In this age of information overload, we are interested in identifying effective modes of communication regarding events on campus. We have been evaluating past practices and listening to faculty and staff regarding their preferences for sharing and receiving information. As I mentioned at the faculty meeting, I鈥檓 pleased to announce we are in the process of developing a communications portal, with the assistance of our colleagues in the 乐播传媒 Communications and Marketing Office and Information and Library Services, that we are calling . This initiative builds on the success of the 乐播传媒 Today daily email and website geared for communicating information and events to students.

What we envision under the new 乐播传媒 Now system is one email delivered to your inbox each morning resulting in a clear, easy to peruse digest of announcements, events, deadlines, and news pertinent to faculty and staff. It will be a one-stop information hub, and one that we hope reduces daily email load. An associated 乐播传媒 Now webpage will also be available to view the information contained in the daily email. The website will contain information on posting to the system, guidelines, and more.

We have consulted with the Academic Administrative Assistants who have, for years, had to manage three different methods to post information from their departments and programs. The 乐播传媒 Now interface allows posting to be as simple as checking a box(s) to indicate which channel(s) the information should be posted to.

We would appreciate your feedback on this idea and invite you to attend a demonstration and feedback sessions this month at the following times and places:

September 16, 12:00 – 1:00 p.m. in Commons 226

September 18, 4:15 – 5:00 p.m. in Commons 226 

September 26, 12:00 – 1:00 p.m. in Commons 226

September 26, 4:15 – 5:00 p.m. in Commons 226

We are planning that with the introduction of this new communication service, we will 鈥渞elaunch鈥� the unmoderated factalk@groups.bates.edu. For new members of the community, the factalk listserv is meant to be a place where faculty share ideas and to allow collegial discussions on topics of faculty interest. The moderated listservs (faculty@groups.bates.edu and staff@groups.bates.edu) offer an official channel for institutional communications as well as emergency information. We hope and anticipate that traffic on the faculty and staff lists will decrease as we transition to communicating events through 乐播传媒 Now. As we start the new year with so many new colleagues, we plan to sign all eligible members on to the factalk listserv. New to factalk will be an easy method to unsubscribe at any time via a link at the bottom of each email.

Again, please join us at one of the open meetings in September to see 乐播传媒 Now for yourself and help us create an effective new communication tool for 乐播传媒 faculty and staff. We will also create a mechanism for review of, and feedback on, 乐播传媒 Now for those who cannot attend one of the forums. There are some technical issues with access that we are working out, but hope to find a solution to  those issues in the next week.

In the meantime, I hope the academic year is off to a great start.All the best,

Malcom Hill

Hello all 乐播传媒 students,

Welcome to the Fall 2023 semester! 

I hope you all had a good break, and I hope you are excited to start a new semester at 乐播传媒. I write with some important information that will assist you in getting situated and started in this new semester. All of the information and links below are available also at the Student Advising Portal. This email highlights important information and provides links as well. I highly encourage you to explore the Student Advising Portal to utilize its various resources.

To access the Student Advising Portal, you can click on the link above or go to; then, click on the 3 lines next to the 鈥溊植ゴ解�� at the upper left corner; then click on 鈥淎cademics.鈥� And, finally click on the big red button labeled 鈥淪tudent Advising Portal.鈥�  

Your Course Schedule for Fall 2023

The Add/Drop period opens today, Tuesday, September 5, at 7 AM. You can adjust your course schedule over the next couple of weeks as you explore what classes work best for your academic exploration and meet your remaining requirements. To review the general education requirements, you can go review this summary.

The deadlines for the last day to add a class and the last day to drop a class can be found at the Important Dates and Deadlines Calendar at the Student Advising Portal. Here are the basics:

Last day to add a class without permission of instructor (unless the instructor already requires permission): Tuesday, September 12, 2023 (after this date, you will need permission of instructor)

Last day to add a class: Tuesday, September 19, 2023

Last day to select pass/fail as a grading option for a Fall 2023 course: Tuesday, September 19, 2023

Last day to drop a class: Friday, October 27, 2023

Last day to select letter grade as a grading option for a Winter 2023 course: Friday, October 27, 2023

Minimum Academic Progress and Standard Academic Progress Requirements

Standard academic progress is 4.0 credits per semester. Minimum academic progress is 3.0 credits per semester. Students may not take fewer than 3.0 credits per semester. Students are permitted to take up to 5.5 credits per semester. Taking more than 5.5 credits requires permission from the Academic Standing Committee.

Off-Campus Study from 乐播传媒 and Returning to 乐播传媒 after Off-Campus Study

If you are considering off-campus study, please be sure to be in touch with the Center for Global Education to learn how to set up your. If you are a current sophomore and thinking about off-campus study for Fall 2024 or Winter 2025, you should connect with Global Education during this current semester. You can get started at this webpage and then make an appointment on with Associate Dean and Director of Global Education Darren Gallant or Global Education Advisor Jennifer Hyde to get more information.

If you are a current sophomore intending to study off-campus at any point next year (2024-25), you must declare your major no later than February 1, 2024. Full information on the Global Education exploration process can be found here. More information on declaring your major is below under the Class of 2026 section.

If you are now returning from a semester or a year abroad, please be aware that the credit transfer from your experience away from 乐播传媒 is NOT automatic. There are various steps you must take, and they are outlined in 3 places (all places have the exact same information): (1) the, (2) the Center for Global Education website (mouse over 鈥淥ff Campus Study,鈥� then 鈥淲elcome Back鈥�, then click on 鈥淎pplying Credit at 乐播传媒鈥� or simply click here, or (3) the Student Advising Portal (under General Academic Resources (scroll down to Global Education).

To apply general credit toward your 乐播传媒 degree, i.e., 4 credits, you must: 1) complete the 乐播传媒 Off-Campus Study Evaluation. The evaluation is very important to the college and to future 乐播传媒 students and is available online at  Garnet Gateway (go to the Evaluation 乐播传媒), and 2) you should ensure that the Center for Global Education receives an official transcript from your program or university directly. This second part usually happens automatically.

To apply credit to your major, you should complete this form and review it with the chair of your major field of study. To apply credit to your minor, you should complete this form and review it with the chair of that field of study. To apply credit to your GEC, you should complete this form and review it with the GEC coordinator. Information on GEC coordinators can be found at the 乐播传媒 Catalog here.

Class of 2024 (Seniors) 鈥� Please read this section

If you are a senior, please review your Degree Audit to ensure all of your degree requirements are either already fulfilled or that you can work with your academic advisor to ensure completion by the Winter 2024 semester. You should not depend on short-term to fulfill any Degree requirements. Your Degree Audit is accessible via Garnet Gateway. You can get to Garnet Gateway by going to or simply going to the Garnet Gateway link at the Student Advising Portal. Please note that due to the pandemic, short term requirement has been waived for your class and taking a short term鈥攊f you choose to do so鈥攄oes not count toward your total of 32 required credits for degree.

Class of 2025 (Juniors) 鈥� Please read this section

Please review your Degree Audit to ensure that you are on track with completing all degree requirements: 5 MOIs, 3 Ws, and Major + 1. You can get to Garnet Gateway by going to or simply going to the Garnet Gateway link at the Student Advising Portal.

Please note that it is recommended that all students complete their MOI requirements before the end of their sophomore year, so if you have any MOIs left to complete, please consider taking courses that are tagged with MOIs either this semester or next.

Class of 2026 (Sophomores) 鈥� Please read this section 

If you are a sophomore, please remember that you must declare your Major Plus 1 by March 1, 2024. If you are intending to study abroad during 2023-24, you must declare at least your Major by February 1, 2024 to meet study abroad deadlines. 

All students must have 1 major at 乐播传媒. The 鈥�+ 1鈥� can be fulfilled either by a second major, a minor, or a General Education Concentration (GEC). GECs are course clusters that are often transdisciplinary. GECs require 4 courses or 4 credits (depending on the GEC). A full list of.

Declaring the major or a minor is a multi-step process that starts with you indicating an intention to declare a major on Garnet Gateway (simply click on the link labeled 鈥淒eclaring Majors, Minors, and General Education Concentrations鈥�). The declaration process usually involves meeting with faculty in your major or minor field of study before the declaration is finalized, and this can take a couple of weeks. Please factor that into your scheduling and deadlines. For example, if you need to be fully declared by February 1, 2024, you should register your intention to declare on Garnet Gateway no later than January 15, 2024.

Unlike majors and minors, GECs are self-administered by the students. Once declared on Garnet Gateway, students do not need to meet with anyone to finalize their GEC declaration. Each GEC does have a coordinator and questions can be addressed to the GEC coordinator.

Please review your Degree Audit to ensure that you are on track with completing all degree requirements: 5 MOIs, 3 Ws, and Major Plus 1. You can get to Garnet Gateway by going to or simply going to the Garnet Gateway link at the Student Advising Portal. Please note that it is recommended that all students complete their MOI requirements before the end of their sophomore year, so if you have any MOIs left to complete, please consider taking courses that are tagged with MOIs either this Fall semester or next Winter semester.

