Florida State University College of Arts and Sciences

College of Arts and Sciences
Established	1901
Type	Public
Dean	Dr. Joseph Travis
Location	Tallahassee, Florida, USA
Website	Official website

The largest of the sixteen colleges at Florida State University, the College of Arts and Sciences contains the majors of nine thousand students and is made up of nineteen departments, ten special programs, seventeen institutes. Nearly two thousand degrees are issued to graduates each academic year. The College encompasses the fields of social sciences, liberal arts, mathematics, sciences and interdisciplinary studies. Several academic programs enjoy national reputations. These include the Department of English, which boasts one of the nation's top creative writing programs; the Classics Department, which offers comprehensive programs ranging from analysis of Roman literature to archeology; and several other programs, including the Departments of Geology and Oceanography.

History

The College of Arts and Sciences is the oldest college at the university having existed since the founding of the Florida Female College. Though it awarded bachelor's degrees since the founding, the first masters degree was not offered until 1908. The next year the university was renamed to the Florida State College for Women and issued the first masters degree under that name in 1909. No doctorates were given out by the College of Arts and Sciences until 1952.

The college is housed in several buildings including Dodd Hall, Bellamy, The Psychology Building, and the Longmire building. The Dean of the College of Arts and Scienes is located in the Longmire building.

In July 2011 Joseph Travis stepped down as Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences in order to further pursue his research interests. Sam Huckaba, previously the associate dean, was placed as interim dean.

National rankings according to US News (2008 edition)

Symbolic torches on Heritage Tower fountain

• Physics - 45th overall
• Psychology - 99th overall
• Clinical Psychology - 44th overall
• Chemistry - 45th overall
• Biological Sciences - 89th overall
• Mathematics - 67th overall
• Earth Science - 70th overall
• English - 79th overall

History department

As one of the founding departments of the College of Arts and Sciences when the university was still the Florida Female College, the History Department has a long history. Currently serving more than 550 students, the college offers a broad range of courses every year. The first masters degree was awarded in 1927 and the first doctoral student was hooded in 1962. Since then the college has awarded more than 600 masters degrees and 300 PhD's.

The Department of History includes accomplished faculty in Napoleonic history, Eastern European History, War and Society, History of Science, Latin American/Caribbean History, and Atlantic World. The Department Chair is Jonathan A. Grant. Distinguished faculty members include Darrin McMahon, who has been featured on the History Channel as well as other entertainment programs; Elna Green, Allen Morris Professor of History; James P. Jones, better known as Jim Jones, a beloved fixture in the department recently celebrated 50 years of teaching at the university; and Robert Gellately, the Earl Ray Beck Professor of History. The faculty have, collectively, been awarded a number of awards and written many books in their fields.

Biological sciences

The Department of Biological Sciences includes accomplished faculty in cellular and molecular biology, computational biology, evolution and ecology, and neuroscience. The Department has embarked on an innovative new cluster hiring initiative that focuses on the integration of genotype and phenotype. In 2008 The James E. King Life Sciences building opened giving the Department of Biological Sciences a new home. The new building is a state-of-the-art addition to the campus which consists of over 181,000 square feet of space. Included in the building are spaces for instrumentation, research, and the support needed for these activities. Rooftop greenhouses are a visually distinctive design feature and allow for more hands-on experiences. Also included in the building is the 150-seat auditorium, new teaching laboratories, and more than 30 research laboratories.

Chemistry and Biochemistry

Pacific Yew tree - original source of Taxol. As Pacific yew trees were harvested for Taxol faster than they could grow back, a crisis emerged in the supply of a beneficial anti-cancer medication. FSU's semisynthetic Taxol greatly improved the supply of this anti-cancer drug

Research in the Chemistry department currently spans fields ranging from analytical through organic, using experimental techniques and equipment including advanced lasers, spectrometers and superconducting magnets.

