Friday, October 3, 2008
Friday, September 19, 2008
Friday, September 19, 2008--"Elective Cosmopolitanism"
There’s no surer sign that we are well into the semester than the dismay one feels when there’s more than one event happening on one night—or several in a single week—that are just too important to miss. This was one such week at Stonehill, and I attended two exceptional presentations. While the topics were very different indeed—one on “Globalization and the Cosmopolitanism of the Poor” and the other on Pope Benedict’s papacy and whether it presents a challenge to Catholic-Jewish dialogue—there was ultimately a confluence of ideas about diversity and its benefits that should speak powerfully to all of us.
The first event was the Monday night kickoff of the Martin Institute’s two-year theme of “Globalization.” Peter Ubertaccio, Director of the Martin Institute, hosted Professor Arjun Appadurai, Senior Advisor for Global Initiatives and John Dewey Professor of Social Sciences at The New School in New York. Appadurai, whose scholarship is regularly taught in a number of Stonehill courses, offered a compelling vision of cosmopolitanism that any undergraduate could see as relevant to her or his aspirations.
His address—beautifully introduced by Assistant Professor of English Scott Cohen—was called "Globalization and the Cosmopolitanism of the Poor." It would be hard to summarize the whole talk, but the part students might compare to their experience would go something like this: As an American student studying abroad, you engage in an "elective" cosmopolitan experience—an experience that stretches the boundaries of who you are and what you know. If you let yourself really encounter what you see in another part of the world, you might consider how the experiences of the poor are like and unlike yours. The poor achieve a kind of "compulsory" cosmopolitanism: they also have to stretch the boundaries of who they are and what they know just to meet their basic needs. In a place like Mumbai (where Appadurai conducts some of his research), this means that even the illiterate and unlettered have to be multi-lingual, multicultural, and politically savvy.
Appadurai researches pavement dwellers, ex-prostitutes, and displaced persons who have to know how to talk to different linguistic groups, different religious groups, the police, or the other groups or individuals who want their piece of pavement. He described three activist groups in India who are creating change in the area of housing—and they are sharing what they've learned with similar groups in different parts of the globe, like South Africa and Nepal. There's a real politics of hope, in Appadurai's estimation, in places that are also filled with despair.
Perhaps I was particularly tuned into Appadurai’s message because my oldest daughter is spending this semester in Senegal. Her blog entries and emails are filled with both the joys of experiencing a completely different culture and the challenges of encountering Dakar’s staggering poverty and suffering on a daily basis. She is fluent in French, but finds that there are many she can communicate with only as she improves her Wolof. And she’s discovering how much more difficult it is to feel “culturally competent” when there are very few experiences (such as good meals, environmental beauty, or other English speakers) to offset the sheer effort and “daily-ness” of her growing “cosmopolitanism.” Yet it’s clear that she wouldn’t trade her experience for a semester in Paris, though that, too, would be a cosmopolitan experience.
As more and more Stonehill students head to the developing world or to countries less-travelled by American students abroad (and this semester alone, I note we have students in South Africa, China, Brazil, Czech Republic, Russia, and other countries beyond Western Europe and Australia), we need to prepare them well for these experiences and also offer opportunities for reflection and integration of what they have learned after they return. This kind of curriculum integration may be the most important work we can do to ensure that our students are prepared to have their cosmopolitanism intersect with the cosmopolitanism of those they encounter in their travels—whether that’s study abroad, a H.O.P.E. trip, or a local volunteer opportunity—and to know how to put those encounters into a broader context.
The second event I attended this week was the annual James J. Kenneally lecture. Sponsored by the Catholic-Jewish Dialogue Committee and hosted by Kevin Spicer, C.S.C., Associate Professor of History, the lecture this year featured two scholars: Professor Ruth Langer of Boston College and Professor Philip Cunningham of St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. The topic was certainly not intended to connect to Prof. Appadurai’s view of cosmopolitanism, but there was a link nonetheless.
Professors Langer and Cunningham took up the question of why—after the tremendous (though occasionally bumpy) progress made by Pope John Paul II in Catholic-Jewish relations—Pope Benedict issued a motu proprio (a personal papal executive order) allowing the wider use of the "Latin Mass," in the form of the 1962 Latin Missal. The chief concern about this missal is that it contains prayers—in the Good Friday rite—that are offensive to those of some other faiths.
While the 1962 missal does not include the most objectionable language calling Jews “perfidious” (this was eliminated in 1959), it does use language that seems out of keeping with Nostra Aetate (1965), the Catholic Church’s official statement on the Church’s relations with non-Christians: “Almighty and everlasting God, You do not refuse Your mercy even to the Jews; hear the prayers which we offer for the blindness of that people so that they may acknowledge the light of Your truth, which is Christ, and be delivered from their darkness” (emphasis mine). Moreover, the Missal also contains a prayer “For the conversion of pagans [Infidelium]” which cannot help advance the Church’s relations with Islam.
For Stonehill students—indeed for the whole community, regardless of their religious affiliations—this was another call to cosmopolitanism. It was a reminder that while Pope Benedict's action creates some confusion related to the Catholic Church's relations with other faiths, official Catholic teaching in Nostra Aetate stresses the religious bond and spiritual legacy shared by Judaism and Christianity and affirms that God and Jews abide in covenant. Nostra Aetate also makes explicit statements about commonalities between Islam and Christianity and honors philosophical answers provided by other world religions. And, of course, Judaism, Islam, and other traditions all have their own perspectives on these interfaith relations. Both Stonehill's overall curriculum and an interfaith dialogue such as the one we sponsor should promote understanding and respect across all these traditions.
So, we needn’t leave campus to expand the boundaries of who we are and what we know. Indeed, these two events provided a wonderful reminder of what exposure—at home and abroad—to a diversity of persons and ideas can do to widen our perspectives and to enhance our cosmopolitan frameworks for living. Thank you for your work to encourage our students to take advantage of all these opportunities.
Best regards,
Katie
The first event was the Monday night kickoff of the Martin Institute’s two-year theme of “Globalization.” Peter Ubertaccio, Director of the Martin Institute, hosted Professor Arjun Appadurai, Senior Advisor for Global Initiatives and John Dewey Professor of Social Sciences at The New School in New York. Appadurai, whose scholarship is regularly taught in a number of Stonehill courses, offered a compelling vision of cosmopolitanism that any undergraduate could see as relevant to her or his aspirations.
His address—beautifully introduced by Assistant Professor of English Scott Cohen—was called "Globalization and the Cosmopolitanism of the Poor." It would be hard to summarize the whole talk, but the part students might compare to their experience would go something like this: As an American student studying abroad, you engage in an "elective" cosmopolitan experience—an experience that stretches the boundaries of who you are and what you know. If you let yourself really encounter what you see in another part of the world, you might consider how the experiences of the poor are like and unlike yours. The poor achieve a kind of "compulsory" cosmopolitanism: they also have to stretch the boundaries of who they are and what they know just to meet their basic needs. In a place like Mumbai (where Appadurai conducts some of his research), this means that even the illiterate and unlettered have to be multi-lingual, multicultural, and politically savvy.
