Arts, Cultures, and the Strategic Plan

by Mary Moran

Professor of Anthropology and Africana and Latin American Studies

What was striking about the comments at the faculty meeting last Monday was how many faculty noted that a facility for the performing arts, which was a prominent feature of the previous strategic plan that was never realized, is completely absent from the current plan. Many faculty believe that such a priority would help toward the goal of increasing Colgate's academic profile, and it has been recognized as an unmet need for a very long time now. Given all we have heard about changing the profile of students we attract through an increased focus on meeting financial need, it also seems like we should have facilities here that will attract an broader range of students.

At the same time, we are pushing forward with a plan to put a very controversial new Center for Arts and Culture downtown in the village. This is controversial because many village residents are worried about this intrusion into the business district and are concerned about the historic character of the village. It is controversial with many faculty, myself included, due to concerns about having access to the collections of the Longyear Museum of Anthropology and the Picker Gallery for teaching purposes. I use Longyear materials in my classes and would like to use them much, much more, if we had the kind of facility that would serve the pedagogical purpose. I protested quite strongly during two consultations with the siting committee, that it was impossible to get students up and down the hill in the space between classes to see and use the materials, and was told this was not a concern and students would "work it out." This to me is not an adequate response.

Furthermore, I and others have grave concerns that the footprint of the downtown site does not allow for adequate storage space and space for expansion of the Longyear collection. Anthropologists have different goals in constructing a teaching collection which are not shared by art historians, who more frequently want to "cull" a collection for its "masterworks." There was only one anthropologist on the museum siting and building committee and he was consistently outvoted on every issue. There was no representative of the SOAN Department on the hiring committee that hired the new director. The Longyear Museum of Anthropology has effectively been taken from the SOAN department without our participation. On the other hand, we very much need a new museum facility because the Longyear has been undersupported for years and the collections are not being preserved in the way they should. A really famous architect has been engaged, and there is trustee and donor enthusiasm for having a "statement" building.

The situation as I see it is this:

• We have a lot of faculty who are are angry that a performing arts center, which was a focus of the last strategic plan, is now off the table due apparently to lack of donor interest (as we were told last Monday).

•  We have faculty and village residents who are very upset about a building planned for the village that directly impacts the faculty's ability to teach.

• We have a famous architect engaged to build a building in a place where many people don't want it, and faculty who want a building they are told they can't have.

My proposed solution: Could we not explore with the trustees and donors the possibility of engaging with David Adjaye (the famous architect) to build on our campus a "statement" building housing an integrated arts center, with space for both performing arts and the two museums? Might it be possible to raise donor enthusiasm for such a project? Has anyone even tried? We now have the space gained from the purchase of the Hoteling property to build such a structure. Also, such a plan would be so much more in keeping with the actual language of the framing document, which talks on pp. 9 about "A Campus for Colgate's Third Century" (emphasis in the original) and how "we must develop a more compact campus in order to enhance student life." In a complete contradiction, the document then turns in the next few paragraphs to discuss the building of the Center for Arts and Culture off campus. in order to "strengthen the role of the arts and culture in Colgate's educational enterprise." This building is projected to cost $15 million dollars; does it make sense to invest in this and still push the unmet need for space for the performing arts off into the future, when another building will have to be constructed at even higher costs?

Teaching and “Teaching”: In Honor of Margaret Maurer, William Henry Crawshaw Professor of Literature, upon Her Reception of the Balmuth Teaching Award, April 4, 2013

by Jerome Balmuth

Harry Emerson Fosdick Professor of Philosophy and Religion, Emeritus

           
Thank you all for your presence here; it is a tribute to our honoree and to the idea of the  award proposed and generously supported by Mark Siegel, class of 1973.
                                                                      
In a recent column in the NY Times, the usually careful writer, Tom Friedman argues that a plausible solution to the commonly acknowledged problem of the increasing costs of University education is a much more determined and systematic use of internet and video education, with a sophisticated employment (as for example in supplementary MIT courses) of a more exacting system of instruction and testing than heretofore practiced.

