Friday, December 14, 2007--Time for a Break

Friday Notes will take a break for the next few weeks and will resume with the Spring 2008 semester. Happy New Year!

Friday, December 7, 2007--Finals and Works in Progress

As we get ready for the last push of final exams and grading, I’ve enjoyed the swirl of activities that mark the end of the semester: the music concerts, the dance recitals, the Learning Community presentations. Those that I’ve been able to attend have been wonderful testimony to our students’ abilities and to the growth and change that are accomplished in their work with you over a single semester. These culminating events continue into next week, and I encourage people to support them. I’m especially pleased to see the remarkable number of musical events: we are just beginning to grow a Music Program at Stonehill, and already we are seeing the results of that undertaking.

I was thinking about the whole idea of “finals”—about how part of the pleasure of academic life involves regular opportunities for endings and for beginnings. In fact, that may be the key to the passion for life-long learning that generally characterizes faculty: we can close chapter after chapter, but we always re-open the book.

Sometimes it’s the book of ourselves that we re-open—after all, life-long learning can also be about self-knowledge. Lately, that’s been the case for me.

Recently, I asked our wonderful archivist, Nicole Tourangeau, if she could dig up a talk I gave in 1993. The occasion was the sesquicentennial of Holy Cross Education in the United States, and Fr. James Lackenmier—then the President of our sister school King’s College—gave a formal address at Stonehill. Richard Capobianco (Philosophy) and I were the faculty respondents, and we were both relatively junior faculty members at that time!

Amazingly, Nicole found my remarks—composed, I am certain, in Wordstar 3.3 and printed on a daisy-wheel printer! But while the typeface shouted that fifteen years had passed, the themes of my talk whispered that we have not made enough progress on some of the topics that remain pertinent today. I was saddened to bear some responsibility for an under-realized goal that was a central focus of my 1993 talk: diversity.

That particular speech responded to Fr. Lackenmier’s observation that while other religious congregations found their “charism” in the texts of a saint or in other central founding documents, the Congregation of Holy Cross—in spite of having the writings of its founder, Fr. Basil Moreau—was less rooted in foundational texts and enjoyed more of a tradition of “adaptability” in each of the environments where it flourished. And way back then, I suggested that some challenges we were facing at Stonehill would “require the strength of adaptability.”

I talked about the need for diversity at Stonehill, both among persons and in the curriculum. And I pointed out that it was hard to accomplish that diversity if we were always already looking at ourselves as alike. I used my own ethnic heritage as an example to suggest that someone seen as an “Irish Catholic” can come from more than one place: “My own parents . . . in their well-intentioned desire to give me a coherent cultural identity, celebrated my father’s Irish-American Catholic background, never really giving me access to the traditions embodied in my maternal grandfather—a Jewish emigrant from Russia.” Indeed, I didn’t need to look far to propose that diversity is a condition of (not a threat to) knowing who we are and where we come from.

So why did I go hunting in the archives for this speech? Well, that’s where we get back to life-long learning. This semester, pushing myself to learn more about my family, I’ve been able to connect with relatives I didn’t even know existed. I’ve had lunch with a cousin in New York who connected me with a missing branch of the family. I’ve shared a Shabbat meal with distant cousins in Chestnut Hill and a Chanukah candle-lighting and dinner with near cousins in Washington D.C. I’m in possession of the family histories of the Vendrovsky family (my great-grandmother’s line) back to the 1730s and of the Rems family (my great-grandfather’s line) back to the 1760s—complete with photographs of the many rabbis and others from whom I am descended. I have photographs of the gravestones of two great-great grandparents and three great-grandparents in Queens, and I will visit them on my next trip in that direction. I’m embracing everything I’ve learned, and I’m also understanding more about my grandfather’s choices, my parents’ choices, and myself than I could have understood fifteen years ago. And fifteen years ago, the people I have discovered would have remained hidden—with no accessible email or world-wide web to reveal them.

I’m understanding more about Stonehill, too—what makes it work as a community and where we still fall short; which problems inhere in its structures and which in the uses people make of its structures; where the curriculum can grow and where we have limitations. In 1993, I argued vigorously for diversifying the curriculum, suggesting that an emphasis on canonical materials in any discipline implicitly told students “not only who and what is important, but, by exclusion, who and what is not important.” And while I’d still argue for even further diversifying, I would also have more concern today that students learn fully the histories of the disciplines that they interrogate.

So, in this time of finals, I invite all of you to celebrate some of the things that are always still works in progress: our students, the college we participate in shaping, and—most of all—ourselves.

Best regards,
Katie

Friday, November 30, 2007--"Coffee's On"

Each Friday this semester, like clockwork, Wendy Hanawalt has sent out an email to Duffy faculty members. The subject line is simply: “Coffee’s on!” With Wendy organizing, faculty members sign up each week to bring in goodies, and the convivial conversation flows as generously as the coffee—before the earliest class and intermittently between morning classes. Everyone who knows Wendy knows that she’s had many great ideas on topics more important than coffee! But that idea for Friday morning coffee has shown all of us one of the extra perks (so to speak) of having such smart and committed staff to work with!

And coffee’s not the only thing that’s been percolating on the Stonehill campus this week. After two years of planning for the Martin Institute’s mission, philosophy, leadership, and programming, a celebratory event on Wednesday evening heralded the launch of interdisciplinary concentrations.

Let me jolt your memories. When the Martin Institute Philosophy was written two years ago, it anticipated a robust commitment to interdisciplinary work—particularly when that work connects to the Institute’s primary areas of focus--public policy and social justice:

Consistent with the College's mission to cultivate leadership, responsible citizenship, and a commitment to social justice, the activities of the Institute center on increasing student awareness of and interest in the public policy/social justice theme for the year. To this end, a close connection exists between the Institute and the curriculum. This linkage is forged through a variety of interdisciplinary teaching and learning opportunities and through pedagogies that connect theory and praxis. A variety of interdisciplinary academic experiences are offered through the Martin Institute, including elective minor concentrations in public policy and social justice that attract students from a range of disciplines; Learning Communities and stand-alone courses addressing public policy and social justice issues related to the annual theme; lectures and debates; Martin Institute fellowships; off-campus student service, internships, and research projects under the auspices of the Institute; and a Martin Institute newsletter or academic journal.

And the kickoff event for these interdisciplinary efforts could not have involved a better speaker than David Kirp. His latest book, The Sandbox Investment, is a model of interdisciplinary inquiry, and even the format for the event—a discussion led by Martin Institute Director Peter Ubertaccio—suggested that inquiry itself was a pervasive theme.

Kirp—who has also written on the marketing of Higher Education (Shakespeare, Einstein and the Bottom Line), on cities and suburbia (Our Town: Race, Housing, and the Soul of Suburbia) and on the appealing concept of community as it is confronted by the decision-making of everyday people (Almost Home: America’s Love-Hate Relationship with Community)—discussed his new book in detail and answered a number of questions from the audience.

The audience was, in fact, rather small. Sure, this is a busy time of the semester. But it was a bit disappointing to have so few people in attendance for a celebration of a curricular innovation that enjoys such widespread support. I urge the faculty to review the brochure Peter has developed about Interdisciplinary Concentrations and to encourage students to pursue such a concentration if their interests and passions are not met by the standard curriculum in a department or if a concentration will broaden their exposure to different ways of seeing a problem, idea, culture, history, concept, or discipline.

Indeed, the most exciting aspect of these concentrations is that they invite students to plug in and to percolate their own ideas—to predict that there are campus resources that will help them to gain multiple perspectives on their fields of interest.

