Art & Design
According to Associate Professor and Department Chair of Art & Design Katherine Fries, the program will have new offerings for students this year, said, falling into three categories: events, new faculty and a new park on campus.
Events include a lecture series with special guests and L/P credit, the “Night Calls” gallery opening, a Halloween costume contest and a Student Art Sale, Fries said. The “Night Calls” Gallery, hosted in the Christel DeHaan Fine Arts Center Gallery from Sept. 9 to Oct. 25, will showcase a selection of 18 photographs by Rebecca Norris Webb, a poet from Rushville, Indiana. A reception for the exhibition will be on Oct. 3 from 4-6 p.m.
Fries said the most exciting new feature coming from Art & Design is Greyhound Park — a new place for the UIndy community to gather between Christel DeHaan Fine Arts Center and Krannert Memorial Library. Fries said the park was designed by Co-Chair of the Art & Design Department James Viewegh in collaboration with Student Affairs.
“All of these efforts are designed to give our students opportunities, experiences and program offerings,” Fries said. “Every single one of these things were created with the idea, “What can we bring to our students? What can we have here to share with our students?”
Criminal Justice
Chair of the Department of Criminal Justice and Associate Professor Kevin Whiteacre said the most exciting developments coming to the department this year are new faculty members. Adjunct Professor Jordan Oliver is an assistant U.S. attorney and will be teaching a criminal evidence course this fall.
Oliver said he has been a guest instructor in other classes, and he is excited to teach his own class for the first time. Right now, Oliver deals with criminal evidence in every aspect of his job, which he said gives him a unique perspective to bring to students.
Holly Sims-Bruno is also joining the criminal justice department as a full-time professor after serving as an online adjunct previously, and she will be teaching a corrections course, Whiteacre said.
Communication
UIndy Theatre season kicks off in September, according to Director of UIndy Theatre and Assistant Professor Grant Williams. “All in Good Timing” is its first performance and will run from Sept. 19-21, and “Circle Mirror Transformation” will be Nov. 14-16. Williams said there will also be exciting performances to look for in the second semester.
Chemistry
Chair of the Chemistry Department and Associate Professor David Styers-Barnett said although the chemistry department does not have any new faculty or programs this year, it is strengthening many of its existing offerings such as research programs and personalized degrees.
Styers-Barnett said students have been able to do the Swift Undergraduate Research Experience, a summer research program that takes place in May where students work on chemistry-related projects and conduct research full time. He said this opportunity is available to students of any major as long as their project is chemistry-focused.
Although there are no new concentrations this year, Styers-Barnett said there have been new concentrations added in recent years that are beginning to grow. He said a chemistry degree by itself can provide many opportunities, but there are also concentrations that students can add to focus on their career goals or interests. Concentrations like biochemistry have been around for a long time, Styers-Barnett said, but forensic chemistry and industrial chemistry are still relatively new. A key feature of the industrial chemistry concentration is the partnerships the department has with industries around Indianapolis, the biggest one being with Roche Academy and Roche Diagnostics. Roche hires UIndy students for internships, which can lead to full-time job opportunities after graduation, Styers-Barnett said.
“We have people at Eli Lilly for pharmaceuticals that we work with,” Styers-Barnett said. “We have people at the Heritage Group, which is more of a materials company, so they got their start working on things like concrete, and they also do environmental chemistry work. That’s just a few of the folks around town that we try to work with to help students get experiences that they need for whatever kind of career that they want to have.”
Styers-Barnett added that the concentrations in the chemistry major add flexibility and gives students the opportunity to to design their degree in order to be most successful after graduation. He said it is rewarding to get emails from alumni who have said the classes and opportunities the UIndy chemistry department provided to them helped them excel in graduate degrees or careers.
“We are, like a lot of departments here on campus, very student-focused, and we’re all undergraduate,” Styers-Barnett said. “We’re very much a department that is looking to work with students on every aspect of what we do, whether it’s designing sets of classes, doing independent research projects … or trying to choose electives that will help make sense or provide them with a new passion they didn’t know they had. That’s what we want to do, we want to make sure our students are successful.”
English
Professor and Chair of the English Department Molly Martin is most excited for this year is the new experiential requirement for English students. She said this will help students get workplace experience on campus while working on the skills they will need in the future.
Although students have not had to do this previously, Martin said the requirement is flexible and could be accomplished through an internship, student teaching or a study abroad course.
Associate Chair of the English Department and Professor Jen Camden said she is looking forward to the study abroad experiences coming this year. Camden, Martin and Associate Professor Barney Haney will be teaching a class on Welsh literature during the spring semester, including a trip to Wales over spring break.
“Part of it [the value] is seeing the world,” Martin said. “We really value global travel and local travel as well, any opportunities to experience things in general.”
