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| Students | Staffing | Curriculum | Scholarship | Assessment |
| Contributions | Reconfguration | Problems | Ahead|

OUR department is winding up the second millennium in fine fashion, with excellent teaching, productive research and scholarship, and strong service to the Skidmore community. This year we revised our courses, published books and articles, served in faculty governance, joined in workshops, enhanced the Skidmore community with a variety of events, and further infiltrated the administration. We reaccredited our social work program. We carried out personnel reviews. We introduced assessment procedures and slouched towards reconfiguration. Most importantly, we welcomed four new colleagues into our department and a baby into the world. We have done all this with amicability and goodwill intact.

Students

Our students did us proud again this year. The Anthropology-Sociology Club continued as an active organization sponsoring panels and informational meetings. The Club's get-together in which students who have studied abroad meet with students planning to do so has become an annual event. The Club also hosted a fall semester dinner with faculty and a spring term potluck in honor of three Pueblo Indian women visiting Skidmore.

Meanwhile, social work students revived the Student Social Work Association. The SSWA sponsored a series of events, including a speaker about graduate school and lobbying in Albany on behalf of welfare clients. Social Work students again led the way with their activities in Benef-Action and other service to the larger community.

Four sociology majors--Shuk Yin Lee, Lani Radack, Juliet Scarpa, and Allison Washburn--were elected to Phi Beta Kappa. Department majors were elected to the Periclean Society; Alpha Kappa Delta, the sociology honor society, inducted fifteen new members (joining six continuing members). Department faculty recognized outstanding student achievement with departmental prizes. Shuk Yin Lee received the Stonequist Award in Sociology, Lani Radack the Rautenberg Award in Sociology, Daryl Somma the Gallagher Prize in Anthropology, and Abigail Trow the Betten and Betten Award in Social Work. Sociology major Lani Radack, with a joint major in Women's Studies, also received the E. Beverly Field Women's Studies Award.

Eleven students in Catherine Berheide's Senior Seminar in Sociology presented papers at the annual meetings of the Eastern Sociological Association–the third consecutive year of such participation. Invited by Michael Ennis-McMillan, anthropology students attended the annual meetings of the Northeastern Anthropological Association as well as a Russell Sage College's Philosophy Forum on Rigoberta Menchú's' controversial writing. Five anthropology majors presented projects at the inaugural Academic Festival in April and two anthropology majors joined with faculty in the Senior-week Consilience Symposium.

This summer several faculty are working with students on College-supported projects. David Karp and Ryan Fairly, '01, have a collaborative research grant to study Vermont reparative boards. Supported by AT&T Learning Network grants this summer, Catherine Berheide and Juliet Scarpa, '99, are teaming up to prepare exercises for SO 225/Quantifying Women, while Carla Sofka and Brian Kelley, '00, are developing an interactive web page for SW 333/Social Work Practice.

We are indeed proud of our students and their many accomplishments.

Staffing

We were joined this year by four new colleagues: David Karp in sociology; Michael Ennis-McMillan and Renee Walker in anthropology; and Carla Sofka in social work. Our new colleagues added to our curricula and invigorated our department.

These newcomers were made possible in part by our department's colonization of sizable chunks of administrative territory. Renee Walker replaced Susan Bender, who is again Associate Dean of the Faculty after serving a spring-semester hitch as Acting Dean of the Faculty. Carla Sofka is filling in for Thomas "Pat" Oles, interim Dean of Student Affairs.

Once again this year we were helped out by adjunct faculty. Stephen Darman, a PhD candidate at SUNY-Albany, taught a section SO 101/Sociological Perspectives last fall and Michelle Napierski-Prancl taught three sociology courses for us in the spring semester.

Although not formally associated with our department, Fran Hoffmann is in many ways one of us–she is a sociologist, after all, and she once chaired our department. We were delighted, then, that Fran Hoffmann returned to Skidmore's administration even if for but a year. Fran worked with us on recruitment and department members turned to Fran for advice, especially regarding assessment. With Pat Oles, Fran also convened the "Culture Club" to launch a study of student cultures. Susan Walzer is joining in this exciting project with a new course, Studying Student Worlds, next fall.