So, when students come looking for something that’s not in the catalog, let’s be sure to give them a consistent message: “Coffee’s On!” We can trust that—with faculty guidance and mentoring—they will be ready to brew their own new interdisciplinary blends from the grounds of the disciplines to which we are all connected.

Best regards,
Katie

Friday, November 23, 2007--Taking Care of Business

Perhaps you thought I took a week off from “Friday Notes” because of Thanksgiving. But while I did certainly enjoy the turkey—and the family and other company that this favorite-of-all-holidays brings—I did not forget that the whole point of “Friday Notes” is pretty much a big “thanks-giving.” So I’m posting late, but on an important topic that I’ve been thinking about quite a lot lately: our Business Administration program and its future.

Indeed, over the last several weeks, I have interviewed many finalists for the five positions the Stonehill Business Department is currently searching to fill. It’s always exciting to interview prospective faculty members, and in this case, there’s quite a lot to be excited about. The Department is seeking AACSB accreditation, and as it moves toward this important milestone, it has used the standards developed by the accrediting organization to rethink its curriculum, to focus the research of faculty already in the department, and to craft the new areas of expertise the department needs. All these efforts express Stonehill’s eagerness to offer a progressive program that both prepares graduates to enter business fields in the rapidly changing global economy and honors Stonehill’s longstanding commitment to integrating liberal and pre-professional education.

I think it’s critical for all Stonehill faculty to know the history of this commitment and to understand why it is important to Stonehill’s future that we spend time, energy, and financial resources to “take care of Business.”

First, we probably need to agree that it’s hard to say in any “purist” way what “kind” of college Stonehill is. Labels like “liberal arts” and “comprehensive” are only useful in certain contexts. We can celebrate that we are a “liberal arts college” while simultaneously recognizing that we include among our top competitors many types of schools: comprehensive colleges, “Master’s Universities,” and other liberal arts colleges.

Since 1949—the second year of Stonehill’s history—we have offered curriculum in one or more Business fields. Like any areas of study, we have seen student interest levels vary over the years; in the 1980s, student interest in Business was so high that the College actually had to put a cap on the number of spaces in the program. Over the last 15 years, we have consistently graduated about 25% of the class each year in Business Administration. And the most recent information (2004-05) from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) indicates that 21.6% of all baccalaureate degrees in the U.S. were granted in Business. Given the public understanding of Stonehill’s identity, this should give pause to anyone who assumes that we could make our class each year without a strong Business program.

We have also seen a significant number of students—including humanities, fine arts, science, and social science majors—choosing to minor or double-major in Business fields. And the department does a great job with these students. Indeed, even with their majors, they are the first to celebrate that Stonehill produces a different kind of accountant or marketer or manager—because the faculty truly wants students to have a broad education in the liberal arts as well as a deep knowledge of their major field.

Stonehill has historically offered a unique combination of disciplines for a small college and has—in an unforeseen way—actually anticipated the needs and interests of this generation of students. Currently, there is a high level of interest in practical areas of study, and demographics suggest that this trend will continue and increase in the coming years. First-generation and minority college students, who will grow as a percentage of college–age students over the next decade, report greater-than-average interest in business and other pre-professional fields, and even the most “pure” liberal arts colleges are already finding ways to accommodate these interests. They are adding accounting and finance to their Economics Departments; or they are calling Business by its more old-fashioned title of “Commerce”; or they are linking business study to programs exploring globalization; or they are adding a fifth-year MBA program designed for liberal arts graduates. But they are clearly trying to figure out how they will prepare for what Stonehill has already been doing: integrating business-oriented professional preparation with a solid liberal arts foundation.

Lately, we’ve been using the phrase “liberal arts plus” to acknowledge the creative integration of liberal and professional studies at the College. In recent years, more and more Stonehill departments have sought to promote the relevance of their disciplines in new ways—sometimes by “putting knowledge to work” through practical applications. And studies like the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) show that applied learning really makes a difference. For example, NSSE reports that an internship or field placement is the most powerful form of a culminating senior experience in terms of greater self-reported gains in thinking critically, solving real-world problems and working effectively with others.

So all these interviews with Business candidates (which the department has done an outstanding job to bring about) have allowed me to take the temperature of our program and to imagine its future directions. It will take significant resources to build the program that the faculty are committed to—and whereas the sciences needed facilities to take the next step, Business, at least initially, needs more personnel. I hope that as we complete this hiring, add international emphasis to all the concentrations, and strengthen several features of the Business program, other College departments will see that taking care of Business pays tribute to a historical program at the College and offers a proactive salute to Stonehill's future health.

Best regards,
Katie

Friday, November 16, 2007--Virtuoso Performances

I’m just in the door from the Stonehill Theatre Company Production of Frankenstein Virtuoso. Virtuoso indeed! As always, Patricia Sankus and her team put together a show that transformed the Hemingway Theater, amplified the talents of the student performers, and challenged the audience with a comedy in which the humor actually honored intelligence.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I never attend the STC productions without having thoughts that lean in two directions.

First, I wonder if I might have gotten more out of students in my own teaching. The student performers are nothing short of extraordinary: they rise to whatever material is put before them—and, in doing so, they raise the material to new levels. But students don’t do this without mentoring of an exceptional type. Indeed, I’m sure we all remember the words of one student who nominated Pat Sankus for the Teaching Award a few years ago: “I’ve been pushed, challenged and criticized and I’ve had to stay in the Hemingway Theatre until three in the morning. And I’ve loved every minute of it.” Proof positive that students want to be challenged.

Second, I think about some students I had over the years who might not have been performing well in my classes, but whose talent lit up the stage in the Hemingway Theatre. Attending the student plays is a great reminder about our students’ many dimensions. Student athletes, student artists, student musicians, student actors—they all show us that a great college experience involves developing talents and skills both inside and outside of the classroom.

In the case of theatre, the work of producers, directors, costume designers, set builders, and makeup artists all provide fertile ground for learning: indeed, Pat Sankus, Douglas Coler, Joan Halpert, Kevin Brown, and Joe Rossi are not only preparing actors for plays, they are also teaching all the various “arts” of the theatre. The awards our students win in all areas of design and acting—and the work they go on to do—is testimony to all these teachers.

After the play, I spoke with an alumna, Tina Cersosimo ’05, who sat in the in the row in front of me. I knew Tina as an excellent student, and I enjoyed her STC performances in each of her four years at the College. She is now a teacher on the north shore, and she loves her work. But she and a number of her classmates actually run a small theatre company that performs in the South End: F.U.D.G.E. Theatre Company (“Friends United Developing Genuine Entertainment”).

I visited the company website and was delighted to read their mission: “to provide quality, affordable theatre productions to the people in the greater Boston area, cultivate an appreciation for and understanding of the arts, and provide a learning opportunity for those interested in a genuine theatre experience.” I was also impressed with the overwhelming number of the executive board who graduated from Stonehill College: from President Joe Demita to Kerri Judge, Emily Hayden, Shannon Rosa, Kacee Staiti, James Petty, and Cersosimo herself. They didn’t all graduate with degrees in theatre arts (Psychology, English, and History were also in the mix), but they obviously cultivated a love for the theatre that has not ended with their college experience. Whatever their professional “vocations” they continue to be called to work in the theatre, even when that means long hours beyond their ordinary work days.

It just happened that today also involved the opening of a student-curated exhibit “The Immigrant Experience.” I couldn’t make it to the official opening event, but I walked through the exhibit in the late afternoon and saw the preparations starting for the Artist Panel and the festive reception.

