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Throughout this semester, different groups on campus have been debating how best to address the College’s need for internal change in light of the recent economic downturn. Most recently, select members of the faculty collaboratively drafted a letter to the Board of Trustees that offered sharp criticism of the administration’s recent actions concerning curricular changes. Several student members of the Campus Solidarity Working Group introduced this letter to the Vassar Student Association (VSA) Council on Nov. 22. After more than three hours of discussion, the Council voted to endorse this letter. On Nov. 29, to clarify its reasons for voting on the letter and to elaborate on some reservations that it still held about it, the VSA Council voted to endorse a memorandum drafted by the VSA Academics Committee.
The Nov. 22 letter, brought to Council by the Campus Solidarity Working Group, was criticized at Council for containing some inaccurate and occasionally misleading information. On the other hand, the Nov. 29 memorandum has been criticized for “going back on” the VSA’s prior endorsement of the Nov. 22 letter. The memorandum refutes some points of inaccuracy within the letter, but the memorandum’s language also raised concerns about the implications of the letter’s assertions, such as in the discussion of faculty retirements. Here, some points of the Nov. 22 letter and the VSA’s memorandum are compared and contrasted, and the points of the two documents are clarified.
Course reductions
During the Council meeting, the reduction in the number of sections offered across the curriculum was a point of confusion and concern. While the Nov. 22 letter operated under the assumption that the curriculum would be reduced by 30 to 40 sections, in comparison to current offerings, members of the Executive Board were able to announce that the curriculum would only be reduced by 10 sections (see “Ten, not 30 sections to be dropped,” 12.3.09). The Nov. 22 letter states that, “Last year the College reduced course offerings by 60 sections.
This year Vassar students are noting the ways the cuts are making admission into courses needed for majors much more difficult.”
While this year’s curriculum was reduced by about 60 sections from last year’s offerings, Dean of the Faculty Jonathan Chenette responded that the number of students getting into all of their pre-registered classes has actually gone up in the past three years. In 2008, 58 percent of students got into all four to five of their pre-registered classes, in 2009 it was 55 percent and for the spring semester of 2010 it was 62 percent.
The curriculum’s size fluctuates from year to year—both as a whole and within departments—due to professors’ rotating commitments to other departments or programs and to sabbaticals or other forms of leave.
“Cuts to the curriculum have been overstated,” said Dean of the College Christopher Roellke. “I think the word that’s being thrown around a lot is ‘transparency’…for the 10 years I’ve been at Vassar I don’t think the College has ever been as transparent.” He cited the economy website and the various town hall meetings as examples. Roellke continued, “I feel comfortable that we’ve been both transparent and engaging.”
Computer Science
Perhaps the most discussed department is that of computer science.
The Nov. 22 letter states that, “Though student interest in computer science has jumped because of availability of employment in the tech sector, Vassar cut staffing by one-third last year. Cutting of release time, failure to replace faculty and cutting of staff make it impossible to supervise student projects, adequately staff computer laboratory sessions, and administer the complex equipment and staffing of the program adequately. Majors are having trouble completing requirements for this major.”
This section of the letter was drafted in part by Professor of Computer Science Nancy Ide, who established the Department and formerly served as its chair. In fact, it was not Computer Science staffing that was cut, but course sections. “We were the most-cut department in the College,” observed Ide.
Computer Science was, in fact, one of the most cut departments for this academic year, facing a reduction of two courses, or seven course sections. It was particularly hard-hit given that it was already a small department. These cuts came after Associate Professor of Computer Science Thomas Ellman became Director of the Media Studies Program, after which the Department was not approved to hire an adjunct faculty member to make up for the lost teaching load. The Department, along with the letter, questioned the use of low enrollments in previous years as a justification of cuts, citing growing course enrollments this year and last year, along with fluctuating national trends. However, this semester’s enrollments, which show an aggregate enrollment in excess of last year’s numbers, has been used to make an opposite change for next year. The Department gained two new contracts for adjunct faculty members for the next academic year as a result of a grant that the Department has received. While the Computer Science Department may still not be able to offer all of the courses it has in previous years, these new faculty will relieve enrollment pressures by allowing the department to offer a greater number of course sections. The justification for using enrollments in curricular decisions is at best an egalitarian means of decision-making—students vote for courses based on what they take.
However, the Computer Science Department’s difficulties as a result of cuts also highlight the complications that arise from a process that reacts to fluctuations in enrollments; therefore, decisions reflect past numbers, occasionally at the expense of future projections.
A tenure-track Islamicist
One major point of contention in the Nov. 22 letter was the letter’s claim that Vassar was the only top 25 liberal arts college without a tenure-track Islamicist. Members of the VSA refuted this as a fact and questioned the terminology of the claim. An “Islamicist” refers specifically to a scholar in religion, though topics in Islam may be referenced by and integral to many disciplines.
According to the Nov. 22 letter, “Despite the current world situation, the Religion Department is being asked to reduce the position of its only Islamicist to part-time.”
However, VSA Vice President for Operations Brian Farkas ’10 challenged this assertion. Citing U.S. News and World Report, Farkas stated that “10 of the 25 [top liberal arts schools in the United States] do not employ tenure track Islamicists (including Vassar). These include: Grinnell College, Harvey Mudd College, Washington & Lee University, Wellesley College, Oberlin College, Carleton College, Bates College, the U.S. Naval Academy and Hamilton College. Some of these schools (like us) employ non-tenured teachers to lead courses on Islam,” he wrote in an e-mailed statement.