Appadurai researches pavement dwellers, ex-prostitutes, and displaced persons who have to know how to talk to different linguistic groups, different religious groups, the police, or the other groups or individuals who want their piece of pavement. He described three activist groups in India who are creating change in the area of housing—and they are sharing what they've learned with similar groups in different parts of the globe, like South Africa and Nepal. There's a real politics of hope, in Appadurai's estimation, in places that are also filled with despair.
Perhaps I was particularly tuned into Appadurai’s message because my oldest daughter is spending this semester in Senegal. Her blog entries and emails are filled with both the joys of experiencing a completely different culture and the challenges of encountering Dakar’s staggering poverty and suffering on a daily basis. She is fluent in French, but finds that there are many she can communicate with only as she improves her Wolof. And she’s discovering how much more difficult it is to feel “culturally competent” when there are very few experiences (such as good meals, environmental beauty, or other English speakers) to offset the sheer effort and “daily-ness” of her growing “cosmopolitanism.” Yet it’s clear that she wouldn’t trade her experience for a semester in Paris, though that, too, would be a cosmopolitan experience.
As more and more Stonehill students head to the developing world or to countries less-travelled by American students abroad (and this semester alone, I note we have students in South Africa, China, Brazil, Czech Republic, Russia, and other countries beyond Western Europe and Australia), we need to prepare them well for these experiences and also offer opportunities for reflection and integration of what they have learned after they return. This kind of curriculum integration may be the most important work we can do to ensure that our students are prepared to have their cosmopolitanism intersect with the cosmopolitanism of those they encounter in their travels—whether that’s study abroad, a H.O.P.E. trip, or a local volunteer opportunity—and to know how to put those encounters into a broader context.
The second event I attended this week was the annual James J. Kenneally lecture. Sponsored by the Catholic-Jewish Dialogue Committee and hosted by Kevin Spicer, C.S.C., Associate Professor of History, the lecture this year featured two scholars: Professor Ruth Langer of Boston College and Professor Philip Cunningham of St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. The topic was certainly not intended to connect to Prof. Appadurai’s view of cosmopolitanism, but there was a link nonetheless.
Professors Langer and Cunningham took up the question of why—after the tremendous (though occasionally bumpy) progress made by Pope John Paul II in Catholic-Jewish relations—Pope Benedict issued a motu proprio (a personal papal executive order) allowing the wider use of the "Latin Mass," in the form of the 1962 Latin Missal. The chief concern about this missal is that it contains prayers—in the Good Friday rite—that are offensive to those of some other faiths.
While the 1962 missal does not include the most objectionable language calling Jews “perfidious” (this was eliminated in 1959), it does use language that seems out of keeping with Nostra Aetate (1965), the Catholic Church’s official statement on the Church’s relations with non-Christians: “Almighty and everlasting God, You do not refuse Your mercy even to the Jews; hear the prayers which we offer for the blindness of that people so that they may acknowledge the light of Your truth, which is Christ, and be delivered from their darkness” (emphasis mine). Moreover, the Missal also contains a prayer “For the conversion of pagans [Infidelium]” which cannot help advance the Church’s relations with Islam.
For Stonehill students—indeed for the whole community, regardless of their religious affiliations—this was another call to cosmopolitanism. It was a reminder that while Pope Benedict's action creates some confusion related to the Catholic Church's relations with other faiths, official Catholic teaching in Nostra Aetate stresses the religious bond and spiritual legacy shared by Judaism and Christianity and affirms that God and Jews abide in covenant. Nostra Aetate also makes explicit statements about commonalities between Islam and Christianity and honors philosophical answers provided by other world religions. And, of course, Judaism, Islam, and other traditions all have their own perspectives on these interfaith relations. Both Stonehill's overall curriculum and an interfaith dialogue such as the one we sponsor should promote understanding and respect across all these traditions.
So, we needn’t leave campus to expand the boundaries of who we are and what we know. Indeed, these two events provided a wonderful reminder of what exposure—at home and abroad—to a diversity of persons and ideas can do to widen our perspectives and to enhance our cosmopolitan frameworks for living. Thank you for your work to encourage our students to take advantage of all these opportunities.
Best regards,
Katie
Friday, September 12, 2008
Friday, September 12, 2008--Uncommon Reading
The most exciting thing that happened this week actually took place on Friday: the much-anticipated visit of Greg Mortenson, the subject and co-author of Three Cups of Tea. The best-selling account of Mortensen’s failed attempt to summit K-2 and his subsequent humanitarian work buiding schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan was required summer reading for the Stonehill Class of 2012, and from the extraordinary crowd of college friends, neighbors, retirees, alumni, and strangers that joined the first-year students, faculty, staff, and administration for Mortenson’s talk, it’s clear that our students were not reading alone.
So why do we do this summer reading anyway, and does it accomplish what we would hope?
To answer that question, let me step back for a moment. In summer 2007, I was invited to be a guest on National Public Radio’s noontime “Here and Now” program. The topic was summer reading for first-year students, and I was a panelist along with faculty members from Lafayette College in Pennsylvania and Franklin Pierce University in New Hampshire.
From the living room of my summer vacation rental in Prince Edward Island, I described what we are trying to achieve through the summer reading program at Stonehill. We are signaling to new students that they are joining an intellectual community, and we’re hoping that the chosen text will create a common ground among students, faculty and administrators.
All the books we’ve chosen in these past few years: Tracy Kidder’s Mountains Beyond Mountains, Paul Rusesabagina’s An Ordinary Man, and Ishmael Beah’s A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, were successful in creating community. And these selections also emphasize Stonehill’s mission to promote social justice, global learning, and interdisciplinary studies. I suggested, on that radio program, that we had struck on a valuable set of experiences: having students read a powerful story of self-discovery, bringing to campus the person who had the experience and found the voice to give shape to it, and offering opportunities for students and other members of the community to reflect on the text and its contexts. (If you are interested in hearing the radio program, it can be accessed on the NPR website at this link: http://www.here-now.org/shows/2007/08/20070810_2.asp).
The other guests on the program had similar hopes with a common reading, but they also took different approaches. Lafayette chose John Stuart Mill’s essay “On Liberty,” in which Mill praises the Marquis de Lafayette for living a life of liberty. The college used the reading as a springboard for talking about “lives of liberty” throughout the year. They could not (to be sure!) bring Mill to campus for a visit, but they could certainly introduce students to the contemporary relevance of a classic text and, through it, explore the value of liberal education. Like us, they use a book to express their intention to transition their students into a community that cares about ideas.
Franklin Pierce had similar intentions. Their reading selection raised the whole question of “what is a community?” and asked what it means to be a member of one. They wanted a text that emphasized international experience and they were especially interested in the way their reading—Greg Mortenson’s Three Cups of Tea—emphasized how one person can make a difference.
