, our optimism, and our willingness to push knowledge and sometimes our students to the edge.

As the last five years or so have illustrated, changes in administrative structures can be difficult. Unlike the inevitable renewal that comes each fall with the entrance of a new class of students bringing their new lives, new ideas and new energy, changes in administrative structures are simply not a part of the natural rhythm of university life which is governed more by tradition than innovation, more by stability than change. However, as we embark upon a new academic year, we can finally look forward to a year in which we will achieve transformative change, not simply in the structure of arts and sciences but in the educational opportunities that we offer our students.