• Economic Development/Workforce Demand
  

  The Department of Anthropology requests an Instructor line in Cultural Anthropology to contribute to instruction in all Anthropology programs and to coordinate undergraduate and graduate Advising and Internships. The Instructor will develop courses in Careers and Professionalism in Anthropology to better prepare our graduates for contributing to the workforce. The Instructor will also contribute to instruction and advising in Cultural Anthropology at the undergraduate and graduate levels and complement the one tenure-track cultural anthropologist.
  Cultural Anthropology is an essential component of Anthropology, which also includes Archaeology and Biological Anthropology, and concerns the holistic study of human biology, societies, and behavior through time and across space. Cultural Anthropologists study cultural diversity both in non-western societies and in our own. Their research provides qualitative and quantitative information about many inter-related aspects of culture including belief systems, social-political organization, non-western economies, and the impact of modern development on traditional cultures. Cultural anthropology expertise is especially important with today’s global businesses and military expansion, and in settings where ethnic differences may impede effective communication, such as in health care, criminal justice, social services delivery, and conflict management. We seek a PhD-level cultural anthropologist with background in Anthropology’s four fields who will complement our focus on archaeology, applied anthropology, forensic and biological anthropology, and community engagement.
  
  Internships are one of the most important ways we foster workforce readiness in our cultural anthropology students. In order to maintain our internship and applied field methods programs, we must have a second full time faculty member to assist with our successful experiential approach in undergraduate and graduate education.
  Further, the department is planning to implement a sophomore level course in “Careers in Anthropology” and an Upper Division Professionalism course to help students plan their curriculum and careers more effectively. A second cultural anthropologist would be ideally suited to offer this course and aid the department in career advising.
  
  There are few, if any, job openings titled Cultural Anthropologist for graduates with only a BA degree. Professional Cultural Anthropology positions in academia, government, and business often require a PhD in the field. Consequently, many of our BA graduates have gone on to graduate school. Of our recent 23 Cultural Anthropology graduates (2006-10), the whereabouts of 8 are known to us, and 5 of these are in graduate school in Anthropology. The remaining 3 are employed in a social service, a library, and in the tourism industry. We should also note, however, that Cultural Anthropology is an excellent foundational degree for pursuing related careers in medicine, law, business, banking, teaching, and international relations, to name a few.

• Florida Board of Governors Areas of Strategic Emphasis      
  

  Anthropology was listed as an Area of Strategic Emphasis by the BOG due to its important Global Reach up until February 2014. It was then delisted.

• Accreditation Requirements
  

  N/A

• Community/Visibility
  

  The Division of Anthropology and Archaeology is already considered a successful niche program at UWF and has the potential to continue to grow through its experiential learning and community outreach approaches. The Division excels in its visibility in the community, nationally, and internationally. The archaeology part of the program reaches statewide in its community engagement and outreach activities, experiential learning, and research. The disciplinary home of Archaeology is in Anthropology, which also includes Cultural Anthropology and Biological Anthropology at UWF. These three sub-disciplines work together to provide our students and the community with positive experiences and leadership opportunities that focus on understanding human cultural diversity. A second cultural anthropologist will assist us in maintaining the sub-disciplinary integration among the units of Anthropology, and expand our links with other relevant UWF programs concerned with global multiculturalism, medicine and health care, forensic sciences, mental health, and social services.

Enrollment Growth:
Enrollments in Anthropology classes continue to increase over time, including Cultural Anthropology. The retired Cultural Anthropologist taught primarily Upper Division required courses and popular electives in Anthropology that attract both majors and non-majors. Between Fall 2008 and Spring 2012, enrollment in the 27 Upper Division courses he offered ranged from 20 to 91 students and averaged 43.9 students per section. The courses produced an average upper division enrollment of 124 students per semester (Fall and Spring). In addition, the number of Cultural Anthropology majors reflects an upward trend at both the undergraduate and graduate levels based on the data provided below. We need a second full time cultural anthropologist to replace the retired faculty member in order to continue these growth trends. Without a second full time cultural anthropologist, it will be difficult to even maintain the present levels of enrollment and majors.

Gen Ed:
A second cultural anthropologist will help the department respond to the recently proposed state of Florida general education courses. We anticipate the need to offer additional sections of ANT 2000 Introduction to Anthropology to meet student demand both online and on campus.

Multicultural/Diversity Education:
One of the more important cultural anthropology courses we offer is ANT 3212 Peoples and Cultures of the World. The course lays the groundwork for critical thinking about cultures and lifeways other than our own. The course allows students to operate with greater understanding of other perspectives in a complex and changing world. This course is not only a requirement for all anthropology majors (not just cultural anthropology track majors), but also for the international studies major offered by the Department of Government. It also fulfills the current multicultural requirement. As such, ANT 3212 is the highest enrolled cultural anthropology course. Having a second full time cultural anthropologist will ensure that we are always able to offer sufficient sections of this important course. In addition to this course, several other cultural anthropology courses also fulfill the multicultural requirement, and the second cultural anthropologist would allow the timely offering of those courses as well. ANT 3212 is also essential in attracting majors to Anthropology, and we are reluctant to use only adjuncts to teach it. We hope that when the university redefines the diversity requirement that ANT 3212 will be included.