At that time, I had never heard of Three Cups of Tea, and I certainly had no idea that it would become this year’s selection at Stonehill. But when we invited faculty input for the summer reading, more than a half-dozen people nominated this book. And when I read it, I understood why: it is an adventure story, a love story, a crime story, a war story—it opens up, through a most compelling tale, the politics, religion, geography, and culture of Central Asia. The vision of humanity in Three Cups of Tea insists that we are here to take care of each other, to give shelter and sustenance, and to protect and preserve the ordinary decencies that give order to our community. I hope the heroisms, large and small, of so many in this book would be recognizable in any culture or language. I hope it makes our students want to learn more (more languages, more cultures, more religions, more geography, more economics) and that it will inspire or reinforce their own moral courage and active citizenship.
Mortenson’s visit did help our students to consider how the journey on which they are embarking intersects with Mortenson’s own story of self-discovery. But the most affirming part of his message was that students should not just think about how they can help his cause, the Central Asia Institute. They should tune in to what they are passionate about and work to accomplish that. He also showed them, up close and personal, the humility and graciousness of a man who has accomplished truly great things. And I hope that the presence of so many members of the Stonehill community—and so many from beyond the community—demonstrated not only that students join a community interested in both ideas and action, but also that they can find communities after they leave us that care about the same things.
The event couldn’t have been so successful without the hard work of Joe Favazza, Todd Gernes, and Lori Hagerty, who all worked together on the details that made it appear seamless; the incredible commitment of the student peer mentors, who from summer orientation through the first weeks of the semester encouraged first-year students to read the book and conducted pre-and post-lecture discussions in small groups; and the work of faculty, who encouraged classes to attend and incorporated the book into their syllabi. Without all of you, the common reading could not have paved the way for what was surely an uncommon experience.
Best regards,
Katie
So why do we do this summer reading anyway, and does it accomplish what we would hope?
To answer that question, let me step back for a moment. In summer 2007, I was invited to be a guest on National Public Radio’s noontime “Here and Now” program. The topic was summer reading for first-year students, and I was a panelist along with faculty members from Lafayette College in Pennsylvania and Franklin Pierce University in New Hampshire.
From the living room of my summer vacation rental in Prince Edward Island, I described what we are trying to achieve through the summer reading program at Stonehill. We are signaling to new students that they are joining an intellectual community, and we’re hoping that the chosen text will create a common ground among students, faculty and administrators.
All the books we’ve chosen in these past few years: Tracy Kidder’s Mountains Beyond Mountains, Paul Rusesabagina’s An Ordinary Man, and Ishmael Beah’s A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, were successful in creating community. And these selections also emphasize Stonehill’s mission to promote social justice, global learning, and interdisciplinary studies. I suggested, on that radio program, that we had struck on a valuable set of experiences: having students read a powerful story of self-discovery, bringing to campus the person who had the experience and found the voice to give shape to it, and offering opportunities for students and other members of the community to reflect on the text and its contexts. (If you are interested in hearing the radio program, it can be accessed on the NPR website at this link: http://www.here-now.org/shows/2007/08/20070810_2.asp).
The other guests on the program had similar hopes with a common reading, but they also took different approaches. Lafayette chose John Stuart Mill’s essay “On Liberty,” in which Mill praises the Marquis de Lafayette for living a life of liberty. The college used the reading as a springboard for talking about “lives of liberty” throughout the year. They could not (to be sure!) bring Mill to campus for a visit, but they could certainly introduce students to the contemporary relevance of a classic text and, through it, explore the value of liberal education. Like us, they use a book to express their intention to transition their students into a community that cares about ideas.
Franklin Pierce had similar intentions. Their reading selection raised the whole question of “what is a community?” and asked what it means to be a member of one. They wanted a text that emphasized international experience and they were especially interested in the way their reading—Greg Mortenson’s Three Cups of Tea—emphasized how one person can make a difference.
At that time, I had never heard of Three Cups of Tea, and I certainly had no idea that it would become this year’s selection at Stonehill. But when we invited faculty input for the summer reading, more than a half-dozen people nominated this book. And when I read it, I understood why: it is an adventure story, a love story, a crime story, a war story—it opens up, through a most compelling tale, the politics, religion, geography, and culture of Central Asia. The vision of humanity in Three Cups of Tea insists that we are here to take care of each other, to give shelter and sustenance, and to protect and preserve the ordinary decencies that give order to our community. I hope the heroisms, large and small, of so many in this book would be recognizable in any culture or language. I hope it makes our students want to learn more (more languages, more cultures, more religions, more geography, more economics) and that it will inspire or reinforce their own moral courage and active citizenship.
Mortenson’s visit did help our students to consider how the journey on which they are embarking intersects with Mortenson’s own story of self-discovery. But the most affirming part of his message was that students should not just think about how they can help his cause, the Central Asia Institute. They should tune in to what they are passionate about and work to accomplish that. He also showed them, up close and personal, the humility and graciousness of a man who has accomplished truly great things. And I hope that the presence of so many members of the Stonehill community—and so many from beyond the community—demonstrated not only that students join a community interested in both ideas and action, but also that they can find communities after they leave us that care about the same things.
The event couldn’t have been so successful without the hard work of Joe Favazza, Todd Gernes, and Lori Hagerty, who all worked together on the details that made it appear seamless; the incredible commitment of the student peer mentors, who from summer orientation through the first weeks of the semester encouraged first-year students to read the book and conducted pre-and post-lecture discussions in small groups; and the work of faculty, who encouraged classes to attend and incorporated the book into their syllabi. Without all of you, the common reading could not have paved the way for what was surely an uncommon experience.
Best regards,
Katie
Friday, September 5, 2008
Friday, September 5, 2008--Good Work
Several years ago, I gave a talk at the start of the academic year that reflected on work and leisure. I had been reading A. Bartlett Giamatti’s Take Time for Paradise and several other texts that seemed to send a single message: that we need to slow down and recognize the need for unstructured time, for “retirements” and “holidays” and games—for leisure.
And yet I knew that we were revving up—as we are again now—for the academic year and for a new strategic plan, and that I needed to ask each of you to join me in giving a significant part of your time and energy to keep Stonehill on the trajectory that we have set for the future. I concluded that with focus, good will, good humor, and authentic community we can enjoy the hard work we do.
Looking back at that talk after attending yesterday's Faculty Senate-sponsored wine and cheese party, I still believe we should think more intentionally about the fact that we have good work—work that, unlike so much of the world’s work, is about more than just survival. We have far more choice in our work than people do in other professions—choice about content and method and schedule. The rhythms of faculty work are quite humane: we get to start over each semester—we have summers and sabbaticals and other opportunities for change and renewal. And the rewards are potentially so high: there are few professions where one might hear even once that one had changed another person’s life—and yet I read that regularly in your course evaluations, in nominations for the Hegarty Award, and in evaluations of students’ SURE experiences.