We conducted a positive third-year review of Susan Walzer and welcome her continuation at the College. We carried out a positive second-year review of Rory McVeigh and "officially" notified the Dean of the Faculty that we regard Rory as a candidate for a second three-year appointment. This spring we conducted first-year reviews of our four newbies, David Karp, Michael Ennis-McMillan, Renee Walker, and Carla Sofka.

Two colleagues will be on leave next year: Kate Berheide for the full year and Susan Walzer in the spring semester. They will be replaced by Michelle Napierski-Prancl and Joanne Reger, each joining us for the entire academic year. With her PhD from SUNY-Albany, Michelle is a Skidmore veteran, having taught with us fulltime this past spring. Jo has her PhD from Ohio State University and will bring special expertise in gender and social movements.

In early February Mary Ann Fitzgerald retired after 18 years of service at the College, the last few years as our department secretary. Sightings of Mary Ann since February find her immersed in local history and thoroughly enjoying her retirement. Mary Ann has a grant from the New York State Council on the Arts to fund an oral history project and exhibit on Saratoga's West Side. The exhibit will open at the Saratoga Historical Society Museum in early September.

We are fortunate indeed that Colleen Bodane joined us in January as department secretary. Colleen quickly put her special stamp on our department, not the least by her quiet competence and generosity. Colleen's selfless spirit was exemplified early on by her raising funds for Kosovar relief efforts by Doctors Without Borders.

Looking ahead to this coming fall, John Brueggemann will stand for tenure and our department will review Rory McVeigh for reappointment. We will also carry out second-year reviews of Michael Ennis-McMillan, David Karp, Carla Sofka, and Renee Walker. This coming year our department will review its personnel procedures with special attention to assuring consistency of department polices and practices with those of the College.

We also look ahead to some leaves in 2000-20001. Jackie Azzarto and Peg Tacardon are scheduled for sabbatical leaves and, assuming reappointment, Rory McVeigh plans a pretenure leave. This coming year we will need to recruit sabbatical replacements to cover these colleagues’ absences the following year.

Curriculum Development and Teaching Activities

Last December the Council on Social Work Education reaccredited Skidmore's social work program. Ta-da! Reaccreditation ("reaffirmation" in CSWE lingo) came after a lengthy and detailed self-study of the program led by Jacqueline Azzarto and an on-site visit by CSWE representatives last November. Supported throughout by the College and her social work colleagues, Jackie’s hard work paid off. We were relieved (although not surprised) by CSWE's reaccreditation. We were especially pleased that reaccreditation was for a full eight-years cycle and raised only a few, relatively minor issues easily addressed. We know Skidmore's social work program is an excellent one and were delighted by CSWE's recognition of the program's quality. Very few selective liberal arts college's have CSWE-accredited social work programs.

Our three programs' curricula have never stood still. This year was no exception. We introduced new courses and substantially revised old ones. Indeed, with newcomers on board, we probably did more curricular development than ever before. (We also introduced assessment procedures and moved toward reconfiguration, but more on those matters later.)

Susan Walzer taught SO 304/Sociology of Emotions for the first time. Rory McVeigh introduced an Honors section of SO 101/Sociological Perspectives in the inaugural semester of the Honors Forum. Rory also taught SO 321/American Social Change and SO 328/Social Movements and Collective Action for the first time. David Karp introduced LS 2/Society and Social Responsibility, an offering with a significant service-learning component. Michael Ennis-McMillan introduced courses on Latin American Indians and Medical Anthropology and significantly revised Ecological Anthropology to meet the policy cluster requirements of the Environmental Studies program.

Bill Fox made extensive use of PowerPoint in SO 226/Social Research: Analysis for the first time. Gerry Erchak introduced student oral presentations into his AN 366/Seminar in Anthropology. Renee Walker continued Susan Bender's practice of incorporating pedagogical software in AN 105/Introduction to Archaeology and integrated web resources into several courses. Michael Ennis-McMillan arranged for David Stoll to meet with students and faculty to discuss his controversial critique of Rigoberta Menchú's work. Peg Tacardon converted her Prisons in America from LS II to LS 2 and in the process changed approaches to the course.

As noted above, Catherine Berheide and Juliet Scarpa, '99, are preparing exercises for SO 225/Quantifying Woman, and Carla Sofka and Brian Kelley, '00, are developing an interactive web page for SW 333/Social Work Practice–all this by supported AT&T Learning Network grants. Meanwhile, supported by a summer Technological Innovation Grant, Bill Fox is further integrating PowerPoint into and developing a web site for his SO 226/Social Research: Analysis course.

