Faculty and Directors’ Views of Outreach

Extract

Outreach. The term was first made known to many Africanists by the U.S. Office of Education (USOE) as a mandated responsibility of Title VI Language and Area Studies Centers and seemed to represent something Africanists at many institutions had probably been doing all along anyway without any specific person or any additional funds. Outreach in the mid-1970s seemed so appealing and harmless enough to the directors who submitted applications for their programs to be named Title VI centers that they deemed to insert the required 15 percent minimum budget for outreach activities and usually a request for the hiring of an outreach coordinator as a line item supported through soft money. By 1979 outreach had become so integral a part of center activities and outreach coordinators that the one African program not re-funded as a center was nevertheless able to continue its outreach program through university funds. By late 1979, however, some center directors were also expressing the view that outreach risked becoming the tail that wagged the dog, while others were beginning to realize that they might have lost control of these coordinators who were calling themselves directors! By late 1979, too, both the personae in USOE committed to outreach and the evaluation review sheets used by the expert panels for center and fellowship funding had been dramatically reduced, indicating a decline in O.E. emphasis on outreach but, in the African field, probably also an implicit recognition of the substantial commitment and achievements of the Africanist group.