Please reach out to your pre-major academic advisor/FYS instructor for additional guidance.

Class of 2027 (First-Years) 鈥� Please read this section

Welcome to your first semester at 乐播传媒! You should have met with your FYS instructor, who is also your pre-major academic advisor, during the first meeting of your First-Year Seminar on September 1. It is recommended that all students complete their MOIs before the end of their sophomore year. Please be sure to review your Degree Audit to ensure that you are on track with completing degree requirements. You can get to Garnet Gateway by going to or simply going to the Garnet Gateway link at the Student Advising Portal. Continue to work with your pre-major academic advisor/FYS instructor to explore the curriculum to identify possible majors, minors, and/or GECs that you are interested in pursuing.

Planning for Summer 2024

Please consider working with the Center of Purposeful Work to identify summer internship and job opportunities. Please consider working with the Harward Center for Community Partnerships to identify summer opportunities (as well as opportunities during the Winter 2023 semester).

Resources for Research Experiences

The Dean of Faculty office as well as other offices and centers around campus offer a range of resources to support student-led research. You can find a full list of student grant and fellow opportunities that are administered by 乐播传媒.

Please be in touch with your academic advisor should you have questions. Thank you.

Steve Engel

Associate Dean of Faculty and Professor of Politics

We write to announce the appointment of two faculty members to endowed chairs with terms that begin this fall. We are honored to have such wonderful colleagues in our community, and look forward to celebrating their accomplishments publicly this year.
Endowed chairs recognize and support the work of colleagues who have demonstrated sustained excellence in their academic careers. These chairs are the product of generous gifts from benefactors interested in supporting the work of the 乐播传媒 faculty. Recipients are appointed for a 10-year term during which they will receive an annual $10,000 stipend, an annual professional development fund, and a physical chair commemorating their award. Each new group of faculty appointed to endowed chairs will be celebrated in the fall semester of their appointment and have the option of presenting to the 乐播传媒 community as part of a lecture series focused on their scholarship.聽

We will soon host a celebration to honor our new endowed chairs and we will continue our lunchtime endowed chair seminar series that will run throughout the coming year. More information about all of these events will be announced soon, but please join us in congratulating our colleagues as we celebrate these appointments.

Endowed Professorship Appointments

The Charles A. Dana Professorship of English and Africana
The Dana Professorship is the longest-standing endowed chair program at 乐播传媒. In 1966 the Charles A. Dana Foundation of New York awarded the college a matching grant to establish an endowed professorship fund that would recognize exceptional teacher-scholars among the 乐播传媒 faculty. The first Dana professor was named in 1968. Over the next half century, a distinguished group of faculty members has been honored with Dana professorships and recognized for their exemplary teaching, the value of their research, and their service to the college. Dana professors may hail from any discipline, underscoring the depth of talent of the 乐播传媒 faculty.

Ther铆 Alyce Pickens, Professor of English and Africana

Professor Pickens arrived at 乐播传媒 in 2011 after receiving her Masters and PhD from the University of California at Los Angeles in 2010. Upon her arrival to 乐播传媒, she quickly established herself as a prolific scholar working on race, identity and disability studies. She has authored multiple books including Black Madness :: Mad Blackness from the Duke University Press and has contributed to many edited volumes. She has a long list of peer reviewed articles as well as public scholarship including pieces in the New York Times and the Washington Post. Dr. Pickens has been a finalist or semifinalist for numerous national awards for her writing and poetry including a nomination for the Pushcart Prize, receipt of the Mayers Fellow from the Huntington Museum, among many other honors. An innovative teacher, Dr. Pickens teaches multiple courses in the Department of English as well as the Africana program. Dr. Pickens is an engaged member of the community providing essential leadership to the Africana program while also serving on numerous VP search committees as well as the COVID-19 planning committee in 2020. Her work does not end at 乐播传媒. She is active as a reviewer and judge within her disciplines and serves as a coach for a national faculty success program focused on faculty retention throughout the academy. 

The Whitehouse Professorship of Psychology

The Whitehouse professorship was established from a 1985 gift to the college by David C. Whitehouse ’36 and Constance T. Whitehouse, in honor of their families. First awarded in 2007 this professorship has been held by 3 faculty over the last 15 years. The professorship is not restricted by discipline and recognizes faculty who are exceptional in teaching, scholarship, and service. 

Amy Bradfield Douglass, Professor of Psychology

Professor Amy Douglass arrived at 乐播传媒 in 2001 after receiving her PhD from Iowa State University the same year. Upon her arrival at 乐播传媒, Professor Douglass began building teaching and research programs that have involved hundreds or students and collaborators from across the US and globe. Her research is focused on the reliability of eyewitness testimony and ways to improve and preserve such testimony. Her publications include numerous student co-authors from among the many thesis students she has advised in the Department of Psychology. Professor Douglass has received multiple grants from national and international funding agencies (e.g., the National Science Foundation, Australian Research Council) totaling over $600,000 and has held several international academic positions including a Fulbright Scholarship in 2023. Beyond these significant and ongoing contributions to her discipline, Dr. Douglass has done exemplary work as a teacher, most notably in her instruction of Statistics, a core requirement of Psychology and other social science curricula. She has been an influential member of the community serving on elected and appointed committees including the Academic Affairs Council, the Committee on Faculty Governance, and the Faculty Personnel Committee.

——————————————————————

Malcolm S. Hill, Ph. D.

Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of the Faculty
乐播传媒 College
2 Andrews Road
Lane Hall 120
Lewiston, ME 04240
Follow us on Twitter: @乐播传媒DeanofFac

October 9, 2024 Update: You can now visit the Peer Learning Commons website at bates.edu/plc.

乐播传媒 has long provided comprehensive and innovative peer education and peer tutoring. In 2021, after some staff departures, we began an initiative to re-imagine our academic support programs and structures with a goal of improving what we do to better meet the ever changing needs of our students. As we move toward academic year 2023-24, with the Kessler Scholar Program and the Schuler Access Initiative fully in place, we know that achieving this goal is even more important. Over the last two years, we have been examining some of the best programs in the nation to determine how we can improve 乐播传媒鈥� already robust model of student academic support. Working with the excellent colleagues in the unit, we are excited to announce a reorganization, redesign, and expansion of our student academic support programs.

Reorganization of Student Academic Support and Student Writing Support Resources and Programs

Academic support services and programs for students are currently divided into 3 areas: the Academic Resource Commons (ARC), the Mathematics & Statistics Workshop (MSW), and the Writing and Language Center (WLC). On August 31, 2023鈥擜rrival Day for the Class of 2027鈥攖hese resources will re-open as 2 Centers: the Student Academic Support Center and the Student Writing and Language Center.

The Student Academic Support Center will combine the programming presently provided by the MSW and ARC, namely peer tutoring in math, statistics, computational studies, the quantitative social sciences, and the natural and physical sciences. The Student Writing and Language Center will expand the work of the WLC by providing writing and language support to students with a particular focus on course-attached peer support for the First-Year Seminar, support for the W2, and support for the thesis/capstone (W3). Furthermore, this reorganization enables expansion of the staff for both Centers, so that there will now be a dedicated staff member in the Student Writing and Language Center focused on translingual and multilingual education and English-language learning and a dedicated staff member in the Student Academic Support Center focused on learning skills and learning strategies development.

New Leadership

We are excited to announce new leaders of these 2 Centers. Bridget Fullerton will be the Director of Student Writing. In this role, she will lead the design of programs and resources offered by the Student Writing and Language Center. In addition, starting this coming Fall 2023, Bridget will teach a new half-credit Fall course, EXDS 201, in which all FYS Writing-Course-Attached Tutors will be enrolled and which will enable those tutors to learn about writing pedagogy and writing center theory, and therefore be better able to partner with first-year students and support FYS instructors. She will also teach a second course 鈥� in the Short Term 鈥� that will also focus on writing pedagogy, which will be available to tutors whose roles include supporting students who come to the Center to develop their writing for courses throughout the curriculum, including but not limited to the W2 and W3. Finally, Bridget will work with a new Assistant Director of Student Writing, who will focus on supporting English-language learning, linguistic diversities, and trans-lingual education. The search for this position is ongoing.

Grace Coulombe will be the Director of Student Academic Support, and in this role, she will lead the reorganization of peer tutoring in mathematics, statistics, quantitative social sciences, computational studies, and the natural and physical sciences. In addition, Grace will offer one mathematics course per year as she has in previous years and will develop a new half-credit EXDS course in tutor pedagogy that we expect to be available in the 2024-25 academic year.

We are also happy to announce that Andee Alford will take the role of Associate Director of Student Academic Support and will focus on math, statistics, and digital and computational studies support. Eric Dyer has accepted the position of Assistant Director of Student Academic Support; he will be the liaison of student academic support to the Kessler Scholars Program as well as develop learning skills and learning strategies programs and resources. A search for a second Assistant Director of Student Academic Support is ongoing, and that position will focus on supporting peer tutoring in the area of the sciences and quantitative social sciences.