Here is another example of great faculty mentoring that builds student experience in formative ways. Through Professor Carole Calo's “Exhibitions and Collections” course, students have the opportunity to plan and execute an entire exhibit—from choosing the theme and the artists to writing the catalog, preparing the marketing materials, installing the collection, planning the artists’ opening, and hosting the reception. This year’s exhibit taps into an important national conversation about immigration and invites the entire Stonehill community to reflect on their own families and their own immigrant experiences. Congratulations to the students and faculty who created this exhibit!

These events are more than just skillful performances. And they are more than “practice” exercises for the future. They are also examples of the kind of virtuosity we should all encourage in students: a genius for living passionate and full lives that keep multiple talents and enthusiasms alive and well.

Best regards,
Katie

Friday November 9, 2007--The Other Outcomes

For the last few years, we’ve had a great deal of conversation about “outcomes,” particularly focusing on the learning outcomes of our curriculum (the knowledge and skills our students should develop in their four years with us) and on graduate outcomes—the kinds of jobs, graduate schools, and post-graduate service we help students to enter.

Even as we continue our discussions about academic challenge and about Stonehill's course and credit model, I think we’ve made a good first effort of reviewing each academic program and articulating the goals of the curriculum. At the end of this academic year, we will have completed a full cycle of the new academic program reviews. I know we still have work ahead to better capture the graduate outcomes of our students, and this task will require a great deal of collaborative work among the faculty, career services, and alumni affairs—first to articulate what graduate outcomes we want for students, then to refine the systems to assist students in their efforts, and finally to capture and record information about what they actually go on to do.

There is, however, another set of outcomes that I hope we never lose sight of, and these outcomes are related not to what our students become, but to who they become. I know that faculty members and many others on campus work toward educating “the whole person so that each Stonehill graduate thinks, acts, and leads with courage toward the creation of a more just and compassionate world.” This noble statement from our mission should always remain a central part of our focus.

Over the last week or so, a number of campus events and activities have promoted these “other outcomes.” The Department of Sociology and Criminology, for example, hosted the 2007 meeting of the New England Sociological Association. The conference topic, “Civic Engagement: Linking Campus and Community,” seemed made for our campus, where community-based learning has become a feature of many courses and Learning Communities. And the conference did much more than bring major speakers and other academics to campus; it also provided opportunities for our faculty and students to contribute in meaningful ways—moderating panels, presenting papers, and participating in poster sessions. Six Stonehill students presented their original research, one alumna currently in the Ph.D. program at UConn presented a co-authored paper, five Stonehill faculty members attended (three of them moderated panels), and at least eight additional Stonehill students attended the sessions.

For students who intend to earn an advanced degree, inclusion in this kind of professional activity provides a preview of the professional world they seek to enter. It also reminds them that professors have responsibilities beyond those they see in the classroom—responsibilities to their scholarly disciplines and to far-flung collegial networks. And for those who intend to enter the job market, the skills they gain in effective communication and public presentation and are invaluable. The students all remarked on how important it was to have this opportunity.

In the case of this particular conference, the topic also lent itself to considering post-graduate service. The keynote speaker, Dr. Jonathan White of Bridgewater State College, specializes in the critical examination of inequality, poverty, globalization, human rights, and public sociology—all topics of compelling interest for students interested in sociology and criminology and all topics that engage students to get outside their limited experiences and make a difference in the world. Congratulations to the department for bringing this event to Stonehill and for so meaningfully involving your students and alumni!

Two other events highlighted the responsibilities we invite students to accept as members of our community and, when they leave us, as members of the the communities they create and sustain. Dr. Celeste Lay, Assistant Professor of Political Science, spoke in the Martin Institute’s Public Policy and Social Justice Series. Focusing on the re-election of C. Ray Nagin after Hurricane Katrina, Lay explored how voting behavior is influenced by natural disaster. While the specific subject of her research matters to all of us, her presentation also reminded students—in a more general way—that voter behavior matters, and that they should take seriously their responsibility to participate in the political process.

Last week’s Common Sense Lecture—sponsored by the Office of Student Activities—featured Assistant Professor of Mathematics Eugene Quinn on the topic of "Living Green." Gene spoke about the kinds of choices his family has made to become more “green” and about the quantifiable results of their practices. He also challenged students to develop habits that reduce the use of non-renewable resources, to re-use materials that can be reused, and to recycle whatever materials that they can. Again, this event featured an adult mentor who showed—by example—how a single individual can make choices that actually make a difference. This week Prof. Cheryl Schnitzer of the Chemistry Department will reinforce what Gene spoke about last week when she discusses global warming in the Common Sense Lecture Series.

Of course, our curriculum goes a long way in promoting the connection between knowledge and practice, and many faculty members have sought ways to encourage civic engagement within the curriculum. But these co-curricular events (and others like them) also send messages to students about what our community values and about why they should work—with us—to preserve the values we share. When they do, the “other outcomes” of social responsibility that we’ve promoted become part of the fabric of their lives—and these are outcomes worth celebrating.

Best regards,
Katie

Friday, November 2, 2007--"Getting Dirty"

Last Tuesday morning, I headed down to the University Club at Brown University, where Stonehill was hosting a breakfast for Rhode Island high school guidance counselors. Maybe it was the mystique of the University Club or maybe it was that “something” about Stonehill I wrote about last week, or maybe it was the great relationships that Sam Smith. Associate Dean of Admissions, and others on our Admissions team have built in Rhode Island, but we had a wonderful turnout for the event.

I spoke briefly about Stonehill’s academic program and some of our current initiatives, and Maryjean Viano Crowe, Chair of the Fine Arts Department, made a superb presentation about one of the Learning Communities she has taught in, about her short-term courses in Paris, and about taking seven students last year to a conference on “Defining Culture Through Dress” at Hofstra University where their work was widely acclaimed. The counselors commented afterwards that it was “refreshing” to have a faculty member speak at such an event—that they got a different kind of “inside” view from Maryjean that extended the vision they can get from our colleagues in admissions. Together, these views gave them a far more complete picture of a college that they might want to recommend to students. And it’s hard to overestimate the influence of guidance counselors on prospective students.

Events like that remind me of how hard it is to keep an eye on the big picture of even one’s own college. Sam, Maryjean, and I each touched on many of the important qualities of the experience students have when they choose us: a challenging and diverse curriculum, a creative faculty who are willing to take chances and who are nimble in responding to opportunities that enrich both student experience and their own professional growth, and a focus on successful learning outcomes and post-graduate planning.

Maryjean spoke about how she had taken students to Paris before, but how she hadn’t imagined that she would ever partner with Biology professors and take students camping in a west Texas desert habitat to produce art that engaged with the environment. She exuded enthusiasm for the remarkable results of that trip, but she also recalled that her tent blew down in a windstorm and that the faculty had to set a good example about conservation of water and thus went days without showers; indeed, she said, “I have never been so dirty.”

We’re all finding out how much “getting dirty”—figuratively, least—is required when we try new ways of doing things. And we’re doing new things with students in every stage of their academic lives.

This past week, advisors met with their first-year students, and from the reports I’ve heard, most students are making a great transition to college and giving high marks to the advising they’ve received. A few faculty members who had told me that they had students who struggled with the adjustment at the start of the year were thrilled to connect with the students and to hear that they have integrated themselves and found ways to become involved. Their peer mentors have been instrumental, often connecting one-on-one with a student if the faculty advisor felt that peer support was most needed. Such advising takes time and can pull faculty away from advising in the major, but most people I’ve spoken with feel that we are moving in the right direction by focusing new energy on first-year students.