No one should denigrate the use of the internet for such possible educational uses; nor deny that the internet is -- and can continue to be - a wonderful source of accepted knowledge and detailed information -- as shown by Wikipedia, and by the plethora of other such sources. These would include, I should think, the advertised DVD’s and CD’s of experienced University lecturers, many of which are easily purchased and listened to, as if in a huge University lecture hall. In fact, of course, encyclopedias, for another such source, have been around since even before the French Revolution.

To illustrate his proposal, Friedman offers a Harvard example of such apparently effective and yet economical education: the celebrated course on justice and the law given by Professor Irwin Sandel of Harvard’s Government Dept. This is a course which enrolls no fewer than 1000 students and must use the Brattle Theater and its balconies for its venue. I’ve watched videos of this ‘course’ and marked on Sandel’s use of commonly accepted philosophical materials, such as those I’ve used in my Philosophy of Law and ethics classes over the years. Sandel  talks to the assembly easily and interestingly, occasionally singling out a volunteer student or two in the first few rows to apply or test for a point; which then serves as the lesson of the day. The remainder 998 or so students watch and listen in the loges and balconies, with various degrees of  engagement. Of course student writings and  papers, if any, or the one, at most, as well as a mandatory final exam, are read, if not mechanically, then presumably by a multiple number of apprentices to the department, i.e. TA’S employed for that course.

The irony Friedman misses, I would claim, is the clear failure of Sandel's course to "teach" any of these 1000 students, all so efficiently, in one illusory fell swoop. Teaching, as I understand and try to practice in the class, is unlike merely informing, telling, lecturing or power-pointing; it is not directed primarily, if at all, simply to transferring detailed or general information through indirectly demonstrating how informed the Instructor is as  a model; all the while seeking somehow to engage the student with the instructor’s particular interests. One can read her book for such details and information, or indeed copy and memorize the claims of the associated website.

None of this, I would hold, meets the challenges of genuine teaching: provoked learning and reflective understanding which I, and Colgate, consider at the heart of  the challenge of liberal education. Our students, in relatively small classes, are individually put into  positions of challenged thought: personally confronted to show reflective understanding, imaginative application, and independent  development and elaboration.  No matter how "serious" and "attentive” the merely observant student, it is the imminent insistent human encounter with the instructor's verbal, and subsequently written, challenges for explanation, elaboration, and possible application, that are finally the honest tests of education and practical learning; best enabled -- as alums consistently testify -- under the auspices of a demanding teacher. This is a test -- one of immediate human connection that often continues to endure through time -- that is neither sought nor achievable merely through the large  lecture-halls or, for that matter, from a required exposure to matters of the internet -- even with directed testing as a  challenge.

It is my contention that we cannot economize in the easy ways often suggested if we  are to meet honestly the challenges of learning and genuine understanding that are initiated and realized most often through a determined teacher; the alternative is the shared illusion of unmonitored solitary learning, which is the too easily accepted substitute.

What I have been saying about the community of teaching and learning is in part an outgrowth of our modern humanistic culture; that,  through the centuries, creative humans perfected the uses of words to tell and record stories -- some true as history, some made-up as plays, poems and fiction; the uses of color, shapes and pictures to display and represent appearances, some received, others constructed imaginatively as drawings and  paintings; and similarly for related sounds: to represent as melodies, received cries and tones, as say, bird songs, and then devising and composing  artful, fresh sounding combinations:  songs, symphonies, string quartets.  It is the intellectual  task of present-day humanists and teachers, reflectively, to attend to and build on this special talent: to understand this godlike ability of humans not simply to be in this world, but to ponder and question exactly how we are in, as well as of, this world; dwelling especially on  those creations that more ingeniously enlarge perception, the understanding and self-understanding. Our best teachers, in the immediacy of the classroom, enable our students to draw fresh insights on these talents and their creations -- probing (the class is indeed the laboratory of such probing) their meanings, while exploring with the students, the many  features of the human  creative process itself.

