Name of group: Academic Technologies
Number of Contributors: 4
Submitter Name: Beth Du Pont
Submitter Email: bdupont@skidmore.edu
How does your group view the College today?
We view the college as a whole as a leader in higher education, the arts, and study abroad experiences in the capital region. The College has a dedicated interest in sustainability and furthering these efforts into the future, and a very substantial and enhanced infrastructure. Skidmore’s marketing slogan of “Creative thought matters” has served us well, and students seem to relate to it. Looking around campus at the multitude of projects and interests of our students really shows that our students are living that theme.
The College student demographic consists mainly of traditional students of affluence, however, we agreed that over the years we have seen a noticeable increase in diversity on campus. Our student population is smart and talented, which is a reflection of Admissions’ hard work in selecting each incoming class. In some cases, our new students are expecting more engagement from faculty in the classroom and less time lecturing. They have been exposed to new technologies in their high school career and look for similar experiences at Skidmore.
From our viewpoint as Instructional Technologists, we recognize that the College is at a crossroads for major curricular opportunities to connect with modern technologies and new approaches to keep liberal arts current and relevant. We have a well-seasoned faculty whom in many cases are most comfortable with traditional approaches. This makes it challenging to capture their attention and demonstrate new efficiencies and engaging ways to connect and share information with students. On the other hand, we do see a growing number of newer faculty who embrace the new instructional technologies, and arrive at Skidmore expecting these resources to be available.
Students are coming to the College with some technology skills, but not necessarily the ones they need when going out to seek employment or pursue graduate study. The current curriculum has very few places where students can learn technology fluency and skills, and there is no focused way of providing these opportunities beyond the curriculum.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 1:
crossroads, evolving, mindful
How does your group view the external world?
We view the external world unanimously as a place for opportunity. It is rapidly changing and increasingly complex, contributing to an extraordinary time for learning. Information is everywhere, and it takes little effort to find it. The challenges that come along with that are making sure that we and our students are well educated consumers of the vast amount of information available, and that we have strategies for filtering the constant flow of it. Many liken it to drinking out of a fire hose. We are exposed every day to this influx of information some of it welcome, some not, some of it helpful, much of it misleading, inaccurate and at times potentially damaging. Discerning truth from falsehood and the ability to do so quickly is critical.
The Internet has impacted the world by making it much smaller, more global and interconnected. It can be a very safe and a very scary place. The best way to prepare our students is to teach them how to navigate the digital world safely and empower them to continue learning on their own for the rest of their lives.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 2:
complex, changing, opportunity
How does your group describe the College you would like to see us become by 2025?
We believe that by twelve years from now, the College needs to be prepared for the flexibility in curriculum that future students are going to need. Student interests seem to overlap increasingly within the wide variety of academic programs Skidmore offers, and they develop some fascinating and exciting ideas and works. Students in the future will need to know how to adapt to rapidly changing environments and will need a broad array of tools in their belt. To provide this, the College needs to preserve the strong liberal arts tradition, yet be nimble and open to change. The college needs to find creative ways to preserve the value of face-to-face learning in small classes.
We would like to see more collaboration from all parts of the College. We are an institution with many silos. These silos keep us from exploring our common areas and looking at where we overlap more creatively. There are a number of thriving businesses in the Saratoga region that Skidmore students could have mutually beneficial collaborations with. These collaborations provide hands on experience while strengthening community relationships. Faculty would be involved with collaborative work with their colleagues from other institutions, where students can benefit virtually from these professional relationships. Skidmore staff as well could benefit from more cross-departmental collaboration.
The college would be actively involved in using online resources in a multitude of ways both in the classroom and for faculty research and publication. By 2025, we would have fewer questions and more participation in Open Access and modes of online learning. These would be viewed as additional resources in the liberal arts environment that would be engrained in how students learn. This acceptance of learning from a variety of venues will assist students in leaving the College equipped to be life long learners. Within twelve years, we hope to be educating the next innovators, entrepreneurs, and well-grounded, broad thinkers, just as we are today, but prepared with, in some cases, a broader set of tools.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 3:
adaptive, collaborative, open
Name of group: Active Minds
Number of Contributors: 15
Submitter Name: Elizabeth Estey
Submitter Email: eestey@skidmore.edu
How does your group view the College today?
Skidmore College has a wonderful community feel. There are issues with the lack of services offered. The Counseling Center is too small to accommodate the needs of all the Skidmore students who need it. For us, the college seems to be putting money into things like the computer screen of donors in the dining hall and other fairly trivial things. We feel that the Counseling Center offers services necessary to the well being of the students and it currently appears that electronics are given higher priority than the students.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 1:
Unmet needs, Perception, Money
How does your group view the external world?
We see the world struggling. There are good people but right now the power is in the hands of those who abuse it. Many social issues that were once in the forefront have been tossed aside and presented as "solved". Sadly, racism, sexism and many other issues are being ignored while the need for them has actually increased. We hope to leave Skidmore and make real progress in the world.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 2:
Change, Injustice, Inequality
How does your group describe the College you would like to see us become by 2025?
Ideally, the college will have divested all of its money from coal and oil companies. Given that an environmentally-conscious college is actually paying the companies who destroy the environment, this hypocrisy should end soon. Hopefully before 2025. We would also like to see clear signs that the college is making the students' well-being a priority. This would be most apparent in the expansion of the Counseling Center and the renovation of the some the dorms with mice living in them.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 3:
Divestment, Resources, Living
Name of group: Alumni Association Board of Directors
Number of Contributors: 5
Submitter Name: Mike Sposili (On behalf of the Alumni Board)
Submitter Email: msposili@skidmore.edu
How does your group view the College today?
Members of the Alumni Association Board of Directors view Skidmore with great pride and enthusiasm. In fact, several commented that they experience a sense of renewed pride each time they return to campus and they believe that the College seems to be on a solid footing under the leadership of Phil and Marie Glotzbach. Several used the words “thriving” and “exciting” to describe the current state of affairs at the College. Members of the Board described Skidmore as a dynamic, visionary, creative and highly focused and purposeful place where students are challenged academically and responsible citizenship is encouraged. Others commented about the great interdisciplinary nature and the many social groups that students can belong to. Simultaneously, members of the Board observed that this makes it very hard to foster a cohesive alumni body with a singular vision of support for the College.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 1:
Thriving, Exciting, Forward-Looking
How does your group view the external world?
Members of the Alumni Board characterized the world as complicated and a place that, as of late, lacks meaningful and truthful dialogue about key issues. Too much emphasis has been placed on communicating information that’s not critical to key decision making. Several citied the world as increasingly digitized and heavily messaged noting that they are inundated by emails, junk emails, and junk snail mail and Facebook posts. As a result of this, members of the Board expressed concern that we (as a society) are too focused on what’s immediately before us and not mindful enough of the importance of strategic planning as a road map to achieving long-term goals. Others observed that the external world is devaluing liberal arts education for an apparent lack of "practical" skills. Members of the Board noted the increasingly global nature of the world in which we live, citing countries such as China and India which are highly focused on education and technological advancement. As a result, this creates an external world which is highly dynamic and one which requires creativity, resourcefulness, and determination.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 2:
dynamic, challenging, resourcefullness
How does your group describe the College you would like to see us become by 2025?
Members of the Alumni Board see Skidmore becoming more diverse and representative of a changing population. They believe the College needs to continue to innovate and look ahead. Maintaining the balance of the “mind and hand” was viewed as one of Skidmore’s hallmarks and something that should be maintained and further celebrated. Skidmore could be that rare place that examines the world from multiple perspectives and shares its findings with larger domestic and international audiences in academia, politics, religion, and business. It is unique place where one can find a marriage of intellectual perspective and real-world, practical solutions. Maintaining Skidmore’s relatively small size will require utilizing limited resources extremely well and with great focus. Members of the Board believe the renewed emphasis on the sciences is a great start that will attract the curious students that Skidmore and the greater world will need. Academic study will undoubtedly be redefined with continued emphasis on technology, and new forms of collaboration, teaching and student output.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 3:
practical, resources, continuity
Name of group: Anthropology Department
Number of Contributors: 5
Submitter Name: Michael Ennis-McMillan
Submitter Email: mennis@skidmore.edu
How does your group view the College today?
Anthropology is the social scientific study of the human condition across time and space. We seek to bridge the sciences and humanities with applications to contemporary social problems and issues. We appreciate the ongoing support for a vibrant anthropology program within a liberal arts context. From our perspective, however, Skidmore’s expensive, elitist, and conventional liberal arts undergraduate education creates barriers for realize anthropology’s potential to contribute to transformative educational experiences. The College also seems to be unsure of its identity as a liberal arts college adjusting to contemporary circumstances. The current curriculum emphasizes the development of intellectual skills using a mixture of traditional academic disciplines along with opportunities for pre-professional subjects. Anthropological knowledge infuses the curriculum with social science foundational knowledge and cross-cultural perspectives. We also contribute to interdisciplinary programs, including American Studies, Asian Studies, Environmental Studies, Gender Studies, International Studies, and Latin American Studies. As our program grows and we see opportunities to contribute to emerging programs (such as public health and media and film studies), we feel constrained in some respects. Skidmore’s faculty promote interdisciplinary perspectives to foster creative, critical thinking and a broad, general knowledge base. Yet, most attempts to foster interdisciplinary perspectives do not necessarily engage social problems and issues that will occupy students’ lives after graduation. For example, we find too many instances where discussion about cultural differences emphasize the need for “other” cultures to assimilate to dominate Western mode of thought. Furthermore, the current residential living-learning experience continues to emphasize a US-centric perspective that maintains barriers, borders, and boundaries between US citizens and people from other countries – on and off campus. The curriculum promotes a view of other cultures as less developed and needing assistance or “help” from educated US citizens. Students learn about African peoples as recipients of “charity” and “service learning” as if the cultural differences need to be corrected. In many respects, the prevailing framework has a colonial approach that runs counter to effort to diversity faculty and students, many of whom come from outside of the US (or are children of immigrant parents). Some recent faculty discussions about the curriculum have privileged proponents of conventional liberal arts approaches that actively oppose incorporating global perspectives with a social-justice, problem-oriented, practical perspectives to understanding and addressing social and cultural problems. Anthropology faculty remain baffled about the negative attitude from some quarters that suggest that applied perspectives on globalization and discussions about career development have no place in a traditional liberal arts curriculum. Strategic planning discussions will need to increase awareness of the tension between maintaining a traditional view of liberal arts with an emerging contemporary view of being an intercultural global citizen seeking social justice. We also need to develop own vision of a liberal arts education rather than looking to aspirant colleges that uphold a traditional model (with all its baggage of parochial thinking, colonial models, championing the life of the mind at the expense of the life of the hand, etc.).
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 1:
Expensive, Conventional, US-centric
How does your group view the external world?
The external world values knowledge that has a practical application, and we believe the perspectives from all areas of anthropology (cultural anthropology, biological anthropology, archaeology, and linguistics) offer intellectual and practical knowledge. The broader public beyond the college demands that college-educated citizens understand and address pressing social and cultural issues across the globe. The interconnected globalized work is characterized by growing social inequality, racism and ethnic conflict, human rights abuses, global climate change, natural disasters, health disparities, military conflict, and peace movements. In addition to conventional knowledge about cultural differences, our students need to develop interdisciplinary perspectives on these issues. And they need to use new modes of communication – written, visual, and aural – to develop pragmatic initiatives that improve life experiences and life chances across the globe. Many communities and countries are developing effective ways to address social inequality, and our students may not be prepared to engage this aspect of diversity. The contemporary world demands participants to be broad thinkers that can engage differences and cross borders, that recognizes colonial thinking, and that sees the globalization processes in the US. Students will encounter people from different backgrounds in other places outside the college (in study abroad, internships, field research), and they need the skills to navigate that social complexity.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 2:
Social inequality, Globalization, Pragmatic
How does your group describe the College you would like to see us become by 2025?
Anthropologists study human diversity (in the past and present) and we seek to engage students with cultural difference using a variety of tools from science, social science, humanities, and the arts. Based on this broad perspective, we believe Skidmore should develop its own version of a liberal arts experience that fits our mission and potential. A contemporary anthropology program will thrive in an institutional context that promotes and rewards academic experiences that incorporate critical global perspectives, applied experiences, and intellectual and practical skills for students to address pressing social problems and issues. A Skidmore education will build on conventional disciplinary perspectives but also allow students to gain intercultural communication skills to create solutions to pressing social problems and issues. Interdisciplinary perspectives, for example, should allow students to be leaders in preventing violence and promoting peace. Students need to think across disciplines but also must learn to work across disciplines and work with people from different disciplines and life experiences. Anthropology has become a discipline that expects students to use their studies to understand and address a variety of issues: climate change, racism, natural disasters, human rights abuses, health disparities. When students graduate from Skidmore in 2025, we would want them to be leaders in ending human rights abuses, reversing climate change, and reducing health inequalities. They will be better prepared to be leaders if they integrate solid intellectual and communication skills with a sense of the need to promote social justice. We welcome the opportunity to bring anthropologists who specialize in corporate ethnography, non-government organizations, education, and non-profit associations. These are fruitful areas of inquiry as well as bridges to real-world careers that engage with 9/11 and hurricane Katrina type disasters. We seek support from the college to expand the anthropology program so that it has comparable resources as conventional areas of study on campus (including most of the other social science disciplines that have nearly double the faculty). By 2025, we would like to see the College support a larger anthropology program to provide study and training to all students so that they have the cultural competence and sense of social justice to apply knowledge, skills and tools to work with people, study the past, and shape the future. As a College, we should be bolder and take risks on creating a liberal arts experience that truly allows students to apply their broad knowledge to the pressing problems of the 21st century. Our students need to abandon the colonial approach to “helping” or “correcting” people from different cultural backgrounds and seek to create new collaborative approaches in communities, museums, laboratories, and institutions. By 2025, students should no longer seek to promote assimilation but instead value difference and engage with diversity in terms culture, class, and social practices. By 2025, our academic programs should create interdisciplinary experience not just for the sake of being interdisciplinary (or to follow traditional liberal arts curricula) but to address specific subjects that affect citizens across the globe.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 3:
Application, Value difference, Social justice
Name of group: Asian Cultural Awareness Club (ACA)
Number of Contributors: 11
Submitter Name: Yoon Young Sim
Submitter Email: ysim@skidmore.edu
How does your group view the College today?
We view the College today as segregated. Even though that there have been efforts in order to reduce the segregation, such as from the current strategic plan to increase intercultural and global understanding, we see that there is not enough support, especially from the administrative level to foster diversity on campus, which will ultimately decrease the segregation. For example, the current Discovery Tour gives a false representation of the school to prospective students by dividing students of color with others even before coming to Skidmore. While Skidmore College has tried to increase the number of students of color in the name of increasing diversity, we see that there is a lack of care and support after the students of color actually enter Skidmore. We believe that creating a safe space on campus for these students are even more important than merely increasing the ratio of students of color. As a club, which our vision is to develop familiarity, understanding, and appreciation of Asian cultures and identities, we see the lack of support from the campus. While we believe that such issue is extremely important on this campus, we want to see more collaborative and interdisciplinary efforts. We see that only the same clubs and departments ask or agree with collaborating with us upon these issues. While the Office of Student Diversity Programs is the main support system for ACA, there is not much focus or representation of OSDP from the administrative level. Moreover, there is a lack of spaces for students, such as meeting spaces or lounge areas. Even though the college has been emphasizing in building a collaborative community on campus, we believe that such goal will not be reached with the current lack of facilities on campus for students.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 1:
segregation, misrepresentation, unsupportive
How does your group view the external world?
ACA views that Skidmore is like a bubble from the external world. While we feel that there is an adequate number of resources on campus to prepare students for post-graduation, we sense the lack of transparency of such resources. As we mentioned, there is a lack of safe space for students of color on campus. This lack of safe space extends to the external world. In order to solve this issue, there needs to be more initiatives that have greater integration among students, faculty, and the administration and between the college campus and the external world.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 2:
distant, unsafe, hidden
How does your group describe the College you would like to see us become by 2025?
ACA eboard members would ideally like Skidmore to have demographics similar to that of NYC. This includes a more diverse array of student, faculty and staff (yep, can't forget them) in terms of socioeconomic status, race, major and academic interests, upbringing, political thought, and more. This will allow Skidmore members to interact with and learn from various perspectives, rather than the complaint that we hear of the common lack of diversity in Skidmore's group thinking (how everyone feels the same way about topics). Skidmore members will also be more nationally and globally aware to topics and issues within the Skidmore community if we have a population like this. Skidmore is also a bubble itself, so we would like to see it branch out and work effectively and consistently with other colleges and neighboring communities. Moreover, we would like to see a change in the physical environment. There is a high demand of more spaces for students to study and lounge so that ideas can be exchanged and so that students do not feel the need to always stay in the residential rooms.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 3:
open-minded, supporitve, integrated
Name of group: Athletic Council
Number of Contributors: 9
Submitter Name: Gail Cummings-Danson
Submitter Email: gcumming@skidmore.edu
How does your group view the College today?
The Impact of Athletics at Skidmore College
Intercollegiate athletics has undergone many changes over time and its value has long been a topic of conversation on many college campuses. The ever evolving dialogue has come as a result of reform movements in education and intercollegiate athletics programs. Maintaining academic excellence is the core value of all institutions; however, at Skidmore, it is also a vital ingredient to maintaining a successful athletic department.
This brief white paper, which is written in consultation with members of Athletic Council, intends to describe the current status of the Athletic Department and provide key concerns that need to be addressed in the strategic planning process at Skidmore College for the ten-year period ending 2025.
The Value of Athletics for All
Skidmore students benefit from athletics in a multitude of ways. As identified in the department mission statement, the Skidmore College Department of Athletics, Fitness and Recreation is committed to pursuing excellence both academically and athletically, and subscribes to the NCAA Division III philosophy and the concept of the student-athlete. The Department seeks to be a unifying force for the College’s diverse population by providing opportunities to maximize academic, athletic and life-skill potential through core values such as teamwork, leadership, discipline, lifelong fitness and service to others.
The Department provides athletic programs that are comprehensive and varied, with opportunities for all students, faculty and staff. It offers the following:
• A vigorous intercollegiate sports program that strives for excellence and is committed to sportsmanship and fair play.
• A Physical Activity Course program that promotes good health, physical fitness and life-time activities.
• An intramural program that encourages students of varied abilities and skills to participate in a wide range of recreational athletic activities.
• A fitness program that encourages participation, builds community and promotes life-long fitness through a variety of class offerings.
• Facilities that are maintained and available for Skidmore community members to take part in independent or group physical activities.
There are many reasons why athletics, in all forms, are important to a college campus.
• At the most basic level, physical activity enhances mental acuity and general wellness.
• Those who engage in physical activity learn the importance of building habits that will serve them well in all facets of life including setting goals and working to achieve them.
• Sports develop team-building skills that are transferable skills for any setting.
• Sports teach students how to be coachable (i.e., take direction without being insecure) and prepare them to be strong mentors.
• Sports teach resiliency and the ability to confront adversity. Learning how to accept success and failure with dignity is vital.
• Through athletics, students deepen their relationships with each other and with their coaches. As our alumni report, many of their most memorable and positive experiences were as members of an athletic team.
• Athletics foster a sense of campus spirit that can rally students, faculty, staff and alumni around a common goal.
• Participation in athletics at any level will enhance the lives of students and as such, contribute to the overall mission of the College.
Intercollegiate Athletics at Skidmore
Skidmore has celebrated a rich tradition in a small number of sports for a couple of decades (specifically, riding, women’s tennis and golf). Our more recent success across all sports has come as a result of an increased emphasis on the importance of athletics, and an increased awareness of how a strong athletic program can complement the overall mission of the College. Allowing ourselves to revel in the athletic accomplishments of our students, while expecting that teams and individuals will achieve high standards in the classroom and on the field of play, has transformed the way the College is viewed by both internal and external communities.
Over the past decade, the Athletic Department has distinguished itself as a force to be reckoned with by winning two National Championships in riding, qualifying for the NCAA Championship 47 times in all other sports and winning 32 league championships. Equally impressive are the results in the classroom with 881 student-athletes having earned Thoroughbred Society honors by attaining a 3.67 or higher GPA over the past 14 semesters since the society’s inception. This new level of excellence confirms the belief and commitment that success in academics and athletics can and should go hand in hand.
Expanding our Commitment
As the College begins to think about the future and looks to focus on the next strategic plan, there are several areas that will require attention if we are to compete for students with our peer and aspirant institutions. As many studies have shown, having quality athletic facilities does impact the decision that students make regarding their academic future. Not surprisingly, there are significant athletic facility concerns at Skidmore and quite simply, we are struggling to keep pace with even our peer institutions. If we are to maintain the high caliber of student-athlete we are currently engaging, and maintain our relative attractiveness to all prospective students, certain deficiencies in our current athletic facilities will need to be addressed. Although there are several areas of high concern, the immediate needs are the cardio/weight rooms and locker room space.
In addition, although the College has made substantial strides in the area of financial aid over the last decade, it is important to not lose sight of the relatively advantaged position held by our peer and aspirant institutions. Simply put, our coaches find it increasingly difficult to recruit against merit aid. As the financial circumstances of many of our families have changed over the past decade, the availability of merit aid has become a determining factor when deciding on a college. Many of our athletic peer and aspirant institutions currently offer merit aid.
The College has become more and more self-conscious about the need to cultivate a strong, vibrant sense of community. The Athletic program is extraordinarily well-suited to attain this important goal. A strong, increasingly visible athletics program has the ability to unify students, faculty and staff and to assist the campus in its mission to diversify our community. Bonding together at an athletic event can diminish gender, social and racial differences. Improving school spirit will not only provide an important audience for our teams to play for but will also re-direct our campus focus towards celebrating our similarities in choosing green, white and gold.
Although it is important to acknowledge and celebrate our successes and how far we have come, we must continue to find a way to compete and excel. We are excited by the many contributions that a vibrant and broadly inclusive athletics program can make to the achievement of our institutional goals.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 1:
NA, NA, NA
How does your group view the external world?