Professional and Scholarly Activities

Department members published several books this year. Temple University Press published Susan Walzer's Thinking About the Baby: Gender and Transitions into Parenthood. David Karp and Todd Clear's The Community Justice Ideal was published by Westview. David also edited Community Justice: An Emerging Field, published by Rowman and Littlefield. Gerry Erchak saw his Anthropology of Self and Behavior issued in a new paperback edition.

John Brueggemann co-authored articles offering a sociological approach to labor history in Work and Occupations and forthcoming in the Radical Review of Political Economics. David Karp published articles on community justice in the National Institute of Justice Journal, the Journal of Community Psychology, Correctional Management Quarterly, Crime & Delinquency, and The Responsive Community. That's quite a run(!), but David also managed to publish his Deviance course syllabus in a collection of syllabi issued by the American Sociological Association and write the selection on values theory and research in Edgar Borgatta's Encyclopedia of Sociology. Rory McVeigh published articles on power devaluation and the rise of the KKK in Social Forces and, switching gears, expansion of two-year colleges in the Community College Journal of Research and Practice. Jill Sweet published an article on Pueblo ritual dance in the 1920s in Performance de Santa Fe. Renee Walker has two papers based on her Dust Cave work in press. Michael Ennis-McMillan is awaiting publication of a chapter in a book dealing with the privatization of water management in Mexico. Carla Sofka published three pieces on death and dying, including an article in the Journal of Personal and Interpersonal Loss. An earlier work of Carla's was reprinted in a new edited work on dealing with grief. Carla also maintained the "News and Notes" section of Death Studies.

Department members published book reviews too. John Brueggemann reviewed Ronald Glassman's Middle Class and Democracy in Socio-Historical Perspective in Contemporary Sociology. Rory McVeigh offered a critique of Bert Klandermans' Social Psychology of Protest in Social Forces. Gerry Erchak reviewed David Lancy's Playing on the Mother-Ground in the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute.

We spread the gospel, or at least our versions of same. David Karp lectured on community justice at Rutgers. Susan Walzer was an invited speaker at both a SUNY-Albany Sociologists for Women in Society meeting and the Skidmore Women's Studies annual dinner. Michael Ennis-McMillan spoke on culture and public health issues at SUNY-Albany. Gerry Erchak lectured (and surely expressed an opinion or two) on "Consilience and Postmodernism" at SUNY-Albany. Gerry also gave Skidmore's Anthropology-Sociology Club food for thought discussing "The Importance of Eating Meat." Carla Sofka taught a death and dying course at Washington University and guest lectured at SUNY-Albany.

Department colleagues reviewed manuscripts for the American Sociological Review, Social Forces, Journal of Family Issues, Qualitative Sociology, Mobilization, Contemporary Justice Review, Teaching Sociology, and Journal of Contemporary Ethnography as well as Waveland Press and the American Sociological Association's Committee on Teaching.

John Brueggemann gave a paper on sources of interracial unionism at the American Sociological Association meetings. David Karp delivered papers on community justice at meetings of the Justice Studies Association and American Society of Criminology. Rory McVeigh gave papers on various aspects of social movements at annual meetings of the American Sociological Association, the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, and the Eastern Sociological Society. Susan Walzer discussed her research with Pat Oles at the American Sociological Association meetings. Michael Ennis-McMillan organized a session and presented a paper on the politics of water in Mexico at the meetings of the American Anthropological Association. Michael also chaired a session on gender at the Northeast Anthropology Association meetings. Renee Walker delivered papers based on her Dust Cave research at the Southeastern Archaeological Conference and meetings of the International Council for Archaeozoology and Society for American Archaeology. Jacqueline Azzarto chaired a session of student papers at the annual meetings of the Council on Social Work Education. Carla Sofka gave papers on thanatology and grief counseling at the annual meetings of the Association for Death Education and Counseling and a workshop of the New York State Crime Victims Board.

Kate Berheide serves on the American Sociological Association's Executive Council, an important elected position rarely held by a faculty member from a liberal arts college. John Brueggemann chairs the ASA’s Teaching Committee, a delicate assignment as the ASA’s organizational structure evolves.