Etchings and the Kellogg Writer Series will be available to students this year through the English department, which offers new opportunities for students, Martin said. The deadline to submit to Etchings is Sept. 10, and it is a blind-submission process where each submission is judged without the entrant’s name attached to it. During the second semester, Martin said the Kellogg Writer Series has a great lineup of female writers, including UIndy Professor Liz Whiteacre, who has a poetry book coming out.
Another project the department will be continuing is a collaboration with the art department, where they take a historically-significant, out-of-print novel and edit it, add footnotes and a critical introduction, Camden said. A student artist will create artwork for the novel, and this fall the students in English 385: Book Editing and Publishing will create the text, choose fonts, decide the layout, as well as other apects of book production.
“They’ll be doing all the pieces of book production that we don’t often think about and that students wouldn’t always have an opportunity to do,” Camden said. “In some ways, the curriculum changes are just making more visible in our curriculum what we’ve already done, and highlighting that this is what we do at UIndy that’s really unique to our program.”
Global Languages
The global languages department will continue to offer three languages: Spanish, French and German, and will host new and old events, according to Department Chair Ava Maria Ferreira.
The department will be hosting movie nights once a month throughout the semester which are available for L/P credits, according to Ferreira. She said they will host a Spanish Conversation Circle again this year, which includes meeting once a week at a public library with the option to attend online.
Ferreira said the department will also experiment with having students work directly with a medical clinic as translators on the East side of Indianapolis. She is piloting it in one of her classes, and students will go through background checks and an interview process since the work will involve sensitive information. Depending on the success of the trial, Ferreira said the project may become available to to more classes and areas of the school.
Math
This year, Chair of the Department and Associate Professor Livia Hummel said the math department is partnering with Indiana DataMind, which is hosted at Purdue University. UIndy students will participate in the corporate partners program and will be working on a data project with a company, according to Hummel. She said there will also be students participating in the DataMind seminar, an online, asynchronous class which is open to anyone. Hummel said the benefit for students is it exposes them to skills they may not see in class and gives them a chance to work with an industry partner. According to her, students will work with students from across the U.S. in a real-world environment with the hope of potential job opportunities in the future.
Music
According to Department Chair Dr. Rebecca Sorley, the music department is anticipating a new degree starting in January called Music Industry. The major would focus on music technology and the business side of the music industry. She said most music majors have a primary instrument, but this will be a good option for those who may not have one.
The faculty artist concert series is continuing this year and occurs every Monday night. The first event is Sept. 9 at 7 p.m. and will feature Director of Jazz Studies Mark O’Connor. All Faculty Artist Concert Series performances will be available for L/P credits.
She said every year the winner of the American Pianist Association Jazz Competition performs at the school. The school has a partnership with the Indianapolis-based American Piano Association, according to the website. Isaiah Thompson was the winner of the American Pianists Award in 2023 according to UIndy’s website.
Physics
According to Department Chair and Associate Professor of Physics Leah Courtland, the department will be setting open hours for the observatory and hosting science movie nights. She said by having more events open will build more community, which is a huge focus in the department.
Courtland said the department has changed some of its math requirements to make earth and environmental science majors and minors more accessible to students. She said they are working to ensure required courses will be offered with the possibility of offering other credit-bearing courses, such as those in health and science.
Religion and Philosophy
According to Assistant Department Chair and Assistant Professor Lacey Davidson, the Center for Ethics is a big focus for the religion and philosophy department this semester. The Center for Ethics hosts events outside the classroom that students can attend for L/P credits, Davidson said.
She said the newest addition to the ethics center is the Kevin R. Armstrong Ethical Leadership Award. The second inaugural award will be announced in the spring and provides students a role model of a leader in the community.
She said there will also be a panel in the fall that will focus on artificial intelligence and ethics. According to Davidson, it is important to have opportunities outside the classroom to give students examples of individuals successful in their careers.
“A lot of times the panels that happen outside of the classroom give someone a really specific and concrete way that those skills and knowledge base that they developed through the class can be applied in their life,” Davidson said.
She also said the religion department will host an event called the Showers Lecture in the Spring and will feature an individual who is conducting research within the Christian tradition.
Sociology
The sociology department had a couple of major changes over the summer. Chair of the Department of Sociology and Professor Amanda Miller said the department incorporated National Association of Colleges and Employers competencies into the syllabi. Miller said NACE is an organization that brings together colleges and employers with a goal of ensuring students have skill sets employers are looking for by the time they graduate. Another goal, according to Miller, is to not only prepare students to be sociologists but employees as well.
Additionally, the department added three graduate certificates for 4-plus-1 students in sociology. She said the programs are meant for master’s students who may want additional preparation or for working adults who want to add to their expertise without the full commitment of a master’s degree. The three new programs are social work, non-profit leadership and DEIB (diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging). Anyone in the community can apply to these programs. She encourages students to stop by Good Hall 219 to learn more.