Department of Athletics, Fitness, and Recreation
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 2:
NA, NA, NA
How does your group describe the College you would like to see us become by 2025?
Department of Athletics, Fitness, and Recreation
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 3:
NA, NA, NA
Name of group: Black Faculty Staff Group
Number of Contributors: 7
Submitter Name: Rochelle Calhoun
Submitter Email: rcalhoun@skidmore.edu
How does your group view the College today?
Skidmore seems to be in a holding pattern with respect to its diversity efforts and initiatives. Major achievements in hiring administrators, faculty, and staff were undone by a climate unreceptive to difference in many forms including organization structure, leadership, and communication styles and functional conflict around issues of diversity and identity. As a result, retention has been a persistent institutional issue resulting in what should be considered a decline in representation of people of color in the faculty and staff populations. Underlying the tension is the need for Skidmore College to focus on domestic diversity as a short-and long-term goal. Many key stakeholders in the Skidmore community demonstrate a wish to maintain a very broad definition of diversity without recognition that such a general approach can render domestic persons of color invisible; particularly under some of the models proposed by some experts.
Thus, Skidmore’s efforts are somewhat compromised. It must be recognized that each diversity achievement still plays out in a context of visible and invisible resistance across faculty, staff, and students. Today, Skidmore stands in a position where radical and disruptive change is possible and necessary. Perhaps, the BFSG and its strategic partners (CIGU; IGR Program; Director of Intercultural Studies; OP) can be given a prominent position in the next Strategic Plan in order to insure progression rather than regression on these important issues.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 1:
Non-committal, Uncertain, Compromised with Respect to Diversity
How does your group view the external world?
Is the thrill gone? We recall the excitement, energy and optimism associated with Barack Obama’s rise to the Presidency. What positive outcomes have resulted from his election? What diversity goals and outcomes have been achieved here at Skidmore since President Obama has resided in the White House. The world, especially Black and Brown America, is still waiting for “Change”. Is President Obama to blame? – Of course, not! The system that pervades the United States pervades Skidmore as well. How does Skidmore disrupt itself in the context of diversity and identity? It displaces fear and places in prominence these sensitive and controversial issues and says to its stakeholders, diversity is important!
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 2:
Anticipating, Disillusioned, Resilient
How does your group describe the College you would like to see us become by 2025?
We look forward to a Skidmore campus on which Black and Brown persons feel and experience “home” (i.e., safe, welcomed, whole and appreciated). A Skidmore campus where we are valued for our scholarship, knowledge, skills and abilities rather than consistently having our competence and worth questioned. A Skidmore College that speaks to diversity and identity issues from a position of strength and accomplishment rather than from a position of regret.
Specific Action Steps:
- Invest in hiring racially/culturally diverse faculty and staff especially focusing on domestic diversity as we have a special obligation to these important stakeholders.
- Offer a revised curriculum with significant emphasis on diversity and identity issues/concerns across the all-college requirements and department/program majors/minors. Also, add a second course to the Cultural Diversity Requirement.
- Support and allow more opportunities for all employees of color to take part in training, conferences, and programming that will facilitate increased productivity and self-efficacy.
- Maintain current opportunities for all employees to connect with colleagues: community breakfasts, coffee hours, etc.
- Create community volunteer and service opportunities targeting underserved communities and populations for all stakeholders to take part in.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 3:
Multi-Culturally Literate, Responsive, Home
Name of group: Business Services Dept.
Number of Contributors: 9
Submitter Name: Christine Kaczmarek
Submitter Email: ckaczmar@skidmore.edu
How does your group view the College today?
>Overall good place to work- generally competitive salary and benefits
>Strong admission trends- currently
>Good reputation as a quality institution
>Heavily tuition dependent
>The College often appears to work in silos rather than as an integrated whole- contributing to a feeling of a lack of community
>The College feels divided and reactive
>Policies and associated consequences appear to be administered inconsistently and often appear to be influenced by other factors (perhaps not communicated effectively)and unrelated to the facts at hand.
> Many employees do not feel that their contributions are valued- impacting morale negatively
> There often appears to be a lack of discipline in decision making- decision making is often slow or non responsive, and non-strategic
Residential educational model may be unsustainable
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 1:
Divided, Unsustainable, Non-Strategic
How does your group view the external world?
>Rapidly changing Higher Ed landscape- the middle class is being squeezed out
>Increasing and substantial pressure on Cost and Value
>Consumers are looking for accountability for high investment
>Partnerships with industry heavily entering the conversation
>Skidmore should be evaluating its product(s)in a critical and honest way to ensure its value and relevancy in today's and tomorrow's world
>The rapidly changing world will require nimble and flexible decision making- something that Skidmore currently does not do easily
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 2:
Cost/Value Pressure, Relevance, nimble/flexible decisions
How does your group describe the College you would like to see us become by 2025?
>Innovative and flexible
>Decreased dependency on tuition through diversification of resources
>Strong, in demand admissions profile
>Highly regarded as a quality academic institution whose graduates are actively sought after in the marketplace
>Nimble, flexible and strategic decision making that fosters and rewards creativity and risk taking
>A strong, diverse community united by a common set of core values, ethics and goals
>A respectful workplace that honors and respects all voices and contributions
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 3:
Innovative, Nimble, Respectful
Name of group: Cabaret Troupe
Number of Contributors: 12
Submitter Name: Nicolas Graver
Submitter Email: ngraver@skidmore.edu
How does your group view the College today?
We find Skidmore to be an excellent collaborative environment where people can come together and form ideas and bring those ideas to life. Skidmore's academic programs and buildings are well supported by the administration, and the SGA does a good job of supporting student clubs financially. However, we see a disconnect between these two forces; clubs feel disconnected and unsupported by academic departments and by the administration, and as such there is only a limited degree to which financial support from SGA can be utilized effectively.
For example, we cannot create for ourselves the performance spaces we need to put on high quality performances; Filene auditorium's renovation reconverted it away from being a performance space and into being a lecture hall, a disastrous failure of communication and a failure to recognize the importance of Skidmore's clubs as central to our community and learning opportunities. The services that the auditorium now provides as a lecture hall are far eclipsed by the educational possibilities of a real performance space that is designated for club use.
Skidmore's clubs provide, as a whole, an incredibly productive learning community. By managing the process of making theater from start to finish, members of our club learn vital skills of directing and management by working in an entirely student-run setting. It is incredibly powerful for students to be in charge of programs such as these because they provide real world experience in budgeting, management, advertising, and a host of other areas. In our experience, it is frequent to see students voluntarily pour a great deal of energy and innovation into student clubs, and for many students club activities are actually the focus of their time spent at Skidmore. By not facilitating support and advising from academic departments and adequate storage and performance spaces for clubs, the administration and faculty are not utilizing an educational resource of tremendous power and energy.
Another important case of student initiatives being unsupported by the administration is sustainability. While the administration engages in sustainable initiatives independent of student efforts, there is little to no support for student initiatives which have the power to dramatically reduce waste and cost effectively approach carbon neutrality. SGA has recently converted to solely compostable plates, napkins, and utensils; however, until there is a program for composting these materials, our efforts are entirely in vain. Much like the disconnect between departments and performing clubs, these two forces work in competition while they are separate, but have the opportunity to work together and accomplish a great deal.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 1:
communication, advising, ownership
How does your group view the external world?
We see institutions across America uniting to form basic standards for sustainability in terms of the ACU President's Climate Commitment, divestment from the fossil fuel industry, and the LEED Certification process for new buildings, all of which initiatives Skidmore has categorically refused to partake in. This is increasingly becoming an embarrassment to our community, both in communication with other colleges and on tours. We see other colleges with comprehensive waste management stratagems that encourage recycling and composting, whereas these programs are operating at embarrassingly low capacity at Skidmore because of little administrative interest in involving students in sustainable practices.
Few institutions provide as much direct financial support to clubs as Skidmore does, which makes our community close knit, free of Greek Life, and dominated by clubs. However, we also note that financial support is not all that is needed; as long as we feel opposition and disinterest from the administration and as long as academic departments see us as hostile competition, we will not be able to operate as successfully as do clubs at other institutions.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 2:
unity, cooperation, sustainability
How does your group describe the College you would like to see us become by 2025?
Skidmore should take immediate action to make sure that clubs feel supported both by academic departments and the administration. This means hosting events that are intended to facilitate conversations about the role of clubs in our community, and encouraging faculty to support clubs wherever possible, instead of the general status quo, which includes faculty who actively discourage students from becoming involved in club affairs. Clubs should be asked for input at every level of decision making processes such as lecturers brought to campus, building renovations, and sustainable planning initiatives. The President and Dean of Student Affairs should take time out of their schedules to regularly meet with groups of clubs, such as performing groups, diversity groups, and academic clubs.
Filene auditorium should be made a priority for immediate renovation for student use; in order to meet the immediate needs of clubs, we need a new stage set apart from the seats, a sound and lighting booth, a regular maintenance budget, and proper handicapped accessibility. This renovation also has the opportunity to meet club storage needs; clubs are desperate for adequate storage space for large materials such as set pieces, costumes, and sporting equipment. The campus needs to keep its buildings up to date with the kind of activities and energy present on campus; this means fewer large lecture halls, more small classrooms, and more rehearsal and performance spaces.
Lastly, the President should immediately sign the ACU President's Climate Commitment and the administration should take an active involvement in sustainable initiatives created and decided upon by students. By 2025, there should be dramatic reductions in food waste, paper waste, and plastic waste, but the campus should also have moved to recycling 100% of available materials and composting 100% of our wasted food. By that time, we should be entirely divested from fossil fuels, the majority of our buildings should be LEED certified, and we should have made dramatic reductions in our carbon footprint, with a goal of carbon neutrality by 2030.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 3:
club space, dialogue, sustainability
Name of group: Career Dev. Center
Number of Contributors: 6
Submitter Name: Shannon Rodriguez
Submitter Email: srodrigu@skidmore.edu
How does your group view the College today?
Since our focus is on career development, the expense of the College impacts service expectations from students and parents which may or may not be realistic given students voluntary participation in career development programming and career counseling. Faculty's voluntary inclusion of career development varies in curriculum, which leads to either strong allies or student populations that aren't being equally served.
While we value ambition and appreciate the progressive environment of the College, there are challenges associated with change and growth. There needs to be realism and practicality tied to the ambition. For example, we could better meet demand to expand Career Jam and the Graduate School Expo if we had a conference center that was strategically placed. The existing spaces are at maximum capacity.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 1:
Expensive, Ambitious, Progressive
How does your group view the external world?
The economic uncertainty is well known and impacts students, alumni, and employees of the College. There is often a discrepancy between our professional standards/mission and the expectations of stakeholders. This requires either compromise (sometimes appropriately uncomfortable and other times inappropriately uncomfortable) or excessive energy to educate. On the supportive side, we have thousands of alumni, parents, and friends of the College who support our programs and services through volunteering time, expertise, or financial support.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 2:
Uncertainty, Discrepancy, Supportive
How does your group describe the College you would like to see us become by 2025?
As we move towards an integrated and inclusive learning community, we are in need of more space, in particular, conference, office, and studio facilities. In addition, internally we need large, flexible spaces for institutional programming such as Grad Expo and Career Jam.
We would like to see a dedicated endowment line for alumni to be able to donate funds for career development needs - especially funded internships, support for applying to graduate school including test taking and application fees, and interview attire. In order to provide equal access to opportunities, we need additional funds.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 3:
Facilities, Integrated, Endowment
Name of group: CEPP
Number of Contributors: Peter
Submitter Name: Peter von Allmen
Submitter Email: pvonallm@skidmore.edu
How does your group view the College today?
PREFACE: CEPP has a dual role in the administration of the curricular matters at the college. On an ongoing short-run basis, CEPP helps to craft policy in response to changes to the internal and external environment. For the most part, these tend to be relatively narrow in scope. In its planning role, CEPP considers long range issues and opportunities that have broader implications for the curriculum such as the place of graduate education at Skidmore or the general education curriculum. CEPP sees its role in the strategic planning process as central in that the priorities set out in the next strategic plan may have a profound impact on the future educational planning and policy of the college.
CEPP sees Skidmore as an institution with many great strengths, but also one of contradictions. The college has an excellent faculty who participate actively and often take on leadership roles in the scholarship of their disciplines. As a direct consequence of this disciplinary excellence in research, faculty offer a wide range of courses in those same disciplines. We should not take actions that would compromise disciplinary expertise, which is an important asset for students as they pursue majors and minors. Disciplinary focus is not without cost. While the resulting curriculum features a few powerful opportunities for interdisciplinary study, faculty expertise and as a result student experiences remain largely siloed in traditional disciplines. While we have created a number of interdisciplinary programs, the college currently lacks a planned, integrative experience beyond the FYE for every student. We are well positioned to develop such opportunities more intentionally.
Our curriculum was at one time novel, but is now mainstream in the spectrum of liberal arts colleges. We have an identifiable “brand” in CTM, but we may not be making the most of it as it relates to our curriculum and the link to the co-curricular. Transitions and transformations has established an important platform for students to think intentionally about life beyond Skidmore, but our work in this area could be more pervasive and intentional. Many of the critical tools our students will need after leaving Skidmore are already part of our curriculum (e.g. writing, quantitative reasoning, critical thinking). We see the need to expand the students’ experience along multiple dimensions - to foster creativity and practicality (skills-based work) while at the same time reinforcing a traditional liberal arts education.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 1:
Safe, Excellent, Siloed
How does your group view the external world?
The external landscape is challenging, at times even hostile to elite liberal arts colleges. The value and accessibility of expensive private education are now openly questioned. We must do a better job of convincing those who question the value of liberal arts that our students are well prepared to take on leadership roles. As we think about how to solidify this claim, we encounter another contradiction. That is that we must be brave, visionary and nimble, yet at the same time purposeful and cautious, conserving what is most valuable and enduring in the liberal arts model. Skidmore should prepare students for a rapidly changing world without losing sight of the fact that some of the most important skills needed to do so are timeless. Those who work at Skidmore were drawn here because we see the value of broad training and the interconnectedness of the world. The irony is that liberal arts institutions are currently under criticism in an environment where the problems are more complex than ever. While effective writing and critical thinking are as in demand as ever, we’ll need to think more broadly about what our students should take away from a Skidmore education. This may require us to be creative about combining traditional liberal arts learning with other educational models and goals. For example, we need to consider the value of skill-based learning (e.g. information literacy, technological competence) and internships and similar experiences that prepare students for discipline- related workplaces as complements to the higher-level critical thinking.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 2:
Challenging, Changing, Uncertain
How does your group describe the College you would like to see us become by 2025?
CEPP believes that as we look to the future, we must retain the disciplinary excellence that has characterized the college in the past with more intentional mechanisms to foster, support and reward faculty (and by extension student) efforts to reach across disciplines. The student experience will be more transformative if our curriculum is more intentional about helping students to embrace the complexities of the problems they’ll face when they leave Skidmore. The FYE, once novel, is now commonplace at liberal arts colleges and even at larger universities. Skidmore is in a strong position to claim a leadership role in higher education by forging a curricular model that bridges disciplines in a meaningful way beyond the students’ first year. We believe we should take up that challenge.
As we work to strengthen interdisciplinary ties and foster integration of siloed knowledge across departments and divisions, we face an important opposing force. That is, in the broader context of academia, disciplinary training remains the norm, and disciplinary research remains the coin of the realm. Faculty, especially those who are pre-tenure or in non-tenured lines, have a powerful incentive to retain their disciplinary focus, especially as it relates to research. And as noted above, we want faculty with recognized expertise in the disciplines. Asking them to also reach across disciplines will require that the college be intentional and direct about stating this value and rewarding this work.
To overcome the skepticism about the value of the liberal arts, we should be intentional about strengthening the link between students’ experiences at Skidmore and the external world. A central challenge will be to resolve the contradiction between the institution as nimble and as traditional. The tenets of a liberal arts education that we value most highly are and will always be valued by our society. If we continue to deliver that value in a way that allows students to thrive in an increasingly interconnected world, we can maintain our role as leaders in higher education.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 3:
Intentional, Integrative , Brave
Name of group: Chemistry Department
Number of Contributors: 10
Submitter Name: Kimberley Frederick
Submitter Email: kfreder1@skidmore.edu
How does your group view the College today?
The Chemistry department believes that the College is a vibrant and dynamic place which has transformed itself from a regional school specializing in Arts and Humanities to a national liberal arts college. Students who were science majors historically came to Skidmore for some other reason and discovered a major in science through their strong classroom experiences in the science departments. Today we see a robust group of students who are actively interested in studying science and choose Skidmore over our peer institutions because of a secondary interest in dance, literature, studio art etc. We find that these students enrich our lives as we understand the creative ways in which they blend their multiple avocations with their major field of study.
Yet these students are challenging in many ways. The students challenge us to look critically at ourselves and our deeply held beliefs and biases. They ask us to continue to learn in order to keep up with the technologies with which they are so fluent. Students also ask us to learn far outside of our academic training to help them weave together their various areas of interest. Only at Skidmore would a Chemistry faculty member curate a major art show. Being asked to review the monologue read over a dance piece or help with an independent study on the effects paint aging are just a few other examples of the ways students ask us to stretch beyond our training. We love these opportunities to participate with students in the learning enterprise. Yet we also know that the ways which students learn, the life challenges that students face and their expectations for the college experience can leave us feeling unsure of the best ways to proceed. The College appreciates innovative pedagogies in the classroom but there is little support for risk taking and if things aren't successful, it is unclear what resources are available to support alternatives. When it comes to embracing new technology and new teaching modalities, Skidmore is often multiple years behind the students.
Skidmore has identified the importance of high impact educational practices to student transformation. Collaborative research conducted with student faculty teams is perhaps the most beneficial of these practices because it simultaneously transforms student lives and advances disciplinary research which in turn raises the profile of the institution. Skidmore students and faculty regularly present at national and international meetings and publish articles. Faculty often identify this work as some of their best teaching and mentoring interactions with students. Furthermore, faculty receive grants which provide monetary support to Skidmore directly in terms of student salaries, by off-setting equipment and supplies costs and through indirect costs which contribute to the budgetary bottom line. We believe that Skidmore's growing support for undergraduate research, scholarship and creative activity is encouraging, and a prudent use of the institution's resources for maximum student impact.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 1:
collaborative research, science, pedagogy
How does your group view the external world?
We live in a world that is, simply, in need of scientists and scientifically literate citizens. Most of the major issues facing the world going forward or either rooted in or have a significant scientific component. We need scientists who can communicate their findings, with both the limitations and conclusions, to the public using a variety of modalities that stretch beyond just the academic written word. But we also need business leaders, politicians, artists, journalists, teachers, and poets, who can separate the scientific findings from the often biased rhetoric that surrounds them. Skidmore has an important role to play on both fronts.
We also realize that the competitive marketplace for higher education is something that the College does not have the luxury to ignore. Simultaneously, we urge caution as the tides rise and fall on various topics and trends. Skidmore's core mission to educate small groups of students in close relationships with faculty is a model which has enduring transformational power. Continuing to refine our identity and our brand and articulate it clearly in the marketplaces will help us to find our niche in the broader higher education landscape.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 2:
science, science literacy, mission
How does your group describe the College you would like to see us become by 2025?
We hope that Skidmore in 2025 will be a better version of ourselves. Skidmore has come a long way in embracing the sciences as part of a liberal arts college and we hope that journey will be fully completed by 2025. We anxiously look forward to the opening of the Skidmore Center for Integrated Sciences. We also hope that in 2025 Skidmore will have an innovative, transformative general education curriculum that provides students with experiences that clearly indicate that science and math have value in their lives and equips them with the skills to be educated citizens.
In a similar vein, we hope to see high impact educational practices better supported so that opportunities are not restricted to a few students in a few disciplines. Under the pressure to provide off campus internships, Skidmore should not lose sight of the value-added nature of undergraduate research, scholarship and creative activity for both faculty and students. Every effort should be made to hire faculty committed to this enterprise so that the student demand for collaborative research experiences can be met for all students. In 2025, we hope to see increased opportunities available for summer collaborative research and student travel funds to support student presentations at conferences. We believe that further strengthening collaborative research will result in robust sense of intellectual community among the students and faculty.
One of Skidmore's stated commitments is to educating a diverse student body including racial, socioeconomic, and gender identity diversity. We could not be more supportive of this goal. By 2025, the Chemistry department hopes that we (both institutionally and departmentally) have put in place the support structures to enable the success of all of our students. In particular, we hope to have structures in place that help students expressing an interest in science to have strong self-efficacy in science regardless of whether they choose a scientific discipline as a major.
One of Skidmore's distinctive characteristics is the degree to which the students embrace interdisciplinarity. While maintaining strong departmental programs, we hope that Skidmore in 2025 will have incorporated interdisciplinary connections into the core of the curriculum and faculty experience. This would be truly innovative and look more like the world that our graduates will enter.
In 2025, we hope that Skidmore will have taken more advantage of its local and regional resources. Skidmore has opportunities to both educate students and serve our community. We would like to see more partnerships with local organizations both non-profit and for-profit. We also hope that Skidmore will strengthen our ties with other local institutions of higher education as well as the other member of the New York Six consortium in order to help faculty to develop networks and to strengthen the student experience.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 3:
collaborative research, science, interdisciplinarity
Name of group: Christian Fellowship
Number of Contributors: 6
Submitter Name: Caleb LaRue
Submitter Email: clarue@skidmore.edu
How does your group view the College today?
