By now it’s no secret that the College has asked all academic departments to consider how they can save money within their program—whether through fewer team-taught courses or more cross listing—the curriculum, like all arenas of the institution, will have to make sacrifices in order to help the College reconfigure budget allocations and nurse losses to the endowment. The College, however, will not be able to mitigate the academic budget with cross listing alone; the unfortunate reality, with which all schools are being faced, is that all faculty contracts will not be able to be renewed for the 2010-11 academic year.
The question on everyone’s mind then is, of course, “who is it going to be?” And, less obviously, “what will be the inevitable curricular repercussions of these cuts? What programs are in jeopardy? Which courses?”
One of the tricky things about decision-making processes like this one is that there is a debate and discussion over how to quantify or definitively determine what makes a faculty member or course valuable. It is thus difficult for students to know how value is measured. What’s more, the levels of bureaucracy involved in faculty and curriculum decisions can seem bewildering, even to the most informed students and staff members.
The upshot of the occasional bureaucratic hurtle is that the decision-making processes of the College are in fact designed to take student voices into account—course enrollment and course evaluation questionnaires (CEQs) are two concrete examples. Thus, as a shrinking curriculum looms, and as students across campus grow concerned about their favorite professors and courses, there has never been a more crucial time to seek out additional venues through which students can constructively voice their opinions.
There are a few methods in particular that The Miscellany News hopes to draw attention: majors committees, department interns, heads of departments and representatives to the Committee on Curricular Policies are invaluable resources that ought not be overlooked. We suggest that students should work through departments since—although the Office of the Dean of Faculty and Studies make final curricular decisions—departments have considerable autonomy as to what courses they provide and, as contract renewals are debated, whom they would prefer to keep.
All interested students should become involved in or communicate with majors committees. Large departments usually have majors committees chaired by a senior in the department and often meetings are open to everyone from that major. These committees report to and work with the chairs of their departments, who then attend weekly faculty meetings.
Some departments or programs—such as Environmental Studies Program or the Media Studies Program—don’t have majors committees because of the size, age or nature of the curricula. In these programs, the department intern often acts as a liaison and works in conjunction with the chair or chairs of the department. In these cases it’s especially important to find out who the interns are and communicate with them as decisions are made about faculty and courses. Contact information for department interns is available on nearly all department websites and in all department offices.
We also hope you’ll find out who your division representative is to the Committee on Curricular Policies—the group in charge of many of the curricular decisions that come before the Deans of Faculty and Studies. There are six students who sit on this committee, one from each of the five major disciplines at Vassar, and VSA Vice President for Academics, Stephanie Damon-Moore ’11—who has shown great effort in the past several weeks to reinvigorate majors committees across the curriculum—also sits on the committee.
The 19 members of The Miscellany News Editorial Board would like to commend students who have made their voices heard in the pages of this publication, who have held demonstrations, who have attended town hall meetings with administrators, and who have spoken out at the open forum hosted by the senior officers of the College on Sept. 30 in Rockefeller Hall.
At this moment, activism of all kinds is important to maintaining the academic values of the College. In addition, we hope to remind students of the importance of working within the structures already in place to communicate and work in collaboration with administrators and decision-makers on this campus. Voices of respect and thoughtfulness are always heard louder than those that are filled with hate—and using these institutional resources will be a further guarantee that your opinions will be considered.
Ultimately, all can agree that it’s more important than ever that students continue to speak out about what matters to us. As the College will be announcing and continuing to make major changes to the curriculum in the coming weeks, The Miscellany News urges students to seek out their representatives now, and to speak through them as loudly possible to help maintain the curriculum for which we all came to Vassar.
—The staff editorial reflects the opinion of at least two-thirds of the 19-member Editorial Board.
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