We want to acknowledge the hard work that Grace, Bridget, and Andee took on in the Summer of 2021 to each take on two-year Acting positions鈥擥race as Acting Director of ARC, Bridget as Acting Director of the WLC and the Writing@乐播传媒 Program, and Andee as Acting Assistant Director of ARC. Without their partnership, that ongoing management of these programs as well as the visioning for this reorganization would not have been possible. Thank you to each of them for their professionalism and care for 乐播传媒 students.

An Exciting Relocation

The 2 new Centers will be co-located on the Ground Level of Ladd Library, adjacent to the Office of Accessible Education and Student Support and across from the redesigned Chase Hall. We expect that this Ground Level area of Ladd will be named the Peer Learning Commons.

This relocation offers some exciting opportunities. First, it creates an accessible and organized single location for student academic support resources 鈥� Accessible Education, Student Academic Support, and Student Writing and Language Support. Second, the Peer Learning Commons has a newly-accessible exterior door that opens onto the area near Chase and Carnegie. As many Student Support Advisors will be located in the new Chase Hall, this proximity enables more partnership between these services and SSAs. Third, we believe the integration of the 2 new Centers into a single shared Peer Learning Commons鈥攚hich occupies the same square footage of the current 3 Centers (ARC, MSW, and WLC)鈥攚ill provide exciting new opportunities to continue and expand upon 乐播传媒鈥檚 innovative community approach to peer tutoring. Work to redesign the Ground Level into the Peer Learning Commons will take place over the Summer, and we expect that the Peer Learning Commons will open on Arrival Day, August 31, 2023.

Improved Faculty Support for Writing and Writing Pedagogy

This reorganization of student writing and student academic support has also enabled a systematic re-examination of how the Dean of the Faculty can improve resources for faculty writing and faculty writing pedagogy. While Bridget Fullerton, in her role as Director of Student Writing, will continue to partner with Steve Engel in his role as Associate Dean of Faculty, to support the First-Year Seminar (which functions as the W1) as well as to work with tutors who support writing across the curriculum, this reorganization also enables more dedicated writing pedagogy resources for faculty to be available through the Center for Inclusive Teaching and Learning. Lindsey Hamilton, Director of CITL, is currently searching for an Assistant Director, whose portfolio will include supporting faculty in their role as teachers of writing, and we expect that individual to start on or near August 1. We aim for there to be close alignment between the writing pedagogy support provided by the CITL for faculty and the student-facing work鈥攂oth in the education of peer tutors and the support for faculty in developing their FYS courses鈥攖hat Bridget will oversee in her new role.

Again, we are excited about the prospects of this reorganization and redesign of our student academic support and student writing support resources and programs. The services provided by this new structure should be more easily understood by students, staff, and faculty. We look forward to inviting faculty and staff into the new Peer Learning Commons to explore the new Student Academic Support Center and the new Student Writing and Language Center in the coming academic year. We are tentatively scheduling an open house of the new Commons at Ladd鈥檚 Ground Level for Friday, September 8, 2023, which is the Friday of First-Year/First-Weekend programming of the First-Year Experience.

Thank you for all the work that you do to support our students.

Malcolm Hill, Dean of the Faculty and Vice President of Academic Affairs
Steve Engel, Professor of Politics and Associate Dean of Faculty

INTRODUCTION

I want to thank the CFG for opening some space for me in this faculty meeting as we begin the winter semester. Now that I am in my fifth year in this position, I can apply a somewhat historical perspective on what we have been able to accomplish under some extraordinary circumstances. Four years ago, in January of 2019, I gave a speech to this body entitled 鈥�A multitude of opportunities, and the case for optimism at 乐播传媒,鈥� which laid out several initiatives that were going to guide the work of our office and support our academic mission. Given that we were just over twelve months away from the historic challenges of a global pandemic, it is clear that my case for optimism was going to be tested. And in the face of these challenging headwinds, we have made a lot of progress.

In that presentation, I spoke about several initiatives.  These were informed by conversations that I had with faculty, staff, and students in my first six months, but also, importantly, by our Institutional Plan. The Institutional Plan was and is comprehensive, and was an incredibly useful guide to think about the priorities of our shared work.

For instance, the Institutional Plan called for:

路     Strengthening intellectual culture by more intentionally and effectively supporting faculty at every stage of their careers.

路     Creating a clear commitment to diversity

路     Elevating a culture that promotes creativity, intentionality, and reflection in teaching and learning.

路     Supporting all students for academic success

With Krista, Don, and Steve joining the dean鈥檚 office, and building from the work of 脕slaug 脕sgeirsd贸ttir and Margaret Imber, including the work of previous administrations, we have been able to work on several of these initiatives. We have focused attention on creating an evidence based and nationally-informed faculty mentorship program. We launched the Foundational Dialogues initiative to continue our commitment to equitable and inclusive practices in our academic units. We have focused on academic advising through close examination of the First-Year Seminar program and are now focusing on elevating our academic support structures for students.

Another initiative in 2019 was CFG鈥檚 creation of an ad hoc committee to examine the faculty handbook and the standards for tenure and promotion. The TPRC proposed, and the faculty then adopted in 2021, a re-organized and rationalized handbook with clearer criteria for evaluation of our permanent faculty. 

The TPRC effort also reintroduced the notion, that had been present in the 乐播传媒 handbooks prior to 1983, that continued professional development in pedagogy needed to be part of the standards of teaching excellence for faculty. From this call, we worked with faculty and staff to explore how 乐播传媒 might provide the kind of focused, serious, and desired training in teaching and learning. With input from many faculty and staff across campus, and careful planning and consultation with external experts, we launched the new Center for Inclusive Teaching and Learning this year. Lindsey Hamilton joined us this fall as the inaugural director, and she has already been extraordinarily successful during this launch. The response to the CITL has thus far been fantastic. 

The Institutional Plan also called for:

路     Developing a model of general education that achieves our educational goals.

The MOIs that passed in 2018 was the first step. AAC鈥檚 proposal that was just presented, and that this body will consider over the next several months, represents a continued effort by our faculty to create a model of liberal arts education that best prepares students for the world they will enter after graduation. Our faculty have always recognized that the future of the liberal arts will play out in the context of global competition for talent and for the development of a more complete understanding of the forces that are shaping our world. The curricular proposal which was read by the AAC for the first time earlier tonight, with at least one course embedded in each major, will better prepare our students for the globalized reality that they will enter. They will understand more fully the history, structures, and cultural norms that have shaped society as we find it today, and they will have the knowledge and tools to use their energies to bring us a more open, equitable, and just world.  

I now want to turn to a matter of central importance to the strength and vitality of our academic program 鈥� the expansion of the faculty. 

The 乐播传媒 College Institutional Plan, adopted in 2016, named as an explicit priority increasing the size of the faculty by adding additional tenure-track faculty lines. The plan stated the rationale as follows: 

鈥淓very time 乐播传媒 hires a new faculty member, the college makes a thirty- to forty-year investment in the continuing excellence of the liberal arts education we provide. The faculty is the cornerstone of this educational experience, and to sustain it we need to make a significant commitment to faculty expansion…鈥� [Priority 1.2]

In January 2019, I noted that 鈥淵ou are a busy and dedicated group of faculty, and while this is a joyful profession, it is clear that your time and energy budgets are maxed out.鈥� What was true then is even more true today. I heard then, as I do today, a persistent call to find resources to support what you do, and I have taken that call seriously. 

We are engaged in 17 tenure track job searches this year, as we hire permanent faculty to replace recent openings as quickly as we can. At the same time, I have been working closely with Clayton and Geoff to find ways to provide additional resources to support you in your academic work.

Through the Capital Campaign, we were able to add seven new tenure track lines to our faculty funded entirely by philanthropy. Today, I am happy to announce a goal to add up to eight more tenure track lines over the next three years. The capacity of our budget to support this growth is related to recent shifts in the composition of our faculty, prudent financial planning, and increased contributions to our budget from the endowment, due to gifts and market gains. It is important to note, however, that our ability to achieve this goal is contingent upon maintaining a stable and positive financial outlook at the college, which is by no means a certainty given the short- and near-term economic challenges we face that Geoff just described.

We will begin the process with three additive searches next year. Among other benefits, these new colleagues will help us maintain our position as one of the leading national liberal arts colleges; will help to reduce workload associated with advising and thesis; and will enhance the student experience with smaller class sizes and expanded curricular offerings.

I will work with the AAC to allocate these lines to the units where they will make the biggest impact. While these lines cannot support all the desires that each academic unit might have for itself, they should have a college-wide positive impact for faculty and students. We will use a disciplined approach to allocating these lines using the three-year plans and teaching planning tool to guide decision making. The new lines will be used to relieve enrollment pressures in areas of high student demand,  strengthen some of the academic units that have experienced destabilization over the past several years, meet goals for growth and innovation in our academic offerings that have been articulated in recent years, and address gaps in our curriculum. The AAC will use a data-informed approach to understand where curricular pressures continue to be a challenge and areas where we need to support growing student interest. 

