A graduate program unique to UT is suspending its admissions for the 2009-2010 academic year after the loss of federal grant money.
The School of Information faculty, with support from the Mellon Foundation, will discuss options for the Conservation of Library and Archival materials certificate program with hopes to admit students again in 2010.
“The Conservation Studies certificate program focuses on conserving paper documents such as books and maps,” said Mary Lynn Rice-Lively, associate dean of the School of Information. “Students do a lot of lab work and acquire a very unique skill.”
The program has been among the school’s offerings since 1991, when it moved from Columbia University to UT.
“The School of Information is a graduate program that prepares students to work in all stages of the information life cycle, from where information is born — digitally or physically — to the end of its cycle in preservation,” Rice-Lively said. “Those who graduate from the Conservation Studies program end up in the best libraries and institutions around the world.”
A grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities has supported two full-time Conservation Studies professors since 1991, but the current two-year grant will expire in August 2010. Since the program usually takes two years to complete, the school decided to suspend admission to the five or seven students they would usually take in.
“We’ll use this time to rethink curriculum and come up with a new funding model in hope of resurrecting the program,” Rice-Lively said.
Current students will continue to be supported, and a grant of about $19,000 from the Mellon Foundation will help the school restructure the program to make it financially sustainable.