Christian fellowship views the college as a place to invest in the life of the community, in the lives of individuals, and in our own development as persons and leaders. The social climate is challenging, but open. It is a place where students explore knowledge and experience that shapes the next several years of their lives, if not all of it. CF appreciates the many attempts by administration to lead the campus into deeper conversations about community, and the efforts it has extended. We share these concerns. Our theme (focus) this Spring semester will be "Community: Unity and Diversity". We are in the beginning stages of planning, but it is on our own hearts as well. We would love to have a conversation with anyone in the administration (perhaps during Winter break?) about this, if it were desired. Contributing to the challenges in the social climate, there are physical limits on campus that hinder deepening community. There is a striking lack of community space, with only the ICC and ICL as private/public gathering spaces (and the ICL is not reservable, but only first-come-first-served). The absorption of the Game Room into administrative space removed a large, casual, multi-use space. The lack of such available space hinders community growth--not only for our fellowship, but for other groups as well. Finally, we are concerned with the financial practices/policies of SGA. The process for securing club funding is remarkably opaque, and the consequent reality is that some clubs receive enormous budgets, while others receive meager allowances. The lack of transparency on procedure, plus the interpretive patterns with categories of funding impacts all clubs, and we have felt its limitation acutely. We recognize and respect the need for process in decision-making, but the lack of accountability feels unjust. Simply one example is the difficulty in securing funding for conferences and retreats. Each time we apply there is an interview process which seems strongly biased against faith, and therefore against the request. Joshua Nelson in working in this area, and shares the concerns we have voiced re: transparency and accountability.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 1:
Community, Funding, Space
How does your group view the external world?
We view the external world---the community of Saratoga during college, as well as the world into which students are moving--as the world that God loves, and as His followers, we love it as well. We want to both serve and lead others to serve. Within CF, we talk about "servant leadership" and want it to characterize our lives--as students and in the future in our careers and community lives. We do not believe isolation is good, but rather a deep engagement in the lives of others will yield a better future. Practically, we would love to see the college invest in a building that could become a hub for service opportunities, off-campus but near-by (compare the service initiatives that Union College has through its Kenny Community Center). We believe the outcome would be greater impact by students on the community, and by the community on students.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 2:
love, serve, lead
How does your group describe the College you would like to see us become by 2025?
2025 is only 11 years away . . . so this is both an inviting question (change is possible and welcome), but also limiting (change sometimes takes a lot of time). With those two parameters in mind, here are 2 "becomings". [1] We long to see an openness to thoughtful Christian faith and dialogue become the norm. We are already grateful for the welcome we experience, but wish to continue to invest in this campus to contribute to this openness and change. One significant criticism: for a campus like Skidmore to actually be "open-minded", there will need to be substantial change in climate for this to happen. We believe the tone of either openness or close-mindedness is actually set in subtle ways by faculty and administration alike. They (you) are the guardians of the College. We would like to see a different campus in 2025, one which is marked by open conversation in the classroom (rather than the occasional snide and dismissive comments by faculty, which is unbecoming of the generosity that should characterize teachers, in our opinion). It seems unfitting for such comments by leaders on campus to go unchallenged. We recognize that CF will need to take a significant role in this change. [2] Community Space--we mentioned this in Q1, but recognize that "space takes time". The need for more casual, public space is significant. Community is the key issue, but space is a component which will help a great deal.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 3:
Openness, Guardians, Space
Name of group: CIGU
Number of Contributors: 13
Submitter Name: Jackie Murray, Mariel Martin, Co-Chairs
Submitter Email: jmurray2@skidmore.edu, mariel@skidmore.edu
How does your group view the College today?
The College has made some progress in terms of creating a more inclusive campus. However, the aim to increase diversity is in tension with certain aspects of campus climate, relations with the city of Saratoga, the curriculum, co-curricular programs, college structure, and the availability of resources. We have a clear definition of what diversity means for our community:
“Skidmore College is committed to fostering a diverse and inclusive community in which members develop their abilities to live in a complex and interconnected world. Consistent with our educational mission, we strive to be a community that respects individual identities based on varying sociocultural characteristics, such as race, ethnicity, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, national origin, first language, religious and spiritual tradition, age, ability, socioeconomic status, and learning style. We aspire to help create a socially just world that honors the dignity and worth of each individual, and we seek to build a community centered on mutual respect and openness to ideas—one in which individuals value cultural and intellectual diversity and share the responsibility for creating a welcoming, safe, and inclusive environment. We recognize that our community is at its best when all members participate fully in the spirited and challenging conversations that are at the center of the College’s educational mission.”
It has also been formulated by the President in the former strategic plan as follows:
“Furthermore, in attending to diversity, we need to think inclusively: considering factors such as socioeconomic background, geographical distribution, and national origin, as well as race, gender, ethnicity, cultural heritage, sexual orientation, religious background, and the like.” (Engaged Liberal Learning The Plan for Skidmore College 2005-2015, p.27)
However, a disturbing trend has arisen where “diversity” and “inclusiveness” are beginning to lose their initial institutional focus on social identities. Often the term “diversity” is applied to thought and ideas, which are actually to domain of policies governing academic and political freedom on campus. There is also confusion around the common everyday sense of the word and its institutional meaning, e.g. students have “diverse” co-curricular interests which are expressed in the clubs and other events and activities on campus that address personal identities and have little or nothing to do with social identities. The confusion arises when this kind of diversity, the common everyday kind, is thought to be covered by the institutional definition. The result is that these activities and interests syphon off resources and time that should otherwise go to activities and interests that are within the purview of the institutional definition.
Another disturbing trend is that “diversity” is being used as a code word for race/ethnicity and even more specifically, a black/white binary. This ultimately alienates many people, especially, people of color and others of marginalized identities. We simply need to be clear about what we are talking about. Not being clear means that not everyone understands what the value of diversity is to their Skidmore experience or why it should be an important issue to them. Specifically, the vague ways in which we use the terms “diversity” and “inclusion” means that those who do not fit the stereotype implied, even those with marginalized identities, are left feeling alienated. Excellent examples of this are (1) white students and faculty who see diversity and inclusion as something for others and not something that affects them in a meaningful way, and (2) Black / Latino students are offered programs to cope with the challenges of being part of the community; however, these programs often assume a conflation between race and socio-economic background that actually denies the very diversity of these students.
An inevitable consequence involved in trying to create a more diverse and inclusive community is the fact that invisible systems of oppression suddenly become visible to the majority population and become salient in everyday interactions. Therefore, if Skidmore’s aim is to create more “diversity”, this effort MUST be accompanied by a serious commitment to confront the host of challenges will inevitably arise. Currently, the College’s commitment to diversity seems uneven; the necessary level of commitment is lacking on many fronts. This unevenness could be because diversity and inclusion are perceived to be special interests and not central to the college. Sadly, there are also individuals and departments who see the challenges brought on by trying to be a more diverse and inclusive community as “not their problem.”
Strides have been made in changing the climate. Programs have been initiated in various areas of the College to support and educate students, faculty, and staff, including inclusive teaching workshops, faculty interest groups, Intergroup Relations, the Bias Response Group, the ADA Advisory Committee, the Advisory Council on Sexual Misconduct, the Everyday Leadership Program for bystander intervention training, and many other workshops and programs. Efforts have been made to attract diverse faculty including the ambassador program to address concerns outside of what the search-committee can answer and we have succeeded in recruiting increasingly diverse classes of students. All of these have moved the college forward and should be enhanced and developed.
While it is true that some pro-active and committed individuals and groups are doing the heavy-lifting, e.g. DOF and other offices specifically dedicated to engaging with and responding to issue surrounding diversity on campus, the fact is that a majority of those in positions that could have the broadest impact, i.e. faculty, sit back. As this trend to increase diversity continues and more systems of oppression are exposed, the individuals who benefit from these systems of oppression will feel uncomfortable and even threatened by attempts to address the problems. They may use their power and privilege to exert pressure on the decision-making structure or the allocation of resources to make their discomfort “go away.” This can manifest itself for faculty in the tenure and promotion process, and for staff in the review process. Another repercussion is that as the faculty and staff become more diverse in response to the College’s goal and systems of oppression are exposed, the burden of educating the community will weigh heavily on the victims which can affect their level of comfort and give them incentive to leave. This is borne out in the reality that college has a problem attracting, and especially retaining faculty and staff of color. The climate issues that are present for students are also present for faculty and staff.
In spite of Goal II of the current Strategic Plan, diversity and inclusion is still perceived as a special interest that applies only to a minority of the community. This is a misconception that contributes to the stagnant pace of the college’s progress. The College has not done a good job of holding individuals accountable to advancing Goal II. There also needs to be a shift in the conversation around diversity so that it is framed as everyone’s issue and to encourage buy-in from white faculty, staff, and students who do not see how they actually benefit from a more diverse and inclusive Skidmore and are negatively affected if the challenges are not adequately addressed. The advantages of diversity and inclusion for everyone needs to become part of the conversation.
Below are some of the challenges we see in three distinct areas:
Curricular
The curriculum is lacking in courses, programs, minors/majors, and/or departments that respond to the current Goal II of the 2005-2015 Strategic Plan.
While there are new initiatives that promote diversity in the curriculum, the All-College requirements as yet do not adequately address the lofty vision of the current strategic plan’s Goal II. The definitions for the requirements that currently address these goals are contradictory and vague. This is because they are trying to do too many things at once and there is no consensus on what the culture-centered inquiry requirement should achieve.
Cultural Diversity needs to be de-coupled from Non-Western since these kinds of courses address distinct focuses, and a student who takes only one, will not necessarily encounter important aspects of the other. These are treated as interchangeable, when they should not be.
Co-Curricular
Our community is not comfortable with exclusive spaces (e.g. Discover Tour, Students of Color Welcome Dinner), which are necessary to foster inclusivity in a community. For example, when talking about problems with diversity, folks respond with critiques of programs designed for specific communities, namely for students of color.
White students still do not feel that diversity conversations or spaces like the Office of Student Diversity Programs (OSDP)/OSDP clubs are “for them.” This is despite the extensive attempts to reach out to white members of the community. When folks outside of a given group attend events or programs, they are attending dinners and dances, not lectures and discussions, unless mandated by a class.
OSDP is one of the few spaces on campus where students engage in conversations about identity and diversity outside of the classroom. With limited staffing, it’s difficult to meet the needs of our increasingly diverse student population. OSDP currently advises 12 student clubs/organizations and must work to create campus programming, both targeted and broad, focusing on the many individual and intersecting aspects of identity, beyond the classroom.
Campus Climate/Structure
Many elements of our institutional structure impede effective and transparent communication, responsibility, accountability, and action. Specifically the lack of quality communication/collaboration/support between departments, offices, and programs currently engaged in diversity work and the challenge of bridging academic and student affairs work.
Currently, there appears to be no obvious mechanism that allows faculty in non-privileged positions, both structurally (e.g. non-tenure, non-tenure track) and in terms of individual identity (e.g. faculty of color, international faculty, female faculty, non-cisgender faculty, etc.), to have their problems with being systematically oppressed on the basis of gender, race, or the intersection of both, addressed or taken seriously without jeopardizing their jobs.
Skidmore currently struggles with retaining faculty and staff of color, LGBTQ faculty and staff, and international faculty and staff.
As indicated in the recent student campus climate survey, students do not feel like they can bring their whole identities into certain spaces on campus. As a result, some members of our community, particularly students with marginalized identities, do not feel included or engaged. This applies to faculty and staff as well.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 1:
fast-pacedsomewhat incoherent, communication challenged, slow, stagnant progress
How does your group view the external world?
Peer and Aspirant Schools
Many of our peer and aspirant schools have the resources to create and implement more sustained, well-thought out diversity/social justice programming models. Several of our peer and aspirant schools have buildings or more prominent and substantial spaces and more staffing in their equivalent offices.Offices that should be tasked with this work, like OSDP, are under resourced (financial, space, and staff).
Saratoga Community
The College’s relationship with the city of Saratoga affects the way students, especially students with marginalized identities are treated in the city; this is a serious problem identified in the student surveys, exit interviews, and through reported bias incidents. If diversity is a priority, the consequences caused by diversity are as well. Bringing students into a hostile environment is irresponsible, especially if something can be done to make it better.
Global Community
The outside world is ever changing, technology wise. What is new today is old tomorrow.
The world is competitive and searching for citizens who have a global understanding and are well versed in global, cultural issues outside their immediate circles.
The increased corporatization and job-oriented focus is a huge threat to the fundamental goals of a liberal arts education. The college should eschew the seduction of curricula that are mandated by economic interests that are actually hostile to its mission of educating thoughtful, creative, and informed citizens - unless of course that is not the college’s real goal. This trend in making students into consumers is antithetical to diversity. If the “student satisfaction” model already determines what courses will be offered, and unchecked, only those that make students feel comfortable will survive. Courses that treat diversity issues, especially racism and structural bias, cause discomfort and discomfort is a crucial aspect of learning. Corporate thinking reinforces structural discrimination in teaching practices, and works against hiring and retain faculty who do not fit the stereotype of a college professor.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 2:
fast-paced, competitive, socially diverse
How does your group describe the College you would like to see us become by 2025?
Curricular
Provide and redefine what a Liberal Arts Education means - Global understanding, international education, cultural immersion, entrepreneurs, civic-minded students who have a true and complete understanding of the world outside Skidmore
Vibrant academic programs/departments – to offer majors/minors in Ethnic Studies, Africana Studies, Queer Studies, etc.
Provide incentive to faculty for course development.
A more comprehensive and relevant Cultural Diversity/Non-Western requirement – students must take selected courses early and often. Ideally the College will have at least three requirements - social justice, cultural diversity in the U.S., and international diversity.
Continue to engage students in a well-rounded education and learn to widen our understanding of diversity and our acceptance of each other.
Travel seminars somehow need to be brought under the culture-centered inquiry requirement, in a way that does not disadvantage course that focus on Western cultures. Studying abroad is itself culture-centered inquiry.
All faculty will have adequate training in inclusive teaching; the CAPT committee and chair of departments will have training in identifying biases in the hiring, mentoring and evaluating of junior faculty.
Co-Curricular
Continue to engage our students beyond the classroom, through collaborative research, service learning, internship & volunteer activities (interdisciplinary)
A thriving and robust co-curricular program in OSDP. Adequate staffing, financial and space resources to meet the needs of our increasingly diverse student population.
Introduce intercultural learning early and often in the student experience collaboration with Saratoga.
All students entering Skidmore will receive adequate education in dealing with diversity and inclusion and sexual misconduct.
Campus Climate/Structure
The next phase of Goal II should be a clear action plan to address the problems we continue to see in regards to underrepresented groups on campus.
A model institution for the recruitment and retention of diverse groups, teaching and resources related to diversity and inclusion.
A diverse (broadly - racially, nationality, gender identity, sexual orientation, ability, etc.) staff and faculty.
Committees, like CAPT and other staff search committees that determine hiring/appointments, promotion, and tenure, are educated on issues of structural oppression and bias so that they can effectively assess signs of bias in performance reviews, teaching evaluations, letters, etc.
Inclusive environment in which students, staff, and faculty are engaged in conversations about community, global citizenship, diversity, and inclusion.
Implementing an effective mechanism of responsibility, accountability, and recognition for increasing campus diversity and inclusion.
Clear, effective, transparent and frequent communication.
Focus on diversity-related policies and practices (e.g., Celebration Weekend, Commencement, religious and cultural observances, name changes in the computer system)
Create a Social Justice Center
Connect participation in diversity workshops to faculty rewards (e.g., tenure, sabbatical, etc).
Re-examine diversity structures and committees.
Educate our students to become global citizens - “Global Citizens” is becoming meaningless jargon. We need to define it in a way that actually gives it substance, so that our students stand out as leaders in creating a more just world.
To address the town-gown problems Skidmore might consider what its peers have done. One of our aspirant schools, Vassar, changed their town-gown relationship with Poughkeepsie, by having special scholarships for students from the local high schools. The College could affect the way it is perceived by the Saratoga community by channeling some of its efforts in recruiting diverse students toward the high schools in the area. Encouraging qualified local students to attend Skidmore could be a way of getting Saratoga to see the college as a part of itself and not something extraneous, and ultimately make it a more welcoming place for all our students. This will probably require more funding or even diverting of funds for new scholarships.
The college needs a stronger commitment to educating all its members, not just the students, but more importantly, faculty, staff, and administration so that the systems of oppression that operate in our society are not replicated on campus as it becomes more diverse.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 3:
social justice, inclusive & diverse, engaged
Name of group: Classics Department
Number of Contributors: 5
Submitter Name: Dan Curley
Submitter Email: dcurley@skidmore.edu
How does your group view the College today?
The Skidmore Classics Department has strong affinities with the College at large. Skidmore is a young institution; Classics is a young program. Whereas Classics programs at other colleges have been part of their curriculum from the very beginning, ours has been in place only since the mid-1970s, and only a full-fledged department since 1999. Skidmore has always been a place for invention and innovation; Classics at Skidmore has evolved with those ideals in mind. While the ancient Mediterranean world remains our focus, our methods for seeing and teaching that world have changed with the times. Skidmore is an interdisciplinary institution, where fields intersect and combine, becoming more than the sum of their parts; Classics, in which traditional areas like linguistics, literary studies, history, and archaeology have thrived, and newer areas like gender studies, critical race theory, and film studies have taken hold, is founded on interdisciplinarity. The scholarship of our faculty is multifaceted and dynamic, and we welcome opportunities to collaborate with colleagues in other departments and programs. Our department exists because of the conviction that a first-tier liberal-arts college must offer the Classics. At the same time, we seek to uphold the mission and goals of Skidmore in everything we do.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 1:
interdisciplinarity, tradition, innovation
How does your group view the external world?
Most Classics majors have no desire to become "professional Classicists" and wish to enter the work force or to enter a professional school immediately upon graduation. Classics has been seen, and continues to be seen, as one of the strongest liberal arts degrees a student can earn. Future employers view Classics majors as students who have been trained to read original and difficult texts as well as to think about them critically, and who are able to communicate these thoughts persuasively in speech and on paper. These skills are as rare as they are sought after by employers in many fields. A BA in the Classics can lead to a wide variety of final destinations. At Skidmore, as at other similar colleges, some go on to teach Latin and/or Greek at the pre-collegiate or college level, but most achieve success in a broad array of other fields, including business, law, government, publishing, advertising, and medicine.
No matter what we do and how we do it, we rely on words. Whether in business or law, medicine or publishing, in formal presentations or casual conversation, on email or cell phone, words are our primary medium of communication. Choosing the right words, getting the right tone as we put words together, shaping our message to the occasion and to our audience, using words with assurance and style and wit -- all these are essential to our success. Studying the Classics, and especially reading the texts in their original languages, provides constant exercise of these skills. When Classicists translate Greek or Latin we select from the many alternatives the most apt English equivalent; we must put these individual words into sentences that approximate the meaning and tone of the original. We must -- through words -- try to grasp the overall feel of the text in question, then -- again through words -- try to recreate that larger essence in our English version. We may in time forget much of our Latin and Greek, but the sensitivity to words, the awareness of their endless and subtle range of communicative properties, and the delight of using them artfully and effectively remain.
Modern life constantly entails making decisions on the basis of inadequate evidence. A political leader, a personnel officer, a lawyer, an entrepreneur, a physician will never know enough to be sure that a particular course of action is the right way to go, but these professionals will succeed only if they are able, often under great pressure, to act wisely and decisively on the basis of whatever evidence they do have available. It is a skill that Classicists constantly practice. We try to understand the history of a particular era, but the texts are incomplete, biased, at odds with each other, and the archaeological and epigraphical evidence scattered, fragmentary, and opaque. We know that ancient poetry was intended to be spoken, and that not to read it aloud is to short-change it, but the evidence as to how its sounds were pronounced, its meters read, is hopelessly inadequate. A student of Classics comes up against these issues daily, for s/he too in reading and discussing and writing about the texts, the history, the material and social facts of the ancient world must also constantly be making decisions on the basis of inadequate evidence. These activities provide a superb foundation for what any professional will have to do in every arena of contemporary life.
While we always feel hampered in our study of the Classics by the paucity, even the absence, of the evidence we most need, we paradoxically also face precisely the opposite problem. New evidence is constantly appearing -- pottery, inscriptions, coins, archaeological discoveries; the already vast secondary literature on every aspect of the field is expanding at what feels like an exponential rate; new techniques of examining and interpreting the evidence we have constantly oblige the Classics student or scholar to reassess earlier conclusions. Anyone studying Classics at any level is again constantly obliged to make decisions, draw conclusions, before one feels ready to do so -- precisely what students will face as they enter any field of endeavor in the twenty-first century. One of the most obvious facts of our time is the explosion of new knowledge, of new forms of research, of new techniques of communicating what we know. Whatever one ends up doing, there will always be too much information available, too many avenues to new information springing to life. A student of the Classics is daily learning to select from the vast panoply of available information what is most relevant and important and to make decisions, fashion understandings, take action on the basis of that selection process. It's a skill that is rare -- and that is becoming ever more important.
The people who make breakthroughs in any area of human endeavor are those who have the inclination and courage to see things in new ways and to communicate what they have discovered clearly and persuasively. Italian author Cesare Pavese writes, "The surest, and the quickest, way for us to arouse the sense of wonder is to stare, unafraid, at a single object. Suddenly -- miraculously -- it will look like something we have never seen before." The papers that students in Classics write for every course, and especially those they write for advanced seminars, oblige them to engage in just such an enterprise -- to look long and hard at what they have studied in the course, to see it in new ways, and to forge their own interpretations from these insights. These papers also require students to organize their thoughts in such a way as to build the strongest possible case for what they are proposing. In the process they will draw upon the skills mentioned above: they will exploit their growing ability to use words and language clearly and elegantly; they will exercise and strengthen their ability both to handle the evidentiary gaps they will face and also to select what is most important from the overwhelming plethora of information at their disposal; and in researching and organizing the overall project they will need to construct their own new systems of dealing with this complex intellectual undertaking.
The skills described above are essential tools for virtually any profession today, and people who have mastered them are rare and in great demand. Studying Classics in depth provides an ideal proving ground for developing these skills -- and the more so when students are consciously aware of ways in which this major can foster these more general intellectual skills. At best, one is developing "habits of mind" that will become part of one’s very make-up and that will automatically click into action at every opportunity, be it in the academy or beyond. The reason that a musician never stops playing scales, a dancer never stops doing barre exercises, is that these basic habits, in this case of body as well as mind, provide the foundation for taking on ever-new challenges and repertoire. In the same way, the skills learned through a rigorous Classics major rigorously pursued provide habits of mind that are the foundation for success in whatever profession(s) one may pursue. Perhaps most important, in a world where everything is changing at a meteoric rate, these flexible, adaptable skills remain essential and relevant.