Our sophomores participated in course selection for Learning Communities in advance of the general course selection process, and I want to commend Registrar John Pestana, John’s staff, and Dean Joe Favazza for making that messy process as clean as anyone could dream. At the end of the LC registration, 86% of students received their fist choice LC, 12% received their second choice, and 2% received their third choice. This is a great success! Still, one challenge in this area involves the funding necessary to help needy students to participate in the travel learning communities. Although we have $40,000 in the budget this year to offset this need, the programs costs are rising rapidly, participation is increasing with new travel LCs emerging each year, and the budgeted amount is not enough to help students as significantly as we would like.

As you know, juniors are electing to go abroad or to take part in one of our full-time domestic “away” experiences in high numbers, and this past week, Erika Schluntz and Alice Cronin hosted the director of the Granada program on campus for a lively lunch with about 20 students who had either been to Granada or who plan to attend in the future. And while this is just one of many available programs, the students are articulate in saying just how transformative such experiences are. Our challenges ahead include the weak dollar, which has made many of our traditional programs in Europe hit unacceptable price points for students and families. Indeed, the International Programs office now spends considerable time looking for more affordable programs to augment our strong list of historical relationships.

And of course the Senior Transitions project is placing new emphasis on how students make post-graduate plans and how the entire college can collaborate for their success. I look forward to conversations with the faculty and with Career Services to share what the senior administration learned through this effort and to look for feedback that will influence future plans in this area.

All these efforts can get messy: they may involve differences of opinion about the processes and even about the goals we have set. As we continue find new ways of improving that “big picture” of Stonehill College—and communicating it to prospective students—I appreciate your willingness to roll up your sleeves in a productive way and even to get a bit dirty in order to make fresh starts on important college priorities.

Best regards,
Katie

Friday, October 26, 2007--Something about Stonehill

As some of you know, I’ve been away from Stonehill for about 10 days—on three different work-related projects. On Thursday and Friday of last week, I attended a meeting sponsored by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC), the accrediting body that reviews Stonehill and other New England schools and colleges every ten years. This workshop was intended to prepare colleges coming up for review in 2009 for the self-study and campus visit that are important elements of the accreditation process.

On Sunday I joined four academics from other institutions (three faculty members and a librarian) as part of a team named by the Massachusetts Board of Higher Education to undertake an intensive review of a college seeking to add new programs that would change the nature of its charter. It was an exhausting four days of working late into the night—indeed into the early morning!—to understand that college’s unique culture and to evaluate the quality of the programs they were proposing.

Both the NEASC workshop and the off-site curriculum review reminded me that our profession depends in so many ways on peer review. We think about it most with our scholarship, but in fact, all kinds of institutional accreditations and program approvals rely on peer evaluation to hold colleges to the professional standards we have agreed on as institutions of higher learning. We may sometimes take this for granted, but among the interesting things about being at a young college is that we actually have colleagues among us who remember when the College was first accredited! And it was an enormous accomplishment.

After finishing up the review on Wednesday, I flew to Washington D.C. on Thursday to join a Stonehill team that included Louis Liotta, Sue Mooney, and Karen Talentino for a conference called “Promoting the Liberal Sciences: Science as Liberal Education,” sponsored by the Phi Beta Kappa Society and the American Conference of Academic Deans. We made a 90-minute presentation on two curricular developments at Stonehill that we argued promote the sciences as liberated from narrow specialization and liberating in developing the broad and deep scientific literacy required for engaged citizenship.

As all of you know, there’s nothing like getting away to make one feel that there’s something about Stonehill. Something good. Something to appreciate.

In fact, the most powerful aspect of all three of my own experiences over the last ten days was an informal kind of "peer review"--hearing about Stonehill’s reputation and profile among the other academics I met. I found people who knew and admired a faculty member or knew and respected a faculty member’s work. Or they had been on our campus and were stunned by the physical beauty of the place. Or they identified Stonehill as being a “hot” school that was doing innovative things.

As the other Stonehill folks at the PBK/ACAD meeting can attest, many people we met who did not know of Stonehill before today were impressed with our spirit of engagement and with the curricular efforts we described. In fact, one conference speaker began his own presentation by commenting on the “inspirational” Stonehill session he had just attended!

We met junior faculty members from colleges with far more resources than Stonehill who said that they could not ever team-teach at their own institutions, so the idea of Learning Communities with a third course that counts fully in each faculty member’s course load was mind-boggling to them. Between sessions, one such junior faculty member confided wistfully that he’d like to be “one of us.”

Sometimes, when we get bogged down with our campus responsibilities and the day-to-day minutiae of our jobs, we lose sight of the great community we really are—a community where I know there’s a good deal of faculty collegiality and where I think there’s relatively little tension between faculty and administration. Getting away can offer some perspective about what really matters, and this week it offered me insights into just how much we have to celebrate.

Best regards,
Katie

Friday, October 19, 2007--Back to the Future

On Wednesday night, I attended the James J. Kenneally lecture, an annual event at the Martin Institute. Jim Kenneally was—indeed still is, even in retirement!—faculty member and colleague extraordinaire, beloved teacher and author and editor of books on American Catholicism, women’s suffrage, and House Speaker Joseph Martin. His significant scholarly and teaching contributions now span almost a half-century.

Any event that honors Jim and Louise Kenneally’s contributions to Stonehill is, in my mind, a no-miss occasion—I think of it as “back to the future.” Jim already looked like the future of Stonehill when he arrived in 1958, and reflections on his career offer us previews of the future we now inhabit—a college that invites faculty members committed to teaching simultaneously to pursue their research passions. Today Stonehill supports faculty members quite vigorously to help them reach their scholarly goals; Jim managed to publish articles and books under very different conditions. The lecture bearing his name is a major event in the Catholic-Jewish Dialogue—a dialogue that Jim founded and that he and and Louise have ardently supported.

This year’s lecture featured Prof. Susannah Heschel, the Eli Black Chair in Jewish Stuudies at Dartmouth College, who spoke eloquently about her current research on a Protestant Christian group whose project was to “de-Judaize” Christianity in 20th-century Germany —to remove references to Jesus being a Jew, to move his ancestry north to Galilee and thereby to make him seem more Assyrian, and to strip any references to the Hebrew Bible in Christian worship.

I was struck not only by the brilliance of Prof. Heschel’s arguments and by her ability to answer every kind of question about her research but also by her generosity of spirit. In some informal words spoken at the dinner which preceded the event, she spoke of the deep sense of welcome she felt at Stonehill. She honored Jim Kenneally and his work, and then also honored the memory of her father, Abraham Joshua Heschel, a major scholar and Jewish thinker who also promoted civil rights and interfaith dialogue and instilled a passion for such issues in his daughter.

It was our privilege to host this eminent scholar, and I’m proud that Stonehill works in so many ways to promote understanding of world religions and to encourage the critical and historical study of religion. Some of that work—such as the Catholic-Jewish Dialogue, other campus lectures, the film series on Religion and Film begun last year by the Religious Studies Department, and a significant number of courses in our curriculum—are substantive engagements with the study of religion. Others, such as the Buddhist Retreat that takes place on campus every second summer, are symbolic events that demonstrate Stonehill’s openness to and respect for all religious beliefs, practices, and cultures.