And that’s where Bart Giamatti’s, Take Time for Paradise becomes relevant. As some of you may know, Giamatti was a renowned scholar of Renaissance Literature who served as President of Yale University from 1977-86. He left academia to become President of the National League and eventually, the 7th Commissioner of Baseball. He served as Commissioner for less than a year—until a heart attack claimed his life. But he obviously spent a great part of his life reflecting on baseball as leisure—on baseball as a perfect geometric space, a search for home, a metaphor for America.
Some of his thoughts on what he calls “America and her games” are actually reflections on the importance of ritual, of the sacred, of freedom—and they may help us to sort out the priorities to which we give our time and our energy. He recalls that the Greek word for leisure is scholē, the root of school, and argues that for the Greeks (and the Romans, and the educated Renaissance-era person) leisure and education had the same essential purpose; the humanities and the liberal arts “were to be pursued because in the pursuit the muscle that is the mind was disciplined and toughened and thereby made more free, to pursue new knowledge, and just as that freedom in the mind became a freedom for the mind, which freedom is the guardian of political and social freedom . . . so was the pursuit of these studies undertaken in, and meant to perpetuate, a condition of leisure.”
This isn’t to suggest that our work is play—or that we can forego other forms of leisure because we get the liberal arts on the job! But it is to remind us, as we return to our work together, that it’s pretty good work to have, and that we should be happy in it. I want to thank each of you for dedicating yourselves to teaching and mentoring students and to the kind of contemplation that results in new knowledge and new practice—new scholarship. You will need to discover your own balance in these activities—a balance that must benefit both you and Stonehill.
Some of you will accomplish your teaching and scholarly goals and lead departments in conversations about best practices that will ensure Stonehill students learn and grow in the best curricular structures, in the most beneficial laboratory and classroom environments, and in the most helpful experiential and applied opportunities. Some of you will do this and assist your colleagues who look to change teaching methodologies or to reinvent scholarly projects that have lain dormant. Some of you will accomplish these goals while taking leadership in College governance. And some of you (dare I say “some of us?”) who are serving as administrators—and truly we are “of you”—will continue to seek ways to support your work and to set the direction for what we can be as an institution. I think we can all work (and play!) together, and I believe we have a very bright future.
Some of you may ask why we should continue the push to move forward when it’s obviously such hard work. Think about the new faculty members who were introduced yesterday. They are our future—and they came to us with expectations that we are in the process of becoming something better and better, improving yet again on what the rest of us who have been here longer have created and continually improved.
Joe Favazza and I spoke with new faculty members during the interview process, and we talked about Stonehill’s trajectory in the hopes of inspiring them to join us and our common enterprise. We made promises, promises of new science facilities, improved research prospects, and expanded opportunities for challenging students to reach more ambitious goals. I want to fulfill those promises because with enhanced resources I’m convinced that an inspired faculty who are doing faculty work and doing it well is the single most important factor in improving the programs and the reputation of Stonehill.
As Giamatti says about sports—and even about those who participate only as fans—“when people win together, the joy is more intense than when any of us wins alone, because part of any true pleasure is sharing that pleasure.” Giamatti characterizes a “win” as “the actual realization of what is essentially an imaginative surge.” He says, “The spectator, seeing something he had only imagined, or, more astonishingly, had not yet or would never have imagined possible . . . is privy to the realized act of imagination and assents, is mastered, and in that instant, bettered. ‘Winning’ for player or spectator is not simply outscoring; it is a way of talking about betterment, about making oneself, one’s fellows, one’s city, one’s adherents, more noble because of a temporary engagement on a higher human plane of existence.”
I know that your imagination, craft, and—most importantly—your engagement will result in the betterment of Stonehill. Let’s all participate in an imaginative surge for Stonehill’s future, and we may very well accomplish our own betterment in the process.
Best regards,
Katie
And yet I knew that we were revving up—as we are again now—for the academic year and for a new strategic plan, and that I needed to ask each of you to join me in giving a significant part of your time and energy to keep Stonehill on the trajectory that we have set for the future. I concluded that with focus, good will, good humor, and authentic community we can enjoy the hard work we do.
Looking back at that talk after attending yesterday's Faculty Senate-sponsored wine and cheese party, I still believe we should think more intentionally about the fact that we have good work—work that, unlike so much of the world’s work, is about more than just survival. We have far more choice in our work than people do in other professions—choice about content and method and schedule. The rhythms of faculty work are quite humane: we get to start over each semester—we have summers and sabbaticals and other opportunities for change and renewal. And the rewards are potentially so high: there are few professions where one might hear even once that one had changed another person’s life—and yet I read that regularly in your course evaluations, in nominations for the Hegarty Award, and in evaluations of students’ SURE experiences.
And that’s where Bart Giamatti’s, Take Time for Paradise becomes relevant. As some of you may know, Giamatti was a renowned scholar of Renaissance Literature who served as President of Yale University from 1977-86. He left academia to become President of the National League and eventually, the 7th Commissioner of Baseball. He served as Commissioner for less than a year—until a heart attack claimed his life. But he obviously spent a great part of his life reflecting on baseball as leisure—on baseball as a perfect geometric space, a search for home, a metaphor for America.
Some of his thoughts on what he calls “America and her games” are actually reflections on the importance of ritual, of the sacred, of freedom—and they may help us to sort out the priorities to which we give our time and our energy. He recalls that the Greek word for leisure is scholē, the root of school, and argues that for the Greeks (and the Romans, and the educated Renaissance-era person) leisure and education had the same essential purpose; the humanities and the liberal arts “were to be pursued because in the pursuit the muscle that is the mind was disciplined and toughened and thereby made more free, to pursue new knowledge, and just as that freedom in the mind became a freedom for the mind, which freedom is the guardian of political and social freedom . . . so was the pursuit of these studies undertaken in, and meant to perpetuate, a condition of leisure.”
This isn’t to suggest that our work is play—or that we can forego other forms of leisure because we get the liberal arts on the job! But it is to remind us, as we return to our work together, that it’s pretty good work to have, and that we should be happy in it. I want to thank each of you for dedicating yourselves to teaching and mentoring students and to the kind of contemplation that results in new knowledge and new practice—new scholarship. You will need to discover your own balance in these activities—a balance that must benefit both you and Stonehill.
Some of you will accomplish your teaching and scholarly goals and lead departments in conversations about best practices that will ensure Stonehill students learn and grow in the best curricular structures, in the most beneficial laboratory and classroom environments, and in the most helpful experiential and applied opportunities. Some of you will do this and assist your colleagues who look to change teaching methodologies or to reinvent scholarly projects that have lain dormant. Some of you will accomplish these goals while taking leadership in College governance. And some of you (dare I say “some of us?”) who are serving as administrators—and truly we are “of you”—will continue to seek ways to support your work and to set the direction for what we can be as an institution. I think we can all work (and play!) together, and I believe we have a very bright future.