I want to thank Matt Duvall and Jason Scheideman, who have been working on this project since the winter of 2019. We started with something that we called 鈥淧roject 2020鈥� not knowing what the world was going to throw at us in short order, but we never lost sight of the main purpose of that work. I also want to thank Clayton for her steadfast support of our desire to direct resources to the faculty and our academic program and Geoff and Doug Ginevan for their partnership in modeling the financial scenarios that have allowed us to move forward. 

If we are able to fully implement this plan, the addition of 15 new lines will represent a nearly 10% increase in the size of our permanent faculty over a ten-year period.  

I look forward to the winter semester, and the opportunities that 2023 will offer us. Best of luck with your courses.

I wanted to take a minute to draw explicit connections among the initiatives I mentioned at the September faculty meeting as we do some incredibly important work regarding the consideration of curricular requirements at 乐播传媒 College. I mentioned at that meeting that our mission focuses our work on the emancipating potential of the liberal arts and the transformative power of our differences. I added that we must be concerned about the pedagogies that exclude, the curricular content that impedes, and communities that deny access. 

The barriers that are all around us are based upon the structural 鈥渋sms鈥� inherited from previous generations. 

At the tail end of this past summer, Ezra Klein interviewed Ta-Nehisi Coates and Nikole Hannah-Jones before the start of the academic year as they took on roles as faculty members at Howard University.

During the interview Nikole Hannah-Jones said that we 

Racism, sexism, ableism, classism are deeply embedded in society, in our fields of study, and in the spaces we occupy. To eradicate these inhibitors, these retardants to progress and educational potential, these poisons, we must dedicate ourselves to focused work that identifies where we have weaknesses and identifies opportunities for growth and improvement. And it begins with dialogue.

Each of the three pillars of work this year – pedagogy, curricular content, and community – will be focused on removing structural barriers. I indicated at the September meeting that all academic units will engage in what we鈥檝e called 鈥淔oundational Dialogues鈥� – borrowing from the Mellon Committee – and we will be releasing to the chairs this week a timeline and plan for this work.

Identifying the barriers will require serious reflection about where we are as individuals, where we are as academic units, and where we are as an institution. Many of us, especially white faculty and staff, require explicit training and reflection on the power and privilege that we carry. We also need to seriously consider how that power and privilege permeates our educational spaces in negative ways. All of us need to spend time looking for ways we unconsciously erect barriers. The HHMI committee recently shared a viewing of 鈥淧icture a Scientist鈥� that highlights the ways that barriers persist in STEM, and they made a call for conscious demolition of the sexism and racism that has homogenized science and mathematics in damaging ways. This type of work honors our BIPOC students鈥� demands that all students, staff, and faculty at 乐播传媒 seriously engage with issues of race, racism, power and privilege to create the types of learning spaces we imagine. The evidence is also clear that this leads to better, more effective pedagogies.

We will also require honest conversation and productive dialogue at all levels to make this happen. Our norms of discussion where we smooth the edges of disagreement is due no doubt to our existence in a smaller community with iterated interactions among individuals that can last for decades. However, the 鈥渘orm to niceness鈥� when taken too far can occlude our ability to learn from and work with one another.  On the other extreme, this practice of smoothing edges – the norming to niceness – can be used as a justification for unnecessarily antagonistic discourse – the notion that the community is just too sensitive. We need to be in a space – and I鈥檝e said this in previous remarks – where disagreement and debate does not mean dislike or paralysis. We also need to lift self-censorship. Our discourse should be based on respect for one another, a recognition of the hard work in which we are all engaged, and should come from a culture that values curiosity, openness, and generosity. This professionalism is not based on performative niceness or friendliness, it is not even based on politeness per se, but rather a recognition of the value of others and the perspectives they bring into deliberative spaces. Even when, and most importantly when, they disagree with you. We should be focused on evidence and analysis. Not dogmatic positions. We should have confidence that the best outcomes will be produced after we consider alternatives, test ideas, and collectively decide on viable solutions. I do believe that moving out of zoom space and back into our three dimensional meetings will help us reconnect in so many ways that are currently difficult to do.

 As Clayton shared in her Convocation remarks:

Beginning this week, we will engage in serious consideration of the proposal that the Curricular Working Group submitted to the AAC, and that you all have now received. The AAC has created a sequenced process for careful deliberation so that faculty may evaluate and consider the recommendations. You have likely already received invitations to some of the conversations. There will be many additional opportunities to provide feedback, and to bring your expert opinion about feasibility and viability of the proposal over the next several weeks. Your endorsements, recommendations, and alternative proposals will come to the AAC who is responsible for drafting any legislation that would come to this body for final consideration. 

I look forward to the discussions as we weigh this consequential proposal. The Curricular Working Group has recommended something quite distinctive and potentially powerful – that we embed within majors an analysis of the ways that race, white supremacy, and colonialism affect fields of study. Their exact proposal is that all majors have two required courses – one at the introductory level and one at a more advanced level. According to the proposal, each course must substantively engage with scholarship and knowledge production centering race, white supremacy, and colonialism.

We need to carefully consider the proposal from all of our disciplinary perspectives and from the expertise that colleagues will bring into these discussions. How do we mitigate the tensions between disciplinary work and the work of critique or historical analysis that may require a different set of intellectual tools and expertise? I myself am wrestling with how I might, for example, incorporate the history and critique of eugenics in my biostatistics course while worrying, legitimately, that I am not a trained historian. I know there are far better faculty on this campus than I to do that work, and I want students to take their courses. I also feel the tension about how I might convey the statistical tools and knowledge to all students in my class that they will need for their lives post-乐播传媒 with the need to add content that meaningfully addresses any learning objectives articulated in the CWG proposal. I believe, however, it is my responsibility as an educator committed to excellence to develop the tools to do this work. 

Nonetheless, I am also concerned about what Danzy Senna, in a critique of two books: White Fragility and Learning in Public, points to as the potential damage caused when white people remain the center of the story and BIPOC people are at the margins 鈥渨ith little better to do than open their homes and hearts to white colleagues on journeys of racial self-awareness鈥� – as Senna points out, we must be careful not to cause harm when engaged in the 鈥済reat white awakening.鈥� This is where racial equity training and the Foundational Dialogues are essential. We all have work to do and each of you will imagine your own courses in your own ways. Some disciplines will find themselves capable of meeting the proposed requirements immediately while others will not. So what is possible in that space? And what is the best outcome for our students?

I, like you, want to do our antiracist work well, and while considering the type of course content included in our classes is important, it is not the only strategy we have to achieve goals of dismantling structures of oppression. Inclusive pedagogies are part of our strategy as well. In fact, our approach has to be synergistic and holistic – and we need to recognize that they are two sides of the same coin. We have to be committed to deploying all of the tools available to us to dismantle systemic oppressive structures.  As discussed in Jarvis R. Givens鈥� 鈥�Fugitive Pegagogy: The longer roots of antiracist teaching鈥�:

Our work developing a Center for Inclusive Teaching and Learning is explicitly focused on this type of work – building tool kits to bring antiracist inclusive pedagogies into our classrooms. We will have opportunities later this year to consider what a launch of a center of this sort looks like at 乐播传媒 College, and we look forward to hearing from you about the emerging plans.

The reality is that the conversations we have about race, racism, power, and privilege will be among the most rewarding we take part in this year. While we can鈥檛 move faster than the speed of trust, we can ensure that all voices are heard on our campus, that the spaces we create allow for different perspectives, and that we recognize the value of working together across differences to achieve a common goal. This gets to the heart of what it means to build community, and to be committed to providing exceptional and evidence-based educational experiences for our students. And as it turns out it is core to our 乐播传媒 mission. 

I look forward to working with everyone as we consider this shared work ahead.

Even though we are two weeks in – welcome everyone to the start of this academic year. I hope everyone is settling into the new rhythms of the year. It is nice to have some fall weather, and some signs of our academic lives taking off.

I also wanted to share with you some of the planning we did last summer, and describe some of the projects that are moving forward this year. I hope the year ahead feels more typical in the ways we care about, but we are still in covid鈥檚 long shadow, and it continues to complicate our efforts. The news from some of our colleagues at other schools who have had to move to in-room restrictions and full remote instruction indicates that we must remain vigilant as we navigate the next several weeks and months. We are carefully monitoring conditions, and are seeking the best advice possible from public health officials. Our goal will be to clearly communicate with the community as possible, and to process information as quickly as we can. Thank you all for your patience and  commitment.

Summer 2021

The summer was a busier period than typical, which was probably to be expected given the pandemics continuing effects. 

When it became clear that the Class of 2025 was going to be a large class, Associate Deans 脕slaug 脕sgeirsd贸ttir and Krista Aronson did a fabulous job recruiting talented faculty to offer classes this year – many of whom were just introduced. We have one of the largest assemblages of faculty in the history of 乐播传媒 on our campus, and we look forward to getting to know them better throughout the year. Our office looks forward to supporting all of you as you do your work this year.