As I looked around the room at the Kenneally lecture, I noted the number of faculty members present there who encourage our students–and each other—toward such encounters. Kevin Spicer C.S.C. of the History Department came back from his year at Notre Dame to host the event. But Kevin is also the co-creator, with Shari Lowin of the Religious Studies Department (who was also present), of a Learning Community that pairs a History course on Nazi Germany with a Religious Studies course on Jewish Religion and Culture—and it culminates with a travel course to Poland, the Czech Republic, and Berlin. Sitting with Shari was Prof. Erica Tucker (Sociology), who agreed to help keep that enormously popular LC going this year in Kevin’s absence by pairing “Anthropology of the Holocaust” with Shari’s Religion course and team-teaching the travel course with Shari.

I saw Pete Beisheim (Religious Studies) and thought about how his Learning Community with Jose Luis Martinez (Foreign Languages) challenges students to look at the contemporary Catholic Church in Latin American and involves a Spring Break trip to Peru that partners with the HOPE trips sponsored by the Mission Division. Mary Joan Leith (Religious Studies) was also there, and her Learning Community with Allyson Sheckler (Fine Arts), "Pagans and Christians, Roots of Christian Worship" uses the study of religion and art to help students understand the world of early Christianity, and takes the students to Paestum, Pompeii, and Rome as part of that engagement.

Other faculty members attended the lecture too, like Daniel Itzkovitz (English), whose scholarship focuses on Jewish identity in American culture. I single out these faculty members only to suggest that—while Jim Kenneally probably couldn’t have imagined that the small, 10-year old College he joined in 1958 would someday be in a position to support educational endeavors such as our Learning Communities or to support such a breadth of scholarly effort—his work, and the work of others in his generation, built our foundations. For that, and for the creativity so evident in the faculty’s ongoing work, I am grateful.

Best regards,

Katie

Friday, October 12, 2007—Endurance

When about 115 members of the Stonehill faculty met on Tuesday to spend the morning discussing how to support a culture of academic integrity, then ate lunch together and spent the afternoon reviewing the work of a faculty committee on course and credit models, I found myself thinking: “How have we created this faculty culture of self-evaluation, dialogue, and trust?”

I remembered a day back in early 2001 when Registrar Linda Sullivan, hard at work on the 2001-02 academic calendar, asked if I would like to use an "extra" Monday in the calendar for any kind of academic purpose. Out of that conversation Academic Development Day was born—a day now set aside each semester for faculty conversation about topics related to teaching and learning. This semester’s meeting was our thirteenth, and the record attendance, the spirited discussion, and the obvious good will in Alumni Hall made me certain that thirteen is a lucky number.

Back on our first Academic Development Day, Prof. Sue Mooney, who had just become our inaugural Dean of General Education, offered reflections on what was needed to move our Gen Ed agenda forward. Fifty-five current full-time faculty members and a significant number of academic administrators have been hired since that time, so let me take a moment to anchor you in 2001—and to remind those who were here for the discussion that day about the theme Sue chose.

Sue spoke of seeing a new film about Ernest Shackleton’s 1914 Antarctic expedition involving 28 men, 69 dogs, two pigs and one cat on a ship that would endure nine months trapped in the frozen seas before being crushed by shifting ice. You know the ending was happy—for the human travelers at least—but Sue focused on how the adventure on the ship called “Endurance” might offer lessons to the Stonehill faculty.

My favorite of her observations: “The men on the Endurance were an unlikely crew, a mix of professional, educated men and uneducated seamen. Men from the aristocracy and men from the slums. A moody artist, a fractious carpenter, a ground-breaking photographer, a nerdy scientist, a captain enamored of the ship and rather indifferent to the crew, even a young stowaway. Somehow, this group of very different men became a true community, trusting one another and cooperating under the most challenging of circumstances.”

She didn’t imply that we were quite such a motley crew, but she did suggest that we would need to work harder at working together to achieve our goals—that we must reach out “to colleagues all across this campus, beyond the smaller communities we form so naturally with those in our discipline or allied disciplines. . . . [T]he only way for us to achieve our goals, in general education and in other issues of concern to the faculty here at Stonehill, is to become a trusting, caring community.”

I believe that’s the community that was in place in 2001—and the community that showed up on Tuesday (with many new members aboard) for Academic Development Day #13. Led and inspired by Dr. Donald McCabe, Professor of Management and Global Business, Rutgers University and Founding President of the Center for Academic Integrity, our morning conversations pushed us all to think about the ways we can build and sustain a culture that encourages student responsibility, that responds to academic dishonesty consistently when it occurs, and that uses (and shares) campus resources, such as the new Center for Teaching and Learning, to bring faculty members together around clarifying expectations for student work and continually developing creative and fair forms of learning assessment.

I’d like to thank the Honor Code Task Force, led by Dr. Marylou Jackson, for all the substantive research and work that brought us to this point. Members include: Roger Denome (Biology), Beth Devonshire (Director of Community Standards), Pauline Dobrowski (Associate VP for Student Affairs), Joe Favazza (Dean of General Education and Interdisciplinary Studies), Denise Gannon (Campus Minister), Kathleen Joint (Associate Director of Academic Services), and George Piggford, C.S.C. (English).

The afternoon discussions about proposals to move to a graduation requirement based on credits rather than courses also brought out great collegial discussion among faculty members and academic administrators. Many thanks to the course and credit committee, which completed its own feat of endurance over Summer 2007 to bring us this proposal: Karen Anderson (Education), Scott Cohen (English), Roger Denome (Biology), Joe Favazza (Dean of General Education), Glen Ilacqua (Business Administration), Daniel Itzkovitz, (English), John Pestana (Registrar), Allyson Sheckler (Fine Arts), and Karen Talentino (Dean of Faculty).

We won’t always come to complete agreement on the significant matters that Academic Development Day invites us to confront. But I think we’ve come a long way together. We continue to build a faculty ethos of respect, curiosity, responsibility, inquiry, affirmation—and even endurance—that must surely rub off on our students as they rig out their own vessels and explore their own uncharted waters.

Best regards,
Katie

Friday, October 5: The Academic Enterprise

Last week, a new Trustee—who happens to have worked at Stonehill in an earlier decade—made an interesting comment after he spent two days on campus reconnecting with faculty members he had known and meeting many new faculty members.

He said, “I always knew that Stonehill faculty members were passionate about their courses and generous in their interactions with students, but I am struck by something different on this visit: a commitment to the larger academic enterprise.”

Now I’m not sure that the Trustee and I would define “the academic enterprise” identically, but I am very sure that he was onto something. Stonehill faculty members do show a remarkable commitment to the broad academic enterprise, and they do so through their courses, their advising, their attendance at Academic Development Day and other opportunities to discuss our common work—as well as through programming that augments the curriculum and faculty-led events that promote collegial conversation about scholarly work.













What’s my evidence that the academic enterprise is alive and well? Well, one major event of the past week offers a good example. Now in its seventh year, the Chet Raymo Literary Series honors our well-loved physicist and creative writer emeritus with a literary event in his name. This year’s guest, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks, inspired Monday’s audience with a presentation that was part reading, part personal journey, and part writerly advice. It was also pure enjoyment!

We have several such “signature” events on campus each year, but I am most impressed with the level of ingenuity shown by the faculty in weaving these events into the fabric of their courses or into the enrichment of their students. For example, the English Department undertook a number of initiatives to prepare students to get the most out of this event--from teaching specific individual plays by Parks to teaching selections from Parks’s current project, 365 Days, 365 Plays to working with the English Society to create campus interest in the event. The Honors Program also challenged students to read Parks’s work and to attend the event, and theatre students were likewise urged to attend.