(The response for this section was adapted from an essay entitled “You’re Majoring in What???” by David H. Porter, Professor of Classics and President Emeritus of Skidmore.)
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 2:
skillsets, adaptability, originality
How does your group describe the College you would like to see us become by 2025?
The Skidmore of 2025 will continue to invest its students with the habits of mind and conscience essential in the 21st century. It will continue to prepare our students for life after Skidmore -- not by focusing solely on jobs and careers, important as these are, but by fostering creativity, curiosity, and a sense of our common humanity and dignity. We all understand the phenomenon known as the “Skidmore Transformation,” whereby young women and men discover their best selves over the course of four years. We also understand that the Skidmore Transformation does not end after graduation. Rather the transformation continues on as our alumni -- whether from Classics or History or Economics or programs as yet unimagined -- meet new challenges and solve new problems. By 2025 the entire world should understand this, too, in the thousands of stories, each a unique journey, that will become part of our legacy and that we must tell.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 3:
humanity, transformation, legacy
Name of group: Communications
Number of Contributors: 16
Submitter Name: Dan Forbush
Submitter Email: dforbush@skidmore.edu
How does your group view the College today?
As ranked by U.S. News, Skidmore stands among the nation’s top 50 liberal arts colleges – a conclusion with which we certainly concur. Our tagline’s assertion that Creative Thought Matters resonates with almost everyone who knows the College. There's an energy and vibrancy in the Skidmore culture that distinguishes us from many of our peer institutions. One student has perceptively described Skidmore as having a “relaxed intensity.” Unique assets include our location in Saratoga Springs, the ease with which our faculty engage in interdisciplinary approaches, the global orientation of our students and the opportunities we give them, the Tang Museum, the Arthur Zankel Music Center, the caliber of our athletics program, the quality of our housing and dining services, and the strength of our major in management and business and our ability to combine it with multiple other disciplines.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 1:
Vibrant, Global, Management & Business
How does your group view the external world?
Skidmore is perceived as providing a high-quality but expensive form of education. Prospective students and their families are increasingly concerned that the cost of attending will not be justified by future earnings. As flawed in its methodology as Payscale’s annual ranking of colleges by their “return on investment” may be, its influence on public opinion is increasing, and liberal arts colleges must be mindful of the conclusions that many prospective students and their parents will derive from it. We need to better research, understand, and communicate the career-enhancing value of the experiences our students enjoy at Skidmore. We need to better demonstrate how – through such programs as collaborative research, study abroad, internships, SEE Beyond, and civic engagement – students are able to embark on successful, transformative career trajectories.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 2:
ROI, Careers, Transformative
How does your group describe the College you would like to see us become by 2025?
With our strength in management and business, our growing nucleus of programs and initiatives focused on entrepreneurship and innovation, the substantial strides we’re making in “cleantech”, and our determination to build the new Center for Integrated Sciences (with its pathbreaking IdeaLab), we have the opportunity to further differentiate Skidmore from other liberal arts colleges and make our “mind and hand” credo more manifest.
We also see much to be gained through a concerted effort to reduce costs through collaborations with other New York 6 institutions, the continuation of a strong commitment to sustainability, and an expansion of our international student population.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 3:
Entrepreneurship, Differentiate, Global
Name of group: Concerned Faculty Dedicated to the Liberal Arts
Number of Contributors: 5
Submitter Name: Tillman Nechtman
Submitter Email: tnechtma@skidmore.edu
How does your group view the College today?
Skidmore has a distinguished history as a liberal arts college. Its reputation in fields like theater and the arts is matched by academic traditions like the summer Writers’ Institute, all of which mark the college as a place to engage in the life of the mind and to celebrate the deeper examination of the lived human experience.
However, there are many conversations and initiatives afoot at the college today that, to our mind, have the potential to endanger the college’s tradition. These conversations include things like T & T, the so-called “flipped classroom,” and other innovations that are widely (if not always wildly) popular in the academy beyond Skidmore.
Conversations here at Skidmore have indicated a good deal of support for these innovations, but they have also demonstrated uncertainty about them. We side with those who view these initiatives more cautiously, as we are worried that these initiatives are more trendy than they are substantive and that they do not always or necessarily reflect the values of a traditional liberal education.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 1:
Divided, Uncertain, Trendy
How does your group view the external world?
Many of the innovations we feel uneasy with emerge from external pressures. The outside world is, today, an unsettled place. Economic pressure has inspired many – most notably President Obama himself – to challenge liberal arts colleges like Skidmore to offer some demonstrable proof of their worth.
We find this posture to be dismissive of the absolute value of the liberal arts per se. The notion that education is a social good in and of itself or, to quote Socrates, that “an unexamined life is not worth living” gets overlooked in any conversation that bases a liberal arts education on its “outcomes.” The language of assessment has done little to assuage concerns about the value of a liberal arts education. Indeed, the assessment work colleges and universities have submitted has only ever been met with more calls for assessment, to the extent that assessment has become an industry unto itself.
Certainly, the cost of our tuition has brought some of this pressure on us, but we worry that the outside world is driving our agenda in as much as we are responding to it rather than the other way around. We move towards internships as “high impact experiences” as if to admit that what we offer cannot measure up in the “real world” and against “real work.”
We are concerned that we have begun to internalize the idea that the liberal arts education is outmoded and out of touch and have, as a result, begun to remake that education in the image of the outside world rather than insisting that the liberal arts helps us better understand the world around us.
In one way, the outside world does have something to offer. Recent works like the book Academically Adrift and Rob Lazebnik’s essay in the Wall Street Journal (“A Message for the Class of 2013”) have pointed to a glaring failure on the part of liberal arts college to teach the actual core liberal disciplines – history, literature, etc. – that are at the center of our tradition. This failure, we worry, is part of the retreat from the liberal arts we see elsewhere, but it is the one critique from the outside that we deeply believe we would do well to heed.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 2:
Dismissive, Intrusive, Demanding
How does your group describe the College you would like to see us become by 2025?
We believe that Skidmore ought to be distinctive as it moves into its next decade. Too often new ideas and initiatives here at Skidmore are introduced as being “like X-college does” or “as y-college is planning to do.” We believe that this trendiness is not a good thing. We have operated under the motto “Creative Thought Matters,” and we would like to see that motto become something we live out more boldly, primarily by being bolder in our faith in the liberal arts.
To that end, Skidmore needs to look to strengthen its departments and its faculty over the next decade. We need to recruit, support, and sustain the best teacher-scholars. We have been dismayed that faculty have not featured more prominently in the preliminary items outlined for the new campaign. Buildings, tuition stipends, and internships may be well and good, but the core of a liberal arts educational experience is a student’s engagement with a professor who has dedicated his or her career to the exploration of the world in a deep and disciplinary way.
We believe that Skidmore should strive to be known as a place of ideas. That campus tours focus so heavily on student services, dorms, and the dining hall may be part of the high-school expectation, but we would like to see Skidmore step bravely and boldly out of that track, stressing instead the classes, the faculty, the teaching, and the scholarship that ought to define our community.
We believe that by following this sort of path, Skidmore becomes distinctive, for it argues against the idea that the liberal arts education needs to explain itself. It argues that the liberal arts education was always offered, to use the language of the T & T initiative, an “integrated learning” experience, and it takes up the ideal that those who would not examine the world through the lens of a liberal education have something to answer for, something to explain. Skidmore would challenge the external notion that students need “real world” experience with the argument that poetry, art, literature, and history are the keys to understanding what is real in the world.
To the extent that our comprehensive cost submits us to these outside questions, we may well need to evaluate our price tag, but, more importantly, we can find answers to the outside world’s questions that are rooted in our tradition. The liberal arts have always flourished over mere vocational training because they offer something liberated from time and place. The liberal arts education does not produce knowledge of a time or for a specific context. Rather, it frees the mind to explore, to create, to analyze, and to communicate. These skills translate easily into what we might call practical skill sets; they are not at odds with securing post-graduate employment.
To that end, we ought to do more to be sure students are getting a genuine, rigorous, substantive and profound liberal arts education rather than contorting the liberal arts to meet the demands of an outside world that is dismissive of what the liberal arts has to offer. We ought to explore and root out the causes of grade inflation, to reassert the core disciplines and traditions of the liberal arts in our curriculum, and to insist on the value of the liberal arts as central to a life well-lived.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 3:
Sustaining a Strong Faculty, A Place of Ideas, Distinctive
Name of group: Cool Cities
Number of Contributors: 6
Submitter Name: Emily Durante
Submitter Email: edurante@skidmore.edu
How does your group view the College today?
We believe there are bureaucratic issues with the College today, and there is poor communication between administration and students. Students feel isolated and unsupported in their decision-making, especially when trying to create change at the College in the form of sustainable projects that will benefit the community.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 1:
isolated, bureaucracy, sustainability
How does your group view the external world?
We view the external world as a resource for us to learn from and to collaborate with in order to help the larger community. We also view it as a venue in which we are productive and well-received as a group. That is, we have a lot of respect from the citizens of Saratoga Springs and representatives of City Hall. We are able to effect change in the City of Saratoga Springs but we do not feel widely accepted as a group at Skidmore. We feel that Skidmore as an institution does not encourage us to connect with the Saratoga Springs community and local government, and we feel as though we are running an individualized initiative.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 2:
innovate, collaborate, sustainability
How does your group describe the College you would like to see us become by 2025?
We would like to see Skidmore as a private institution that can link with the City of Saratoga Springs to work together to create sustainable solutions for our community. This may include collaborations with the City for a community-wide bike share and car share program. We would like policies in Saratoga Springs to be implemented on campus, especially the Anti-Idling Ordinance that we single-handedly presented and passed through City Hall. We would like to see more geothermal in our buildings as well as a hybrid vehicle purchasing policy for the campus vehicles.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 3:
community, sustainability, transportation
Name of group: Dance
Number of Contributors: 2
Submitter Name: Debra Fernandez
Submitter Email: dfernand@skidmore.edu
How does your group view the College today?
Only myself and Professor Graciani were able to meet to discuss these questions. I think it is safe to say that my voice probably reflects the voices of the other dance faculty who have been at the college longer while Professor Graciani brings a point of view based more in the present moment. I see the College as a place that has made huge leaps in the last 10 to 15 years. The Tang Museum and the Zankel have added a sophistication to the campus and affirmed the college's belief in creativity. My younger colleague, in addition to acknowledging these positive qualities, sees the college as suffering from a bit of inertia and an inability to make certain tough choices that would enable us to change and transform with more immediacy. Dance,as a department, feels itself to be "the little engine that could" in terms of our relationship to the college. We are a highly popular program who is nationally recognized but we still have not received the support that would elevate our facilities (mainly the Dance Theater) to the level of the other arts on campus. We wonder how we truly fit in on this campus.
We feel very supported by the college in terms of enthusiasm and recognition but would like to see more concrete proof of that. Even without those important resources, we still feel connected to the college in vital and creative ways due to our relationship with The Tang and with Zankel. We would love to see more support for the interdisciplinary that Skidmore values. There is a sense of being a bit stuck in the 20th century.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 1:
What's Next?, Re-energizing, Resisting Inertia
How does your group view the external world?
The dance field is moving much faster than we are able to move due to the nature and requirements of institutional planning. We constantly question how we can keep up with the changes in the field while maintaining the values that have been central to our mission. What do we truly want to incorporate into the program and how long will it be before that, too, has an expiration date? We see the trends and movement of the field and question if we are adequately preparing our students for the kind of lives they are hoping to lead. We are sorely behind in technological invention and our theater is something out of the dark ages. We do, however, realize that not everything new has value and we need to continue to evaluate our relationship to the external world and choose what and who we want to invite to our party. As Chair, I wonder how many of the innovative ideas we have can actually be implemented in the program due to issues such as space and budget.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 2:
Fluidity versus Stability, Technological Deficit, Invite Change
How does your group describe the College you would like to see us become by 2025?
Like many people, we would like to see more diversity by 2025 along with a sincere response to what diversity truly means. What will we value and how will we back those things up? How do we make sure that our policies line up with our vision? I.e. will ID courses count towards a junior faculty member's tenure file?
Lastly, we recognize the reality of the current climate and we know marketing and dollars are important but we hope to retain the identifying qualities that have made Skidmore so unique: a commitment to creativity, strong community bonds and a place that supports rigor but also supports human beings.
On a strictly personal note, I would like to see us move away from over assessment and over evaluation of professors. I don't mean to put down this important work (assessment) but I see a shift in the creative nature of my students and in their sense of adventure. I also see a low grade level of continual dissatisfaction with "what is" and I believe this stems from always being asked how they think things can be improved. I encourage feedback but I also encourage my students to react to what IS and not always to what COULD BE. I do not believe they can make those distinctions with their level of experience and that, in the extreme, it can lead to a continuous dissatisfaction with what they are actually engaged in. In short, I think the departments and faculty members should do the work of assessing their programs but should not lean too heavily on the students.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 3:
Embracing Diversity, Vision = Policy, Maintaining Skidmore's Magic
Name of group: Dean of the Faculty's Office
Number of Contributors: 4
Submitter Name: Beau Breslin
Submitter Email: bbreslin@skidmore.edu
How does your group view the College today?
See Below
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 1:
***, ***, ***
How does your group view the external world?
See below
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 2:
***, ***, ***
How does your group describe the College you would like to see us become by 2025?
Higher education, and especially the liberal arts sector, is changing rapidly. As we try to predict where we’ll be in five or ten years, we are fully aware that we don’t have all the information, and that in many instances the old way of doing things will be disrupted. As such, the disposition embraced by the Dean of the Faculty’s office is one of nimbleness. We must be able to generate new ideas, forge new partnerships, make decisions more quickly, and reimagine ways to resource the very best ideas that emerge. Additionally, we cannot rely on old practices and existing paradigms when it comes to the curriculum, faculty and staff workload, hiring practices, reliance on temporary faculty, pedagogy, shared governance, and so on. The future of Skidmore depends on its ability to reimagine itself, while at the same time staying true to the first principles of liberal education.
It begins with reimagining the student experience. We will consistently ask: What will our students need in terms of skills and knowledge to become responsible, successful, and active citizens in an increasingly complex, challenging, interconnected world? The answer to this question should inform all that we do over the period of the next Strategic Plan.
The Dean of the Faculty’s office sees several broad areas that require long-term attention and planning. First, we must provide greater opportunities for innovative pedagogy that leads to increased student learning. There is always a place for the tried and true pedagogical approaches (lecture, discussion, etc.), but new pedagogies have emerged in the past decade and others will no doubt follow. Flipped classrooms, dialogue-based instruction, civic engagement opportunities, team teaching, project-based learning, and discovery-based instruction are just a sample of the different pedagogical approaches already embraced by many faculty, but we must better situate ourselves to share best practices and conceive of the next generation of pedagogies. In order to achieve this goal, the Dean of the Faculty’s office must provide more opportunities for faculty to explore and experiment with new approaches to teaching and learning. The DOF office should be a better conduit or resource for faculty: identifying conferences, workshops, and symposia, and providing the necessary resources for faculty development in this area. We also intend to establish robust connections between faculty and Academic Technologies in order to maximize our capacity to support faculty and explore and implement new pedagogies.
At a higher theoretical level, we must also implement more effective strategies for integrative learning. Students must be encouraged to make connections across classes, across disciplines, between the curriculum and the co-curriculum, and between their work in the academic side of the house and their extra-curricular passions. Integration is consonant with liberal education; both are based on the principle that the acquisition, interpretation, and application of knowledge occurs within a broader context of connectivity, intellectual linkages, and broad exploration. We must be sure that students obtain the skills that integrative education will call upon: quantitative, writing, scientific, cultural, and so on.
The Dean of the Faculty’s office believes that the general education curriculum is outdated. We are delighted to contribute to CEPP’s review of the current curriculum and we are hopeful that a new and innovative curriculum will emerge from these conversations. We should also mention that a critical ingredient of any potential new curriculum is the belief among all stakeholders that they were heard during the process of review and reform. A new curriculum (if it should come to that) will succeed only if the community believes it is reflective of collective conversations and meaningful collaborations.
Insofar as faculty will always remain at the heart of the entire enterprise, we must refocus our attention on ways to support them. One critical responsibility of the DOF office is to provide renewal opportunities for all of our faculty—particularly the mid-career and late-career faculty. These faculty are our emerging and existing leaders; they provide models for our younger faculty, and, as such, attending more intentionally to their interests, passions, and skills will translate directly into an improved intellectual community. Further, we believe that liberal arts colleges often ask too much of our faculty colleagues, and thus we must find better ways to achieve a reasonable balance of work and personal lives. One reason for the imbalance, we contend, is that Skidmore is fully committed to an egalitarian model which assumes that all faculty will engage in the work of the three-legged stool in roughly equal ways and will be more or less equally effective at each part. We know that not to be true. In addition, faculty are tackling tasks and responsibilities that are not included in the present advancement criteria. Advising expectations have changed, there is now a higher expectation for collaborating with students, and the work of shared governance has increased. All of this has happened without shedding any of the old (and critically important) responsibilities associated with teaching, scholarship, and service. It is imperative that we identify ways to recognize this additional work in the professional advancement of the faculty.
The Dean of the Faculty’s office is also fully committed to building a better sense of community. We have a strong faculty community to be sure, but we are interested in improving connections among colleagues. We will continue to examine opportunities for collaborations and co-location, as well as more social and community-building ideas (similar to the “open bar” after faculty meetings, the community breakfasts, lunches with faculty, and so on).
The scarcity of resources continues to be a challenge for Academic Affairs. We are committed to increasing the number of tenure track lines while maintaining the current number of faculty instructors. An important long-term project involves partnering with Departments and Programs to find places where there may be inefficiencies in course offerings. That work, coupled with a reduction of course caps in some areas and several other factors, could yield opportunities for new resource allocations. We intend as well to explore collaborations with other schools (most prominently, in the New York Six). Let us be clear: we are not looking to collaborate with other institutions so as to save money. Our principal goal is to offer greater and better opportunities for students to learn from others, for faculty to work more closely with colleagues across the state (and the country and the world), and for institutions to share ideas and practices. The opportunity to share responsibilities in some areas (study abroad, for example) could lead to cost savings that would translate into more tenure lines, higher faculty and staff salaries, greater financial aid, and so on.
Finally, the Dean of the Faculty’s office believes that certain topics have emerged (or will emerge) in the next decade, and that these substantive topics will require additional energy, resources, and commitment. We must continue our steadfast commitment to diversity and inclusive excellence. From course offerings focused on exploring difference to our programs around recruitment and retention, we cannot afford to be complacent. The stakes are too high. We must institutionalize our “Just in Time” Inclusive Hiring Workshops while at the same time trying out new ideas for retention of our extraordinary faculty and develop leadership programs that will insure adequate preparation for future program directors and department chairs. We must also build on the growing interest in sustainability, especially in the curriculum. Student and faculty interest is high in this area, and we have an obligation to our fellow humans to act morally and responsibly. Further, we have to become more comfortable with the process of assessing student learning and measuring institutional practices, as well as with the way in which we talk about data based decision-making. We must focus our attention on information literacy, visual literacy, communication skills, quantitative competency, technological innovation, humanistic inquiry, scientific exploration, and so on. These are areas that will always demand our attention and will insure the excellence and relevance of the Skidmore education.
Transformation is our goal. We want students to be positively transformed and we want faculty and staff to feel like they are constantly transforming as well. To achieve that lofty goal, we must remember the first principle of liberal education—that learning can truly liberate the mind and the soul—and apply it in a swiftly evolving environment. Skidmore will be a better place in 2025 than it is now. How good it can be will depend on vision, creativity, nimbleness and hard work.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 3:
Nimbleness, Creativity, Reimagining
Name of group: Department of Art History
Number of Contributors: 4
Submitter Name: Katie Hauser
Submitter Email: khauser
How does your group view the College today?
TRYING TO PLAY “CATCH-UP,” UNABLE TO FORM A DISTINCTIVE IDENTITY
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 1:
fragmented, aspirational, reactive
How does your group view the external world?
INCREASINGLY ORIENTED TOWARDS VISUAL MODES OF COMMUNICATION
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 2:
diverse, complex, unstable
How does your group describe the College you would like to see us become by 2025?
we did not come up with anything
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 3:
diverse, distinctive, visually and verbally literate
Name of group: Dept. of American Studies
Number of Contributors: 4
Submitter Name: Dan Nathan
Submitter Email: dnathan@skidmore.edu
How does your group view the College today?
We are encouraged by many of the College's initiatives (especially around interdisciplinarity and diversity) and its leadership, especially in the Dean of the Faculty’s Office.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 1:
interdisciplinarity , diversity, Beau
How does your group view the external world?
As a complicated, heterogenous, dynamic place with competing interests and values.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 2:
complicated, heterogenous, dynamic
How does your group describe the College you would like to see us become by 2025?
The Skidmore College we envision is committed to excellence, respect, diversity, multiculturalism, interdisciplinarity, creativity, and civic engagement.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 3:
excellence, interdisciplinarity, creativity
Name of group: dhOcMCbMptDtke
Number of Contributors: RLanE
Submitter Name: batpuqxs
Submitter Email: vknfjs@ilbtbv.com
How does your group view the College today?
ySRoYE xorissnvdwms, [url=http://bkqmphatxhgo.com/]bkqmphatxhgo[/url], [link=http://ecukqruarrnj.com/]ecukqruarrnj[/link], http://wyqedxbpveks.com/
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 1:
AVPcYNWdYBNKvZNkigS, lsyYGGZDIEo, yFPXWpVkPt
How does your group view the external world?
ySRoYE xorissnvdwms, [url=http://bkqmphatxhgo.com/]bkqmphatxhgo[/url], [link=http://ecukqruarrnj.com/]ecukqruarrnj[/link], http://wyqedxbpveks.com/
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 2:
nHlBvYiXVMVcF, WpHKKyXdmA, XxrCOIZIqRyJkt
How does your group describe the College you would like to see us become by 2025?
ySRoYE xorissnvdwms, [url=http://bkqmphatxhgo.com/]bkqmphatxhgo[/url], [link=http://ecukqruarrnj.com/]ecukqruarrnj[/link], http://wyqedxbpveks.com/
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 3:
ZcoLyAzbESzZGpJRc, JxyaJoDVBYrZEl, xDvOhJTVYaSCwH
Name of group: Diversity Quad
Number of Contributors: 4
Submitter Name: Mariel Martin
Submitter Email: mariel@skidmore.edu
How does your group view the College today?