A new, 5-story 168,000-square-foot (15,600 m²) chemistry building was completed in April 2008 and officially opened on May 2, 2008. The building features state-of-the-art facilities and houses all fields of chemistry. Labs are located on floors 2 - 5 and are segregated by division. The second floor is home to material chemists, while the third and fourth floors serve physical and analytical chemists. The fifth floor is home to synthetic organic chemistry with labs specifically designed to accommodate organic synthesis research. The building serves to enhance the department's strengths in molecular recognition, materials, nanotechnology, biochemistry, molecular synthesis, computational chemistry, and advanced measurement science as well as further support its robust Ph.D. and postdoctoral fellow training programs.

Also working in the field of materials science and nanoscience at FSU is the Nobel laureate Sir Harry Kroto, the co-discoverer of the C₆₀ 'buckyball', who is a member of FSU's Chemistry and Biochemistry Department.

Taxol - anti-cancer drug
A significant achievement at the university was chemistry professor and synthetic organic chemist, Robert A. Holton's synthesizing of Taxol on Dec. 9, 1993. The chemical has been used as an effective breast cancer and ovarian cancer treatment.

Dr. Holton and his organic chemistry team won a race to develop a cheaper semisynthetic version (Holton Taxol total synthesis). In 1993, Bristol-Myers Squibb began marketing Taxol, ultimately earning more than $1.6 billion by the year 2000. Just like other chemotherapy drugs, it had side effects, but it also prolonged lives, and in many cases caused a full remission of cancer.

Before the drug company's exclusive license expired, Florida State earned $351 million in royalties, vaulting the school into the ranks of Columbia University and California's state universities in research profits. By comparison, Taxol has earned Florida State more than three times what the popular beverage Gatorade earned the University of Florida.

Computer science department

FSU's Computer Science program is a National Center of Academic Excellence in Information Assurance Education (CAE/IAE) by the National Security Agency. Florida State is the only university in Florida to achieve this status. In U.S.News Computer Science rankings of 2010, the department was ranked 79th in the nation compared to being unranked in 2008. In 2012, the department maintains the same rank. It ranked 2nd in the state of Florida only second to University of Florida CISE which has more than 45 tenure track faculty. The department had 16 tenure track faculty in 2010. The number of tenure track faculty in the department is 12 in 2012 (2 on sabbatical) and plans to hire two new faculty in 2012. The department offers a bachelor's degree in CS, three tracks for the master's degree in CS, and continues to offer the PhD degree in CS as well. Through a joint effort between the FSU Biology and Computer Science departments, FSU is now one of the few universities in the country offering a bachelor's degree in Computational Biology. The department also has created an interdisciplinary bachelor's degree in Computer Criminology by working with the College of Criminology and Criminal Justice. The research funding and the number of research assistants has significantly increased in recent years. Many of the faculty are internationally recognized, hold distinguished positions on editorial boards and conference committees, and with their students are publishing innovative research in very prestigious conferences and journals. In 2010, the department had five CAREER Award recipients including 3 NSF CAREER Award recipients, 1 DoE CAREER Award and 1 AFOSR Young Investigator Program recipient. Three graduates of the department have received NSF CAREER Awards in the past.

English department

The English Department at FSU is a nationally ranked program which encompasses many majors and produces a number of journals such as the Kudzu Review and The Journal of Early Modern Studies. Comprising a wide range of topics, the faculty includes winners of the Guggenheim Fellowship, the National Endowment of the Arts, Fullbright, and Newberry Library Fellowship.

Literature Program The Literature Program in the English Department at Florida State offers a BA, MA, and Ph.D. The literature faculty is notable for the diversity of its approaches to literary study, its expertise crossing literary criticism innovatively with a spectrum of extra-literary fields: from animal studies in the Renaissance to piracy, rock n' roll, ethnographies of the American south, and the science of reading. The faculty is setting agendas in a number of fields, including Shakespeare and Early Modern studies, where Florida State has concentration of some of the most exciting scholars in the country, as well as in Beckett studies and Modernism. The nationally-recognized History of Text Technologies Program (HoTT) extends from the History of the Book to Digital Humanities as a means of exploring how the history of the forms of texts is also a history of human culture in its largest sense, a history that speaks to how we use texts to establish ways of thinking, means of knowing, and practices of living. Other programs and areas of exploration, such as Medieval Studies, Renaissance Studies, African American Studies, Caribbean Studies, and Performance Studies, include interdisciplinary components that weave together fields as diverse as Archaeology, Art and Architectural History, Language and Literature, Manuscript Studies, Music, and Musicology. The faculty are leaders in interdisciplinary certificate programs in Critical Theory as well as in Publishing and Editing. The Critical Theory Certificate combines studies in literature and culture with a broad range of philosophical approaches that draw from other fields such as Art History, Film, Religion, and Modern Languages. This program is designed to ensure that students have access to the most recent and cutting-edge scholarship in a number of fields. The Literature Program also offers classes in university-wide inter-disciplinary graduate and undergraduate programs, including Middle Eastern Studies, Human Rights, Women's Studies, and Humanities and Science.