In a stroke of creativity, photography professor Maryjean Viano Crowe invited students to do photographic interpretations of one of Parks’s short plays from the 365 project. These assignments were due on Monday, and after her reading (and about 90 minutes of book signing), Suzan-Lori Parks walked into Cushing-Martin Hall and generously gave time to those photography students as they reviewed the task and explained their individual “translations” of her words into visual medium. This and so many other imaginative projects invented by faculty members--and even the presence of so many faculty members at the Raymo event--are surely signs of a very healthy commitment to “the academic enterprise.”

Obviously, the Raymo event brings an important outside speaker to campus each year, but this year I am also pleased to see such a robust number of events on the calendar that feature Stonehill faculty members speaking on their areas of expertise. The Social Justice and Public Policy Research Series, for example, kicked off on September 21st, with Prof. Rick Gribble, C.S.C. (Religious Studies) speaking about his most recent book on the life of Archbishop Edward Hanna.

The Common Sense Lecture Series--a collaboration of Student Affairs and Academic Affairs--featured Prof. Celeste Lay (Political Science) in the opening lecture on the presidential primaries: how they work and why they are important. These are moments for faculty to share expertise with students--but also for faculty to join each other n collegial conversation about topics that matter to faculty work and to the intellectual life of our campus. Another such important moment will be our discussions at Academic Development Day next week--discussions focused on the critical topic of academic integrity.

The Trustee’s comment made me wonder about how much the campus intellectual culture has truly changed and grown richer in the last decade. And I was reminded of a colleague--dear to many of us--who left Stonehill early in his career, and whose life was brutally cut short in a still-unsolved murder in Chicago on June 22, 2005. Those faculty members who knew Peter D’Agostino will remember that he had uncompromising expectations for how faculty colleagues should sustain each other’s intellectual passions. He was truly committed to “the academic enterprise.” I know we fell short of Peter’s expectations, but I think about him regularly, and I believe that he would find Stonehill today the kind of enriching and supportive intellectual community he hoped for.

For your parts in making Stonehill that kind of community, thank you.

Best regards,
Katie

photo credit: Nicki Pardo

Friday, September 28: The Art of Science

So much happened on campus this past week that I will have to pass over several possible topics to focus on one whose importance is impossible to overstate: we broke ground on Thursday for a new $34 million science center that will transform our campus in manifold ways!

As anyone who attended the event can attest, it was truly a “ceremonial” groundbreaking. We all knew that shiny shovels hitting an oversized sandbox was only a signifier of the earth-moving efforts ahead. But I’d like to reflect a little on how this event was also a sign of much past work. Indeed, I daresay that science faculty at Stonehill have been groundbreakers since the College opened its doors, and that this new building is the culmination of their efforts.

Many of the names in Stonehill’s lore involve scientists: Fr. Frank Hurley C.S.C., the “Father of Biology”; Mary Alice Moore, the chemist who dared--according to the stories--to destroy her lab furnishings in order to get students what they needed to do science; Chet Raymo, whose love for physics and astronomy drew generations of students to his classes, where he raised their sights to the night skies and beyond in the Merkert-Tracy observatory.

The new Science Center will house four academic departments: Biology, Chemistry, Physics, and Psychology. These departments sponsor majors in biology, biochemistry, chemistry, environmental studies, neuroscience, and psychology--and soon a full-fledged physics major. The current faculty is simply outstanding, and the College has recognized this: these departments boast five faculty recipients of the Louise Hegarty Award for Excellence in Teaching and two recipients of the Distinguished Faculty Scholar Award. (That’s one quarter of the teaching award recipients and one third of the distinguished faculty scholars!)

They have brought millions of dollars in external grant funding to support their research--and this has been happening in an environment where it is increasingly difficult to attract federal dollars for research. National Science Foundation (NSF) funding supports the honey-mushroom research of Diane Peabody. Robert Peabody, Maura Tyrell, and Jane DeLuca; NSF also supports Louis Liotta’s ongoing research on Polyhydroxylated pyrrolidines.

Marilena Hall and Cheryl Schnitzer have received substantial funding from Research Corporation to support their basic research. Mike Horne and Alessandro Massarotti enjoy remarkable collaborations with scholars at institutions including MIT and at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. In addition to these salient examples of specific research projects, these departments have also brought in matching funds for new instrumentation, such as a high-speed nuclear-magnetic resonator and a DNA sequencer. In the case of Chemistry, a whole department collaborated to acquire funding that fosters pedagogical change: we are in the second year of an NSF grant in excess of $860,000 that supports a substantial revision to the way we deliver General Chemistry. These are just a few examples of such work.

Even more importantly, these faculty members have shaped the lives of countless students by leading the rest of us in many of the most important academic directions we have taken in the last two decades: experiential learning, interdisciplinary exploration, and undergraduate research. Each of these departments has consistently been a “hands-on” department, where students learn science by doing science. Their labs and research facilities are hubs of activity--as are many corners of the physical campus--where students take pride in the record numbers of hours they log on their laboratory or environmental work. Three of the nine interdisciplinary majors at Stonehill are offered through these departments. And undergraduate research, which we are now proud to offer in every discipline, began with the sciences. Some of that research is course based; for example, 100% of Psychology students design their own research projects through the Research Methods class. And much of the research also involves the direct collaboration of a student and a faculty member. Indeed, it was Louis Liotta who brought the idea of the SURE program to Stonehill, and since 1996, the number and variety of projects has grown each year, as today’s SURE Poster Presentation demonstrated.

To call these steps in Stonehill’s remarkable progress would be an understatement; to call them quantum leaps would be a cliché. The truth is, our science faculty have broken new ground at Stonehill, and they’ve done it in spades. This week, they also did it with spades, and the Science Center that will open in Summer 2009 represents an another acknowledgement of their work--one that we will all have the opportunity to enjoy.

Best regards,
Katie

Friday, September 21: It's About More than Film

When I recently read the September 17^th issue of The New Yorker, I was struck by Anthony Lane’s review of David Sington’s documentary about Apollo astronauts, “In the Shadow of the Moon.”

Lane’s final sentence concludes: “. . . [M]aybe, however many movies we see, there’s something about the Apollo experience that should remain indescribable--drifting away from our imagination, as if out of radio contact, on the dark side of the moon.”

What a beautiful sentence--and an interesting starting point for considering the remarkable emphasis on film that’s taking place on our own campus this fall. The Global Film Series launched its season last week, and the Political Science Film Series begins tonight with “All the President’s Men.” We can look ahead in the campus calendar to find a series of Italian films and another of Postmodern Film Screenings.

Three of the four series promote films set in other countries, written in other languages, and directed by artists with imaginations nurtured in other corners of the globe. The Global Film Series, for instance, focuses this semester on African film, featuring works about Senegal, South Africa, Mali, Nigeria, and Mauritania. The languages in these films range from French and English to Wolof, Hassanya, Zulu, Bambara, Ibo and Yoruba. The stories span from re-workings of Biblical and Shakespearian narratives to engagements with the harsh details of 20^th century apartheid or the contemporary lives of ordinary Nigerians.

For most of us, nearly all these languages are “out of radio contact,” and for many of our students, these places might as well be the “dark side of the moon.” Certainly, a film series cannot be expected to illuminate all the complexities of these cultures, but it’s a beginning. The Italian films on tap this semester likewise invite students to explore both a culture and a culture’s perspectives on ideas, issues, and known events: soldiering, World War I, the nature of friendship, the Holocaust. All these places, people, and events are to some extent “indescribable--drifting away from our imagination[s],” yet the language of film and film’s visual economies have a way of anchoring the unfamiliar.

