Chris Osmond

The majority of my service so far has been at the university level, as both departmental representative to the Faculty Senate role and as a member of the Appalachian Humanities Council.

Halfway through my three-year Faculty Senate term, I continue to serve as the faculty voice of the department at the University level. I am in my second year on the Senate’s Campus Planning Subcommittee, in which role I helped develop and draft recommendations to the Provost in spring 2012 to inform the Program Prioritization process currently underway. I also sit on the University Planning and Priorities and Planning Council (UPPC), which has primary responsibility for the creation of the University Strategic Plan for the next five years, and have increased faculty voice in that development by deploying my subcommittee’s members to work in the areas of undergraduate education, resources, and work-life balance in that process.

In my second year on the Humanities Council, I am working with the Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences to strengthen the institutional climate for humanities research at Appalachian. Under new leadership this year, the Humanities Council is working to expand its impact on the campus, and I participate actively in the selection and recruitment of speakers, the organization of symposia (“digital humanities” will be the focus of this spring’s), and cultivation of a supportive research and teaching environment for humanities scholarship at Appalachian. As the humanistic value of the use of literature in professional education is one of my core research interests, I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to connections between humanities and social science research through this work.

I serve in other roles as well, including faculty liaison to the Future Educators Residential Learning Community and dissertation committee member (Wayne Matthews, awarded winter 2012) and chair (Marisa Cornell, in progress) for Ed.D. students.

I consider the third strand of my research (“the role of local solutions in the development of sustainable dispositions”) to have a clear service component. I hope to continue to explore opportunities that make connections between research and service.