#interview 6

“... I don’t think that there’s any nature that exists on UK’s campus, truly, because even the trees and the plants we’ve put there are very man devised, but that’s the closest thing to nature that we have, trees around buildings and a couple squares of land around the arboretum...”

Anonymous, Saint Rose Professor

I’ve been here for 16 years, and when I first joined the faculty, we used to use the phrase “Saint Rose family” a lot to describe our community, and it truly felt like that. The relationships that we built weren’t just professional relationships. They were relationships that sustained the individual in every way—personal, spiritual, intellectual, on every level. That’s what made this campus very special. I got to know my students, I got to know other faculty. I remember coming in as a junior faculty and being mentored by senior faculty and introduced and welcomed into the campus life, and included on committees, and got to know the institution. Very quickly, I learned how important it was to be of service to the institution. I learned by watching other faculty members just how much effort and time it takes to build a really good academic program. It’s not just about designing it on paper but you have to execute and implement and refine and constantly improve on how you deliver the curriculum to the students. Then there’s the mentoring the students outside of the classroom. So Saint Rose has made a great deal of difference to me, not only in terms of my professional growth, but the way I have evolved as a person has been enriched by Saint Rose. I have to say that I feel I’m different because I’m here, and that I am also a contributing factor to the Saint Rose Difference. And, up until now, that’s been a very good thing.

I feel that the whole body of the faculty is being treated in a rather patronizing manner. We’re just viewed as people who deliver whatever curriculum they think is popular at the moment. I was at one meeting where I heard one of our senior administrators say it may be necessary to reinvent the college every ten years. I sat there thinking to myself, it takes years to build a successful academic program. What faculty member is going to want to give years of their life to get a successful academic program in place, just to hear from some senior administrator “Oh, that’s no longer popular now”? “We’re going to let you go now because the new fad is this…” And there goes your life’s work. Because someone is following market trends. This is not to say that there should never be change at institutions of higher education, but the way things change should be a process that has everyone equally situated at the table, having a discussion about what needs to change, in what ways does it need to change, and how can those changes be implemented in a humane fashion? I was just heartbroken to come back this year and listen to our president tell us how successfully the deficit had been cut from $18 million dollars down to $9 million and that things are looking better, and then just a couple of hours later, the provost was sent around to announce to the faculty that there were going to be faculty reductions and people would be informed a couple of weeks before Christmas. I found that unnerving and hurtful and just not in keeping with the Saint Rose tradition of how to treat people. Even though administration has said that they have consulted with faculty, the truth according to the deans is that they have looked at data all summer long on how to execute these faculty firings, and they took months to review the data and come up with different scenarios, and the president was only going to give the faculty four weeks to request, examine data, and have four one-hour meetings with her. Four hours of discussion about people’s lives. I am at a loss of words to say how you reduce someone’s life’s work down to four one-hour discussions for people who have given years to build and create experiences that our students value. It’s a very tough time. The current approach to decision making is not in keeping with the traditions that we have on this campus or with a system of shared governance, and we have a shared governance document that we claim we adhere to, but we really do not.

For one thing, for any decision that affects the curriculum and academic policy, there needs to be an understanding that it’s the faculty who have expertise in academic areas. Therefore anything involved in academic policy has got to be approved by the faculty. When you see administration doing things like waiting until the faculty has gone away for the summer to call an emergency meeting to push through a new transfer credit policy—simply because the board of trustees wants it done—so there is no opportunity for discussions about the academic merit of that policy, intentionally not bringing that policy up for a vote while school was in session so there wasn’t an opportunity for a vote while everybody was here, that type of stuff really erodes trust. It looks as if we’re really a campus that is run by the board of trustees, and not by the professors. There’s a real disconnect because students come here and they don’t get credits based on their interactions with the board of trustees. They get credits based on the work they do under their professors. However, the policy is now being driven by this outside body, who is so removed from the student experience that it’s not even funny. We live in a strange world. The people who work closest to the students are the lowest paid. And yet, they do the work that makes us an academic institution. And that’s what I feel like we’re losing. Our mission as an academic institution is fading. We’re much more concerned with our economic mission. I understand that colleges have to maintain fiscal stability. I truly understand that, but when the market begins driving academic decisions, I think we’re headed down a very slippery slope.