In addition to recruiting a large class of faculty, several faculty decided to leave 乐播传媒 to pursue other careers with very late notice. The Department of Economics was hit especially hard – they lost 4 faculty members in June and July. I want to thank Paul Shea and Daniel Riera-Crichton who agreed to co-chair the unit on short notice, and for working with the AAC to find strong academic pathways for our students in July. Working with the AAC, we addressed this challenging situation for the coming academic year, but will continue to look for long term solutions in all of our academic units to identify staffing solutions that fortify our curriculum.

Academic Advising

Five years ago, our recommended that 乐播传媒:

鈥�…strengthen academic advising by examining and improving the structure of first-year and sophomore advising. [Specifically] our approach to faculty advising for a student鈥檚 first two years should be reconsidered鈥�.While we strongly endorse the First-Year Seminar (FYS) for incoming students, it is unclear that FYS leaders should serve as student advisors.鈥�

This summer, we had over 150 sophomores for whom we had to scramble to find an academic advisor. The problem is more acute than ever, but it is a trend that has been happening for several years. We stand to have even more than 150 abandoned sophomores at the start of the 2022-23 academic year. We must rectify this problem, and we will begin repairing this failing system this year. 

As I mentioned in my message in August, Steve Engel joined our office as Special Assistant to the Dean of the Faculty for First-Year Experience and Pre-Major Advising. Steve will spend a significant portion of the year evaluating national models of pre-major academic advising to consider options for 乐播传媒. Steve will be reaching out to different constituencies for focus group development. He will produce a report of his findings and recommendations that will be shared with the faculty this spring, and our goal is to develop a nationally distinctive and evidence based advising system. In addition to the best advising models we can adopt, we are also going to look at the structural elements of the way we allocate FYS courses. Moving forward, we need to situate the work of pre-major advising among our permanent faculty, and our goal will be structural and systemic change on that front.

Registrar鈥檚 Office Review

While Mary Meserve and her team deserves a lot of credit getting us through one of the most challenging scheduling years in 乐播传媒鈥� history, Mary and I agree that there are many systems that could be improved upon in the Registrar鈥檚 office. Last January, the Registrar鈥檚 office underwent a thorough review by a consultant from the national organization that supports registrar鈥檚 offices (AACRAO). Based on the report鈥檚 recommendations, Mary is developing an action plan for re-modeling the work of the office. We have partitioned the work into four main areas including management and leadership; technology; personnel; and the user experience. One of the decisions we made over the summer was to adopt a course catalogue system called CourseDog. Mary is implementing the system now, and training on how it functions (e.g., how courses are cross listed) should happen in the winter semester. This is one part of a comprehensive improvement plan, and solutions to existing problems will be considered and implemented this year. We will keep you apprised of the modifications.

Our antiracist work ahead 2021-22.

Our college professes through its mission to be concerned about the emancipating potential of the liberal arts and the transformative power of our differences. We thus must be concerned about the pedagogies that exclude, the curricular content that impedes, and communities that deny access. 

For the upcoming year, these three topics – pedagogy, curricular content, and community – will receive focused attention from our office:

Pedagogy. 

We adopted new tenure and promotion criteria last year. Evidence of teaching excellence now must include inclusive pedagogies. Inclusive pedagogies ensure that all students thrive across differences in academic and social background, it pays attention to learning styles, it is student-centered and equity-focused, it adopts a growth mindset as well as a student success model – indeed it ensures that students feel equally valued, equally included, and equally invited into the learning spaces we create. Not only is it the right approach to teaching, it is also the approach that generates significant increases in learning outcomes.  It requires intentional effort and a commitment to ongoing development. To help faculty develop and expand those skills, Associate Dean Krista Aronson created a process last fall for us to consider how we might create a Center for Inclusive Teaching and Learning at 乐播传媒 College. Supported with funds from the HHMI grant, Dr. Kathy Takayama was invited to campus in the winter, and met with many of you to discuss what faculty desire from such a center. Our goal now is to create something that offers the training and support that allows faculty to build the evidence of excellent teaching they need. A detailed analysis of high functioning and effective centers is currently being conducted as we assess what can work best at 乐播传媒. Additional conversations about the CITL are forthcoming.

The new tenure and promotion criteria also prominently describe academic advising as an essential part of our teaching responsibilities. Thus, in addition to the CITL and the work regarding pre-major advising, we will also explore the kinds of professional development opportunities for training as an academic advisor. 

Content of courses and the Content of our curricula

The second topic we will emphasize involves the content of courses and the content of our curricula. This is a component of inclusive pedagogical practice. The material we choose to focus on in our courses, the accessibility of our curricular design, the relevance of topics to our students, and the cost of materials for students are all essential aspects of the work of barrier removal. We must ensure that we engage a wide range of perspectives in our courses. At the academic unit level, a commitment to inclusive pedagogies focused on the content of courses and the content of our curricula requires that we examine, name, discuss, and articulate for students the agenda(s) and historical biases of our fields. 

To do this work, I am requesting that each academic unit take part in serious analysis of the state of their own understanding of the approach to instruction in their fields. At a minimum, academic units should engage in what the Mellon Committee calls 鈥淔oundational Dialogues鈥� or what, for example, the Center for Urban Education at the University of Southern California calls 鈥淟aying the Groundwork.鈥� In essence, each academic unit should engage in racial equity work that allows for a common understanding of historical aspects of our fields, but also builds the capacity to have shared dialogue about our work in racial equity. This work will occur over the next 2 years, and my office will work with our existing curricular transformation committees to develop a schedule that makes sense for each academic unit. The best forms of this work meet academic units where they are. Some of you have already begun this work within your departments or programs. Others have not. We will mobilize resources from our institutional grants and from our own institutional budget to identify and engage disciplinary experts from outside 乐播传媒 who can work with academic units, who can assess curricula, and who can help a unit chart a path forward as we think about transforming our teaching. We will also work with our disciplinary experts on our campus to help shape these dialogues. Again, not all units are in the same space, but all units must engage consultants at some point in the next two years as we develop tools, knowledge, and the efficacy to be agents of change. Additional details of this initiative are forthcoming, but this initiative dovetails with work we will all be engaged with in the coming weeks as we discuss a proposal from the Curricular Working Group that was formed early in the winter semester last year. The working group came from a call I made at the February faculty meeting in response to students鈥� demands that all students at 乐播传媒 seriously engage with issues of race, racism, power and privilege. The description of the work and timeline for steps that was described is available on our website. I am thankful that 5 faculty members (Andrew Baker, Leslie Hill, Ther铆 Pickens, Michael Rocque, and Adriana Salerno) and 5 students (Perla Figuereo, Zoe Gallate, Maya Karmaker, Lebanos Mengistu, and Aaliyah Moore) systematically and carefully evaluated programs across the country, considered what would be the most effective path for us to follow, and how we might implement such a plan. The CWG submitted their report to the AAC. The AAC will share the proposal and is crafting a plan for faculty consideration of the recommendations. The upcoming dialogue provides our community with an opportunity to explore ways to build a curriculum that meets the goals of our institutional mission statement. 

Finally, our office will work on the idea of community at 乐播传媒. We use this term frequently, but are we a community of scholars and artists or are we a collection of scholars and artists? This is a fundamental question because the former requires continued investment. When I arrived at 乐播传媒 I was told about the egalitarianism that was so vital to the way 乐播传媒 operated. I wholeheartedly embrace egalitarianism but I worry however about a corrupted form of it that can prize individualism even libertarianism in some spaces over the collective aspirations that I believe we share. We should really consider the ways that we interact and care for each other. Covid disrupted so much of our communal practices last year. As we look to re-build, what do we want to salvage, and what do we want to reimagine? Over the course of the next year, and beyond, we will be examining ways that we can reconnect and craft a shared narrative about the work we do as colleagues. It will also include an analysis of the ways we make decisions that may be locally beneficial, but perhaps less useful at a macro level. A clear example from my perspective is the consequence of students having the ability to write more than one thesis. While this practice may work for individual units, collectively it adds thousands of hours of faculty time and effort beyond what I believe our pedagogical goals are for something like the W3 requirement or thesis proper. Another example has to do with the way we build our grids – what courses are taught and when are those courses taught. We will use with the registrar and the chairs our Teaching Planning Tool to collectively design a calendar and manage our space in a manner that balances all of the needs of the curriculum broadly defined. I also believe the discussions that will come about our governing structures will have to be embedded in a clear understanding of the professional community we are looking to build. 

Finally, I hope that our shared narrative about community will grow from things like our Kroepsch panels, Phillips lectures, seminars and speakers on campus, our mentoring programs. One place that I am looking forward to building community this year involves our inaugural new endowed chair celebration that will take place in November. We recently made changes to the endowed chair program such that all endowed chairs from this point forward will carry the exact same terms and a 10 year appointment.

We will look for other ways that we can build the community that we want to be a part of here at 乐播传媒. And as the year unfolds I hope you all are well and please do not hesitate to reach out to us if you have any questions, concerns, or suggestions.