David Karp received a National Institute of Justice grant to write a summary of the current state of knowledge about the criminal justice system. Susan Walzer has been accepted as a visiting scholar at Radcliffe College's Murray Research Center during her pretenure leave next spring.

Contributions to the Skidmore and Saratoga Communities

Department members participated actively across the committee system. Consider:

And we contributed to the College in numerous other ways too. Kate Berheide took on a new role for the year: Coordinator of the Women's Studies Program. John Brueggemann participated in ongoing discussions of religious pluralism on campus. Rory McVeigh spoke to new faculty about transition from graduate school to Skidmore. Rory also joined in a panel discussion of racial diversity at Skidmore. David Karp took part in the Honor Code discussion group. David also advised the Drug Awareness Theme House in Scribner Village. Carla Sofka participated in Diversity Committee meetings.

Sociologists, anthropologists, and social work faculty also contribute significantly to both the University Without Walls and the Masters of Arts in Liberal Studies. With Peg Tacardon leading the way, department faculty worked this year with over two dozen UWW students and over a dozen MALS students.

Faculty generously contribute their academic expertise and skills to the larger community. David Karp conducted training for the Ballston Spa Youth Court and for Vermont reparative boards. Renee Walker enjoyed being shadowed–job shadowed, that is–by two Ballston Spa Middle School students. Jackie Azzarto served as Board President of the Saratoga Economic Opportunity Council and advocated on behalf of welfare clients with the State Comptroller's Office. Peg Tacardon was a board member of Pathways to Independence providing resources for female ex-offenders. Peg also presented workshops for about 500 inmates at the Hale Creek Correctional Facility Alcohol and Substance Abuse Programs. As consultant to the NYS Correctional Services' Bureau of Substance Abuse Services, Peg developed an in-depth curriculum guide to train educators working in the state's prisons. The guide is currently used by over 1,000 educators. Carla Sofka coordinated a Hospice Foundation teleconference. Carla also assisted with the campus vigil in remembrance of the Littleton High School tragedy. Gerry Erchak ran as fast as he could with the Skidmore team in this year's Chase Corporate Challenge.

Many department members–Bill Fox, John Brueggemann, Rory McVeigh, David Karp, Michael Ennis-McMillan, Renee Walker–were interviewed by the press on topics ranging from to the Littleton tragedy to presidential impeachment to student folklore.

Three contributions to the College by anthropologists merit special notice:

	Renee Walker arranged a major lecture by paleoanthropologist Meave Leakey.
	Jill Sweet brought three Pueblo Indian women to campus for several days to enrichanthropology, social work, and education classes and meet informally with students.
	Gerald Erchak proposed and coordinated a Senior-week symposium to discuss ideas in Edward O. Wilson's controversial new book Consilience.

 

 

 

 

Each of these contributions required much time, work, and coordination, and each was highly successful. Skidmore students and faculty are in debt to our anthropology colleagues for arranging these stimulating events.

Assessment

This year each of the three programs in our department introduced assessment procedures based on its mission and statement of goals. These procedures included, within each program, exit interviews along with questionnaires administered to graduating Seniors. Questionnaires were developed by Michael Ennis-McMillan, Susan Walzer, and Jacqueline Azzarto. These instruments and sessions not only provided information, but also stimulated discussion of program goals, ways in which goals may best be achieved, and the program's relation to the larger Skidmore curriculum and community. We think, too, that exit interviews provoked Skidmore students to reflect again, one last time before graduation, on their Skidmore experience.

The social work program, of course, underwent special scrutiny this year as part of the reaccreditation process by the Council on Social Work Education. CSWE itself identified aspects of the program that it believes should be corrected or improved (none serious or difficult to handle, thank goodness). The social work program has a Student Program Evaluation Committee in place to work with the Director and faculty in ongoing assessment of the program.

David Karp devised a special questionnaire to assess the service-learning component of his LS 2/Society and Social Responsibility course and the extent to which the course developed three "core abilities"–valuation, social interaction, and citizenship. David's assessment instrument may well serve as a model for others.

We will refine assessment procedures during the coming year. In particular, we need to be more inclusive in gathering information from Seniors. We need, too, to extend our assessment to include information from alumnae. We will explore inclusion of items pertaining to our majors into surveys carried out by the Office of Institutional Research. The Office of Institutional Research may also be able to help us out with transcript analyses.