In assessing the current Strategic Plan, we have clearly made significant progress in a range of ways over the last ten years. That said, we still have more work to do to best achieve our institutional vision.
Given the work of the Quad (Associate Dean of Personnel, Development, and Diversity; Director of Intercultural Studies; Director of Student Diversity Programs/Title IX Deputy Coordinator; Assistant Director for EEO and Workplace Diversity), we will focus on Goal II – Intercultural and Global Understanding.*
While the College has made efforts to actualize these goals, in the next ten years, we hope that the institution will place more emphasis on both representational and interactional diversity. In addition, celebrating “difference” is not enough; we need to also focus on how our institutional vision challenges the unexamined and unmarked cultural norms of the institution and seeks to create a community that values equity and social justice.
According to the Skidmore College website, “the Life of the Mind is vitally linked with a life of practicality and action.” Part of the stated purpose of the institution is to be a place where we work together to use what we learn “to make a difference in the world.” We can do more as an institution to realize this goal.
* “Skidmore College is committed to fostering a diverse and inclusive community in which members develop their abilities to live in a complex and interconnected world. Consistent with our educational mission, we recognize ourselves as a community that respects individual identities based on varying sociocultural characteristics, such as race, ethnicity, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, national origin, first language, religious and spiritual tradition, age, ability, socioeconomic status, and learning style. We strive to create a socially just world that honors the dignity and worth of each individual, and we seek to build a community centered on mutual respect and openness to ideas—one in which individuals value cultural and intellectual diversity and share the responsibility for creating a welcoming, safe, and inclusive environment. We recognize that our community is most inclusive when all members participate to their full capacity in the spirited, and sometimes challenging, conversations that are at the center of the College's educational mission.” (CIGU Diversity Statement)
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 1:
Social Justice, Diversity, Inclusion
How does your group view the external world?
In comparison to our peer and aspirant schools, Skidmore lags behind in certain key issues related to Goal II of our current Strategic Plan. For instance, we are the only institution in this group without some sort of Ethnic Studies Major or Minor; most have Africana/Black Studies and others have a range of other offerings (e.g., Asian American Studies, Latino/a Studies, Native American Studies, Ethnic and Diaspora Studies). In addition, with the exception of Wesleyan University, all of our peer and aspirant schools have some sort of Multicultural Center, Center for Race and Ethnicity, and/or Community/Civic Engagement Center. Davidson College, for instance, has a multi-purpose Multicultural Center building that serves to bring together students/faculty/staff for meetings, workshops/retreats, informal gatherings and meals, study sessions, etc. It is both functional and fun, and encourages inter/intra-group formal and informal collaborations.
Although in the past three years we have made incremental progress in attracting faculty of color and international faculty, we need to continue on this trajectory and to focus on retention. It is imperative that we establish protocols and practices that will ensure that our colleagues feel welcomed, and are appropriately mentored and supported in their departments and programs as well as by the Skidmore community at large. It also behooves us to explore ways of continuing to increase the diversity of our staff and to adequately mentor and support them in order to insure their success and appropriately recognize their contributions to the institution.
Many of our peer and aspirant schools devote more resources to the creation and implementation of robust and sustained programming that bridge student, faculty and staffs’ curricular and co-curricular experiences. In this important area, we are presently at a comparative disadvantage.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 2:
Ethnic Studies, Multicultural Center, Personnel
How does your group describe the College you would like to see us become by 2025?
To be competitive in the coming years, we recommend attention to the following diversity-related initiatives:
Structural
• Clarify the effectiveness of the current diversity structure (e.g., CIGU, BRG, Quad) and re-consider the possibility of a Chief Diversity Officer
• Develop a plan to handle social justice-related crises
• Create a Social Justice Center* supported by a budget and other resources.
• Review and change institutional policies that unintentionally reinforce bias (e.g., Commencement; Celebration Weekend; College-sponsored religious observations; the process for non-legal name changes)
• Require faculty workshops focused on best practices for teaching in a diverse classroom; hold faculty accountable by connecting it to personnel recommendations and decisions (e.g., reappointment, tenure, promotion, sabbatical)
• Train faculty to address the challenges posed by international students
• Review salary/title equity for staff and faculty
• Strengthen the ESL resources available to international students
• Earmark resources for student of color leadership development (NCORE, CHAS)
• Institutionalize mandatory anti-harassment training
• Ensure that the campus is accommodating and accessible to all members of the community (e.g. universal design, adequate gender neutral accommodations, etc.).
Curricular
• Create an Ethnic Studies Major and/or Minor
• Infuse diversity-related courses throughout the curriculum
• Strengthen the existing cultural diversity requirement
• Explore ways and secure resources for continued development of the IGR program
• Provide resources to allow more faculty/staff to be actively involved in the program to help meet the student demand for the minor and dialogue courses. For instance, we consistently have waitlists of 40+ students each semester. Increased personnel and leadership capacity will be necessary if program expansion is to be realized.
• Expand the dialogue and course offerings to other social identities (e.g., social class, nationality)
• Provide continued resources for IGR faculty/staff professional development
• Offer a first-year seminar using IGR pedagogies
• Work to establish connections to the broader community related to issues of social justice (e.g., community-based dialogues; active partnerships with social justice organizations; internship opportunities)
Co-Curricular
• A thriving and celebrated co-curricular program in the Office of Student Diversity Programs
• Ensure adequate office staffing and financial resources for robust and engaging campus programming that is both targeted and broad in scope and interest to adequately support students in their lives outside of the classroom.
• Provide appropriate space, both formal and informal, for the myriad co-curricular needs of our increasingly diverse student population.
• Foster better connection between curricular and co-curricular work that engages with diversity and social justice including outreach, support, and collaboration.
Personnel
• Continue focusing on the recruitment and retention of faculty and staff of under- represented groups
• Offer continues Leadership development opportunities to faculty and staff of color
Admissions
• Continue working to admit an increasingly diversity student body (e.g., race/ethnicity, social class, gender, sexuality, religion, nationality, ability status)
• Increase financial aid resources in order to move towards a need-blind admissions policy which will allow us to be more competitive in attracting academically strong students from diverse backgrounds and increase the AQR average of every incoming class.
Faculty/Staff Climate
• Re-envision the structure of faculty meetings
• Work on building better, non-hierarchical faculty-staff relations
* Social Justice Center
We would like to propose that the values underlying Goal II of our Strategic Plan be taken into consideration during the re-configuration and re-envisioning of the Case Center space. This is important for several reasons: (1) as our community becomes increasingly more diverse, it is imperative that students/faculty/staff have a central location to convene across various social identities and disciplinary backgrounds to discuss issues of social justice, and (2) the current dedicated space for diversity-focused issues, the ICC, is inadequate.
Creating a social justice space would position Skidmore as a leader for other institutions; it would also centralize some of the cutting edge work that happens on campus (e.g., Civic Engagement, Intergroup Relations, Opportunity Program, Office of Student Diversity Programs). This Social Justice Center would serve as a vibrant and visible "hub" on campus for the social and intellectual development of our community and encourage cross-campus partnerships during and after business hours.
More concretely, potential uses for the space include:
• Gathering space for students of color, other marginalized groups, and allies, to come together to discuss issues unique to their social identities
• Venue for pedagogy workshops about teaching in an inclusive classroom
• Space to host poetry sessions, research talks, and discussions about diversity-focused issues
• Library and resource center for the community
• Conference and/or office space for related offices in Academic Affairs and Student Affairs
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 3:
Campus Climate, Structure, Model Institution
Name of group: Economics
Number of Contributors: dept
Submitter Name: Peter von Allmen
Submitter Email: pvonallm@skidmore.edu
How does your group view the College today?
Skidmore is as strong liberal arts college with an appropriate emphasis on the teacher-scholar model. The goal at Skidmore as we see it is to promote a desire for independent life-long learning. Skidmore is a dynamic environment that works to preserve those fundamental tenets of liberal arts education while aspiring to enhance our commitment to creative thought and creative action. Faculty are committed to realizing this goal in the classroom, in their devotion to research and scholarship, and in the passion they have for their professionalism that consciously and necessarily spills over onto our students. Strong disciplinary study with significant opportunities for multi-disciplinary study such as Environmental studies, Neuroscience, Management, and International Affairs. As a liberal arts college, we are rare in that we emphasize both pre-professional and traditional liberal arts, to the benefit of both. Together, these characteristics place Skidmore among the elite liberal arts colleges. The Skidmore experience serves students well as they emerge into an external environment that requires creativity, analytical reasoning, and critical thinking skills.
At the same time we see important opportunities to strengthen the college. In spite of our students’ strong academic background when they enter the college their academic profiles would benefit from additional quantitative training and communication skills (both written and oral). We see an important goal of the college to strengthen these skills both initially and with a greater commitment to infusing the curriculum at all stages. In this age of instant and condensed information transmitted through electronic media, we must be even more vigilant to engage our students with curricular experiences that emphasize analytical and communicative depth and expression. Our commitment at the College and in our discipline is to go against the tide of instant information, helping students to distinguish evidence from opinion and to learn how to make sound arguments based on that evidence. Our experience is that there is much more that we can do to achieve to these goals
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 1:
Strong, teacher-scholar, CTM
How does your group view the external world?
Students will enter a highly competitive world with a decreasing understanding and appreciation for the value of liberal arts, emphasizing, instead, learning that is ‘skill-based’. Our concern is that the value of traditional liberal arts curriculum is undervalued. Today’s students will likely change not only jobs but also careers many times in their lives. They will need to have the intellectual flexibility to take on new and as yet unknown challenges, underscoring rather than diminishing the value of a liberal arts education.
The external world is also becoming culturally more intertwined and complex, heightening the importance of Skidmore’s efforts to maintain a diverse campus environment. We must, therefore, be more conscious of the need to provide financial assistance to our students to achieve that commitment to maintaining a diverse and rich student body. Diversity in and among the students and faculty is the responsible direction that Skidmore should continue to take as it prepares its graduates for this ever more diverse world in which they will engage.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 2:
Evolving, Diversity, Accessibility
How does your group describe the College you would like to see us become by 2025?
Our commitment to our motto of 'creative thought matters' will surely require a complementary commitment to helping our students learn how to transform creative thought into creative action. The College should think about the processes necessary to achieve this transformation from creative thought to creative action – to encourage even greater emphasis on critical and analytical thinking skills, creative writing, innovation, and research activities (both individual and collaborative). These skills for the future cover all disciplines at the College, whether in the Arts, Sciences, or pre-professional programs. From the Economics Department's perspective, our sense is that students must develop an understanding of the role of economic globalization and the impact of market-driven outcomes on social welfare and development. Understanding these forces better prepares students for a world in which the problems we face, though increasingly complex, often revolve around scarcity and economic well-being.
We should be more vigilant to fostering an academic environment that emphasizes the teacher-scholar model. It is the teacher-scholar who knows how to transform creative thought into creative action. The classroom should become a laboratory for both. We should set a high bar for the standard of student work and provide them with the support they will need to succeed. Doing so ensures that they receive the most benefit from their time here while also preparing them for their lives and careers after graduation.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 3:
Global, Rigorous, Supportive
Name of group: English Department
Number of Contributors: 40
Submitter Name: Mason Stokes
Submitter Email: mstokes@skidmore.edu
How does your group view the College today?
• Well positioned for difficult times, but still vulnerable in relation to shifting demographic and educational landscapes
• On the cusp of a generational shift in faculty makeup, but anxious in relation to change
• Struggling to balance the best of a traditional liberal arts education with the more “practical” imperatives of a new economy
• Increasingly strong financially, but still hampered by limited resources
• Made up of a first-rate faculty that is being increasingly pulled in too many directions at once, as innovative and labor-intensive teaching practices collide with increased scholarly/creative/service expectations
• Less nimble and innovative than in the past
• Not academically rigorous enough
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 1:
Strong, Changing, Vulnerable
How does your group view the external world?
• Increasingly divided, economically, culturally, and ideologically, with even greater divisions likely
• In the midst of a digital revolution that raises significant questions about the flow of information, the way we engage language and ideas, and the future of higher education
• Full of possibility for those able to adapt to an increasingly mobile and global culture
• In need of people who can join excellence in critical thinking and communication with the more specific, often technological, needs of the twenty-first-century workplace
• Approaching a crisis of scarcity, an increasingly intensive competition for resources, i.e., land, water, food, and fuel
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 2:
Divided, Precarious, Unsustainable
How does your group describe the College you would like to see us become by 2025?
• Characterized first and foremost by a rigorous intellectual climate, where students and faculty commit to the life of the mind and the world of ideas, acquiring and perfecting the skills necessary to understand ourselves as products of an intellectual past, and using the best of that past to develop creative approaches to the intellectual, social, cultural, and scientific challenges of the twenty-first century
• A place that values the study of literature and the arts as an expression of what makes us human, and as a means of understanding the human mind and human dilemmas
• Increasingly strong in the sciences, even as we continue to nurture and develop our current strength in the humanities
• Possessing increased financial resources, enabling the kind of growth and excellence that need-blind financial aid makes possible
• A place from which our students graduate debt free
• Increasingly selective
• A similar size, in terms of student population, but with a significantly larger faculty
• No longer structurally dependent upon non-tenure-track faculty, thereby bucking national trends
• More racially and socioeconomically diverse, in faculty, staff, and student ranks
• A national leader in blending the old with the new, the traditional with the yet-to-be-imagined
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 3:
Intellectual, Just, Progressive
Name of group: Environmental Studies Program
Number of Contributors: 10
Submitter Name: Michael Steven Marx
Submitter Email: mmarx@skidmore.edu
How does your group view the College today?
When the Environmental Studies Steering Committee discussed our view of the College, we had a multiplicity of sometimes contradictory views. On the one hand, we view the College as a seat of STRONG TEACHING. This characteristic is at the center of our mission and the heart of much of the innovation at the College (community connections, internships, science literacy, documentary recordings, visual literacy). Simultaneously, although the students and the faculty are creative, the College itself often seems conventional and reactive. This perception lead some of us to wish that the College embraced more of a leadership role while others felt there was nothing wrong with building upon the work and innovation of others.
The College is very much--perhaps too much--aspirational, particularly in a comparative sense. So much of what the College does is following in the footsteps of the other liberal arts colleges, from personnel to buildings. Skidmore should once again be in a leadership role, as it once maintained with interdisciplinary studies and the Liberal Studies curriculum. Does being competitive now mean simply being comparative?
The College seems sheltered even as almost 60% of our students study abroad. The students seem to live in a bubble and need more community engagement. Similarly, the faculty are often sheltered from the student world and issues (for example, most recently the campus climate issues).
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 1:
strong teaching, aspirational, conventional
How does your group view the external world?
Throughout this discussion, we always returned to the idea that when thinking about the external world, economics is at the center. Particularly when we talked about the College in relation to the external world, the importance of economic and financial circumstances seemed to influence everything, from the impact of the employment rate and job availability on students' decisions to choose and ability to afford a liberal arts education, to striving for an educationally rich diverse College community of students, faculty, and staff, to the possible influence of distance learning and MOOCS as both an opportunity and challenge to traditional college education.
When we think about the external world, we see a world living under the reality of climate change and the challenges that climate change poses on how we conduct our lives as individuals, communities, nations, and a planet. The very idea of a future depends on how we respond to the urgent demands of climate change. How we respond to these challenges will determine whether we have a future and what kind of future it is. The dominance of climate change as the most vital issue the world is facing re-enforces the importance of science education and science literacy. It also holds out the opportunity for new and exciting collaborations among scholars and presents us with an arena where "creative thought matters" the most.
We also characterize the external world in terms of connectedness. People are now more connected to each other than ever before, whether through technology or actual experience. We noted the great amount of traveling and “experiencing the world” our students do today even before they enroll at Skidmore. Technology allows us to connect easily to other students and scholars throughout the world than was imaginable twenty-five years ago. Our very perceptions of the world and how we conduct our international politics are all greatly influenced by the connectedness technology affords us today. The idea of a global village seems more relevant today than ever before.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 2:
Economics, Climate Change, Global
How does your group describe the College you would like to see us become by 2025?
Looking ahead to 2025, we could like to see the campus functioning much more sustainably, building upon the foundation we have today with projects such as geothermal heating/cooling, the solar energy "farm," and local food sourcing. We would like to see the College responding to each layer of the triple bottom line definition of sustainability (environment, economics, and social justice) much more intentionally and visibly.
Given the challenges higher education is facing today, we also hope that in 2025, Skidmore will have an even stronger commitment and stronger focus on our mission of providing a liberal arts undergraduate education in a residential setting. We hope that Skidmore and our cohort colleges will maintain their relevance in the external world that will have a better understanding of and be more supportive of the value of liberal learning and a liberal arts education.
We also hope that in 2025, the College will be more innovative, reclaiming the leadership position we once held in the past. We see real possibilities for such leadership in forging new relationships between the Natural Sciences and the Humanities, as the often artificial boundaries between academic disciplines and departments recede.
We anticipate that there will be continued and increased importance on the global in 2025, and thus we hope that the College will be thoroughly engaged with the global community, where we will educate our students for intellectual skills and knowledge relevant to the global world. Having more international students on campus will also help enhance the mission of global citizenship among our students.
Overall, we hope that the College will be operating on a much more intentional basis, carefully planning for the future, being proactive rather than reactive.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 3:
Sustainable, Liberal Arts, Innovative
Name of group: ESL Specialist
Number of Contributors: 1
Submitter Name: Thaddeus Niles
Submitter Email: tniles@skidmore.edu
How does your group view the College today?
We are embarking on an aggressive expansion into the international market without the resources in place to cope. This may sound hard to believe, considering how few additional international admits we've seen, but if we balance those students against the support in place, we see the scales tipping.
I represent perhaps 10% or perhaps as much as 33% of the qualified resources specifically available to English language learners on campus (depending on how you interpret "qualified"). There are very few individuals BOTH trained and task to work through pages of ESL writing on a daily basis--not only making ad-hoc changes, but reflecting on the patterns of error so that these sessions result in lessons that students can carry with them. Would we be comfortable being more transparent about the resources available to our students? Would parents be impressed by our planning and investment into this area? I sincerely doubt it.
With no dedicated ESL department or director, we are homeless, aimless and perpetually impoverished for resources. We begin with a summer course funded by ODSP, which then vanishes during the always-problematic freshman transition. Students can use the Writing Center (i.e., student peers who have received less than a week of training for ESL issues), beg for even-handed assistance from their professors (who lack a 21st century skill set honed to the needs of a 2013 college classroom), contact SAS (who are terrific, but lack specifically-qualified staff), or work with me, the ESL specialist. Self-identified non-native speakers of English account for 34, 38, and 44% of the Writing Center's business over the last three respective Fall/Spring semesters (these proportions skyrocket to 64 and 68% over the last two summers). We've tried to fill gaps by being creative, for example, relying on OP to teach a few students in their HE100 writing course, but we must hope for instructor who are prepared to meet the specific needs of these students. For example, this semester, the five high-need ESL students we enrolled got an unlucky draw in terms of the instructor and were pulling a collective average of a D a few weeks ago. One student failed the course, so we had to drain institutional resources to set up an independent study for that student. Next year, who knows? This isn't the fault of the OP--they have their own directives, and they are plugging holes right now anyway. But that's the point--it is someone's responsibility to make sure these students (who will bring in over a million dollars among the five of them over the next four years) are treated fairly and have a chance to excel, so whose responsibility is it, exactly? If we can't answer these questions, we will remain a mockery, or hide our inadequacies in shame.
I don't mean to rant and I'll stop right here. Suffice to say that we need to be more responsible as we perform our international pivot along with the rest of higher education. If it is indeed a money-maker for us, so be it--but let's treat it as an investment, not a money tree. Everyone can still win, but everyone loses if these students remain undeserved.
My suggestions:
- Hire an independent consultant to review the structures we have in place for ESL conditional admits (EN095) and "mainstream" international and domestic English language learners.
- Encourage or enforce faculty attendance at the ESL workshops I offer every semester. At the very least, ask the SSP profs to meet with me during the Spring semester to plan and prepare. I get a lot of phone calls during September/October and there's no reason to start addressing this issue after the semester begins. Let's prepare, not patch.
- Draft a position statement regarding non-native writers and speakers so that we take a unified approach, so that faculty are aware of their responsibilities as they balance with various support offices on campus, and so that our work might create a forum for faculty from various disciplines to discuss the issue.
- Invest in faculty who bring ESL expertise to this school--and who are tasked to work with them as SSP instructors, 100-level instructors, support staff, etc. Greater continuity among support staff means that our services have a chance to improve every year. The Writing Center will be seeking an evening, part-time ESL tutor to fill a pressing need. Similarly, the ODSP will try to hire a similar position in the summer (which will be at least partially paid for BY THE STUDENTS, raising the cost of their 5-week summer course to $6400!) Let's not be happy with these band-aids. Let's be as aggressive and creative in finding funds for these students as we have been in attracting these students to Skidmore.
Again, I apologize if my tone is too forward, but the urgency of these needs grow as quickly as the numbers and needs of our international and domestic English language learners. I am using this forum because this is a response to our Strategic Plan and may impact several offices: admissions, DOF, etc.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 1:
Danger, Commitment, Investment
How does your group view the external world?
-
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 2:
-, -, -
How does your group describe the College you would like to see us become by 2025?