Margaret Maurer, in the many years since  Colgate has seen her work with students, is a genuine teacher in the sense defined above. Her principal focus in her classes, studying Shakespeare and English literature more generally, is the recognized occasion for generations of our students’ exciting confrontation with, and genuine appreciation of, the literary art; their discovery and understanding of created  masterworks; and the light these project on the human condition. Margaret Maurer's courses, like many others in the humanities, are designed to develop a eureka-like understanding of the uses of language to reveal thought,motive and action:  insightful keys to the most profound senses of being human in a human society. These are realized through the imaginative teaching of a master teacher of  acknowledged masterpieces of human creativity.

Margaret Maurer is herself a uniquely creative teacher; and so, Colgate believes, an appropriate recipient of the University’s very special teaching award, particularly designed for such recognition.

CLASS OF 2013 SENIOR BRUNCH, MAY 5, 2013: A FACULTY VIEW

Upon returning from today's brunch for the Colgate Class of 2013, I find I cannot in good conscience refrain from expressing my extreme disappointment with the event and in particular the two speakers for the senior class. If their speeches are supposed to be what it is that a Colgate education produces, I am thoroughly ashamed of the institution and regret my part in it. Their behavior was juvenile, vulgar, and embarrassing to all those of us who thought we were celebrating the coming of age of respectable adults. Both X and Y made it clear in their speeches that the most important parts of their Colgate experiences were those that involved drunken (and illegal) revelry. X even indicated that having Campus Safety shut down his party and being put on probation in his first semester were fond memories well above any he might have of a class discussion or intellectual achievement. I kept waiting for the part of the story that would indicate reflection on a sense of having grown from the experience, but there was none. Y meanwhile, got her laughs that did not refer to "nights we don't remember" and "the freshman fifteen" by mocking at least four people by name: two members of her entering class, an employee at the Coop and another downtown. I was unaware that humiliating other people - particularly those not present or with far less social capital- was still considered a rite of passage. Is this the level of maturity and character that is expected in a formal celebration of Colgate achievement? Is this what those of us who were invited with Torch Medals were supposed to be proud of?

The only acts of character I saw the class of 2013 demonstrate were the donation to financial aid and the acknowledgement of Dean Taylor's commitment to a more healthy and respectful community. Neither act was in keeping with the attitude of the rest of the event. I can't have been the only one who winced when X said that first semester was a particularly "good time" for freshmen males -- a reference I sincerely hope was only to drinking. I imagine Dean Taylor could provide some statistics on how good a time freshmen females often have in their first few weeks on campus.

Furthermore, while I recognize that it is perhaps in keeping with Colgate's "branding" to have its guest speaker celebrate financial success without reference to any efforts to improve society beyond "giving back to Colgate," the complete lack of reference whatsoever to anything that could be considered intellectual or even moral growth by the students and alumnus of Colgate was heart-breaking. (No, pointing out that even the tragedy of 9/11 could lead to something as positive as a marriage and child is not particularly inspiring or spiritually deep.) The speaker also referred to how entry to a particular industry was based on nepotism, and despite not having family of his own in it, he was able to speak to a top industry official through the intervention of someone who did. I may have missed the reference to his friend being from Colgate, but presumably this was to emphasize the usefulness of the “Colgate connection.” I had hoped a Colgate graduate would at the very least reflect on the problems associated with the fact that the highest echelons of financial and political opportunities are indeed largely closed to those without powerful patrons; in this case it seemed that Colgate grads were simply told to be glad that their association with the University gives them this access.

Even such laudable a goal as raising money for college scholarships was presented through samples of shampoo placed next to the champagne flutes. The card on the tables explaining the grooming products helpfully pointed out that while these were free, we soon would be able to buy them; it was basically an advertisement disguised as some sort of “gift.” While students may have become "consumers" in the ledgers of the University somewhere, I hope we do not need to enshrine the crass commercialism that even the most irredeemably middle class among us find tacky.