We have agreed, as a department, to take a good look at our department's teaching and course evaluation form (the so-called "long form") this coming year. The current form is essentially open-ended, offering no more than some very general guidelines for students evaluating a course. We will review our form this coming year, perhaps in parallel with the collegewide faculty's review to the so-called "Dean's card."

Reconfiguration

Each of our department's three programs worked hard on reconfiguration this year. These efforts were at times complicated, even hindered, by uncertainty about collegewide policies governing reconfiguration. So, for example, we worked enthusiastically on curricula reconfigured with all 4-credit-hour courses only to have such plans rejected by the administration. A model with all 4-credit-hour courses had faculty members each teach nine courses over two years even as they maintained 36-credit-hour teaching loads over this period. We thought–in fact, we still think–such reconfiguration is both workable and desirable, and we regret the lack of dialogue seeking solutions to problems (e.g., offering enough courses) associated with this approach. Likewise, we regret lack of serious discussion of a course-unit rather than credit-hour system.

But we moved ahead despite and beyond such frustrations. The anthropology program, a little further along than sociology or social work, may submit its initial reconfiguration plan (a general model sans detailed course descriptions) for administrative review this summer. Sociology and social work will follow along with their plans in the fall. We anticipate that each of these reconfiguration plans will easily meet current administrative stipulations (e.g., number of hours required for major, continuing contributions to interdisciplinary programs).

 

Special Problems

Our department and its component programs have a couple of issues and concerns beside assessment and reconfiguration:

Enrollment Pressures. Despite a staffing increase in anthropology a couple years ago, enrollment pressures continue, especially for AN 101/Introduction to Cultural Anthropology. A backlog of students wanting AN 101, including wannabe majors, continues. To handle this demand, we are introducing, on a trial basis next fall, an open-ended section of AN 101 (to be taught by Gerry Erchak). We will carefully assess this approach to the course in a variety of ways, including questionnaires and tracing afterward of students who have taken the course.

We also face enrollment pressures in sociology, especially in required methods, theory, and senior seminar courses. We are coping (but only coping) with the problem by carefully tracking majors to plan offerings and adding course sections (at the expense of electives) when required to deliver the sociology major. The problem will become intractable if the number of sociology majors grows much beyond its current 24 or so per class, and there are signs that majors will indeed increase. We will continue to monitor this enrollment problem closely.

Space Problems. Last year's annual recalled that:

We have complained about the lack of comfortable space for student and faculty interaction–call it a lounge–since before we moved into the Learning Center. A College that prides itself on interaction and discourse needs to provide areas for getting together other than classrooms. For the most part, Skidmore doesn't. Granted, classroom space is tight. Still, the lounge problem needs addressed. We hope that the retrofitting of Starbuck Center will free up space for classrooms elsewhere, which in turn will free up TLC classroom space for conversion into a lounge to allow students and faculty to get together more informally than classrooms permit.

Nothing has changed. The problem of space for student and faculty interaction continues.

Looking Back and Looking Ahead

With good planning and good luck over the years, we have developed into a department central to Skidmore College. We teach well, have active research agendas, and contribute mightily and responsibly to the Skidmore community. We also work well together as a department and within our three programs. Department faculty play extensive and active roles in faculty governance. We are interdisciplinary by inclination and intellectual orientation, and so we contribute generously and gladly to Liberal Studies and other interdisciplinary programs. Our department is central to Women's Studies, with Kate Berheide serving as program coordinator this past year and other department members contributing courses to the program. Rory McVeigh and Michael Ennis-McMillan already link us to the new Honors Forum. Our newest colleagues strengthen other links–Michael Ennis-McMillan to Environmental Studies and International Affairs and David Karp to Environmental Studies and Law and Society. Department colleagues–Susan Bender and Pat Oles–have taken on important roles in the administration.

Yes, we are feeling good about ourselves individually and collectively. But not complacent. Building on our strengths, we will continue to improve our programs. Specific items already on our agenda for next year are reconfiguration, refinement of assessment procedures, review of department personnel procedures, personnel reviews of untenured faculty, and (as always) recruitment of sabbatical replacements. We expect another good year.

Colleagues of the Department of Sociology,
   Anthropology, and Social Work
Second Floor
Tisch Learning Center
June 1999

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Created June 1999; Modified June 2000