Greetings CLAE Alumni and Supporters,

I hope the fall has been a blessed season for you and your family. One of the enjoyable events of the fall season at the University is the faculty recognition dinner where the Distinguished Faculty Award is presented to a senior (tenured) faculty member and the Faculty Achievement Award is presented to a junior (non-tenured) faculty member.

This year, Dr. Nick Rombes, professor and chair of the Department of English, was awarded the Distinguished Faculty Award for the senior faculty member at UDM who best exemplifies distinguished work in the areas of service, teaching, and scholarly research.

Dr. Linda Slowik of the Department of Psychology was awarded the Faculty Achievement Award for the junior faculty member whose work exhibited the highest level of achievement in the areas of service, teaching, and scholarly research by a junior faculty member in the University.

In this, my sixth year as dean, I can proudly report that our College faculty have won one or both of these two awards each year since I have been dean. This attests to the quality of our faculty—talented, hard working, and committed to the mission and vision of the College and University.

A number of important activities are under way in our College. One of the most important is the work of the College Strategic Implementation Teams. Based on our College strategic plan, four strategic implementation teams comprised of CLAE alumni, faculty, staff, and students are focusing on moving the College forward in improving our ability to: recruit and retain students, enhance our resource development in support of the College, and in developing new and strengthening existing community partnerships into "high value" partnerships that will provide significant benefits to the College and our community partners.

Our College faculty, programs and departments have won a myriad of awards since the start of the semester. I would like to mention one in particular. This semester, Varsity News has been awarded six state level awards in a wide range of journalistic areas such as news feature writing, sports journalism, news writing, etc. These awards are largely a result of alumni support that allowed us to create the Neal Shine Media Center. Time and again, the support of our alumni is critical in so many of the success stories in our College.

I want to thank all of you who support the College, particularly in these difficult economic times. Your support can mean the difference between a student being able to remain in school because of the financial aid we can make available to them and having to drop out. It can also mean the difference between having a critical piece of equipment available in one of our labs or not. Our faculty, staff, and students are grateful. I wish you the best of Thanksgivings to you and your families.

Charles E. Marske
Dean, College of Liberal Arts & Education