Introduction

I would like to take a few minutes to outline an approach for engaging issues of race, racism, power and privilege in our curriculum and the academic experience of our faculty and students. I want to suggest an approach, first, for engaging with students and faculty on the request of a group of students that we create a requirement that all students take a course in critical race theory and their calls for accountability from faculty, staff, administration, and their fellow students for the lived experience of BIPOC students in and out of the classroom. Second, I would like to talk about our broader institutional commitment to transform our curriculum and teaching overall to encompass consideration of America鈥檚 history of racism, its effects on what and how we teach, and on the experiences of both faculty and students in the academic program. 

In the weeks between the end of the Fall semester and today, I, along with Clayton and Noelle, have spent time consulting with students, individual faculty, members of our governance structures, chairs of academic units, and groups of faculty from departments or units who have been in touch to share their input and understand how we will coordinate our work ahead.

Why This Work Is Essential

Let me begin with the following facts and observations. Too many students feel marginalized at 乐播传媒 because of race, class, gender, or sexual orientation. They feel excluded from learning spaces and other important aspects of what 乐播传媒 claims to offer to all students. This is not due to a lack of talent, resiliency, brilliance, or skill 鈥� it is because of the spaces we create. 

The concerns that motivated the student protest this fall and the proposal for a curricular requirement are legitimate and pressing. The Black Lives Matter movement and protests in response to the murders of Eric Garner, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd and many, many other citizens at the hands of police shed a severe spotlight on the continued racism and injustice experienced by Black Americans. As our colleagues in Africana reminded us: 鈥渢here is no institution or discipline that has not benefited from the creative and intellectual labor of people of color even as those institutions and disciplines are steeped in the ideology that allows them to ignore those benefits.鈥�  Psychological threat and biased experiences can result in synergistic and damaging feedback loops that lead to highly negative outcomes for BIPOC students. This is in direct conflict with our aspirations as an institution.

The evidence is pervasive, but it is not often understood at a level that creates opportunities for transformative adjustments to the curriculum or the courses that students experience. At the end of the day, the effects of pedagogies and curricula that are not attentive to inclusive and equity-minded practices fall short of our shared expectations of teaching excellence. We are all part of this system, whether we want to be or not, but we also have the means and position to be part of a movement that produces real change. As educators, we have one of the most powerful platforms to do this work, as we are responsible for providing new and transformative perspectives for our students. Part of this work involves educating ourselves so that we may recognize our implicit biases, and open ourselves to an authentic accounting of how we got to where we are. The reality is that there is broad agreement, among the faculty, on these important fundamentals, and we have straightforward approaches available to us to offer our students equality of experience and equal opportunities to thrive. While the work is challenging, it is also among the most rewarding work we can do.

A Plan For Advancing this Work

So what does the work look like, and what is our plan? Stasis is not an option. We cannot be neutral. The focus has to be on changing the systemic aspects of any oppressive system that are inhibiting our students. We must recognize that only inclusive excellence is true excellence. 

Since December, the AAC has organized conversations with BIPOC students and faculty. I have met with student leaders to discuss what our winter semester plans might look like. The AAC initiated a conversation with chairs at the January meeting focused on departmental and programmatic approaches to curricular requirements. We are fortunate to have had wise counsel with productive conversations in all of these spaces. Based on the considerations outlined above, I, working with the AAC, would like to propose a two-pronged approach to addressing race and racism in our curriculum.

First, we will address the proposal that all students be required to take a course in critical race theory. This proposal is grounded in an argument that all students should gain some understanding of the history of racism and white supremacy that has shaped 鈥� and misshaped 鈥� this nation from its beginnings and remains part and parcel of every institution in our society, including the academy and our academic disciplines. 

To advance this work over the winter break, I initiated some baseline work that will put us in a good position to make progress once the Winter semester begins. I requested that colleagues in IR and my office prepare an inventory of the existing courses in the 乐播传媒 curriculum that substantially address issues of race, racism, power and privilege. I also asked for data on patterns in course enrollments disaggregated by race and gender. This information will allow us to make informed decisions about pathways potentially available to students outside majors. Finally, I have asked for a review examining similar curricular requirements at other institutions to get a sense of how they are structured, what has proved most effective, and what we can learn. This data-gathering work is currently underway. 

We will need a team of faculty to help interpret these data in ways that shed light on our curricular options. We will also identify potential external consultants who would be able to provide useful perspectives and recommendations as we chart a course forward. As a starting point, I plan to appoint a working group, composed of 3 to 5 faculty, to guide this work during the coming semester. This group will need to meet and decide on its work plan, including how best to engage students in collaborative discussions about curricular change, and how to assess the data we collect. Ultimately, this group will be asked to propose next steps to our faculty governing bodies, and both the 鈥渨hether鈥� and the 鈥渉ow鈥� of the curricular proposal will need to be debated fully and authentically by this faculty, within established frameworks for making curricular decisions. A call for nominations and self-nominations is forthcoming.

Second, and in parallel with the efforts described above, we will continue and expand on our longer-term structural work on curricular and pedagogical transformation across divisions, departments, and programs. Curricular transformation is predicated on understanding the barriers, is dependent upon racial equity awareness, and will require training and planning that will take different forms in different academic units. We will coordinate these efforts at a divisional level. 

Efforts are already underway, with the HHMI grant in the natural sciences and mathematics, and the Mellon grant in the humanities and humanistic social sciences. The AAC is meeting with faculty leading the HHMI and Mellon efforts to understand how we can support and coordinate the work. We will announce soon a similar curricular transformation project in the social sciences, and are working towards a parallel effort in the interdisciplinary studies division. No single strategy will be equally effective in different academic units, but we must be united in a singular focus on improving the experience of BIPOC students and first generation students at 乐播传媒 College.

Thus, we will engage units to assess what kind of racial equity training would be most effective and then engage appropriate disciplinary experts to facilitate the work. Not all academic units are in the same place with regards to the antiracist work that is advocated and required. As each academic unit engages in this work, we will then use evidence to facilitate an understanding of barriers that might exist in the curriculum as we plan strategies that will remove disparate impact based on race and gender. Through conversations that are open, respectful, and reflective, we have the opportunity to make substantive changes in courses, curricula and practices. The reality is that several academic units have embarked, or are preparing to embark, on antiracist initiatives, which have already generated significant positive changes. There are many potential partners within the 乐播传媒 community and in the broader academic community to help us, and it is some of the most creative and important work we can do.

Adopting antiracist approaches to our teaching, to our curricular development, to the academic communities we desire to build is about building a mindset, a skillset, and an expandable toolkit. I think it is safe to say that our colleagues do not believe that the -isms that plague our society are inborn and immutable. Rather, my understanding of this faculty is that we want to do better, we want to create spaces where BIPOC students thrive, but we may not have all the tools right now to do that work. I want to signal, clearly, that we will provide that support, and we will work with you to elevate this work in compassionate, creative, collaborative, and supportive ways. I believe that our faculty can do this work, that to solve these problems we will need to draw on the energy, talents, and creativity of all our faculty with their broad diversity of interests and experiences, and I believe we can do this work well.

The liberatory potential of education includes defending a faculty member鈥檚 right to teach topics from their expertise and to organize their courses in a manner that they deem appropriate. It is important that work of inclusive excellence at the department or program level is carried out in ways that respect discipline-specific goals, content, and methodologies. At the same time, we need to make sure that we are accountable to the quality of the educational experience available to all students. Our students are correct. Any understanding of the world is incomplete without an accurate accounting of the role oppression played and plays in our academic disciplines and our academic communities 鈥� in this country and in the world. We need to address in intellectually rigorous ways, the history and legacy of racism, and its ongoing manifestations if we are to prepare future leaders committed to 鈥渞esponsible stewardship of the wider world.鈥� Excellent teaching ensures that every student with talent and interest finds a safe and responsive intellectual home. Excellent teaching also ensures that every 乐播传媒 student will gain an understanding of the realities of racism, sexism, and ableism in the world we inhabit.

I look forward to partnering with you as we do the vital work of making our commitment to equity and inclusion the lived reality of every student at 乐播传媒. 

INTRODUCTION

I want to start by thanking the CFG for opening space in this faculty meeting. I realize how precious time is, and how important an opportunity to gather in this type of forum can be.

I am here in what I hope will be the first of many opportunities to talk about our collective work. But today I wanted to share a bit about what I have been thinking about since joining the 乐播传媒 community. I want to share ways that I am listening to you, how I am gaining an understand the faculty鈥檚 goals, and how I am attempting to be the best advocate for what you do as I can be. I want to thank Kathy Low, in particular, for taking so much of her time over the summer and fall as she shared her insights on the work of the dean.

I have started by trying to learn more about our core values. I have listened to many constituencies to learn about the important issues in the community, and to get a sense of where you want to go. I have also looked at the governing structures on this campus to figure out how we can achieve our ambitious goals.