I can describe it this way. One day, I was walking across campus, and I saw one of my colleagues who was visibly in pain. And I just went over, I put my arms around her, and she just cried. I don’t think I could say much more than that. It’s devastating.

I think that the heart and passion that I have always had, but developed so much more, for young people entering into adulthood, that caring to see young people become all that they can be, realize their full potential, to see them really embrace their world and set goals for themselves, and find their voice, and think deeply about what matters to them, and become agents of change, that is a gift I got from Saint Rose. If I was at some large research institution with several hundred students in a class, I wouldn’t get that kind of interpersonal interaction that validates you as a professor. You just don’t get that kind of interpersonal exchange that is not just about the academic knowledge that you or your students bring to the classroom, but how that academic knowledge manifests itself in your heart, as a person, and how that shapes how you connect with other people. That’s true education to me. That’s liberal education to me. That’s the difference between just going somewhere and getting a degree, and being liberally educated. A person with a liberal education, they have been touched and changed by their knowledge, and they have the desire to touch and change others. That legacy was what made Saint Rose Saint Rose, and being here just really gave me a sense of community, empowerment, identity, a sense that what I did matters. Running into students years after they graduated in Price Chopper or Home Depot and having them say “I remember when…” and they would go back five years in time and talk about some moment in class or some moment in my office, and over and over again they would validate why I became a professor. One of my students, who I hadn’t seen in nine years, just sent me an email from North Carolina, “Professor, I don’t know if you remember me,” and of course I remembered him, “I just got the highest teaching award in my state. I just wanted to let you know I’m so glad you pushed me. Don’t change what you’re doing.” If I was at some large school, I would have never developed those kinds of relationships. Because I have that kind of connection with my students, it strengthens me as a professor and as a person, which then leads to greater excellence in the classroom. My students shape me as much as I shape them. It’s places like Saint Rose where that becomes possible. We’re living in a world where we see what happens to a society when you have a lot of people going around that have no sense of purpose, that don’t feel connected to anything, that feel alienated. We don’t need more of that, and we don’t need institutions that produce more of that. We need places where people come and they feel validated and they feel connected, and they feel they matter, and that they are a priority. That’s what we did well at this institution. I don’t think that we need to resort to gimmicks in order to sell what we have at Saint Rose, because frankly I think a lot of young people are looking for a community like that. Maybe what we need is a better marketing approach to what we already have, as opposed to having someone come in and just redesign as if our legacy doesn’t matter. If I had to find one thing disturbing about this moment in time, it’s not just a feeling as a faculty member that we don’t matter, but hearing people say “we’re going to refound the institution”—the Sisters of Saint Joseph were the founders of this institution. We walk in that tradition. We value and embrace that tradition. We’re not kicking that tradition to the curb. To have someone who just got here come in and say we’re just going to re-do the institution—it’s almost like saying what we have done for the past 100 years can easily be reshaped, revamped, and it’s dismissive of not just my life, but many lives that have gone into making this institution what it is.

Any time I can learn from my students. And any time I hear my students talking about hitting new levels in anything. That’s my favorite moment. Yesterday, in class, I gave my students a syllabus and I asked them to break up into small groups to review the syllabus, and to make recommendations on how I can improve my course. My students gave me a list of more  than twenty recommendations, the overwhelming majority of which were absolutely excellent. And they did not remove any of the work, because they want a challenging education. But they told me how to refine what I’m doing, and they stepped up to the plate because I made it clear that I respect their wisdom. That I can’t do what I do without them also making a deposit in me. I think that’s my favorite memory, of me sitting back and saying to my students, “Okay, now you teach.” Then watch them do it, students who 15 weeks ago were too shy to raise their hands in class, now sitting there helping to design a syllabus, having been here one semester. I think that’s awesome. And it says something about the incredible young people that we have here that really are the lifeblood of this institution.