-
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 3:
-, -, -
Name of group: FEC
Number of Contributors: 5
Submitter Name: Joerg Bibow
Submitter Email: jbibow@skidmore.edu
How does your group view the College today?
Introduction: As a private (nonprofit) institution of higher education, Skidmore College is run on the principle of shared governance, featuring a governance system that involves the faculty, the student body, and the administration, with ultimate oversight being exercised by the Board of Trustees. In this context, faculty, employed by the college as teacher-scholars, serves on both “All-College” committees that govern the affairs of the college as a whole as well as on a range of (standing or ad-hoc) faculty committees that together with regular faculty meetings form the system of faculty governance. The purpose of the shared governance system under the day-to-day management and authority of the administration is to steer the college on a sustainable path that allows meeting its educational mission. The purpose of faculty governance as part of the shared governance system is to make sure that the faculty exercises effective ownership and authority over the college curriculum and education policy and related faculty personnel matters, thereby guaranteeing and legitimizing the standards and quality of Skidmore’s “liberal arts” educational outcome; an outcome that is competing in an ever-changing global market place which is also subject to government regulation and industry self-regulation.
As the global and national market environment in higher education is changing, so are the demands on the expertise, and time and energy of the Skidmore faculty, an academic community of teacher-scholars. The position of the faculty in meeting the evolving demands on their expertise and presumed life-long development as teacher-scholars and the overall health of the college are deeply and inherently intertwined: one cannot prosper without the other. Similarly, while Skidmore’s governance system has to be as supportive as possible of faculty in their capacity as teacher-scholars, there is also an important role for teacher-scholars in participating in governance.
Therefore, the governance system has to ensure that the college promotes and fosters conditions that enable the faculty to thrive and excel both as teachers and scholars/artists. And it also has to ensure that the faculty’s expertise, interests, and perspectives are part of the processes that guide the college in pursuit of its mission and goals. Teacher-scholars’ key role in faculty governance is to shape and control the college curriculum and educational policy and related faculty personnel matters. Essentially, it is through faculty governance that the faculty governs itself in these areas and in their role as teacher-scholars, and largely independent of short-term managerial and administrative considerations. Their role in shared governance is to best support the college in meeting its educational mission (outside the classroom and the research lab) as citizens of the Skidmore College academic community. As the front-line personnel in academic life faculty can also make invaluable contributions to decision making on matters of resource allocation, setting of goals, choosing top officers, and guiding student life.
One key requirement of the college governance system is to secure the effectiveness of its procedures in meeting its purpose and the wider college goals and ambitions. Other key requirements are efficiency and equity. Efficiency is an issue as the need for faculty to play its part in governance is competing with the demands on faculty as teacher-scholars. The time demands placed on faculty in the ever-evolving teacher-scholar model make faculty tend to distance themselves from the governance system whereas faculty participation in decision making becomes more and more important as the institution responds to the changing external environment. The quest is on for a streamlined governance system without jeopardizing its effectiveness.
Equity is an issue since fairly sharing the faculty’s role in governance (and the “service burden” more broadly) is necessary so as to not hinder otherwise overburdened individual faculty members from fulfilling their primary responsibilities as teacher-scholars. For this reason an academic community may be well advised to establish both standards as well as upper limits on the involvement of individual faculty members in governance at any one time; particularly as temporarily joining the administration in certain functions is always an option open to faculty too. But sharing the burden equitably also benefits the college by ensuring wide participation of faculty in the governance of college affairs. The governance system should meet what is said in the Preamble to Part Two of the Faculty Handbook: “Broad participation by faculty on committees and task forces improves the chances that diverse expertise, interest, and perspectives will inform decision-making at the College. Such participation distributes the workload, encourages greater accountability, and conveys the message that all faculty are committed to protecting the welfare of the entire institution and advancing the quality of academic life across all the disciplines at Skidmore.”
It appears that faculty dissatisfaction regarding governance and how governance and service relate to their primary responsibilities as teacher-scholars stems from the following four sources, some relating to past experiences and some to ongoing concerns. Past experiences include, first, a perceived lack of information, communication, and inclusiveness in some strategic decision-making related to the curriculum and the College’s educational mission and, second, a perceived a lack of scope for open and inclusive discussion at faculty meetings; while organizing separate meetings for discussion adds further pressures on faculty time while risking to undermine inclusiveness. Ongoing concerns include a perceived lack of transparency in governance participation generally and regarding the service expectations for tenure and promotion decisions specifically and a perceived lack of equity in faculty participation in governance. These areas of dissatisfaction indicate that all is not well with our existing governance system.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 1:
governance, teacher-scholars, communication
How does your group view the external world?
Pressures on faculty time and energy both in their primary responsibilities as teacher-scholars as well as regarding their role in governance and broader service expectations have increased considerably in recent decades. To a large extent these trends seem to owe to an evolving and increasingly competitive external environment. What seems clear is that the external environment will continue evolving. What is less clear is whether pressures on faculty arising from the evolving external environment might ever abate by itself. The challenge is to manage these pressures in such a way that the faculty can still thrive and excel as teacher-scholars. Institutionally this includes adapting the governance system in appropriate ways and keeping it adaptable.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 2:
competitive pressures, adaptation, adaptability
How does your group describe the College you would like to see us become by 2025?
Important initiatives addressing the above sources of faculty dissatisfaction regarding governance and how governance and service related to their primary responsibilities as teacher-scholars are either under way or under exploration. In particular, the “Policy on Policies” was established as a means to address the first aspect and the experience so far has been positive as all parties concerned are making a deliberate effort for early and inclusive communication and discussion. Regarding the second issue, the format of faculty meetings has been restructured and now includes regular Committee of the Whole discussions and shorter administrative reports. Again, the experience so far has been positive but further tweaking may be desirable as we try to foster a culture of broad involvement and discussion. In addition, we have tested the “Academic Summit” idea as a forum for more intensive faculty discussion of particular challenges facing the College and the faculty. An alternative would be to arrange faculty meetings exclusively devoted to discussion throughout the semester. The Faculty Workload Working Group is currently investigating the issue of transparency in expectations for tenure and promotion decisions, and is expected to prepare proposals on how to improve the current situation in these matters.
The discussion of the issue of equity in governance and service advances around different kinds of routes, and FEC is hoping to present proposals for governance reform based on its ongoing work to the faculty in the course of the next semester. Yet, whatever we might agree on, there should be no illusion that the next reform could ever settle the issue for good. In an ever-evolving external environment the governance system too will have to remain in flux. There may even be a premium on having some degree of adaptability and flexibility within the governance system. And it may be advisable to establish a routine for regular reviews (say, every five years) of the governance system and expectations for the involvement of faculty as teacher-scholars.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 3:
transparency, equity, inclusiveness
Name of group: Foreign Langs. & Lits. Dept.
Number of Contributors: 23
Submitter Name: Mary-Beth O'Brien
Submitter Email: mobrien
How does your group view the College today?
The College is in transition and struggling with an identity, in which science-humanities-work skills are trying to find a place in our discourse and in our curriculum. We support the various new initiatives for the sciences and for transition and transformation, but would like to see equal attention given to the humanities. Liberal art colleges like Skidmore should take note of Martha Nussbaum’s conclusions in her book, Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities (Princeton UP, 2010). Higher education has a social mission to educate global citizens. It requires us to learn about others, and the first place to start is to find a common language. Learning to communicate in someone else's language teaches us to see how others think, because, simply put, language structures thought. Essential skills like foreign language competency and the ability to read and analyze texts critically allow us to gain an appreciation for the literature, art, history, and philosophy of another culture. The knowledge and tools we gain from the humanities are essential for putting ourselves in someone else's place and learning empathy, respect, and common values. These are the essential building blocks of democracy.
As an institution we need to recommit to our historic mission of teaching students how to acquire knowledge, recognize it as humanly constructed, debate the merits of various competing approaches, and respect differences of opinion. Currently, we seem pulled in many directions, responding to too many “masters.” Our compulsion to “please the client” leads to overreliance on student evaluation in personnel decisions. This interferes with rigorous assessment of student work on a daily basis. Recognizing failure is a necessary part of the equation, if we truly want to celebrate excellence.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 1:
Rigor, Challenge, Education versus entertainment
How does your group view the external world?
The world is full of both promise and conflict. As educators it is up to us to teach our students as much about values, communication, information gathering, debating, and compromise as about job skills for their future careers. The outside world often has misconceptions about what we do, and we seem to act in response to those. The College needs to communicate the intrinsic value of a liberal arts education for its graduates and for society as a whole.
The external world tends to paint the world, the people in it, and the situations that arise in black and white rather than seeing various nuances, not just shades of gray but multiple colors and hues. We need to educate our students to be able to hold a variety of competing and often contradictory perspectives in mind when approaching any situation. The outside world views education as a quick killing on an investment—how much a student earns in the first year after graduation—whereas we should view it as an endowment that grows and becomes more valuable overtime, resulting in an engaged, enlightened, enriched citizen of the world.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 2:
liberated, critical, mind
How does your group describe the College you would like to see us become by 2025?
We would like to see a *wealthier* college by 2025. Why? Being tuition-driven means we are compelled to accept many good students who can pay full tuition rather than great students to whom we can offer financial aid and thus enroll. A bigger endowment would enable us to attract more academically prepared and more intellectual students.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 3:
merit, originality, independence
Name of group: Franklin Forum
Number of Contributors: Conno
Submitter Name: Connor Grant-Knight
Submitter Email: cgrantkn@skidmore.edu
How does your group view the College today?
I should just like to mention what The Franklin Forum is. It is a student-led reading group with 10 members and four faculty advisors. Members read texts drawn from the Western tradition from a variety of sources and disciplines touching on politics-–in the broadest sense of that term. The Franklin Forum meets weekly to discuss the readings and to assess the arguments made by their authors. In addition to our regular meetings, we also occasionally host speakers and travel as a group to conferences. The group has existed now for three semesters. We spent two semesters reading short stories, speeches, and essays in the American tradition, and this past semester read Moby-Dick. We have brought to the College such reputable speakers as Danilo Petranovich, Yale University; Diana J. Schaub, Professor of Political Science, Loyola University and member of The President's Council on Bioethics; and John Alvis, Professor of English, University of Dallas.
For the Franklin Forum, Skidmore’s greatest virtue is the great intimacy of its campus and student-faculty relations. This virtue cannot help but to strengthen Skidmore’s mission, whatever it might be. Skidmore is indeed remarkable for its intimate character, for one does not find it even at the traditionally top liberal arts colleges, such as Amherst and Williams. There one may have to wait as long as a week in order to meet with a professor, for their schedules are so filled; the faculty there, because of the prestige of their institution, face increased pressure to spend most of their time publishing; and perhaps as a consequence of these two factors, at these colleges office-hours do not seem to be considered, as they are here, as an expected extension of the classroom experience.
It seems that students are becoming drawn increasingly toward business and the natural sciences, given the College’s increased funding of them. But it appears to me that that is only one possible cause of this grand trend; another cause is that the mentality of students, even independently of the natural sciences’ increased emphasis at colleges, is changing even more rapidly. Students are coming to adopt the modern, “scientific” way of thinking, according to which only those disciplines that either make money or make observable progress are worth studying. Indeed one sees the language of progress everywhere at Skidmore. But the humanities do not properly share this particularly modern concern for progress; they are more traditional. The problem that Skidmore must address is how to push for creativity and scientific progress while maintaining in its students a reverence for past, humanistic thought.
It seems that solving this identity-crisis should be Skidmore’s top priority; for if the College comes to be unable to reconcile the apparently opposite dispositions of the humanities on one hand and business and the natural sciences on the other, we will necessarily see the unfortunate effect that Professor Timothy Freiermuth mentioned at the Honors Forum's liberal education panel: humanities professors will become increasingly squeezed by students and their evaluations, causing them to dilute and to popularize their material, as well as to inflate their grades—all as last-resort measures to maintain their class numbers, lest they be forced to cancel a class because of poor enrollment and then be forced to teach an additional class the following semester. And the professor would necessarily have to choose for this additional class a more popular, and possibly, therefore, less important subject, so as to ensure without doubt that she wouldn’t have to cancel it, too.
Skidmore's atmosphere and the mentality of its students is not only modern, though; it is also post-modern. One sees in its students a troubling agnosticism about what is good. When one asks a Skidmore student, "What is good? What is just? What is beautiful? What is true?" The answer is the complacent (but "nice"!) "It's subjective." This disappointing disposition of Skidmore students is reflected in the side-by-side appearance of posters advertising great academic lectures on one hand, and "Sex Toy Bingo" night and "How to be a slut" night on the other. But Skidmore has a rich intellectual tradition that may fuel a revival of its students' moral seriousness, and The Franklin Forum is confident that with the right leadership of the faculty and administration, the College will be able to instill in its students both the knowledge and the habits necessary for the genuine learning that has made Skidmore so reputable during its first century of existence.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 1:
Postmodern, Modern, Potentially great
How does your group view the external world?
The Franklin Forum views this as a loaded question, for it seems to suggest that Skidmore should change fundamentally in response to the changing external world. The Franklin Forum would like to remind the drafters of the new Strategic Plan that there are negative, unintended consequences that attend institutional change in light of modernization. There is the pressure to “globalize” and to “culturally diversify” Skidmore’s offerings, in order to prepare students for a more globalized world. The phenomena of technology, social media, and globalization seem to pose a threat to liberal education. To the Franklin Forum, especially in light of the strain on the humanities just mentioned, Skidmore is juggling too many balls as it is, and so too great a concern with globalizing itself (whatever that would entail) would cause only more stress on the institution. For which departments would be forced to change their approaches? Not the natural sciences; rather, the social sciences and the humanities. I will not address the social sciences, for I think that globalization is not inherently at odds with their curricula. But I will say that any pressure whatsoever placed on the humanities to globalize or to diversify would be misplaced. The very concept of having to change one’s way of learning because of change in the external world is entirely foreign to the humanities’ disposition—which is, properly, the view that what one learns by studying literature and books written by the greatest minds in history transcends all time and place. In order to understand the principles of globalization, the proper humanist does not contemporize her studies to the particular mode of globalization in the present day; rather, she opens Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra, and discovers there, through the Bard’s presentation of the hardly less globalized world of the Roman empire, the universal principles and tendencies of globalization.
But even if the humanities do not face direct pressure to change their curricula for reason of adjusting to today’s global situation, they may face pressures causing them, as I mentioned above, to popularize and to dilute their studies, should the College address the need to “globalize” by adding new requirements—which requirements would, of course, because of the apparently contemporary nature of studies particular to a globalized world, be in the social scientific disciplines. And when requirements become increasingly concentrated in one area—natural sciences, social sciences, or humanities—the other two lose out, both because of their enrollment levels as directly affected by the number of students who then take classes elsewhere in order to fulfill their requirements, and because of their enrollment levels as affected indirectly by any newly sparked interests of students caused by those students’ having taken elsewhere the newly imposed requirements.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 2:
"Progressive", Globalizing, Technical
How does your group describe the College you would like to see us become by 2025?
The College should seek by 2025 to have institutionalized some of the intellectual friendships that its intimate campus and student-faculty relationships make so possible. More reading and discussion groups—poetry, newspaper, philosophy, art—and more debates on campus—debate club and interdisciplinary and intradisciplinary faculty debates. As the pressures of modern liberal democracy increase and students become increasingly sensitive to one another’s opinions, the College needs to encourage, and to fund and to staff, such groups and events, in order to remind students that debate and intellectual friendships founded on difference or possible difference in opinion are not only healthy, but also necessary for human flourishing. As it stands, the majority of clubs on campus appear to be founded on the common “identity.” This is good, perhaps, if diversity of the student body is good. But the Franklin Forum asks where is the diversity of opinion? And we should like for the answer to be “alive” and not merely hiding amid various self-affirming groups.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 3:
Intellectually diverse, Encouraging of debate, Self-critical
Name of group: gCBRahZjuCGXtgsXWN
Number of Contributors: luUTg
Submitter Name: bkgpeikuy
Submitter Email: vqcogs@phvbxy.com
How does your group view the College today?
oRLkdH hhiufngheqlf, [url=http://ebifrpyatfla.com/]ebifrpyatfla[/url], [link=http://ywdzpqrqmcqm.com/]ywdzpqrqmcqm[/link], http://uguvqtigzhyt.com/
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 1:
mBXjkzQUUEKmPOdfpkT, PhpZrtdERms, MkOAMFwJxUkKTtPrCcm
How does your group view the external world?
oRLkdH hhiufngheqlf, [url=http://ebifrpyatfla.com/]ebifrpyatfla[/url], [link=http://ywdzpqrqmcqm.com/]ywdzpqrqmcqm[/link], http://uguvqtigzhyt.com/
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 2:
HgiOevHZ, ztATEXPefMBNl, OGDRrqkaeVZbgDbG
How does your group describe the College you would like to see us become by 2025?
oRLkdH hhiufngheqlf, [url=http://ebifrpyatfla.com/]ebifrpyatfla[/url], [link=http://ywdzpqrqmcqm.com/]ywdzpqrqmcqm[/link], http://uguvqtigzhyt.com/
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 3:
iMwmSHYviCZi, uugPZwPVUMQJTmPYQgA, RXToHjjol
Name of group: Geology Club
Number of Contributors: 2
Submitter Name: Patrick Thieringer
Submitter Email: pthiering@skidmore.edu
How does your group view the College today?
Close relationships with professors, closed off but relatively well-knit community, lots of great resources such as Career Development and the different SGA funds. Students are mostly affluent. Professors and students can sometimes be unaware of ideas from other cultures. An education that emphasizes compassion and creativity. On the other hand, drug rules are perhaps not enforced enough, because the marijuana smoking of others can be intrusive and disappointing.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 1:
Personal, Nurturing, Isolated
How does your group view the external world?
Very different from Skidmore. The external world contains a wide variety of people with unusual world views, lifestyles, talents, passions, and motivations. It is an exciting world full of possibilities, but it can be a dangerous world without the right precautions.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 2:
Exciting, Diverse, Beautiful
How does your group describe the College you would like to see us become by 2025?
Skidmore college is becoming increasingly selective and prestigious among liberal arts colleges, and that is a great thing. On the other hand, we also hope that the college leaves its marijuana culture behind. We also wish that there is more academic variety - course offerings such as public relations and filmmaking, for example.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 3:
Prestigious, Virtuous, Diverse
Name of group: Government Department
Number of Contributors: 9
Submitter Name: Natalie Taylor
Submitter Email: ntaylor@skidmore.edu
How does your group view the College today?
We are generally enthusiastic about the College. The College boasts a strong student body. It is more diverse, both with respect to its American and its international students. It is our experience that the students are brighter and more engaged than earlier generations of students. Yet, our optimism is cautious because we recognize some factors that present challenges to the central mission of a liberal arts college. While smarter students suggest great promise, we also notice that many of our students have difficulty articulating their thoughts and that their writing abilities have declined. This seems a consequence of mediums by which students are likely to communicate, such as texting.
We are concerned that the College has adopted a market-based logic to education. We seem preoccupied with Skidmore as a brand and with selling ourselves to various audiences. Rather than focus on how to package the Skidmore experience and the product, we should concentrate on what we do in the classroom. The market-based logic of education seems to foster consumerism among our students. They arrive at Skidmore for the “college experience” with expectations for socializing and entertainment. The posters that plaster the hallways advertise a range of events for every taste. Posters that announce academic opportunities must compete for the students’ attention. The College does not seem to discriminate between one event or another. For example, October Fest (“A Garden of Sinful Delight” in which students were treated to a burlesque) was held on the same Thursday evening as the Stelloff lecture, which was given this year by novelist Jonathan Franzen. We appreciate the importance of student life, but we do not think it should eclipse the academic program.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 1:
optimistic, strength of students, consumerism
How does your group view the external world?
Our department appreciates the opportunities for mutually-beneficial interaction with the external world. We have taken seriously the critiques of liberal education that come from the external world. The first and oft-discussed critique is that a liberal arts education does not properly prepare students for their professional lives. We have taken that criticism seriously and have encouraged students to pursue internships and other professional opportunities.
Our department has also been sensitive to another, less discussed, critique of higher education. Various academic and popular publications have indicted colleges for the failure to educate students generally. Not only are we failing to teach students professional skills, we fail to teach them politics, history, philosophy, and literature. Instead we indulge the students’ desire for socializing and entertainment. In his Wall Street Journal piece, “Message for the Class of 2013,” television writer and producer Rob Lazebnik, comments on the achievements of college graduates. Despite the impressive high school records that today’s college students have built, the class of 2013 “relaxed into college life.” Lazebnik tells the graduates, their “perhaps finest accomplishment, is having persuaded your parents to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to extend your childhood for four years.” We take this impression of college life seriously and reflect on how we could better impart a sense of personal responsibility, as well as a body of knowledge, to our students.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 2:
mutually beneficial, critical, competetive
How does your group describe the College you would like to see us become by 2025?
Our department believes that Skidmore is, in many respects, already the college that we would like to see us become by 2025. Rather than try to reinvent ourselves, we would like to improve on what we already do very well. Despite the recent national attention given to the “STEM” disciplines, the humanities and the arts at Skidmore are resilient. We would like to be rigorous liberal arts college committed to the humanities and arts, along with the social and physical sciences. We believe that the education offered by Skidmore will continue to graduate citizens who are nimble, able to analyze the complexities of the twenty-first century, and who lead rich, active lives. The caliber of education that our students receive depends upon sustaining a strong faculty. Among the greatest advantages of attending a small liberal arts college is working with excellent teachers, who are active in their own intellectual pursuits. Therefore, the College’s top priority should be to foster a faculty that has rigorous expectations for students and that can masterfully guide the students in fulfilling those expectations. This requires the institution not only to maintain, but to grow resources for faculty and to train energetic teacher-scholars.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 3:
intellectual rigor, strong faculty, strong student body
Name of group: Hayat
Number of Contributors: 1
Submitter Name: Sofia Naqvi
Submitter Email: snaqvi@skidmore.edu
How does your group view the College today?