If I were not aware of the many Colgate students and faculty who believe that success is measured by more than a tax bracket and courage by more than risking a comfortable income in order to "provide an excellent product and service" to a luxury industry, I would have left the Senior Brunch today convinced that every negative stereotype of Colgate as the place for the well-heeled country-club set to send their children to drink for four years was accurate. If that were the only example of Colgate I saw, I would never encourage anyone to send their child here.

We are better than this – our students are better than this. I cannot fathom why an event this important did not demonstrate it.

D.A.C. R.I.P.

by Robert Garland

I’m sure it won’t have escaped anyone’s notice that what we voted for at the last Faculty Meeting – rather too expeditiously for my liking – was the abolition of the Dean’s Advisory Council as we have come to know and love that esteemed body.  The fate of the D.A.C. wasn’t, of course, on the agenda of that meeting. And perhaps its demise will go largely unmourned. But there is no escaping the fact that the decision to strip it of its primary and essential function of determining who and who should not be awarded continuous lifetime tenure at Colgate University has the consequence of reducing it to an essentially pro forma body, viz. corpse, of little significance.  The objection to it in its present instantiation is, of course, that it is an appointed committee that does not represent the will of the faculty. It’s true that it is appointed, but its members are appointed after nomination by and consultation with as many faculty within the division as wish to nominate and be consulted, or at least that has always been my experience, and that, as Robert Frost once memorably stated, made all the difference. Will I end up voting for someone in another division to be on the new P. and T. solely because I can put a face to a name? So how should we in the weeks ahead appropriately and efficiently do the homework that used to be the laborious and time-consuming task of the Dean in identifying the best candidates for the job?

As a past serving member of the D.A.C., I obviously have a vested interest in touting the virtues of the old system. I hate to sound self-serving but I am intensely proud to have served on that committee, which taught me so much about the university, about my colleagues, and about myself. I can truthfully state that no body, whether elected or appointed or indeed lighted upon by sortition (the Athenian way!) could have tried harder to ‘do the right thing’. And the fact of the matter is that it is often impossible to do the right thing when individual careers and lives are pitted against the long term welfare and reputation of the university. Under any imaginable system mistakes will be made. Casting one’s vote on whether to award tenure is like playing God while looking down the wrong end of the telescope with an acute case of astigmatism. Is there perchance an unspoken consensus that we should be tenuring a larger percentage of the faculty than we are at present and that somehow the new system with its much-touted transparency will bring that about? I hope not though I fear yes. I take pride (again) in Colgate being the place it is today. The new system will certainly bring about more delays, more lawsuits, and more enduring rancor.

But enough of my own rancorous observations. We’ve taken the decision to set out on that new road and we’re set off and it’s that new road that I want to talk about finally here. As it currently exists, the D.A.C. has virtually no control over the purse strings of the university. It does not protect the curriculum. It is solely because the Division Directors are empowered with the heavy charge of determining who and who will not do be given a job for life at Colgate that they sit on the D.A.C. with a modest degree of clout, both vis-à-vis the Dean and vis-à-vis their colleagues in their divisions. And they need clout because they are the faculty’s buffer, participating in university administration at a high level. while remaining indisputably teaching members of that faculty. Though their votes on tenure decisions don’t or rather didn’t translate into real power, it gave them a degree of oversight in their divisions that made the job eminently worthwhile. It made them accountable as administrators, and at times, too, when the situation called for it, it made them outspoken.

In short I am concerned about the effects of the new system for the governance system of the university. Far from enhancing the faculty’s representativeness at the highest level, I am concerned that we may have collectively undermined it. In sum, I urge the faculty to be alert to the implications of their vote. As a born contrarian who takes a long view of history, I look forward keenly to being proven completely wrong.

Report on the "Real Faculty Meeting"

hosted by the Colgate AAUP, April 11, 2013

An AAUP faculty meeting was held on Thursday, April 11, 2013 and attended by 80 faculty.  The following document provides a summary of the comments, organized by topic area.  The name of each speaker was not recorded so that all could speak freely.