“No one here believes that Islam is unimportant. No one believes that Vassar College shouldn’t teach it. Interest in Islam in American academia has only recently increased, and tenure lines have not yet caught up. But to claim that we are some kind of dramatic outlier among our peer colleges in this regard is simply untrue,” he continued.
Ferry House Representative Briana Markoff ’11 investigated the question after it became an issue at VSA meetings. “The contested fact,” she explained, “…is really just [a] different definition of ‘Islamicist.’”
According to Associate Professor of Religion Michael Walsh, continued Markoff, “All of our peer institutions have some tenure-track faculty teaching a course on Islam, but not all of them are specialized Islamicists.” This means that not all of these professors are religion scholars. “Some teach medieval Arab literature and contemporary Arab music, or are a professor of history and teaching Islam,” said Markoff.
At the Council meeting, Farkas offered a similar analysis of the situation. While Vassar was not alone in its lack of a full-time Islamicist, it could offer studies in Islam through other intellectual pursuits, such as history. In this point, the Nov. 22 letter proved the complexity of curricular preferences and pressures. While the authors of the letter see a strict Islamicist as an academic necessity, the ability to study Islam in other venues is acceptable to others.
Languages
According to the Nov. 22 letter, “There is increasing pressure on language departments to provide elementary language courses at the expense of advanced literary and cultural study.”
The VSA-drafted memorandum responded that, “Students at the 100-level deserve and benefit from contact with our tenured scholars, and our tenure-line faculty benefit from regular engagement with the challenges and rewards of teaching at that level. We disagree with the letter’s implication that this trend is negative.” This view echoes Chenette’s personal conviction that students learning at all levels should benefit from the College’s top faculty members.
Chair of the Russian Studies Majors’ Committee Emilia Firtich ’10 called this view “misinformed.” According to her, “If the senior faculty have to take on [100-level courses], they can’t take on more wide-ranging 200 or 300 level courses. Those are the courses that attract students.”
“If we can’t offer those courses,” she postulates, “we have to teach less...[and] become less competitive,” thereby attracting fewer majors. These positions reflect differences in educational philosophies at the College, which have been part of the complex conversations regarding staffing plans that came through the Office of the Dean of the Faculty earlier this semester. The Nov. 22 letter argues one side of this discussion, which does not make it inaccurate. However, the reason behind suggesting that senior language professors teach at introductory levels may stem from more than just financial constraints.
Retirement pressures, perceptions
“It is troubling to us that the current administration seeks to save money…through pressuring faculty toward retirement,” reads the Nov. 22 letter.
This language was found to be particularly problematic by some members of the VSA Council because it implies that the College may be engaged in forcing retirements illegally, a claim that members of the Executive Board refuted outright.
The VSA memorandum responds to the letter, “We take issue with the letter’s baseless accusation that the administration has illegally forced faculty members to retire. While the College’s financial situation has no-doubt resulted in some retirement-age faculty feeling pressure to leave the institution, we have no reason to believe that the administration is the source of that pressure.”
That such pressure exists no one seems to contest. “I do know some faculty feel concerned about their departments...[they] may very well want to retire, but because we’re not going to replace every tenure line they worry about the future of their department should they retire,” says Roellke.
“Faculty feeling pressure to retire is a personal communication from individuals that they ought for the good of the institution to retire,” said President of the Vassar Chapter of the American Association of University Professors and Visiting Associate Professor of English Karen Robertson. She said that she has been hearing this concern from faculty,
“Now that does not mean that they’ve been taken to the chair’s office and bullied, [but] these are people who serve the institution and feel they ought to go for the good of the institution…this is not what individuals at the culmination of their careers, institutional service and scholarship should feel.” Here, the discussion revolved around the difference between a possible perception or feeling among faculty that there has been pressure to retire and the technical actions of the College. Though no one in Council could claim that administrators were engaging in illegal retirement pressures, some argued that the mere perception of retirement pressures and a community that would foster them is significant.
Conclusion
“I don’t think that deception is the purpose of information but the problem is that the administration delivers snapshots of information that describe the curriculum at particular moments, and that information needs to be placed in a larger context,” wrote Robertson in an e-mailed statement.
“For example, while it may be true that only 10 sections have been lost so far (which is reassuring), the English Department dismissals haven’t been decided on and so the fate of the writing program is still up in the air. That would disturb students but it is not mentioned. Just for example. The information seems transparent, but it is not as reassuring as it may seem.”
Roellke observes, “I feel deep in my heart that the College has gone through this in a thoughtful way...we could have done this in a corporate way...[but] we chose to do as much as we could through voluntary attrition. I’m proud of the way the College has gone about this...Other [colleges] did it much more quickly than we did, and the result is that they’re now scrambling about how to get the work done. We’ve been more slow and methodical about it, which is not easy...so I am proud.”
The endorsement of the Nov. 22 letter by the VSA and the following memorandum serve to highlight the complexities of the discussions taking place. While the Nov. 22 letter included inaccuracies, many members of Council felt that the “sentiment” of the letter was worth supporting. Sentiment, however, is more than simply supporting the faculty and a rich curriculum. In discussions about various curriculum changes, this sentiment is defended in different ways by different constituencies. Often the facts used by all voices in a debate are similar, but the conclusions drawn are the result of different values and perspectives.
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