Some of you may ask why we should continue the push to move forward when it’s obviously such hard work. Think about the new faculty members who were introduced yesterday. They are our future—and they came to us with expectations that we are in the process of becoming something better and better, improving yet again on what the rest of us who have been here longer have created and continually improved.
Joe Favazza and I spoke with new faculty members during the interview process, and we talked about Stonehill’s trajectory in the hopes of inspiring them to join us and our common enterprise. We made promises, promises of new science facilities, improved research prospects, and expanded opportunities for challenging students to reach more ambitious goals. I want to fulfill those promises because with enhanced resources I’m convinced that an inspired faculty who are doing faculty work and doing it well is the single most important factor in improving the programs and the reputation of Stonehill.
As Giamatti says about sports—and even about those who participate only as fans—“when people win together, the joy is more intense than when any of us wins alone, because part of any true pleasure is sharing that pleasure.” Giamatti characterizes a “win” as “the actual realization of what is essentially an imaginative surge.” He says, “The spectator, seeing something he had only imagined, or, more astonishingly, had not yet or would never have imagined possible . . . is privy to the realized act of imagination and assents, is mastered, and in that instant, bettered. ‘Winning’ for player or spectator is not simply outscoring; it is a way of talking about betterment, about making oneself, one’s fellows, one’s city, one’s adherents, more noble because of a temporary engagement on a higher human plane of existence.”
I know that your imagination, craft, and—most importantly—your engagement will result in the betterment of Stonehill. Let’s all participate in an imaginative surge for Stonehill’s future, and we may very well accomplish our own betterment in the process.
Best regards,
Katie
Friday, August 29, 2008
Friday, August 29, 2008--Happy New Year
Over the last week, at least four faculty members have greeted me with the salutation: “Happy New Year!” And I was delighted with the reminder that we have begun a new cycle in our academic lives—one that most people acknowledge as “happy.” So let me add my felicitations to all of you.
Although the first week of the academic year was a short one, it was full of the events that welcome people back to campus and hail the arrival of those who are new to our community. I’d like to take a few moments to thank all of you for the enthusiasm with which you have entered into the new year and to reflect on the enterprise we share.
I’m reading a great new book by our colleague Chet Raymo, Emeritus Professor of Physics, and that reading frames—to some extent—these thoughts. The book—When God is Gone, Everything is Holy: The Making of a Religious Naturalist—is a compelling narrative of Chet’s own “long strange journey” through the Catholic sacramental tradition into which he was born toward the agnostic “attention, reverence, thanksgiving, and praise” that characterize his current encounters with the natural world.
What interests me most (at this moment in my reading) are Chet’s thoughts about the importance of being able to say “I don’t know”: “those three little words—‘I don’t know’—may be science’s most important contribution to human civilization. Yes, we have learned an astonishing amount about how the world works, but of equal significance is our growing awareness of how much we don’t know.”
Chet’s musings cover the history of scientific inquiry, but reading them in this first week of the academic year, I couldn’t help but think that “a growing awareness of how much we don’t know” pretty much describes the life of a faculty member.
In fact, some aspects of the new faculty orientation, led by Stacy Grooters and Joe Favazza, focused on the challenges of moving (as many new faculty members do) from immersion in specialized research to uncertainty about what content to include in an undergraduate syllabus and what methodology will best engage students in active learning. And at a small liberal arts college like Stonehill, most faculty members teach a range of courses that stretch their expertise well beyond their graduate research. New faculty members quickly learn just how helpful it is to be able to say, “I don’t know.”
Whether we are telling a student that we will have to get back to her with an answer or telling a colleague that we are unsure about how to handle a classroom situation, saying “I don’t know” liberates us from the burden of “authority” and places us in the position of being learners—along with our students and our colleagues. It reinforces our place in a learning community.
I was again reminded of how teachers remain learners at academic convocation, when Prof. Robert Peabody was honored with the Louise Hegarty Award for Excellence in Teaching. Bob is an outstanding choice for the award, and I noted that several of his
nominations implied Bob’s willingness to say “I don’t know.” A student wrote about Bob’s inspired teaching and research and about his enthusiasm for working with students in the SURE program. To collaborate in research with others—and particularly with undergraduates—indicates a spirit of inquiry and an openness to new ideas that define Bob Peabody and that I would say—by extrapolation—define a successful teacher.
A faculty nominator also celebrated Bob’s willingness to embrace the communal character of teaching and research in the sciences She wrote: “Bob’s collegiality is unparalleled . . . . One of the criteria for excellence as a scientist, according to André Cournard, is communal spirit: the ability to recognize your debt to those who came before you and the willingness to share your own insights with others in the current scientific community. I know of no scientist who exemplifies this better than Bob.”
The first recipient of the Hegarty Award was another scientist: Chet Raymo. But since 1988, the award has been given to faculty members in numerous fields across the college curriculum. I believe that the “communal” criterion for excellence is shared by teacher-scholars across all disciplines. It requires us all to live in medias res, recognizing the work of our predecessors, but unsure about exactly how our own work lays the foundation for future efforts. It requires generosity—and a little humility—in the face of uncertainty.
Chet Raymo cites French philosopher Blaise Pascal, who insisted that a certain kind of ignorance is, in fact, “an intellectual achievement.” Reflecting on three centuries of scientific investigation since Pascal, Chet suggests that “the purpose of science—and indeed of all learning—is to arrive at a state of ignorance, but an ignorance that is aware of itself.”
So as we begin this happy new year, I hope we can be a community that asks questions and seeks answers—a community that, in poet Mary Oliver’s words, knows “how to pay attention.” But let’s also take a page out of Chet's book and remember the value of those three little words, “I don’t know.”
Best regards,
Katie
Although the first week of the academic year was a short one, it was full of the events that welcome people back to campus and hail the arrival of those who are new to our community. I’d like to take a few moments to thank all of you for the enthusiasm with which you have entered into the new year and to reflect on the enterprise we share.
I’m reading a great new book by our colleague Chet Raymo, Emeritus Professor of Physics, and that reading frames—to some extent—these thoughts. The book—When God is Gone, Everything is Holy: The Making of a Religious Naturalist—is a compelling narrative of Chet’s own “long strange journey” through the Catholic sacramental tradition into which he was born toward the agnostic “attention, reverence, thanksgiving, and praise” that characterize his current encounters with the natural world.
What interests me most (at this moment in my reading) are Chet’s thoughts about the importance of being able to say “I don’t know”: “those three little words—‘I don’t know’—may be science’s most important contribution to human civilization. Yes, we have learned an astonishing amount about how the world works, but of equal significance is our growing awareness of how much we don’t know.”
Chet’s musings cover the history of scientific inquiry, but reading them in this first week of the academic year, I couldn’t help but think that “a growing awareness of how much we don’t know” pretty much describes the life of a faculty member.
In fact, some aspects of the new faculty orientation, led by Stacy Grooters and Joe Favazza, focused on the challenges of moving (as many new faculty members do) from immersion in specialized research to uncertainty about what content to include in an undergraduate syllabus and what methodology will best engage students in active learning. And at a small liberal arts college like Stonehill, most faculty members teach a range of courses that stretch their expertise well beyond their graduate research. New faculty members quickly learn just how helpful it is to be able to say, “I don’t know.”