The meeting began at 4:25 pm with opening remarks on the AAUP, a summary of conversations held between the President of our AAUP chapter and departments/programs, and a statement of the purpose of this meeting.  The focus of this meeting was university governance.  The following bulleted items summarize the major points that were raised.  They do not necessarily represent the perspectives of AAUP.

Elected committee power.  Elected governance committees lack real power.  Committees function in an advisory role rather than in a decision-making role.  Advice that is asked for is not taken seriously.  This is discouraging and disenfranchising.  The activities of various committees need to be better coordinated.

Appointed task forces.  The proliferation of appointed task forces undermines our committee structure.

Faculty meetings.  The structure of the monthly faculty meetings is dominated by the administration.

Faculty disengagement from university governance.  Faculty have become less involved in university governance for a variety of reasons—concerns towards the effectiveness of committees, inadequate amount of time, and prioritization of other interests and responsibilities.

Recollections from the past.  Faculty had a stronger voice and greater power in the past.  This has gradually eroded for a variety of reasons.

Faculty time.  There is insufficient time to manage an increasing workload.  This negatively impacts involvement in governance.  A four-course load is needed.

Relationship with the administration.  The administration was viewed as too top-down.  Faculty feel managed and not listened to.

Provost and Dean of the Faculty.  As Colgate has become more complex, it is questionable whether a singular Provost and Dean of the faculty is appropriate.  The Provost should represent the President’s interests.  The Dean of the Faculty should represent the interests of the faculty.  It is difficult for a single individual to represent both interests.  The hiring of external Deans may decrease representation of faculty viewpoints.

Time in office for the President and Dean of the Faculty.  It was noted that both are fairly new to their positions.  We owe them some trust and time to see how matters develop.  We should sit with them and work things out in constructive ways.

Board of Trustees.  Concerns were raised towards the composition of the Board, the interests that they represent, and their involvement in matters of the faculty (e.g., the curriculum).  Our goals are not consistent with the business model of the Board of Trustees.  The Board does not need to manage the curriculum of an institution.

Departmental and institutional hierarchies.  There is an increased level of surveillance in the work that faculty do, especially junior faculty.  There is an application of rules that interfere with effective mentoring between junior and senior faculty.  There is a need to practice trust among ourselves as colleagues.

Action.  Faculty were interested in concrete steps that could be taken by the AAUP.  How might faculty claim a particular power?  The AAUP should forge constructive strategies.  Perhaps a direct line with the Board of Trustees could be developed.  We need to start with collective items, not items that could be perceived as to our own narrow benefit (e.g., a four-course load).  We must be stakeholders in the institution.

Assertion of faculty voice.  Faculty are not using our full voice.  We need to better assert what is ours.  Nothing should be off the table for the faculty.  Hiring and the faculty are the domain of the faculty.  We need not change our governance structure, but we need to assert ourselves and make our committee structure more vibrant.

Faculty power.  It was noted that faculty are in positions of power across campus (e.g., department chairs, division directors, and associate deans).  We need to make better use of our power.  We are not fully utilizing our Full Professors.  We need to support our faculty administrators, even when they make a difficult and unpopular decision.

Faculty Affairs Committee.  The role of the FAC in setting faculty meeting agenda and in carrying out its various functions was discussed.  Perhaps the FAC is too small to carry out all of its functions.

 Tone.  The tone of our discussions and AAUP communications is important.  Our tone need not signify opposition to the administration.  There may be value in reaching out and working with the administration.  Kindness in tone, but firmness is needed.

Resurrection of Colgate’s chapter of the AAUP.  The revitalization of our chapter of the AAUP is appreciated.  The AAUP may provide a needed mechanism for identifying key issues and channeling our energy.

Unity.  We must not divide ourselves from one another.

The meeting concluded at 5:45 pm.

-- Prepared by Rick Geier, Secretary of the Colgate University Chapter of the AAUP