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| Professor
Robert Betts and the AUB Choir. |
The
annual Spring Concert on April 11 ended with a soaring encore of the "Hallelujah"
from Handles "The King shall Rejoice."
Bringing the concert-the 20th under his leadership -to a close,
Professor Robert Brenton Betts stepped off the podium for the last time
as official AUB organist and choirmaster. After a final informal organ
and choir recital on June 12, the eight-year-long renaissance of musical
life at the University will suffer a serious loss: Professor Betts has
resigned from AUB.
In the 1980s the ongoing years of civil strife had silenced the
voices of AUB musicians and choristers. But when Professor Betts, who
had made frequent trips to Lebanon since his first visit in 1960, returned
to Beirut as Associate Professor in the Civilization Sequence Program
in 1992, he soon began to talk to students about a choir.
Continued next page
Those early years of normalcy were bleak years in the cultural life of
AUB, but, in the Fall of 1993, a newly formed choir of thirty voices presented
a Christmas concert for the first time after a break of almost ten years.
While at the University, Professor Betts nurtured the choir's musical
development and enriched AUB's musical life through many concerts and
guest appearances of the conductors and soloists he brought from abroad.
Betts has also given several organ recitals and played at an innumerable
formal University functions such as Convocation and Founders' Day.
Although
an academic, Betts has always made music both vocation and avocation.
He has sung and conducted professionally with major symphonies in the
United States and abroad, and has made a number of recordings.
The choir's mastery of difficult classical choral works under the
tutelage of Betts has steadily increased. According to Professor Betts,
most of the singers came to the choir with "no preconceived idea
of what choral sound should be." Innocent, for the most part, of
the European classical tradition in choral music, the choir's sound is
"a very natural, fresh vocal production that blends well but also
retains a character of 'edginess'… a feature of Middle Eastern popular
singing… which makes the AUB Choir's sound quite remarkable."
Choir members and others were dismayed to learn of Betts's imminent
departure. "He was such a good teacher," said one former choir
member. "He had such a lot of knowledge to communicate. He was an
entertainer; he was everything," she concluded.
Another long-time member of the choir said Betts made choir practice
"fun, relaxing, a distressing experience."
Questioned about his resignation, Professor Betts said he needed
a change. He has enjoyed his eight years at AUB. "The brightest part,"
he said, "was always the students, whom I will miss enormously."
Betts will be joining the faculty of the University of Balamand as Associate
Professor of History in October, 2000.
Would he start a new choir? Betts, who founded the Williamsberg
Medrigal Singers when he was an undergraduate at the College of William
and Mary in Virginia, replied, "I've always had a choir and I always
will."
Professor Betts will be sorely missed at AUB. In addition to his
contributions to the musical life of the University, he taught both CS
and music courses and directed the CS Program from 1994 to 1997.
He has written many articles and book reviews on Greece and the
Middle East for journals such as The
Economist, has two books, Christians in the Arab East (1975
and 1978) and The Druze (1998), and is currently working on a comprehensive
history of the Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch, scheduled for publication
in 2000.
Reflecting on Professor Betts's resignation, a former colleague
said "Balamand's gain is surely AUB's loss. I fear this is another
example of AUB's failure to balance the advantages of publication and
service to the University community."
DEP
Returns to Arts and Sciences After 24-year Separation
This
March the AUB Board of Trustees decided to move the Department of Education
back where it started out - in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. In the
process, the Department will lose its semi-autonomous character but gain
the advantages of belonging to a larger entity.
The story
of Education's odyssey away from Arts and Sciences began in 1976 when
a University plan known as Horizon 2000 recommended creation of a Division
of Education and Extension Programs (DEEPS).
As it was finally set up in October 1976, DEEP was the repository
for five separate entities: the Department of Education, the Science and
Math Teaching Center, the Office of Tests and Measurements, the University
Orientation Program, and The Office of Extension Programs.
In 1981 the Board voted to return Education to Arts and Sciences
and to disband DEEP. Implementation was delayed by a later Board decision,
but the Division's future was still in doubt.
In 1983 DEEP lost one of its E's when Extension was transferred
to Research and External Programs. The result was the DEP we know today.
DEP operated over the next 17 years as an independent division alongside
the University's five Faculties.
Currently, it enrolls more students than the Faculties of Agricultural
and Food Sciences, Health Sciences, or the School of Nursing.
The recent Board decision means that the Division of Education
Programs and it companions, SMEC and UOP, will head for Arts and Sciences
in October. The Office of Tests and Measurements, the fifth member of
the original DEEP, will report to the Provost.
According to DEP Director Munir Bashshur, the move has several
advantages. One benefit is that Education will enjoy a direct line of
accountability.
"For a long time we came under the Vice President for Academic
Affairs, which meant we had no representative on the Board of Deans,"
Bashshur said. "As a result, important decisions were taken by the
Board on matters affecting us without our being consulted or informed."
Operating within Arts and Sciences, the Department will now report to
a dean like all departments. It will also have closer contact with relevant
"subject matter departments" that Education faculty need to
work with.
"We often coordinate our programs with subject matter departments
such as Chemistry, Arabic, Biology and others in Arts & Sciences,
and the new arrangement should make this easier," Bashshur explained.
On the other hand the former DEP will lose some of its independence.
Once it comes under the wing of Arts and Sciences, it will have to accommodate
to different methods of operation, reporting to and consulting with the
dean on issues it used to handle alone. "We welcome this," Bashshur
declared, " but it will cut down on the speed of decision-making."
The faculty reward system of Arts and Sciences is also different.
"In DEP we emphasize service and development as well as teaching
and research," said Bashshur. "Arts and Sciences, on the other
hand, gives and teaching and research more weight."
After some 24 years functioning in much the same way as a separate
faculty, the idea of an actual School of Education was bound to arise.
Bashshur sees one main advantage to the idea. "It would give us more
clout when it comes to promoting best education practice in Lebanon and
the region."
With the recent move back to Arts and Sciences the idea is destined
for more shelf time until the day the Board of Trustees is ready to renew
the odyssey of the Department/Division of Education. "It's a question
of what the University wants to accomplish," said Bashshur. "If,
at some time in the future there is a School of Education, the role of
AUB in the region will be much more effective."
Howrani
CD Features Alma Mater
"Alma
Mater," Waleed Howrani's variations on the AUB anthem, is now available
on CD thanks to a gift from an AUB alumnus. In addition to the "Alma
Mater," the disc includes Howrani's performances of Beethoven's Sonata
in E flat major Op. 31, No.3, Chopin's Polonaise in F sharp minor, Op.
44, Albeniz' Cordoba and Debussy's "The Children's Corner."
The recording was made at Brookwood Studios, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan,
in September-October 1999.
The CD, entitled "Alma Mater," is available at selected
shops in Lebano0.
Book
by Farid Khazen on The Breakdown of the Lebanese State
In
his recent book The Breakdown of the State in Lebanon (1967-76) Professor
Farid Khazen of the PSPA Department examines the pre-war years for clues
that broke out in 1975.
Exploring a divided society with an open political system, Khazen
argues that this situation need not have generated the armed conflicts
that began in the late 1960's nor the war of 1975-76.
Using important new material on the politics of those years he goes beyond
standard explanations and contends that the causes must be sought elsewhere.
The key questions hinge on the relationship between State and civil society:
which has supremacy over the other and how does the relationship affect
regime stability in crisis situations?
The book is published by Harvard University Press (USA) and I.B.
Tauris Publishers, London.
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