Whether we are telling a student that we will have to get back to her with an answer or telling a colleague that we are unsure about how to handle a classroom situation, saying “I don’t know” liberates us from the burden of “authority” and places us in the position of being learners—along with our students and our colleagues. It reinforces our place in a learning community.
I was again reminded of how teachers remain learners at academic convocation, when Prof. Robert Peabody was honored with the Louise Hegarty Award for Excellence in Teaching. Bob is an outstanding choice for the award, and I noted that several of his
nominations implied Bob’s willingness to say “I don’t know.” A student wrote about Bob’s inspired teaching and research and about his enthusiasm for working with students in the SURE program. To collaborate in research with others—and particularly with undergraduates—indicates a spirit of inquiry and an openness to new ideas that define Bob Peabody and that I would say—by extrapolation—define a successful teacher.A faculty nominator also celebrated Bob’s willingness to embrace the communal character of teaching and research in the sciences She wrote: “Bob’s collegiality is unparalleled . . . . One of the criteria for excellence as a scientist, according to André Cournard, is communal spirit: the ability to recognize your debt to those who came before you and the willingness to share your own insights with others in the current scientific community. I know of no scientist who exemplifies this better than Bob.”
The first recipient of the Hegarty Award was another scientist: Chet Raymo. But since 1988, the award has been given to faculty members in numerous fields across the college curriculum. I believe that the “communal” criterion for excellence is shared by teacher-scholars across all disciplines. It requires us all to live in medias res, recognizing the work of our predecessors, but unsure about exactly how our own work lays the foundation for future efforts. It requires generosity—and a little humility—in the face of uncertainty.
Chet Raymo cites French philosopher Blaise Pascal, who insisted that a certain kind of ignorance is, in fact, “an intellectual achievement.” Reflecting on three centuries of scientific investigation since Pascal, Chet suggests that “the purpose of science—and indeed of all learning—is to arrive at a state of ignorance, but an ignorance that is aware of itself.”
So as we begin this happy new year, I hope we can be a community that asks questions and seeks answers—a community that, in poet Mary Oliver’s words, knows “how to pay attention.” But let’s also take a page out of Chet's book and remember the value of those three little words, “I don’t know.”
Best regards,
Katie
Sunday, March 9, 2008
Friday, March 7, 2008--On Gifts and Giving
Friday Notes is back after a long break, and I look forward to several weeks of uninterrupted reflections before the end of the semester.
This week I began reading a book I’d heard about for years: Lewis Hyde’s The Gift. Now out in a 25th Anniversary Edition, it reminded me once again of how often I feel belated about reading. But shouldn’t we all feel that way? We can never catch up, and a book—new or old, and especially one recommended or passed on by someone else—is a gift of the highest order.
This book explores the meaning of gifts—and particularly the significance of the work of art as a “gift” that comes from someone who is “gifted.” But it also asks, in a consumer culture where art is bought and owned: what happens when a “gift” becomes a commodity? And Hyde prefaces these questions about art and artists by reviewing the classic work of anthropologists Marcel Mauss, Claude Levi-Strauss and Marshall Sahlins and by developing his own theory of gift exchange.
The Gift provoked me to think about the particular kind of “gift exchange” that we in higher education are engaged in. In many ways, our work is the work of gift-giving, passing along what we received from others—and seeing where it goes. As I reflect on what really happens in this endeavor, I feel compelled to quote Ira Gershwin: “Nice work if you can get it.”
So why should we look at our work in this context? At the end of his introduction, Lewis Hyde says:
I believe that, at Stonehill, we are—at our best—such a community, and that we exchange gifts of knowledge, talent, creativity, imagination, and self. Obviously, students pay for a college education, and faculty members and other college professionals are paid for their work. But when an individual, a department, or a college goes beyond the minimum expectations of that market transaction—when we share our knowledge, talent, creativity, imagination, and self more generously than strictly “required”—we set a gift in motion.
In our classes, our office hours, our casual meetings with students, the co-curricular events we plan and participate in, our collegial relationships, and more, we create a form of exchange that transcends commodification. And if we think about it, that gift transforms students (and each of us) beyond our expectations. The extra time and effort we put into students is freely given back in the time and treasure they share with the college as alumni—and in the expertise and personal values that they share well beyond the gates of the college (but to the College’s credit) in the wider world.
Indeed, the gift exchange involved in education illustrates Hyde’s point that gifts cannot stand still: they have a kind of momentum that requires that they be handed on to a new party. He tells the story of an Englishman who is delighted when he smokes a pipe with a native American and is then given the ornate pipe as a gift. While the gift still adorns his mantel, another tribal leader arrives at his home, and it becomes clear that the Englishman is expected to share a smoke with him and then give away the pipe. The Englishman’s confusion produces the western notion of an “Indian giver”—but the deeper truth in the story is that a gift is meant to be consumed. It has to keep moving. If the pipe becomes a commodity—owned by the Englishman, made a “collectible”—it loses it property as a gift. In Hyde’s words: “a gift is consumed when it moves from one hand to another with no assurance of anything in return. There is little difference, therefore, between its consumption and its movement.”
Hyde gives many other examples, such as the Kula gift exchange in the South Sea Islands, where custom dictates an elaborate gift circle in which it takes ten years to cycle any one gift through the islands. This is not precisely a reciprocal arrangement—people give to one person and receive from another. But Hyde points out the core of the social code: “To possess is to give. . . . A man who owns a thing is naturally expected to share it, to distribute it, to be its trustee and dispenser.”
And this sounds a lot to me like teaching and the activities that accompany it. Teaching consumes the teacher. At the end of the day, one is “spent.” We plan events, extend ourselves to prepare and make everything work in order to “give” an experience to our students and colleagues. And in a profound way, when we are consumed by our work, we are satisfied. Hyde notes that this “seems at first to be a paradox of gift exchange: when the gift is used, it is not used up. Quite the opposite, in fact: the gift that is not used will be lost, while the one that is passed along remains abundant.” Back to the chorus: nice work if you can get it.
So as I look back over a number of weeks during which I did not write a Friday Note, I want to thank you all for the teaching and advising you have engaged in so far—and for the co-curricular work you have championed: Focus the Nation, the Be the Change Series, the Social Justice and Public Policy Research Series, the Independent Film Series, and the first visit from a Woodrow Wilson Fellow—to name just a few. And as I look forward, I hope that you can all find that the same “nice work” that sometimes seems simply to consume you is what also nourishes you.
Best regards,
Katie
This week I began reading a book I’d heard about for years: Lewis Hyde’s The Gift. Now out in a 25th Anniversary Edition, it reminded me once again of how often I feel belated about reading. But shouldn’t we all feel that way? We can never catch up, and a book—new or old, and especially one recommended or passed on by someone else—is a gift of the highest order.
