I am honored to serve as the first Dean of the new College of Liberal Arts. We have faced interesting challenges in developing new relationships between faculty in disciplines that previously were not organizationally related.
Between retirements and reorganization nearly everyone in the College has been affected by the changes. Most academic disciplines have stayed essentially the same, but in nearly every case they are either led by someone new, or they are a part of a larger department which includes colleagues they previously knew only from chance meetings in the hall or service on committees.
We have all had much to learn about each other, and about how this new College will operate. And we have begun to learn those lessons while we carry on the work of the University and of our programs.
When we look at what we have done since July the achievements are impressive. We have hired new faculty in Political Science, English, Spanish, Theatre, Music and Speech Communication. We have staged Jack and the Beanstalk for nearly 1,500 elementary students and The Goat for adults. The Goat was named outstanding production at the American College Theatre Festival. We have presented several jazz concerts and a symphony concert. We have written a curriculum for a new program in Cherokee Language and made important revisions in our existing music degree programs. We have hung two exhibits in the art gallery and are about to open a third. We are to host the Oklahoma Political Science Association annual meeting and we were represented by thirty scholars at Oklahoma Research Day. Our Social Work Program received high commendations from the accreditation team, which identified six program strengths and one, rather minor, item needing attention.
This is a very partial list of accomplishments just in the last four months. It leaves out the numerous papers presented or accepted for presentation by our faculty and students, the awards won by our Debate and ROTC students and the everyday work of teaching school and advising students.
One of our important tasks in the next few months is to find our graduates. Jean Christian is working on updating the addresses of our alums and we hope to greatly increase the number of accurate physical and e-mail addresses in our College data base.
Our existing lists are very incomplete, and we would appreciate any help in this task. By our next newsletter we hope to able to include a beginning list of names we need specific help with. For now, we will be happy to receive any accurate alumni information anyone might have.
Welcome to our new college. We are fortunate to be a merger of many outstanding faculty and staff representing high quality programs. We will continue to discover new challenges as we learn to work together. Together we will continue the high quality of teaching, scholarship, service and performance we have as our common heritage.

Paul Westbrook, Dean
College of Liberal Arts