Creative Writing Program The Creative Writing program in the English Department at Florida State is home to recipients of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. The 2007 special fiction issue of The Atlantic Monthly placed FSU's Creative Writing Program as one of the Top 10 Graduate Programs in Creative Writing as well as one of the Top Five Ph.D. Programs in Creative Writing in the country. FSU offers both Masters of Fine Arts and doctoral degrees in Creative Writing. The program claims no university Creative Writing program in the world has been included more often in the Harcourt Trade Publishers Best New American Voices. Recent graduates have published books with Hyperion, Norton, Viking, MacAdam/Cage, Penguin, Henry Holt, Simon & Schuster, and Houghton Mifflin. Students have published in The Atlantic Monthly, Esquire, The Georgia Review, Glimmer Train, Harper's, Ploughshares, and many other quality magazines. Students have the chance to work both for a publisher (FC2) and for the program's official journal The Southeast Review.

Meteorology department

Cyclone Catarina, a rare South Atlantic tropical cyclone viewed from the International Space Station on March 26, 2004

Founded in 1949, the FSU Meteorology program is the largest and most complete meteorology program in the southeastern United States, with 17 faculty members, over 85 graduate students and approximately 200 undergraduate students.

Many graduates of the Florida State meteorology program whether bachelor's, master's or doctorate work in the national media including Neil Frank and Max Mayfield, former directors of the National Hurricane Center in Miami; Janice Huff of the NBC Today Show and on-air meteorologists from The Weather Channel: Stephanie Abrams, Rich Johnson and Jennifer Lopez .

Physics Department

The Department of Physics, comprising more than 60 faculty and over 100 graduate students, is a major research department, offering graduate programs that have been ranked amongst the best in the nation by U.S. News and World Report. Theoretical and experimental nuclear physics and particle physics are particularly strong areas; nuclear physics is currently rated with the Top 7 programs in the United States. There are also extensive research programs in biophysics, condensed matter physics and atomic physics, as well as an expanding astrophysics program.

In terms of major facilities, the Department has its own superconducting linear particle accelerator at which experiments ranging from precision atomic measurements to analysis of rare-isotope collisions are performed. Additionally, the Department is a heavy user of major national and international lab facilities. It maintains active groups working on experiments at Fermilab, CERN, Brookhaven National Laboratory, TJNAF, Argonne National Laboratory and several others. Indirectly, through current director Dr. Gregory Boebinger as well as his predecessor, laboratory founder Dr. Jack Crow, the Department operates the main complex of the multi discipline National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, located near campus at FSU's Innovation Park.

Psychology department

The Psychology Building at FSU which was opened in 2008

FSU's Psychology Department has served as an education and research institution in the university for more than 100 years and has the distinction of being the first psychological laboratory in the state of Florida. Founded in 1902, the program has since grown from two courses taught by only a couple faculty members to one which offers over one hundred courses each semester and boasts nearly seventy faculty members. In 1952 FSU began offering a doctoral degree in Psychology with the first PhD going to a student the next year. The department was historically housed in Francis Eppes Hall(formerly College Hall) and the Kellog Building. In 2008 the department moved into the new Psychology Building located on the western edge of campus.

A number of the faculty have been recognized for achievements in their field at university and the national level. Many of the faculty have written books on their subjects of interest or have written chapters for books. The department is the center of research in many areas and funding through state and federal grants reaches upwards of $6,000,000 annually. The PhD program in Clinical Psychology is ranked 32nd by the US News and World Report and the department itself is ranked 50th.

External links

• Official website