Very different environment than our club. College is not as interested in our club. People express interest but when it comes to our club meetings, and events, none of that interest is seen. We have also been asking for more support from the college, like more diverse faculty from South Asia and the Muslim world. And more accommodations for Muslim students during Ramadan and fasting days.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 1:
Disinterest , Open, Casual
How does your group view the external world?
In the United States, the areas and religions that our club represents are persecuted and are looked down upon. We would love the school to engage in these issues and create a more welcoming environment at Skidmore for this.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 2:
Fear, Worry, Lack of Acceptance
How does your group describe the College you would like to see us become by 2025?
A student should be comfortable wearing the hijab on this campus. Many prospective students refuse to come here for that reason.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 3:
Openness, Acceptance , Communication
Name of group: Health and Exercise Sciences
Number of Contributors: 7
Submitter Name: Pat Fehling
Submitter Email: pfehling@skidmore.edu
How does your group view the College today?
We feel the College is a thriving, upbeat institution that ranks among the best of liberal arts colleges in the country. The College has a distinctive and creative curriculum which distinguishes us from other generic liberal arts colleges (we are speaking of the breadth of non-traditional majors when we speak about the curriculum). The College has clearly made the institutional commitment to the advancement of the sciences so we can sustain a reputation as a well-balanced college that offers excellence in the humanities, social sciences, pre-professional disciplines, and, increasingly and importantly, the natural sciences. Our department is thrilled that Skidmore was willing to take a risk on a non-traditional science major such as ours. We believe that is this type of risk taking that can result in programs that make our institution a distinctive liberal arts institution.
While we are making strides at increasing the visibility of the sciences, we still feel that science is perceived as just a requirement, not something that is celebrated here like the arts. We feel there has been a prioritizing of the arts over the science. Notable evidence for this feeling: arts vs. science on web page (number of stories), the programs that art related that are promoted through Special Programs, and the placement of programs/directors of the Tang and Special Programs in the reporting structure.
We also see the College as too bureaucratic. This is the result of faculty insistence to be part of conversations and decisions that should belong largely to the administration. This level of bureaucracy slows the College down not allowing us to be reactive, nimble or adaptable at times when it would be in our best interest.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 1:
unique, thriving, bureaucratic
How does your group view the external world?
We believe the outside world provides an important and defining context which determines to a great extent the ways in which we prepare and educate our students. Just as the community supports us and in some ways defines the needs and directions we take as a program, we in turn support and work with the community to benefit both the community and our students. In other words, we embrace the syncretic relationship between theory and praxis, and the community serves a critical role as the site for, our students' experience in, and a determinant of praxis.
We also believe that the external world has a degree of anti-intellectualism and anti-science attitude. People will speak while not having evidence to support their claims. We feel it is imperative that our students, trained in the model of liberal arts, have the tools to face this type of world- to question empty rhetoric.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 2:
dynamic, defining, anti-intellectual
How does your group describe the College you would like to see us become by 2025?
We would like a college that sustains excellence across all facets of the curriculum, that enhances its unique and distinctive character, that connects theory and praxis, enhances individual / group work in research, creative performances, scholarship, community / practical work, internships, and other forms of experiential/hands-on education. The closer we bring students into our own world as scholars / creative artists / community activists, the better the education they will receive, the better prepared for a career they will be, and the more relevant we will be. We would also hope to see the monolithic and bureaucratic department structure eased so that we can truly focus on integrated learning.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 3:
intentional, integrative, experiential
Name of group: History Department
Number of Contributors: 7
Submitter Name: Tillman W. Nechtman, Chair
Submitter Email: tnechtma@skidmore.edu
How does your group view the College today?
· Trend-following
· Struggling to find balance between departmental autonomy and administrative priorities
· Struggling to refine and build new consensus on the goals of a liberal arts education in the 21st century
· Struggling to refine and build new consensus on expectations for faculty advancement in light of new pedagogies, new learning priorities, and old models of service
· Serving a smart, diverse group of students who can be inspired to think beyond what they thought they knew but who are also, often, distracted by drugs, alcohol, and social-media, and dealing with mental illnesses and economic troubles
· In quest for consensus, trying to be all things to all groups
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 1:
dynamic, striving, divided
How does your group view the external world?
· The focus of our studies and teaching (i.e. to help students better understand the "external world")
· A sea of troubles to which liberally-educated graduate can apply their critical thinking skills
· The impetus for the many discussions about need to update our goals and methods
· The source of changes that undermine the cultural authority of a traditional liberal arts education
· Offering opportunities/impeti to develop new ways of approaching pedagogy and education
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 2:
changing, intrusive, opportunity
How does your group describe the College you would like to see us become by 2025?
· Bold in its insistence that the liberal arts can shape and change the world
· Effective role in delivering the digital humanities broadly and a leading role in delivering the digital humanities in a liberal arts setting
· Strong academic departments and program that determine curriculum and advancement standards
· A strong faculty with a sense of responsibility to the college as a whole
· Deeply engaged in broader conversations about both the need
for and working conditions of contingent faculty in the academy and internally focused on these issues in a Skidmore-specific context
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 3:
confident, smart, solvent
Name of group: Human Resources
Number of Contributors: 10
Submitter Name: Barbara Beck
Submitter Email: bbeck@skidmore.edu
How does your group view the College today?
• Strong arts programs
• Positive student enrollment - including students of color and international
• Employees in different areas across the campus are struggling with workloads, colleague demands, overtaxed, external pressures
• Divisions are operating in separate silos (not taking advantage of synergies across campus). Divisional leadership is self-centered, not looking at the needs of the whole campus
• Many employees feel unvalued, unheard and unappreciated
• Inconsistent messaging and communications across divisions and departments
• Limited opportunity for personal and career growth
• There is a general lack of discipline - not following policies and procedures, disregard for laws, people often don't do what they say they will do
• Scattered - people are doing overlapping work, groups and individuals work at cross purposes, too many competing initiatives at the same time and competing for the same dollars and people energy
• Strong sense of entitlement which is unrealistic and unsustainable
• Many employees are unwilling/resistant to change - lack of a sense of urgency to coming external changes
• Divide between Faculty, Administration, Exempt, Support staff, Union
• Long term employees have lost any perspective of the external world
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 1:
Unsustainable, Divided, Out-of-Balance
How does your group view the external world?
• Due to external changes (demographics, economy) - Skidmore should expect more complexity, ambiguity and change and will have to learn to lead without clear answers and craft solutions that will require the buy-in and support of colleagues across campus.
• Potential pressure for hiring and keeping entry level employees - local business expansion and potential casinos
• More open to and accepting of change
• More nimble to adjust than we are
• Responsible, accountability
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 2:
Accountable, Change Oriented, Sense of Urgency
How does your group describe the College you would like to see us become by 2025?
• Excited about the academic programs and the quality of work being done on the campus
• Focused on excellence, scholarship, innovation (including administrative areas)
• Knowledge of what is going on across organizations
• Healthy, positive, engaged workforce
• Diverse faculty, staff, students and board of trustees
• Positive sense of community - More accepting of all community members and departments - not based on position. One community - not "sub-groups"
• A set of understood core values - that all members of the community know about, strive to follow, incorporate into policies, processes and behaviors
• More focused on fewer - common goals
• Cutting edge leaders - responsible for all employees and students
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 3:
Respect, Value Added, Energized
Name of group: Information Technology
Number of Contributors: 4
Submitter Name: Jeffrey Clark
Submitter Email: jclark@skidmore.edu
How does your group view the College today?
The implementation and application of technology has to date relied on purchasing the best solution that meets a very specific need (“Best of Breed” or piecemeal philosophy). While this has met the identified needs it has resulted in a somewhat fractured and non-cohesive infrastructure. Hardware, applications and services are purchased to solve the problems facing a single group or service need. These solutions are then laid on top of the existing infrastructure and the bridges between old and new are then developed in-house to enable what we already have to work together with the new initiatives.
While adaptability, customization, and regulating to the exception rather than the rule has long been a hallmark of Skidmore, as more and more technology is added this model becomes unsustainable. As members come into the Skidmore Community, they bring in new ideas, and experience with different technology. There are always demands for new and different “things”. While the incremental change of adding a “differing” technology is small, the explosion of technology into the college has taxed the group’s human resources to the limit. New projects important to the college suffer delays or setbacks as problems with the existing infrastructure emerge and must be dealt with.
The challenge of maintaining what the college has, while attempting to implement what the college wants, has reached a crucial limit.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 1:
fractured, besieged, overextended
How does your group view the external world?
Incoming students and faculty are accustomed to a world with Amazon, Google, Netflix and Pandora. They can buy lunch from their smartphone, and place stock orders from their tablet. They are not technologically sophisticated - they are technologically dependent. In this rapidly changing environment the winning vendors in this arena are on a path of “continuous upgrades” where updates to hardware, software and applications are being rolled out constantly to address the needs of new devices that are reaching the consumer, new features that are being added by competitors, or to correct security issues identified by the latest hack. Keeping a heterogeneous infrastructure up to date in this environment, with continuous updates that invalidate older hardware or software is a job of staggering complexity.
To address these issues more and more vendor services are being delivered from the “web” and via the “cloud”. With ubiquitous broadband access, this method of delivering services from a distributed set of vendors/hardware/software/platforms is now the norm. In this model vendors are responsible for performing updates, maintaining continuity of service, and addressing end user issues. This model, however, is a costly one where the value of much higher levels of service (uptime), flexibility, responsiveness, and growth in features is unquantifiable. This is coupled with a view that the continuing rise in cost of Higher Education cannot continue. There is a pressure to reduce/contain costs to remain competitive with our peers.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 2:
uncertain, complex, costly
How does your group describe the College you would like to see us become by 2025?
The role of technology will change from “supportive” to “foundational”. Technology will be a base for every aspect of the college. The infrastructure will be a hybrid of both locally sourced and cloud based applications, with the locally sourced and developed applications limited to only those that do not make sense to source elsewhere. The group’s human resource will shift from a “maintain and repair” to a “collaborate and recommend” focus.
The college will have a single Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution (rather than the two separate and human resource intensive current ones), most likely hosted by the vendor of choice. The college will be data driven, with the analysis and reporting tools required to mine and present the data from the single ERP allowing interactive assessment of outcome and objectives.
Email, messaging, voice mail, and telephony will be merged into a unified communications platform. Wireless networks will co-exist with an augmented cellular network and provide seamless network coverage both on and off campus. Collaboration will be the norm with consortial agreements in place to leverage purchasing and service agreements.
The user expectation of what technology will be able to deliver is going to skyrocket. What is seen today as advanced technology in the media will become the norm for the classroom in 2025. The foundational technology to support this will be: remote, hosted, vendor supported, and ubiquitous.
The role of our group will be focused on agility, collaborative decision-making on the use of technology and the development of the specifications, relationships with vendors, and purchasing framework to implement it.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 3:
ubiquitous, collaborative, data-driven
Name of group: Institutional Research Office
Number of Contributors: 3
Submitter Name: Joe Stankovich
Submitter Email: jstankov@skidmore.edu
How does your group view the College today?
• This question can be answered with data or perceptions and the comments here are informed by a mix of those since perceptions probably matter too. Robert Zemsky of University of Pennsylvania once told me he consider Skidmore to be the ‘little engine that could.’ He probably is not too far off. If you looked at all 7,000 postsecondary institutions in the US, one would conclude that Skidmore is indeed an elite and privileged institution (e.g., accept rate, endowment $, grad rates, etc.). Yet, internally, we are rarely given this message. That is, the community is frequently told how disadvantaged Skidmore is compared with our aspirants, the top 50 in US News, etc. It could be argued that this comparison is detrimental to student, faculty, and staff morale. The sky seems to be always falling.
• A privileged student body, though not universally so it still skews in that direction
• Clearly expensive. As the president of Southern New Hampshire University, Paul LeBlanc, indicated at a recent conference, we work in an industry that makes health care look good given the rate of our tuition increases over the past 10-15 years?
• Small (or too small) and elite (or nearly elite)
• Slow to change or react and skeptical of most changes occurring in the external world. That skepticism has probably been beneficial up to now. But will it always be?
• Still viewed as an ‘arts school’ when talking with some external entities
• A divided institution (e.g., student cliques, faculty-only activities, etc.). So, it is not only the division between student, faculty, staff, and administration. There are divisions within these groups. The position of faculty member at the institution is a very privileged one internally and externally (e.g., compared to faculty situations the other 7000+ institutions in the US). That is, Skidmore has tenure, shared governance, etc. Yet, this can become a problem when the institution can’t ask faculty to enact the desires of the institution.
• Data- and report-hungry at times (at least the collection of data), but do we really use it and can we document how?
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 1:
Privileged, Data-hungry but not –driven, Slow to change
How does your group view the external world?
• Moving quickly and rapidly changing – at least when compared to the more distant past.
• An external environment that is demanding for graduates, parents, and the institution. Employment opportunities are changing, the financial outlook for families has changed or possibly will, and the institution will undoubtedly face increased competition with fewer students who have ability to pay.
• The changing pace of the workforce. A bachelor’s degree no longer gets you into the dance. We believe it is no secret as to what skills employers desire by profession. Skills that employers are looking for need to be clearly documented and articulated by the school and the student.
• 'Return on investment’ will be scrutinized by more people (as imperfect a measure it is).
• Is our model of education (a coming-of-age experience) sustainable?
• Increased demands and regulations from the federal government (HEOA compliance, etc.), state government (unit-record systems, etc.) and accreditors (assessment, effectiveness, etc.). Very little is taken off the table.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 2:
Rapidly changing, Uncertain opportunities, Increasing regulation
How does your group describe the College you would like to see us become by 2025?
• Internally, more research and less reporting. This is very difficult given the external environment of compliance and increased reporting.
• Better at evidence-based decision making.
• Support and require assessment work that spans all facets of the college – academic departments and curricula, all-college curriculum, administrative offices, etc. A schedule of assessment for every unit of the college that is enforced and people are held accountable for doing it. While many good things at this college come from the bottom to the top, this one probably has to come from the top down. With competing demands and workload increases, it is human nature to push this aside of not required.
• Enact alternative modes of instruction by considering competency-based web instruction where students can fulfill intro requirements/courses (e.g., intro math/stat courses, intro language courses, etc.) via this type of instruction and thereby have more time for depth in the subject and/or research in it. We believe there is some evidence this model works for students and faculty (e.g., Bryn Mawr).
• More nimble and entrepreneurial. Let’s take some real risks and allow ides to flourish or fail. Clearly this is more difficult and time-consuming with shared governance. But, there has to be a way and one that does not sit in committee for years.
• True, Skidmore is preparing students for jobs we don’t know will exist in 10-20 years. However, our alumni survey data indicates that, when compared to peers, Skidmore grads have a more difficult time navigating the job market upon graduation (e.g., pay is less, less likely to get health insurance, take longer to find a job, etc.). Graduates need to be prepared to the job of today and tomorrow.
• Faculty workload could look very different in the future given external and internal changes.
• Again, given the external environment, the enrollment size of Skidmore could be very different.
• Not everyone knows Skidmore College. Moving out of the Washington-Boston corridor, you encounter many people who do not know the institution (as in, never even heard of it). We imagine that this is difficult for students applying for jobs beyond this area.
• More consortial relationships that benefit students and the institution.
• Celebrates success regularly (not only in relation to schools with more money and higher admissions profiles).
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 3:
Evidence-based decision-making, Creative pedagogies, Nimble
Name of group: International Affairs
Number of Contributors: 6
Submitter Name: Pushkala Prasad
Submitter Email: pprasad@skidmore.edu
How does your group view the College today?
From the standpoint of the International Affairs (IA) Program, we see Skidmore as an institution that has voluntarily begun to take global realities seriously, and move toward preparing students for a more pluralistic world. In the last few years we have seen greater numbers of international students from both the West and the non-West attend the College and contribute (through their active participation inside and outside the classroom) to widening the student body’s intellectual horizons. We are also witnessing students becoming increasingly curious about countries and cultures with which they have little familiarity, and requiring the college help them satisfy this curiosity.
We also however, see Skidmore as being seriously challenged in its efforts to intellectually and existentially grapple with this rapidly changing world. Many of our students continue to come from relatively privileged and culturally sheltered backgrounds, which make them less prepared for the more tumultuous and troubling aspects of global transformations. Large segments of our faculty remain committed to academic disciplines (rather than interdisciplinary) and we still have a short supply of faculty with rigorous endogenic expertise with respect to a range of geographic areas including the entire African continent, South and South-East Asia, the Middle East and Oceania. This makes adequately staffing and supporting the IA curriculum a formidable task.
Despite these challenges, the college remains a place where student mindsets are opened to global differences through interactions with increasingly internationalized faculty, the various study abroad programs, and the invigorating experiences provided by travel seminars.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 1:
Global curiosity, expanding horizons, attachment to disciplines
How does your group view the external world?
We concur with the Strategic Plan’s position that the world has changed dramatically, and that we need to embrace this change if we are to remain at the forefront of providing a world-class education. These changes are substantially about shifts in global power and emergence of nations (such as China, Brazil, and India) that have hitherto been less visible and have seemed less important to many Americans. However, appreciating and engaging with this global diversity also implies relinquishing an entire spectrum of taken-for-granted assumptions about the West and the rest that are an integral part of our Eurocentric intellectual legacy. In sum, these changes demand a re-orientation of a fairly significant magnitude in order to understand and dialogue with a multitude of “different” cultures.
Innumerable scholars have also noted that the world has steadily become “flatter” – i.e., a more level field in which inhabitants from all over the world compete with residents of the U.S.A. In other words, global competition has risen dramatically, forcing our students to compete with large populations of highly qualified and extraordinarily hard working individuals from India, Russia, China, Mexico, South Korea, Vietnam etc.
We also anticipate a somewhat more precarious and conflict-ridden world – one in which natural resources (e.g. clean water and air) may be in short supply. We see this as probably triggering world-wide struggles over them. Growing economic inequalities (both between and within countries) are also likely to foster various forums of social unrest that can be addressed only through an awareness of the historical and cultural specificities relating to different nations and regions. We therefore feel quite strongly that students with competencies in negotiation, peacekeeping, and conflict resolution will play crucial roles in political, economic, and ecological spheres.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 2:
Global Diversity, Reorientation, Competition
How does your group describe the College you would like to see us become by 2025?
We would like to see the College develop students who are relatively at home in an increasingly globalized world – not only in the cafés and corporate offices of Paris and London, but in the industrial cities of Brazil and South Africa and the villages of Peru and India. We want to graduate students who are not only unafraid of otherness, but who welcome it as an intrinsically enriching and challenging experience. We see Skidmore as a place that can create a climate that actually fosters a cosmopolitan sensibility – one that appreciates cultural differences without necessarily romanticizing them.
We would like to see the College prepare students to be qualified global citizens and global leaders. We understand global leadership to be the ability to offer initiatives and implement programs that (a) take into consideration a range of complex international dynamics (b) promote conditions of global peace and sustainability and (c) bring us closer to achieving ideals of economic and social justice. We should note that the IA Program is currently working hard to achieve these goals through our recently restructured and more challenging IA curriculum, by hiring new faculty with expertise in South Asia and the Middle East, by supporting faculty who develop comparative and interdisciplinary courses, by requiring IA majors to study abroad for a semester, and by organizing a number of internationally oriented events on campus.
We would like to do even more in the coming years. We see ourselves as not only educating our majors and minors, but also touching the broader Skidmore community by providing public forums for debating and disseminating ideas relating to contemporary global matters be key environmental, cultural, economic or political. We want to be able to invite more outside scholars, filmmakers, diplomats, policy analysts and activists who can dialogue within faculty and students on a range of relevant world issues.
Our students continue to press for international courses that are genuinely interdisciplinary and emphasize comparative global elements. We therefore remain engaged in continuously re-examining and revising our curriculum in order to meet students’ need and comply with our own visions. Over the summers we conducted a survey of alums and graduating seniors to guage their experiences of our program. We also closely examined twenty reputed IA programs in other colleges and universities as part of an informal self-assessment exercise. Based on these efforts, we are in the process of planning further curricular changes designed to strengthen own core and enhance our majors’ research skills. The demand for the IA program-as both a major and minor- only keeps growing. Our primary challenge is to meet the needs of an expanding student body while maintaining our academic standards and staying close to our vision. We trust that the college will support us in these endeavors- by considering future tenure-track appointments, funding post-doctoral candidates, providing developmental supports to faculty who are interested in teaching in this program, and encouraging student initiatives to build a more tightly-knit and cohesive international affairs community on campus.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 3:
cosmopolitan sensibility, global leadership, otherness
Name of group: International Student Union
Number of Contributors: 21
Submitter Name: Musa Bernard Komeh
Submitter Email: mkomeh@skidmore.edu
How does your group view the College today?
The college is largely uninformed about international events and issues happening. Community involvement is also limited. There is a very string academic support from the college (peer tutors, professors, student academic services and advisers). Cutting funds from the arts/dances department to improve the science department is not fair and somethign should be done about it. There is less diversity in the faculty and academic courses (especially classes in African Studies).
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 1:
Less Diverse, Funding, Academic Support
How does your group view the external world?
There is always a sense of community among Skidmore students, which is different from the outside. Campus is genreally safe and there are less worries about safety issues on campus. However, the external world is less diverse than the Skidmore community. The facilities on campus are betetr (housing for example). Compared to the outside world, there isgeneral respect among students, faculty and otehr staff.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 2:
Safety, Facilities, Respect
How does your group describe the College you would like to see us become by 2025?
We would like to see an increase in the number of international students (reach out to more underrepresented countries). We would also like the college to better prepare us for the real world( improving career services, having more international internships connections and alumni network). We would also like to see more support(both moral and financial) so that we can better seel the club to the general student body. We would also like to have an official International House so that students stayign during breaks would have housing. We would like to see increase diversity in the faculty and academic courses as well. We would also like to see the commemoration of "International Days" as a way of raising more awarenesss on campus. We also hope to see more food types in the dinning hall form different countries.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 3:
Support, Inclusiveness, Academics
Name of group: IPPC Campus Sustainability Subcommittee and the Sustainable Skidmore Office
Number of Contributors: 18
Submitter Name: Karen Kellogg
Submitter Email: kkellogg@skidmore.edu
How does your group view the College today?