This book explores the meaning of gifts—and particularly the significance of the work of art as a “gift” that comes from someone who is “gifted.” But it also asks, in a consumer culture where art is bought and owned: what happens when a “gift” becomes a commodity? And Hyde prefaces these questions about art and artists by reviewing the classic work of anthropologists Marcel Mauss, Claude Levi-Strauss and Marshall Sahlins and by developing his own theory of gift exchange.
The Gift provoked me to think about the particular kind of “gift exchange” that we in higher education are engaged in. In many ways, our work is the work of gift-giving, passing along what we received from others—and seeing where it goes. As I reflect on what really happens in this endeavor, I feel compelled to quote Ira Gershwin: “Nice work if you can get it.”
So why should we look at our work in this context? At the end of his introduction, Lewis Hyde says:
The primary work on gift exchange has been done in anthropology not, it seems to me, because gifts are a primitive or aboriginal form of property—they aren’t—but because gift exchange tends to be an economy of small groups, of extended families, small villages, close-knit communities, brotherhoods and, of course, tribes.
I believe that, at Stonehill, we are—at our best—such a community, and that we exchange gifts of knowledge, talent, creativity, imagination, and self. Obviously, students pay for a college education, and faculty members and other college professionals are paid for their work. But when an individual, a department, or a college goes beyond the minimum expectations of that market transaction—when we share our knowledge, talent, creativity, imagination, and self more generously than strictly “required”—we set a gift in motion.
In our classes, our office hours, our casual meetings with students, the co-curricular events we plan and participate in, our collegial relationships, and more, we create a form of exchange that transcends commodification. And if we think about it, that gift transforms students (and each of us) beyond our expectations. The extra time and effort we put into students is freely given back in the time and treasure they share with the college as alumni—and in the expertise and personal values that they share well beyond the gates of the college (but to the College’s credit) in the wider world.
Indeed, the gift exchange involved in education illustrates Hyde’s point that gifts cannot stand still: they have a kind of momentum that requires that they be handed on to a new party. He tells the story of an Englishman who is delighted when he smokes a pipe with a native American and is then given the ornate pipe as a gift. While the gift still adorns his mantel, another tribal leader arrives at his home, and it becomes clear that the Englishman is expected to share a smoke with him and then give away the pipe. The Englishman’s confusion produces the western notion of an “Indian giver”—but the deeper truth in the story is that a gift is meant to be consumed. It has to keep moving. If the pipe becomes a commodity—owned by the Englishman, made a “collectible”—it loses it property as a gift. In Hyde’s words: “a gift is consumed when it moves from one hand to another with no assurance of anything in return. There is little difference, therefore, between its consumption and its movement.”
Hyde gives many other examples, such as the Kula gift exchange in the South Sea Islands, where custom dictates an elaborate gift circle in which it takes ten years to cycle any one gift through the islands. This is not precisely a reciprocal arrangement—people give to one person and receive from another. But Hyde points out the core of the social code: “To possess is to give. . . . A man who owns a thing is naturally expected to share it, to distribute it, to be its trustee and dispenser.”
And this sounds a lot to me like teaching and the activities that accompany it. Teaching consumes the teacher. At the end of the day, one is “spent.” We plan events, extend ourselves to prepare and make everything work in order to “give” an experience to our students and colleagues. And in a profound way, when we are consumed by our work, we are satisfied. Hyde notes that this “seems at first to be a paradox of gift exchange: when the gift is used, it is not used up. Quite the opposite, in fact: the gift that is not used will be lost, while the one that is passed along remains abundant.” Back to the chorus: nice work if you can get it.
So as I look back over a number of weeks during which I did not write a Friday Note, I want to thank you all for the teaching and advising you have engaged in so far—and for the co-curricular work you have championed: Focus the Nation, the Be the Change Series, the Social Justice and Public Policy Research Series, the Independent Film Series, and the first visit from a Woodrow Wilson Fellow—to name just a few. And as I look forward, I hope that you can all find that the same “nice work” that sometimes seems simply to consume you is what also nourishes you.
Best regards,
Katie
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Friday, January 25, 2008--"If you build it"
My blog post is late—and will be short!—and although I am dating it “Friday, January 25th,” it celebrates something that was not, in fact, formalized until Sunday. But nothing in the past week was more important!
The Stonehill College Board of Trustees took extra time to meet this January, and they did so “on retreat” in Marco Island, Florida. Many strategic future directions for the College were discussed and established, but I will leave it to the President to share that important information. I want to reflect on the incredible group of faculty members whose tenure and/or promotion cases were so unanimously affirmed by the Trustees. So why does this remind me of the phrase that echoes through Ray Kinsella’s mind in W.P. Kinsella’s novel Shoeless Joe (popularized as the feature film Field of Dreams)?
“If you build it, they will come.”
At least three aspects of building a culture struck me as I considered this year’s candidates for tenure and promotion. First—the sheer size of the group. We have been building the faculty over the last eight years, and this year saw eight faculty members move from Assistant to Associate Professor and four from Associate to Full. I know what pride the departments who nurtured these faculty members must feel about their accomplishments and about the kinds of institutional citizenship they represent. Ultimately, the Trustees sent the message that twelve faculty members received a further commitment from the college—and we all know that such a commitment energizes us to continue working toward an even more robust culture of teaching, learning, and scholarly excellence.
This particular group also reminded me of some interesting ways in which the support systems have changed at Stonehill—especially as they pertain to scholarly attainment. Whereas many colleges are setting higher bars for tenure and promotion only to see faculty members fall short, Stonehill is encouraging both junior and mid-level faculty toward the next stages in their careers. One faculty member promoted to Professor in this year’s group wrote me a note saying, “My research could not have been accomplished fifteen years ago when faculty were encouraged to conduct research with little support (financially or through time allotment).” And I think it’s not just the financial resources that have made a difference. You have made a difference to each other: building collaborative research projects, inviting each other to participate on research teams, co-authoring articles, applying for grants with multiple investigators, respecting the expertise that your colleagues can bring to the table.
Finally, I think we have worked together to build a process that treats people fairly, allows for some flexibility in the tenure timeline, offers a previously unimaginable level of transparency, and makes the work of everyone—but especially the Rank and Tenure Committee—much easier. (And let’s tip our hats to the Rank and Tenure Committee, whose hard work resulted in beautifully crafted letters of support for their colleagues.) This process truly works for the faculty.
You have built it, and people will continue to come. As we dream new dreams for the future, the faculty we supported this year will become the foundation for the next expansion in Stonehill’s remarkable saga.
Best regards,
Katie
The Stonehill College Board of Trustees took extra time to meet this January, and they did so “on retreat” in Marco Island, Florida. Many strategic future directions for the College were discussed and established, but I will leave it to the President to share that important information. I want to reflect on the incredible group of faculty members whose tenure and/or promotion cases were so unanimously affirmed by the Trustees. So why does this remind me of the phrase that echoes through Ray Kinsella’s mind in W.P. Kinsella’s novel Shoeless Joe (popularized as the feature film Field of Dreams)?