With films from America, Spain, and Mexico--set in such contexts as the far past of Sparta, the modern past of the Spanish Civil War, the recent past of “Father Knows Best,” and the near future of 2027--the Postmodern Film Series suggests that film can translate (indeed, can upend) familiar narrative conventions, leaving us somewhat lost in space and time. Instead of anchoring us, they deliberately set us adrift with our imaginations to chart a course. Since we’re in the business of fostering imaginations, this dislocation and disorientation should be encouraged.

Finally, the Political Science Film Series includes a number of well-known films that explicitly raise questions about politics, policy, and social issues. But these films--all of which challenge students to think about 20^th-century issues such as Watergate, the Cold War, race relations--also challenge another assumption: that the only thing to do on Friday nights is to “party.”

Coordinated by faculty members and involving faculty-led introductions, screenings, and discussions, all these film series model for students the kinds of engaged lives adults can lead--lives where watching movies and talking about them, reading books and discussing them, learning languages and using them, reading newspapers and arguing about them, exploring other cultures and struggling with how they are always still “drifting away from our imaginations” are all part of being an educated person (even on Friday nights). So I thank the faculty members who have put so much energy into this semester’s film offerings: Scott Cohen (Global Film Series), George Piggford, C.S. C. (Postmodern Film Series), Antonio Barbagallo (Italian Film Series), and the Political Science Faculty (Political Science Film Series--with Richard Finnegan, Celeste Lay, and Jim Millikan leading the discussions this semester).

As I mentioned last week, the Martin Institute--in collaboration with the Honors Program--kicked off its programming this year with a film: Eugene Jarecki’s documentary, “Why We Fight.” Jared Green’s erudite introduction to that film set a standard for how faculty can welcome students into critical engagement with such texts.

In spite of the fact that film series such as these are one feature of how we are dramatically increasing the focus on global and political issues and on intercultural understanding in our curriculum and co-curriculum--and in spite of the increasing percentage of our student body who are abroad in short-term, semester-long, and year-long programs--our students report relatively low levels of satisfaction (on surveys of student engagement such as NSSE and the senior Exit Survey) with their own understanding of international issues, their “understanding and appreciating cultural and ethnic differences,” their appreciation for their rights and responsibilities as citizens, and their opportunities to have serious conversations with students and faculty of different religious beliefs, political opinions, personal values, and social, racial or ethnic backgrounds.

So, as we work together across the College to address the diversity of the student body and of the faculty and staff, I encourage you to encourage your students to take advantage of these campus opportunities for developing their intercultural understanding, for expanding their capacity as citizens, for participating in frank discussions, and for expressing differences of opinion. At the risk of losing the Apollo metaphor altogether, it’s not “rocket science” that the world of work and further study they will enter expects them to be prepared for, open to, and engaged with such complexities.

Best regards,
Katie

Friday, September 14: A Week that Affirmed Community

As we arrive at Friday, I find myself thinking about two events of the past week that I believe herald the kind of community we continually create together.

The first was the overwhelming response of the entire College community to the Easton gas explosion that seriously affected six of our off-campus students. While behind the scenes we were trying to verify information, so many people stepped in to provide clear and accurate communications and to determine the actions that needed to be taken. We had timely updates posted on the web; creative residence solutions for offering the students on-campus housing; generous donations of College funds for clothing, food, and necessities; relocation of computers to the residences; and a swift gathering of books and materials to prepare the students for as smooth a transition back to the classroom as they can manage. In talking with friends and colleagues from other institutions, I’m discovering that what’s “normal” at Stonehill would not necessarily be the course of action elsewhere.

But I was also struck by the large and small gestures of generosity that came from so many of you. More than one faculty member offered to house students if they needed temporary or longer residence. Calls poured in to inquire about a campus fundraiser for those affected. And late yesterday, I was on the phone with the Residence Director at Notre Dame du Lac to ask if he could open the door for a faculty member who had baked brownies for the students! Thanks to all of you for nurturing and sustaining this kind of community response. It makes me, for one, want to get up and go to work in the morning.

Also inspiring as a community-building occasion was the first event in the “re-founding” year of the Martin Institute for Law and Society. As I mentioned in my letter last week, many college students expect to attend campus events, and many at colleges an universities around the country report that they have not been encouraged to do so. Well, the 300+ students, faculty and others at the screening of Eugene Jarecki’s Why We Fight entered into lively conversation with the director and each other after watching the 90-minute film. This event, which kicked off a year dedicated to the theme of “War” in the Martin Institute, was just one of many examples of the kind of meaningful co-curricular programming Stonehill has become so good at. The Martin Institute has long been a place where such programming occurs, but under the leadership of Prof. Peter Ubertaccio, some new directions will also be pursued.

As many of you will remember, for the last two years, significant attention has been given to the mission and focus of the Martin Institute. Led by former Trustee Paul Kirk, a past Chairman of the Democratic National Committee and current Chairman of the Board of the John F. Kennedy Library, the Martin Institute Task Force (2005-06) and the Martin Institute Steering Committee (2006-07) created a new “Mission and Philosophy” to guide the Institute and to provide a mandate to its director. Emphasizing a dual focus on public policy and social justice, the Martin Institute philosophy states that:

“The Institute advances the mission of Stonehill College by critically exploring the concepts of ‘law’ and ‘society’ through a focus on public policy and social justice. Public policy encompasses local, state, national and international constituencies, and is concerned with all of the engagements people have with public life. It crosses the boundaries of an exclusively disciplinary focus and involves theories and data from every discipline and examines the initiation of policy through its development, execution and evaluation. Social justice takes as its starting point that ‘every citizen…has the responsibility to work to secure justice and human rights through an organized social response…The guaranteeing of basic justice for all is not an optional expression of largesse but an inescapable duty for the whole of society.’ (Economic Justice for All, No. 120) It includes empirical study and applied analysis of political structures, policies and practices, civil society, culture, and events that occur outside of the dominant political and social structure.”

Working with a faculty steering committee, Peter Ubertaccio has developed bold plans for this year that include ongoing co-curricular activities around the “War” theme, student and faculty research grants, the week-long visit of our first Woodrow Wilson Fellow, and two academic conferences (one called “The State of New England: People, Politics, and Policies” and the other “The Music of War: An Interdisciplinary Conference”). I encourage you to visit the Martin Institute website for more information. I’m sure Peter would appreciate any feedback or any ideas for the future.

The Martin Steering Committee will announce its first two-year theme in November, at which point all faculty will be invited into the most ambitious of the goals for the Institute: to develop curriculum that links to the overarching theme: first-year seminars, sophomore learning communities, ideas for interdisciplinary concentrations--these will all be encouraged.

Both retrospectively and prospectively, I want to thank all of you for your ongoing efforts to make this a community that cares about people and cares about ideas--as was so evident in your level of engagement with both these events this week.

Best regards,
Katie

Friday, September 7: Reflections on Another Great Week

Last week I wrote to thank all of you for a great start to the academic year.

I’d like to continue my reflections on some of the collaborative work that is contributing to an enhanced first-year experience for our newest students and an enriched overall experience for our college community.

For years, we have talked as a community about how to respond to long-standing research showing that students develop their college work patterns in the first few weeks of their academic careers. More recent research shows an even more challenging picture: that first-year students at colleges and universities of all types come to college with higher expectations for challenge than are met by their experience.

A recent analysis of the results of the NSSE (National Survey of Student Engagement)--correlated with results from the newer BCSSE (Beginning College Survey of Student Engagement)--reveals that “three fifths [of American college students] expected to spend more than fifteen hours a week studying, but only two fifths did so” (Peer Review, Winter 2007).