I have spent the last 6 months in a crash course on all things 乐播传媒. My first experiences on this campus included the 乐播传媒 Dance Festival 鈥� a truly joyful and nationally consequential program that made me temporarily believe gravity does not affect all humans in the same way. I spent time getting to know the physical space in the glories of a Maine summer. I also studied the governing and academic structures from a detached space: my office studying the handbook, catalogue and webpages.

I have paid attention to the history of this place. 乐播传媒 has a proud tradition of offering an exceptional undergraduate education and training talented students who have changed our society in fundamental ways. Leigh Weisenburger and her colleagues in Admission are fantastic partners dedicated to attracting exceptionally talented students. I have been impressed with the devotion and care for students that y鈥檃ll show. This is a remarkable and distinctive characteristic. However, this education and a career at 乐播传媒 have not been available to all in equal measure, and we have an obligation to address this part of our history (and our present) as we move to consider our future.

I鈥檝e studied how 乐播传媒 has wrestled with its complicated history. Our abolitionist forebears challenged the ideas that supported the inhumanity of slavery 鈥� with the hope of eliminating an evil economic engine. These individuals were motivated to speak truth to power, and deny a social contract that inhibited, imprisoned, murdered, demoralized, and destroyed millions. From those noble origins, 乐播传媒 has been seen as a place to examine structures that inhibit based on race, gender, sexual orientation, class, economic status, and power. However, we have not, and likely are not, always living up to aspirations of equity & inclusion that are stated in our mission. I challenge myself and all of us to reach for these goals.

I have attempted to understand the structures that support our shared mission and the values that motivate us. I have tried as hard as possible to meet and get to know each member of the community, though I still have some ways to go, I am happy to say that I am close to meeting this goal. I look forward to gaining more nuanced understanding of the cares and worries of this community in the coming months and years. Most important, however, I have listened to as many voices from faculty, staff, and students as I鈥檝e been able to so that I can understand the place and its people to the fullest extent. I am grateful to everyone who has shared their time, experience, humor, and wisdom. This crash course has helped move me towards true membership in the 乐播传媒 community, and has helped me appreciate why what you offer is such an exceptional example of higher education in the liberal arts context. It has also fortified my desire to contribute to our aspirations and goals in all the ways I might be able to contribute.

乐播传媒 is a special place. We are all fortunate to work here and to have the opportunity to do the important work of training talented students as they forge their own paths. We have administrators and staff devoted to providing talented faculty with the tools to offer that education, and remarkable students eager to grow, be challenged, and take on the challenges of the world. You are a busy and dedicate group of faculty, and while this is a joyful profession, it is clear that your time and energy budgets are maxed out. I have heard a persistent call to address this aspect of professional life at 乐播传媒, to find resources to support what you do, and I take that call seriously and will work with Clayton and Geoff to find ways to support you in your academic work.

It is an exciting time at 乐播传媒. There are wonderful signs of success, and real reasons for optimism at 乐播传媒. And we have a lot of work yet to do. At a time when wall-building and the buttressing of barriers are an ever present part of the national dialogue, 乐播传媒鈥� legacy is to build a different kind of structure. We build knowledge 鈥� knowledge that at its core is about removing barriers/breaking down walls. I want to support efforts to build knowledge, build relationships, build communities, build new ways to view the world, grow our aspirations, discover new pathways鈥o that our work is about removing barriers that exist in our society.

I want to talk today about what I see as a multitude of opportunities, and articulate the case for optimism at 乐播传媒 given an ambitious vision for our role in the national landscape.

Overarching goals of the DOF office

We have some important overarching goals in our office, but the primary one is to improve the professional life of members of the 乐播传媒 community. Our job is to support and nurture one of the strongest undergraduate educations available in the US, and we want to strengthen our community in this endeavor whenever and wherever possible. I am interested in being efficient, pragmatic, and aspirational in our decision making 鈥� especially as it relates to our institutional mission. We will communicate decisions, and encourage this in the entire community, so that we may all understand 鈥� even if we don鈥檛 all agree 鈥� with what was decided, who was responsible for the decision, and what criteria were used to reach our decisions. I hope to improve the quality of our professional exchanges 鈥� disagreement doesn鈥檛 mean dislike, and we must be open to the qualities of discourse that help us improve what we are attempting to accomplish. We must be encouraging. As a small community, it is essential to have discourse that does not erode the generosity and even the kindness of our exchanges. I realize that pressures to meet the demands of this job can do just that. You all are working at maximal capacity 鈥� and I have seen how much effort you must expend. I will be an advocate for mobilizing resources to support what you do. I hope to increase our sense of shared purpose, improve the narrative of 鈥渨e,鈥� and strengthen a culture that ties individual success to other鈥檚 success (students, colleagues, 乐播传媒).

We will be student-centered in this approach so we tie our successes to student successes. In short, our overarching goal is going to be to provide support, to support what is working well, strengthen what can be strengthened, and to remove structural barriers that are getting in the way of our shared goals and individual success so that we may continue to offer a signature and singular model of liberal arts education.

Strengthen what we do well

How can we strengthen what we do well? We have a community of teachers and scholars committed to undergraduate education. That commitment is astonishing, and distinctive.

I have been asking faculty in a variety of settings about some of the things that make their professional lives rich and rewarding here at 乐播传媒. There is some strong unanimity in what folks find supportive.

The talented scholars and artists on this campus want support for creative educational and professional opportunities. There are many successful programs in place. For example, our Harward Center offers exceptional and nationally-distinctive opportunities for faculty, staff and students to engage with our community. 乐播传媒 is a national leader in one of the best examples of a high-impact educational practice.

The Short Term courses that I have seen are transformative for the students, and excite many of our faculty. This is an area of curricular innovation that allows for the use of creative and new pedagogies. This is distinctive! I am interested in picking up the Institutional Plan鈥檚 call to optimize ST and will be looking for ways to engage faculty-led conversations and policy discussions in the next year on this topic.

乐播传媒鈥� commitment to students engaging in signature work is obvious 鈥� this is among a short list of the highest-impact educational practices possible in the academy. Thesis is the most obvious example – it is something 乐播传媒 does exceptionally well. Thesis, however, represents a significant investment of time and energy. But the co-creation of new knowledge, new ways to view the world are ways that 乐播传媒 makes lasting contributions to the academy. We will be developing a tool, working with Mary Meserve and Pat Schokneckt and colleagues in ILS, to capture some of the information from theses every year so that we can gauge aspects of scholarship that our students conduct and where their interests lie. The tool will eventually allow us a historic perspective on thesis work at 乐播传媒. We will also look for ways to identify the pedagogical objective of thesis, and for ways to lessen the load of thesis for students and faculty while maintaining it as a distinctive part of the 乐播传媒 education. Faculty have expressed to me the urge to think critically about how many theses students do, and how we recognize and reward the thesis work of students and faculty. Our office will work to facilitate these types of faculty-led discussions next year.

I look forward to strengthening the academic ties to Purposeful Work. This is an exciting initiative. PW helps students align their passions, skills, and interests with their vocation. It offers an unapologetic defense against misguided and myopic attacks of the liberal arts. I look forward to finding ways to contribute to that narrative, to find ways to tell the stories that highlight all the ways that the training we engage students in throughout their 4 years conveys the types of skills, real-world, practical skills that employers are interested in having in the work force. Exploration of the world, developing greater appreciation for the beauty of the world, building skills in critical analysis, these are the tangibles that we give to students that allow them to thrive once they leave our campus. PW helps us achieve that.

The efforts that are going into the recently funded HHMI and Mellon grants are so exciting. These two initiatives offer opportunities to transform what happens in and out of the classroom as we explore ways to ensure broad access and remove barriers to persistence and thriving. These faculty-led initiatives offer opportunities to tie faculty success to student success such that we reward colleagues who are making a major difference in helping students who may not have benefitted from well-resourced educational backgrounds or who are not part of the pervasively white culture at 乐播传媒. This is among the best that 乐播传媒 has to offer. But these efforts need to extend to all reaches of our curriculum, and our office will look for ways to share lessons from the great and innovative equity-minded and inclusive work you are doing.

Maintaining scholarly and creative endeavors is essential to what it means to be a 乐播传媒 faculty member. The reasons for this are varied 鈥� for some it is about identity, for some it is about curiosity, for some it is about joy. Professional achievement helps grow the reputation of 乐播传媒, and it helps attract students and future colleagues. However, the reason we value it at a place like 乐播传媒 is that it is one of the best ways to ensure that our students are gaining perspectives from the best teachers who are also excellent scholars and artists. We have among us leading experts at the forefront of their fields 鈥� our faculty are working at the cutting edge of an ever-changing educational landscape. And they should be. The value of a 乐播传媒 degree comes in part from the recognition that we have recruited outstanding scholars who are equally committed to the creation of new knowledge at least in part because that is one of the most effective teaching tools in our toolkit. I will look for ways to support our scholars and artists who find creative ways to engage students in their work. Our office will also be looking for ways to enhance existing support for the scholarly lives of colleagues 鈥� one small example of this is that we will increase the travel allotment to $1750 starting next academic year. It is a small step. The BFDF is also an essential aspect of supporting the scholarly work on campus. It is important to thank the colleagues who have received funding from external sources, because a part of those funds supports the BFDF, and helps the entire community do their meaningful work. We will look for ways to further support the BFDF so additional resources can be focused in areas of professional happiness. Sarah Pearson and her colleagues are working hard to support our efforts, and I look forward to working even harder with her to provide resources to support our broader goals. Hiring a new director of SPARC will be an important component of this goal.