“If you build it, they will come.”
At least three aspects of building a culture struck me as I considered this year’s candidates for tenure and promotion. First—the sheer size of the group. We have been building the faculty over the last eight years, and this year saw eight faculty members move from Assistant to Associate Professor and four from Associate to Full. I know what pride the departments who nurtured these faculty members must feel about their accomplishments and about the kinds of institutional citizenship they represent. Ultimately, the Trustees sent the message that twelve faculty members received a further commitment from the college—and we all know that such a commitment energizes us to continue working toward an even more robust culture of teaching, learning, and scholarly excellence.
This particular group also reminded me of some interesting ways in which the support systems have changed at Stonehill—especially as they pertain to scholarly attainment. Whereas many colleges are setting higher bars for tenure and promotion only to see faculty members fall short, Stonehill is encouraging both junior and mid-level faculty toward the next stages in their careers. One faculty member promoted to Professor in this year’s group wrote me a note saying, “My research could not have been accomplished fifteen years ago when faculty were encouraged to conduct research with little support (financially or through time allotment).” And I think it’s not just the financial resources that have made a difference. You have made a difference to each other: building collaborative research projects, inviting each other to participate on research teams, co-authoring articles, applying for grants with multiple investigators, respecting the expertise that your colleagues can bring to the table.
Finally, I think we have worked together to build a process that treats people fairly, allows for some flexibility in the tenure timeline, offers a previously unimaginable level of transparency, and makes the work of everyone—but especially the Rank and Tenure Committee—much easier. (And let’s tip our hats to the Rank and Tenure Committee, whose hard work resulted in beautifully crafted letters of support for their colleagues.) This process truly works for the faculty.
You have built it, and people will continue to come. As we dream new dreams for the future, the faculty we supported this year will become the foundation for the next expansion in Stonehill’s remarkable saga.
Best regards,
Katie
Monday, January 21, 2008
Friday, January 18, 2008--Getting Centered
Welcome back! I hope the holiday season brought some rest—and some anticipation of the semester ahead. Those of you who know me well may be aware that I love new year’s resolutions—my husband likes to say: “The new you—again?” So when I write this week about “getting centered,” I’m thinking about how the cycles of the year let us resolve—again—to focus our energies on the things we care most about. But I’m also thinking about one particular new Center on campus that can help you to do that with respect to your teaching.
Like the best new year’s resolutions. I’m looking both backward and forward: back to the great start the Center for Teaching and Learning enjoyed last semester and forward to a number of new initiatives the Center will launch in the Spring semester. Back to a long history of Stonehill College faculty innovation in teaching—and forward to a new cycle of imagining what works in the classroom. I began the academic year on a similar note when I suggested, at Convocation, that:
Part of what we faculty all relish at the table of inquiry is the opportunity to be both teachers and learners—to taste and see new ideas, new practices, new ways of knowing. In the 20th year of the teaching award and the 60th year of great teaching at the College, we recognize that even teachers are continual learners as we formally establish a Center for Teaching and Learning and launch its exciting array of programs. We will continue to be taught by our students and by each other.
If you haven’t yet been into the Center, which is located in Duffy 114, I urge you to head over, to talk with the Director, Stacy Grooters, and to check out some of the resources and programs she has put together for faculty. If you aren’t quite sure what’s there for you, you can spend some time in the Center’s Faculty Reading Room or on the web at www.stonehill.edu/ctl. But let me take a few minutes to highlight some of the undertakings of the Center last semester and to preview what’s to come.
The Center has two major goals: to support individual faculty members in meeting their pedagogical objectives and to build a community of collaboration around teaching and the scholarship of teaching and learning. Last semester, Stacy continued the work begun under the auspices of the Davis Grant, and she also realized a number of new ideas. For instance, the Teaching and Learning Strategies Seminar continued, as did the New Faculty Lunches, which took as their focus topics such as “Student Collaboration,” “Formative Self-Assessment,” and “Increasing Student Engagement.”
In addition to these activities, there are many new developments in the CTL. Individual consultations are at the heart of what the Center can offer. Last semester, Stacy observed classes, gathered student feedback through small group interviews, collected written student feedback, and provided other consultation. Some of this feedback was designed to help a professor understand how a course was working and to brainstorm further strategies for success; some was used to assist a department with evaluating capstone courses. In all cases, the “consultation” focused on identifying the practices that best support goals that the instructor (or department) has identified for the class.
The CTL has funding that can assist faculty members with any number of goals related to teaching and learning. Indeed, in the first semester, over $4,000 was awarded in grants. Some of this funding assisted faculty to attend conferences such as the NERCOMP “digital storytelling” workshop, the American Educational Research Association conference, or the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages conference. Funding also had a direct influence on the faculty-student work in departments—through mechanisms such as a class newsletter or a literary magazine.
Happily, the Center also showed a predilection for celebrating all this good work! The Holiday Open House had about 35 people in attendance, and they raised a glass to the opening of the Faculty Reading Room. “The Wine, Cheese, and . . . Syllabi” event, planned for last Monday, was derailed by the snowstorm, but it will appear later in the calendar.
As if all this were not enough, Stacy came up with more creative opportunities for the Spring semester. Some of you have already agreed to be part of a Teaching Square, a group of four professors who observe each other’s classes--not to give feedback for improvement but to evaluate what they learned about their own teaching from the observations and subsequent reflections. Others among you may have signed up for one of the Pedagogy Reading Groups on either “Creating Significant Learning Experiences” or “Creating Social Justice Pedagogies.”
The schedule for faculty-led Teaching Roundtables also looks very exiting. Twelve faculty members and several guest speakers have worked with Stacy to create a rich Spring Semester of Faculty Roundtables on topics such as “Inclusive Strategies for the Diverse Classroom” (Monique Myers & guest Marcella Runell), “Working with TAs” (John Lanci & Alessandro Massarotti), “Community-Based Learning” (Patricia Leavy, Joe Favazza, & Nuala Boyle), “Communicating with Students” (Allyson Sheckler & Mary Joan Leith), “ Responding to Student Writing” (Scott Cohen & Marilena Hall), “Setting the Stage: Establishing Course Expectations” (Keri Iyall Smith & Erica Tucker), and “Teaching Portfolios and the Tenure File” (Craig Almeida & Stacy Grooters).
As I said at the outset, the success of the Center will be its resolution to look both forward and back. Many of the kinds of conversation the Center promotes have been happening at Stonehill since its opening days. But as the infrastructure and the faculty have grown, we are all spread out across campus. Good ideas—like the CTL—create a kind of centripetal force: they pull people's energies to a central location and give a focus to good work that might otherwise not be shared. We are often looking for new resources to aid our work, but the Center shows so many ways in which we can be resources to each other.
So, try out whatever fits: come to lunch, be part of a square, participate in a round table. It’s a new year, and we can all get centered.
Best regards,
Katie
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