Other areas of concern: 32% of entering students spent no time in co-curricular activities. Four fifths “expected their institution to emphasize academics to a substantial degree and expected to attend campus events and interact with students from different backgrounds” but these expectations were not fulfilled. If you are interested in learning more about student expectations and experiences, the full text of this sobering article, based on substantial data, can be found at: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa4115/is_200701/ai_n19198110

As many of you know, this year we undertook several new initiatives, recommended by our own First-Year Experience Task Force, to improve the experience of new students. Early reports from students, while anecdotal, suggest that they are more than just satisfied with Stonehill’s focus on their transition. They describe excellent meetings with faculty advisors and the importance of making a connection with that advisor in the early days of their experience. Students also recount how the extended first-year orientation has resulted in tight bonds of friendship that are sustaining many of them in this new environment.

In addition, we know that early interventions by faculty advisors--or the upper-division student mentors assigned to advising groups--have helped students with difficult social adjustments. So I want to recognize and thank the 60+ members of the faculty and administration who have spent so much time in these early weeks of the semester ensuring that our first-year students make a successful adjustment and that they maintain high expectations for their learning; I have listed their names at the end of this post.

I also can’t overemphasize the importance of the peer mentors to the success of these new endeavors. We know that an essential part of building an intellectual culture on campus involves not just faculty work, but students inspiring each other. This year we eliminated the “Cultural Encounters” course that attempted--with mixed success--to involve students in co-curricular activities and to introduce them to an array of college resources. The student mentors have stepped in to assist new students with finding these resources--and they have even taken on other important roles, such as gathering their advising groups to conduct discussions of the first-year summer reading assignment.

I think we send a great message to incoming students when they see that older students at Stonehill expect to discuss books, ideas, and issues outside the classroom environment. I know the first-year faculty advisors will thank these students for the leadership they have shown in these and other areas.

I would be remiss if I did not take this opportunity to mention the event that dominated this past week: Ishmael Beah’s compelling talk on Wednesday evening. Just seeing 1200 people stream into the Sports Complex was enough to make my heart leap up. But I was not prepared for rapt attention and the overwhelming reaction of everyone present to this 26-year-old man’s reflections on his experiences and on the value of a liberal education.

He reminded students that they have the privilege of attending the kind of college that offers faculty-student interactions that are powerful and sustaining. He reminded them that they have a responsibility to use that education to engage in greater global understanding and to create social change. He told them never to think that they are too young to have ideas or plans that are truly significant.

Our students asked insightful and sensitive questions, and not one of them was a “plant.” After two standing ovations, at least half the crowd lined up to have Beah sign books--and the last in line waited an hour and a half to meet the author. The whole atmosphere was charged: many students were overheard talking about how exciting it was to have the author of a book--a book they read and loved--speak directly to them. Many thanks to Lori Hagerty and Joe Favazza and to Jen Hodgdon of the Advancement Division for making arrangements that were gracious, warm, and welcoming.

These and other campus initiatives to enhance student experience are ultimately enriching for all of us. Thank you for your role in this enrichment and for the seriousness of purpose with which you approach our common work. I look forward to working with you as we continue these efforts.

Best regards,
Katie

Stonehill College First Year Advisors 2007-2008: Craig Almeida, Karen Anderson, Rick Anderson, Sheila Barry, Peter Beisheim, George Branigan, Rob Carver, Jim Chichetto, CSC, Scott Cohen, Maria Curtin, Roger Denome, Richard Dufault, Bob Dugan, Joe Favazza, Richard Gariepy, John Golden, Sarah Gracombe, Dick Grant, Marilena Hall, Glen Ilaqua, Chris Ives, Keri Iyall-Smith, Kathleen Joint, Bonnie Klentz, John Lanci, Geoff Lantos, Shelley Leahy, Jim Lee, Mary Joan Leith, Louis Liotta, Greg Maniero, Jose-Luis Martinez, Anne Mattina, George McCabe, Kathy McNamara, Sue Mooney, Akira Motomura, Cristina Muise, Jane Nash, Bob Peabody, Magda Pederson, George Piggford, Steve Pinzari , Chris Poirier, Virginia Polanski, Sharon Ramos-Goyette, Debbie Salvucci, Shane Savage-Rumbaugh, Erika Schluntz, Cheryl Schnitzer, Allyson Sheckler, Karen Talentino, Leon Tilley, Mike Tirrell, Erica Tucker, Marie Turner, Maura Tyrrell, Peter Ubertaccio, Gerrit Van Nederpelt, Ed Vaughn, Joe Velasquez, Alex Vesey, Peter Wallace, Tom Whelan

photo credit: Nicki Pardo

Friday, August 31: Opening Week

As we end this first week of the academic year, we want to take a moment to thank all of you for starting this academic year with such energy and enthusiasm! This week--which involved new meetings with students and colleagues on Monday and Tuesday--revealed how your spirit of engagement and collaboration communicates volumes to students about Stonehill’s expectations for academic challenge.

The week included some real highlights. First, the new Orientation program has garnered much positive feedback from students and faculty members. Everyone seems to agree that taking time to meet with first year advisees and as a department with majors had many benefits. First-year students met their faculty advisor and had an introduction to a possible major or to the choices open to undeclared students. Returning students have indicated that it was motivating to talk about plans for the year with their major department. We are certain that the program can improve for next year, but the practice of taking time before classes begin for planning with our students for the challenges of the academic year seems to have landed. Special kudos to Dick Grant and the Academic Services Office and John Pestana and the Registrar’s Office, for all their work to pull this off.

Many of you also know that we moved the annual Senior Transitions Conference from January to August. The turn-out was splendid, and Heather Heerman deserves special commendations for planning and executing this event. Seniors heard from the President, a Young Alumni Panel, and from speakers who focused on the job search or on graduate school application.

Perhaps most important was that you set a clear tone and expectation of academic rigor and intellectual curiosity. Given the academic profile of our incoming (and returning) students, it is important that our courses challenge our students. As first-year advisors can attest, new students have indicated on their “First-Year Advising Surveys” that they expect college to stretch them in new ways, and they anticipate a rigorous workload. So we encourage faculty to take one last look at their syllabi and to reflect on what they are asking of students.

You may also want to take a little time to review the “Strengthen the Impact” Co-curricular Calendar. Once again we have an impressive array of lectures, film series and other programs that truly augment the curriculum. We have attached the latest draft of the co-curricular calendar. Highlights include:

• Ishmael Beah, author of A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier (September 5^th);
• Suzan-Lori Parks, Pulitzer-prize-winning playwright and novelist (and 2007 guest in the Chet Raymo Literary Series (October 1^st);
• Eugene Jarecki, award-winning director of "Why We Fight" (September 10^th);
• Eric Foner, Distinguished Professor of History at Columbia University (October 25th);
• Robert Art, Distinguished Professor of International Relations at Brandeis University (October 25^th).

In response to past feedback from faculty, the Mass of the Holy Spirit and Convocation took place the day before classes started. Attendance at the Mass was disappointing, and we want to encourage better participation in the future. But it was impressive to see the large number of faculty members at Academic Convocation. Together we sent a clear message to students--and to each other--that we are community of scholars committed to the academic mission of the College. Approximately 95% of the first year class and 90% of the senior class were present.

Finally, we have a large number of new full-time faculty members this semester, and we encourage you to introduce yourself to them, and to offer your support for their transition at Stonehill. Next week, the Office of Media Relations will be sending out an announcement with new faculty bios, complete with photographs, so please be on the lookout for that!

Again, we simply want to end the week with a message of gratitude for all the good work that has made for a wonderful start to 2007-08. Thank you again.

Best regards,
Katie