We are also interested in telling the stories about the work of faculty and staff. Our goal is to recognize achievements and support innovation. We are working with Sean Findlen and the BCO staff to craft strategies around this goal. We have created a Focus on the Faculty initiative, a twitter account, and we will be pursuing other ways to tell the broader community about the great work of colleagues here.

Remove barriers that are getting in the way of our shared goals

I have heard many speak of ways we can improve what we are doing, and part of my 6 months here have been spent trying to understand the concerns of the community without letting those concerns be the only narrative that emerges. Again, 乐播传媒 is a wonderful institution filled with colleagues who love their jobs and the careers they have crafted at 乐播传媒. At the same time, there are some opportunities for improving the quality of the professional experience for folks on campus.

I have looked at data from a number of places : COACHE, Workload study, conversations on campus, your descriptions of top priorities for the new dean. I have also directly observed practices that may not be aligned with our shared objectives. There are inequities in our systems – power structures that require realignment – and these have eroded morale for some of our colleagues. For example, the workload survey indicated that women contribute a greater number of hours than men to committee work (on average >20% more than men; >38% more than men at full professor level) and those efforts are not seen as being valued or contributing to professional advancement. The COACHE data indicate that colleagues of color and women experience professional satisfaction at rates lower than white men on this campus. We have work to do to ensure that 乐播传媒 is a place with the highest levels of job satisfaction possible, and that it attends to issues equity and inclusion for all members of the community.

I look forward to working with CFG, AAC, COP, chairs of committees and other faculty leaders on campus, to develop strategies to align our structures and policies with the mission of the institution and to support faculty, staff, and student thriving. Some of the topics we will address initially include the following:

Chairs are now working with a 鈥淭eaching Load Tool.鈥� The goal here is to think about teaching equity within academic units, and to think about how we are all contributing to a 乐播传媒 education that extends beyond majors. Starting next year, I will ask chairs to develop with their colleagues a 鈥淐areer Profile & Values Statement鈥� for their academic units. This will articulate the responsibilities and agency of faculty on this campus. This effort has to be tied to our understanding of our shared values 鈥� and this serves as a cornerstone of efforts to improve mentoring of our colleagues.

You have highlighted in notes to me that mentoring is an area that needs improvement. We will be developing a robust mentoring program, based on vetted and nationally consequential methods. To provide meaningful mentorship, we will need clear statements about our values as well as training for what effective mentorship looks like. Our office is committed to supporting both aspects of an emerging mentoring plan, and our membership in NCFDD is a good first step.

Faculty engagement with the operation of the academic mission is critical and deeply valued by our colleagues, yet faculty have expressed to me the desire to improve our governing structures. As a new dean, with new institutional eyes, there is an opportunity to explore governing structures 鈥� to clarify, for example, on this campus the distinctions between elected and appointed committees, the types of work that our committees do and don鈥檛 do, the expectations of this work as part of our social contract, and the communication that occurs to the community about this work. These are also issues highlighted in previous accreditation exercises. I have raised these and other questions with the CFG, the AAC, and COP, and while it is not glamorous administrative work, it seems to be a good moment at 乐播传媒 to engage with this essential aspect of how we function. I believe it is time to bring in experts from outside of 乐播传媒 to review all of our practices, at a broad, systematic level, and to provide recommendations for ways that we might align with national best practices. I will work with CFG to coordinate this effort in the coming academic year. This is a big initiative, and it will require many faculty perspectives to ensure that we are meeting the goals of our community.

In addition to broad scale perspectives on governance in general, there are also opportunities to clarify specific aspects of the handbook language. For example, there is room for improvement in handbook language associated with tenure and promotion. In the area of teaching, 乐播传媒 faculty have expressed to me during a series of coordinated lunches and individual conversations that the following qualities, and these are quotes from y鈥檃ll, are evidence of teaching excellence:
Continuing professional development in pedagogy.
Assessment of meaningful learning gains/outcomes: real measures of student learning.
Capacity to create an equitable and inclusive environment.
Employment of evidence-based pedagogy and risk-taking in the classroom
Responsiveness to change in students.
As it stands now, we do not assess these characteristics of our teaching, and some of the characteristics that are in the handbook you have identified as unimportant.

Also in the context of teaching, our handbook states that 鈥渁cademic advising is a normal part of a teacher’s responsibilities, and it is evaluated as such.鈥� Several of you have expressed the challenges of assessing advising that is done on this campus. There are national best-practices in advising, and the question is, how much of that knowledge do we apply here at 乐播传媒? How do we train our colleagues in advising best practices, and how do we ensure that colleagues receive credit for this important part of our jobs? I have learned that there is a lacuna in advising that happens during a student鈥檚 Sophomore year. This is problematic for a host of reasons. The second year is a particularly important year in the lives of our students as they imagine the academic paths they will travel. In the absence of good academic advising 鈥� especially in the second year of a student鈥檚 experience 鈥� opportunities are lost to guide a student toward their academic passions. In the absence of this guidance, a number of far from useful factors may be influencing student choice in courses and majors. We will continue to explore ways to improve the advising experience from a student perspective, but also ways to support and reward faculty who do this important work.

In the context of professional achievement, our standards should also be evaluated to ensure they represent contemporary practices in particular fields (e.g., public scholarship in the digital age, open-access journals, new forms of scholarship). How do we value peer-review or public scrutiny and quality of our work in the context of a changing academic landscape?

It is also time to reimagine 鈥淪ervice.鈥� Service is real work – not a donation or a kindness 鈥� and it is essential to the healthy, efficient operation of the college. There are different expectations (real and perceived) at different points of the career. Bias can be present both in who does this work and how it is valued. So we will look to determine how we fairly and equitably address this aspect of the life of an academic.

To address questions about tenure and promotion standards, I will ask CFG to establish an ad hoc committee with a charge to review our values and the handbook language to ensure that these are accurate reflections of our shared values. This is essential to providing useful mentorship to colleagues at all stages of a career, but it is especially true for pre-tenure colleagues, and those colleagues considering promotion to full. This work will also help us understand where to put resources that support faculty development and training that is aligned with the values of the community. For instance, several of you have asked for development and training in inclusive and evidence-based pedagogies 鈥� and this best practice should be articulated in our handbook.

As a final observation in areas where there is room for improvement at 乐播传媒, but one that will involve a much longer conversation, I believe 乐播传媒 has, in places, a fragmented academic landscape. Some of the parsing of academic units has created smaller communities and more borders to defend 鈥� walls have been built up between divisions and academic units. In fact, that is language that I鈥檝e heard some of you use. I will look for opportunities for strengthening what we do in partnership and collaboration rather than weakening our efforts through competition.

CONCLUSION

The world is a better place because of your efforts. 乐播传媒 has a history of speaking truth to power. It also has benefitted from the inequities of society. The land we inhabit is the homeland of indigineous Wabanaki who used the Androscoggin River for transportation, navigation, trade, and sustenance. While it is absolutely true, and a source of pride, that our founders were abolitionists who stood against slavery and challenged the imperial slave economy, it is simultaneously true that they were individuals who accepted money from Benjamin 乐播传媒 who made his fortune directly from cheap cotton made cheap because of the forced labor of millions of humans imprisoned in the south. This narrative of inequity and structural barriers based on race, gender, class,鈥�- this is one that repeats throughout 乐播传媒鈥� history 鈥� from the Civil War, Jim Crow Era, Great Depression, WWII to today. I find hope and optimism in the fact that 乐播传媒 is working to become a better version of itself, and has aspirations to be a model of equity and inclusion for the nation and world. I am looking forward to work with Dr. Noelle Chaddock on these initiatives in the coming years.

乐播传媒 has long recognized that a college diploma is more than a piece of paper, more than a major. It鈥檚 a ticket to social and economic mobility. Yet this educational path has been denied to many high-achieving students based on race, gender, sexual orientation, class鈥�.However, with our high-graduation-rate and incredible resources, I would argue that 乐播传媒 should give these students the best chance for success because we attend to the individual in a way that most other institutions can鈥檛. We can do more on this front, and I am looking for partners in these initiatives.

To summarize, I am interested in improving the professional lives of colleagues on this campus. I want to find resources to support what you do. I want to improve our processes and structures to free up and value your time. I want to be a part of a community that is joyously engaging in the important work that we do. I challenge this community, in constructive dialogue, to join together so that 乐播传媒 can continue to transform the lives of talented and promising students 鈥� especially those who have not had the opportunity to reach their full potential and fully contribute to our society.

Thank you in advance for your continued generosity as we look for ways to move 乐播传媒 towards our future goals.