Experiential Learning:
Experiential learning is stressed in the cultural anthropology track, as it is throughout the anthropology major, through both coursework and other experiences. Currently, students gain significant hands on learning through the ANT 4808 Applied Anthropology course. Beginning the summer of 2012, we offered more experiential learning opportunities through an intensive dual listed field course in “Ethnographic Methods.” Having a second full time cultural anthropologist will enable us to continue regular offerings of these courses.

In addition to course work, the cultural anthropology track stresses experiential learning through a required internship in the community and/or a small scale ethnographic research project. Supervision of these internships and projects is time intensive for faculty, and it will be absolutely necessary to have a second full time faculty member in cultural anthropology to continue offering these crucial experiences to students over the long run.

Graduate Program
A second cultural anthropologist is also crucial to the continued success of our graduate programs where experiential learning is especially important in the curriculum. Approximately 1/3 of the completed MAs in Anthropology have been in Cultural Anthropology since the program began. Cultural Anthropology faculty members also serve on committees for Archaeology and Biological Anthropology students in the Anthropology and Historical Archaeology MA programs. In addition, the cultural anthropologists assist our Public Archaeology students with training in ethnographic methods and Human subjects’ research. They also participate on MA and PhD committees in related programs such as Community Health Education and the Ed D. where they provide expertise in multiculturalism, anthropological theory, and qualitative methods. A second Cultural Anthropologist will be essential for maintaining active involvement in these cross-disciplinary advising and research activities.

We have requested a tenure-track line to replace our second anthropologist for the past several years without success. This year, we decided to examine how an Instructor with a PhD could assist the Department with several issues. Strategic Planning in Anthropology over the years has led us to conclude that our undergraduate and graduate academic programs require at least two tenure-track positions in each Anthropology sub-discipline, including Cultural Anthropology. However, when we looked at the teaching history of our retired cultural anthropologist, we noted that he had made his primary contribution to our program at the undergraduate level, and he rarely taught formal courses in the graduate program. We concluded that a PhD level Instructor could make a similar contribution. Having a PhD will allow the faculty member to mentor students in the graduate program, and offer graduate courses as needed by the department.
One of the recommendations to come out of our recent 7 Year Review of Anthropology was that we hire an advisor to assist with tracking and mentoring our many undergraduate and graduate students. A PhD-level Instructor with a broad background in all the sub-disciplines of Anthropology could provide great assistance in advising our students, overseeing internships, and developing courses in Careers and Professionalism in the field.
We recommend, therefore, that we be awarded a PhD-level Instructor line that will involve a 3/3 teaching load, plus coordinating advising and internships for our four undergraduate tracks and two graduate specializations.

It is essential to the well-being of our undergraduate and graduate programs in Anthropology that we hire a full-time faculty member in Cultural Anthropology who will undertake professional instruction, advisement and mentoring, and service to the community. The department already relies on one full-time lecturer and utilizes faculty associates from the Archaeology Institute and the Florida Public Archaeology Network for instruction, mentoring, and experiential support in Archaeology.

Instructional workload will include three courses per semester at the Lower Division, Upper Division, and Graduate level. The department has a projected course schedule that covers the complicated arrangement of courses need to cover required courses and electives in several Anthropology programs. Instructional duties will also include supervising internships and theses. Some courses are offered every three semesters and others are offered annually in order to meet student needs and keep courses filled. Coordination of advisement and internships for both undergraduate and graduate students will be required across all sub-disciplines, as well as coordination of internships, and service to a variety of communities.

We have carefully scheduled the course-load of the one remaining cultural anthropologist to cover the required courses in the program for the current year. We are also using advanced graduate students (and completed MAs) to teach some undergraduate courses. Many of our courses cycle on a three semester basis, however, and the single cultural anthropologist will not be able to offer the full range of required courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels in subsequent years. It will also be impossible for him to provide advisement, mentoring, and assistance to the many undergraduates and graduate students in Anthropology in the long term without the assistance of a second cultural anthropologist.

N/A

Anthropology enrollments have fluctuated over the past five years, although no track has fallen below 15 majors. The fluctuations may be attributable to a variety of factors such as large cohorts graduating at the same time, the retirement (and non-replacement) of a Cultural Anthropologist in Spring 2012 who regularly attracted large numbers of students to his Anthropology courses, and the Florida Governor’s attack on Anthropology, which began in Fall 2011.

N/A


Evaluation of tabular data below:
The high contribution of “adjunct” instruction listed below is attributable to the retirement of a former cultural anthropologist, Terry Prewitt, in Spring 2012. No replacement for Prewitt was approved, as his line had already been used for a “replacement” Biological Anthropologist. Adjuncts have been used to maintain the needed cultural anthropology course offerings.

Low-enrollment courses numbers are attributable to the fact that a number of our lab courses are limited to 17 students in a section based on lab space and materials (this includes 8 sections of Osteology laboratories alone for 2013). In addition, some graduate courses are dual listed with undergraduate courses, and may be identified as low-enrolled in the tables.

* Does not include non-degree specializations (indicated with a † above)