Motivated by our current institutional strategic plan and the awareness of students, faculty, staff, and administrators, Skidmore has made significant advances in sustainability in the past decade but given pressing environmental and social issues, we have more work to do. As is the case on other college campuses, sustainability involves collaborative efforts by Facilities Services, Financial Services, Food Services, Student Affairs, Academic Affairs, Communications, various student clubs and committees, and many other groups. There is palpable and mounting momentum behind sustainability-related efforts at Skidmore, and a look at our Sustainable Skidmore web page gives us a sense of the breadth and depth our sustainability initiatives. In the past couple of years alone, we:
• Hired two new staff members for positions in the Sustainable Skidmore Office and created a new Associate Dean of the Faculty position for Infrastructure, Sustainability & Civic Engagement to give sustainability more visibility and attention.
• Worked to decrease our carbon emissions by implementing a variety of energy projects including our award-winning geothermal systems that currently heat and cool about 40% of our campus. We are working on several additional major alternative energy projects.
• Restored the student-managed campus bike share program that now operates out of the Scribner Library.
• Enhanced the focus on sustainability in our curricula. In two years, 25 faculty members from across campus participated in Faculty Development Workshops to learn how to incorporate sustainability concepts and projects into their courses. We now have over 150 courses offered through 28 departments and programs that engage our students in some aspect of sustainability. In addition, our Environmental Studies major celebrated its 10th anniversary and is now the 5th largest major on campus.
• Reduced the amount of waste we send to landfills through campus composting projects and the new Zero-Sort recycling program. Additionally, in the past two years, over 3,800 pieces of furniture (131 tons) were donated to a variety of agencies as a part of our renovation and demolition projects on campus.
• Moved to online reading of applications in Admissions saving 100s of reams of paper each year.
• Received a NYSERDA grant to launch the New York Executive Clean Energy Leadership Institute.
• Helped push a new idling ordinance into law in Saratoga Springs, thanks to the Cool Cities Working Group of the Environmental Action Club.
• Began to develop a comprehensive strategic plan for sustainability.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 1:
environmental sustainability, collaboration, progress
How does your group view the external world?
So many of our most pressing societal issues today are rooted, at least in part, in sustainability, and it is increasingly clear that economic stability, social justice, and environmental remediation and protection are intimately linked. In conversations related to population growth, declining resource availability, water pollution, air pollution, public health and disease, and, of course, climate change, there is a tangible sense of urgency to forge new ways of thinking and doing. Never before have we been so challenged by the demands of a burgeoning human population and the visible and measurable strains on the natural systems that sustain us. And never has it been more important for colleges and universities to help our future leaders learn to analyze and articulate the issues around sustainability and to develop new paradigms for how we interact with the world. The sense of urgency for more sustainable approaches to life is unprecedented, and we need institutions like Skidmore to respond to this growing societal need by placing even more emphasis on sustainability.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 2:
urgency, reactive, uninformed
How does your group describe the College you would like to see us become by 2025?
Simply put, we would like sustainability to be an essential part of Skidmore's identity, both as a visible watermark of Skidmore and a value that is integrated into all aspects of the College. We also hope the College internalizes the broader definition of sustainability and more fully explores the intimate links between environmental, economic, and social issues. Some specific goals that the CSS would like to see Skidmore achieve by 2025 are:
• Curricula that help our students develop the skills and knowledge to critically evaluate sustainability-related issues and to pose reasonable and effective solutions.
• Co-curricular programming that immerses our community in the complex, multi-faceted, interconnected nature of the three pillars of sustainability (social, environmental, economic).
• Increased investment and participation in campus projects and initiatives that minimize our environmental impact and that intentionally help advance our understanding of sustainability.
• A true living and learning campus environment that advances our understanding of sustainability.
• An intentional balance of a variety of green spaces and built environment, and programming that encourages our community to explore and appreciate our unique natural resources (e.g., the North Woods, our recently gifted lands, etc.).
• Integration of sustainability into the structure and function of the College's policies, processes, practices, and decision-making.
• Creative and engaging communication materials around sustainability.
• Continued collaboration with and leadership in the Saratoga Springs community.
• A community that is motivated to advance sustainability and a commitment to innovation and leadership in sustainability.
Skidmore has made important advances in sustainability, and we have much to celebrate as a community. Given the pressing needs of the world, however, we have much more work to do. We hope the Skidmore of 2025 more fully embraces its role as an innovator and leader in sustainability and gains confidence in the ways we communicate and make visible our sustainability efforts. It is an exciting time to be at the College, and we look forward to a future full of collaborative work around sustainability.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 3:
leadership, community, innovative
Name of group: IPPC Subcommittee on Responsible Citizenship
Number of Contributors: 10
Submitter Name: David Karp
Submitter Email: dkarp@skidmore.edu
How does your group view the College today?
The SRC, as a subcommittee of IPPC, appreciates that “informed, responsible citizenship” has been one of four pillars of the Strategic Plan and acknowledges its status. We also recognize some significant accomplishments, indicating widespread student, staff, and faculty participation in civic engagement activities.
• Annually since 2009, Skidmore has been included in the President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll by the Corporation for National and Community Service.
• In 2010, Skidmore obtained the Carnegie Elective Classification in Community Engagement.
• In 2012, the SRC became a permanent subcommittee of IPPC.
• In 2012/2013…
o 66% of students participated, at least occasionally, in civic engagement activities through coursework or co-curricular activities.
o 62 service-learning courses were offered, up from 20 in 2006/2007.
o 40 community agencies served as collaborative partners.
o 22 charitable fundraisers were held, donating over $22,000.
o 40 Honors Forum students completed Citizenship Projects.
o 57 students were funded to participate in civic engagement summer internships and See Beyond projects (76% of 75 funded projects).
o 69 faculty members participated in AVD grant divisional workshops to explore civic engagement opportunities in their courses.
o The interdisciplinary scientific literacy initiative was launched.
• Skidmore has also invested heavily in sustainability and engaged significantly in many efforts related to campus sustainability. For example, our Environmental Studies major is just over ten years old and is now the fifth largest major on campus. Our four faculty members within the program, coupled with our numerous Affiliated Faculty from across the College, offer a rigorous and diverse curriculum. Also within the past ten years, we have hired a Campus Sustainability Coordinator and two Sustainability Fellows, added an Associate Dean of the Faculty position for Infrastructure, Sustainability, and Civic Engagement, and increased the number of courses from across the College that include sustainability-focused material and experiences. Furthermore, major efforts by groups including Facilities Services, Financial Services, and Dining Services are transforming our campus into an educational tool for sustainability; our recent Sustainability Leadership Award from the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education for our geothermal systems and our recent NYSERDA grant to launch the New York Executive Clean Energy Leadership Institute are both indicators of our success.
At the same time, the SRC acknowledges that, despite our efforts to make civic engagement a top priority, we face continuing challenges in making it part of our institutional culture. We share some illustrative data below:
• While 95% of students come to Skidmore with service experience and 69% expect to continue with their service, they volunteer on a regular basis significantly less than students at our peer institutions.
• Less than half of our students believe civic engagement is a high priority for themselves or for the College.
• Compared to many of our peer institutions, we have not invested as heavily in FTE staff to support civic engagement activities.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 1:
civic engagement, citizenship, community
How does your group view the external world?
Currently, a national movement is seeking to promote civic engagement in higher education. For example, the largest organization that has focused on this, Campus Compact, had 235 member institutions in 1991. At that time, those institutions offered limited civic engagement opportunities for students: 16% of students in Campus Compact institutions were actively volunteering in the community; 15% had offices of community service; and 59% of faculty were “not at all” or “little” involved in civic engagement work. Today, Campus Compact has 1,100 members. Thirty-one percent of its collective students are actively volunteering in the community; 94% of member institutions have offices of community service; and 90% of member institutions incorporate civic learning as an important learning outcome in their strategic plans.
The AAC&U’s National Task Force on Civic Learning and Democratic Engagement has defined four areas of civic endeavor for higher education:
1. Foster a civic ethos across all parts of campus and educational culture;
2. Make civic literacy a core expectation for all students;
3. Practice civic inquiry across all fields of study;
4. Advance civic action through transformative partnerships, at home and abroad.
We believe that the Skidmore community needs to recognize more deeply the major advances underway in civic engagement at our peer institutions and among the leadership of major higher education associations.
Sponsler, Laura E. and Matthew Hartley. 2013. Five Things Student Affairs Professionals Can Do to Institutionalize Civic Engagement. Washington, DC: NASPA Research and Policy Institute Issue Brief.
National Task Force on Civic Learning and Democratic Engagement. 2012. A Crucible Moment: College Learning and Democracy’s Future. Washington, DC: Association of American Colleges and Universities.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 2:
civic engagement, citizenship, leadership
How does your group describe the College you would like to see us become by 2025?
American society faces significant challenges from terrorism to climate change to political gridlock. The world needs Skidmore graduates who are ready to critically evaluate and respond to such complex issues—informed, responsible citizens. Although there is significant pressure to define higher education as a private good, we encourage Skidmore to embrace civic engagement as a prominent feature of our liberal education.
While we recognize and celebrate the manifold civic engagement activities at Skidmore, we believe they need to be made even more visible and robust to allow students to perceive and choose from a wide range of activities and options. We would also like to see a continuation of dedicated resources and a clear plan for continuing campus leadership for civic engagement.
By 2025, the SRC would like to see Skidmore recognized for:
• More explicit commitment to civic engagement;
• Widespread student involvement and leadership of ongoing civic engagement activities;
• Additional signature civic engagement projects in partnership with our surrounding communities.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 3:
civic engagement , citizenship, leadership
Attachment: Click here to download
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How does your group view the College today?
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Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 1:
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How does your group view the external world?
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Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 2:
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How does your group describe the College you would like to see us become by 2025?
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Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 3:
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Name of group: Latin American Studies
Number of Contributors: 6
Submitter Name: María Lander
Submitter Email: mlander@skidmore.edu
How does your group view the College today?
The Latin American Studies (LAS) Faculty view Skidmore College today as an institution rethinking its identity in order to keep itself among a selective group of liberal arts colleges in the nation. We believe self-examination is always beneficial and we welcome this opportunity to express our views.
We also believe that this moment of self-examination is in part a reaction to the job market (where our students are or will be headed) that seems to favor a science background. We would like the college remain committed to the idea that real success comes through creativity and critical thinking and to the acknowledgment that the Humanities are essential for fostering these abilities
As a program defined by its multidisciplinarity we welcome the strengthening of the sciences at Skidmore. However, in the process of defining what we want to be in the future, we can't overlook what has distinguished Skidmore College as an academic institution: its humanistic essence. The challenge for the college in the future would be to build a real bridge between both disciplinary areas and to keep a healthy balance between them.
We must also keep in mind that women and minorities are underrepresented in the sciences, and that our students come to Skidmore with already assigned “academic identities” that are hard (but not impossible) to overcome during the college years. In the last five years, the college has made great efforts in creating and promoting social and gender diversity on campus. Tilting the balance too much towards the sciences, at the expense of the humanities and social sciences, could be a step back towards our goal of having a diverse institution given that some groups avoid the sciences as a consequence of high school tracking. Skidmore must commit to moving all groups of students to pursue multiple disciplinary areas without privileging those that have the perception of fetching more income for graduates.
LAS is a program primarily sustained by faculty in the fields of the Humanities and the Social Sciences and we believe that our mission of educating students to recognize the cultural, economic, social and political ties between Latin American and the United States is key in the production of informed and responsible citizens whether they are humanists or scientists.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 1:
Transition, Opportunity , Focus
How does your group view the external world?
We see ourselves as representatives of some part of that "external world" at Skidmore. The nature of our program has been to explain that "external world" to our students and to make them understand that the importance of Latin America abroad and at home provides a compelling reason to be educated in the broader context of Latin American politics, culture, and society. All that in preparation for our students' participation in civic and professional life as informed and responsible citizens.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 2:
Understanding , Exchange, Diversity
How does your group describe the College you would like to see us become by 2025?
We expect to see the Skidmore College of 2025 as an institution comfortable with its institutional identity and always ready to take on the challenges that the future will present. We would like to see it as the leader in demonstrating the value of a Liberal Arts education, and the model of openness, support, and commitment to women and minorities. Skidmore must commit to moving all groups of students to pursue multiple disciplinary areas without privileging those that have the perception of fetching more income for graduates.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 3:
Leadership, Commitment , Success
Name of group: Management and Business departmnet
Number of Contributors: 14
Submitter Name: Christine Kopec
Submitter Email: ckopec@skidmore.edu
How does your group view the College today?
We see the College as often conflicted: responsive to changing needs but equally resistant to implementing change; collaborative in many respects, but also firmly imbedded within respective silos at times; attempting to be welcoming and inclusive but often appearing and acting judgmental or distant. We are quick to speak and slow to enact.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 1:
Responsive/resistant, Collaborative/Siloed, Welcoming/judgmental
How does your group view the external world?
We see the external environment as fast-paced, complex and highly competitive, especially with respect to educational models. It is overall less optimistic due to lingering economic woes, climate change, political dysfunction and attacks on a liberal arts education that is often misunderstood or misrepresented. It demands a nimbleness around disruption and a tolerance for ambiguity.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 2:
Dynamic, Competitive, Constrained -resources
How does your group describe the College you would like to see us become by 2025?
We would like to see the college:
1. able to examine new ways and improve old ways to impart knowledge and enhance learning so as to prepare students to thrive in the external dynamic and competitive environment;
2. respond to the challenges and opportunities of developing technologies and pedagogies without losing our core values;
3. act boldly by breaking from the pack and embracing innovation and experimentation, within our time-honored traditions of mind and hand, creative thought and rigorous analysis;
4. differentiate itself from its peers by enhancing the focus on our mind-hand tradition, making it a central, core value and leveraging us as a college dedicated to liberal arts values coupled with 21st century skills;
5. link AACSB accreditation with Middle States accreditation.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 3:
Bold, Thriving, Relevant
Name of group: mEKonlxBB
Number of Contributors: VoyhA
Submitter Name: tskbdowr
Submitter Email: ioknrg@trqojq.com
How does your group view the College today?
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Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 1:
gcFwdEbnFIL, mBVylznqdIMLKi, pNJXfMPuRALEVy
How does your group view the external world?
oyOfDc tgwkgwdopwup, [url=http://cypsowezwahi.com/]cypsowezwahi[/url], [link=http://zjlndyhxehsw.com/]zjlndyhxehsw[/link], http://eizasefihysc.com/
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 2:
wxljqPBmACgpm, uSoEVSEs, CFSutmkqJH
How does your group describe the College you would like to see us become by 2025?
oyOfDc tgwkgwdopwup, [url=http://cypsowezwahi.com/]cypsowezwahi[/url], [link=http://zjlndyhxehsw.com/]zjlndyhxehsw[/link], http://eizasefihysc.com/
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 3:
JoibzUinsgyTQva, mZruoHSXsNxtJeSwp, vsuxyyWxZyX
Name of group: Office of Campus Life
Number of Contributors: 5
Submitter Name: David Karp
Submitter Email: dkarp@skidmore.edu
How does your group view the College today?
Curricular/Co-Curricular Integration
We offer a variety of co-curricular programs that enable students to make connections between their academic program, personal interests and values, and career aspirations. Some leading examples:
• Honors Forum Citizenship Projects: The only academic program with a co-curricular requirement, one good example is HF students who coordinate the S.M.A.R.T. program (second grade math and reading tutors) at the Lake Avenue Elementary School.
• Alternative Spring Break Trips: This year, Maria Lander is teaching a Latin American Studies course and then she and Jordana Dym are taking the students to Guatemala to work with Safe Passage, an organization that provides education and social services to at-risk children.
• Roosevelt Seminar
• PA/PHE Training that combines a credit-bearing training course and the delivery of co-curricular programming and peer-to-peer advising.
• Mediation Training
• Career Course (Rick Chrisman)
• Brand Called Me
• Sophomore Program
Student Center
The College has built a lot of new housing that does not provide communal gathering space making Case Center even more important as a place for informal meetings, socializing, relaxing, and events. The current facility is adequate, but very limited and we could renovate the space recognize the increasing need for communal space on campus.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 1:
co-curricular life, student center, community
How does your group view the external world?
Residential, liberal arts colleges are distinctive in their ability to integrate curricular and co-curricular experiences. As colleges become increasingly online, this is a feature that sets us apart.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 2:
residential, liberal arts, online
How does your group describe the College you would like to see us become by 2025?
We could do much more to highlight and expand opportunities for students to make curricular/co-curricular connections. This might include a certificate program which combines coursework, co-curricular programming, off-campus experiences, and mentoring. Several areas of current practice could benefit from such a program including SGA and the Government Department; the Pre-Health Club, Health Promotion, CDC and relevant academic departments; OSDP and the IGR Program; and Religious and Spiritual Life and the Religion Department.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 3:
co-curricular progra, integration, certificate programs
Name of group: Office of Residential Life
Number of Contributors: 8
Submitter Name: Ann Marie Przywara
Submitter Email: aprzywar@skidmore.edu
How does your group view the College today?
Skidmore College is a nice place to be. Our campus location lends itself to natural beauty. As an institution, we are moving forward, yet fail in showcasing what we have accomplished. Examples include sprinklers in our residence halls, student led EMS, increased number of geothermal wells, and the ongoing solar project. These accomplishments are not widely broadcasted beyond the immediate Skidmore community.
Skidmore is moving forward; however, we lack balance. Truly, academics is the crux of our institution, but as an elite liberal arts institution, we need to focus more on the amenities we offer our students. Our residence halls are not modern facilities and we are unable to adequately offer the physical resources our students demand such as study space, central air conditioning, reliable card access.
While we continue to invest resources in projects ranging from a new music building to new apartments to focus on a new science center, Skidmore needs to decide what we excel at as well as what we would like to be known for. We need to communicate that which makes Skidmore stand out as well as our ultimate destination. Right now, institutional value is status with a tension between those that have access to resources and those that do not.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 1:
Balance, Focus, Status
How does your group view the external world?
The external world is cost conscious and questioning the return on the investment of a four year college education. There is emphasis on the importance of diversity in a multi-layered paradigm (race, identity, gender, socio-economic status, religion, etc.). Today’s student is in conflict between being independent and at the same time lack independence in a variety of areas and as a result unprepared to cope with the personal conflict they encounter. There is strong competition and fear of failure. Because of the the cost of education, students/families feel entitled for top-rate amenities, customer service, and high grades. We are also a technology drive society, which forces our hand for upgraded facilities.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 2:
Cost- conscious, Diverse, Millennial
How does your group describe the College you would like to see us become by 2025?
As described in question number two, Skidmore needs to articulate why we proceed in the manner in which we do. We need to clearly define our values and determine what we can realistically offer to our students. We need to dedicate resources for student support, particularly an infrastructure for students with mental health needs. Skidmore would benefit from a bolstered Counseling Center as well as on-going training for Res. Life staff, both professional and student staff, to adequately support students with such needs. In addition, international student support is needed as the College works towards increased acceptance and diversity. We recommend using the Middle States review to bring focus to our future plans. We further recommend that Skidmore be innovators for these areas and a model for higher education institutions.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 3:
Supportive, Resourceful, Innovative
Name of group: Office of the Dean of Special Programs
Number of Contributors: 21
Submitter Name: Paul Calhoun
Submitter Email: pcalhoun@skidmore.edu
How does your group view the College today?
ODSP views Skidmore as a traditional, face-to-face, residential, undergraduate college that caters primarily to fairly affluent students. Skidmore truly embodies the traditional ideal of a liberal arts college in offering a high-quality, rigorous, student- and learning-centered education. Students here expect – and get – good customer service and considerable interaction with their faculty. This superlative educational experience is expensive to deliver, and the college is working to better integrate opportunities that foster graduates’ readiness for the world of work that awaits them after college.
While conservative in structure, organizational function, and decision-making processes, Skidmore is aspirational in seeking new ways to develop the existing curriculum, finances, physical plant, and reputation in order to position itself as attractive to an even more academically elite market. This strategy has worked well for Skidmore in recent decades, and the college now communicates that it is poised for even better, though not necessarily bigger, things.
One of the college’s strengths is its strong faculty governance system – though this also presents the conundrum of how to keep the college nimble in the face of changing environmental opportunities and constraints. Many decisions are made by the faculty with an inward-looking or departmental focus without regard to some of the challenges posed by the external environment described in the Section 2 below. Lacking is a mechanism within the organization for consideration and adoption of new programs or initiatives that fall outside the purview of the current educational offerings – such things as collaborative institutes, specialized centers of learning that fall outside of traditional departments, graduate programs, or other educational offerings.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 1:
traditional, siloed, learning-centered
How does your group view the external world?
ODSP sees a rapidly changing world in which Skidmore will face growing competition for the best students. Competition will continue to come from peer institutions but increasingly from other educational models, including ones that have not yet been invented. The small liberal arts college model will remain to some extent elitist simply due to its cost to families who do not qualify for financial aid. If other educational models can demonstrate by 2025 that a Skidmore-quality education can be delivered at substantially less cost, our days will be numbered.
The world is unpredictable and filled with conflict. It is also shrinking (everything is more global), mostly market-driven, and focused relentlessly on the future. Opportunities for individual achievement will abound, but competition will remain fierce for entry points whether it is via new business creation, professional certification, or well-paying jobs with organizations. Skidmore graduates will be competing for these entry points with a growing number of well-educated people from throughout the world. The esteem associated with a Skidmore degree will be under constant and growing pressure from those with other educational backgrounds.
The world is becoming more corrupt, polluted, and intrusive. Values of integrity, ethical behavior, and social responsibility are constantly being challenged. As a result, government and not-for-profit socially oriented organizations will continue to grow in importance, and their success depends on the highest standards of integrity, ethics, and social responsibility. The Skidmore degree must at the very least always be recognized for these values.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 2:
competitive, changing, fast-paced
How does your group describe the College you would like to see us become by 2025?
The Skidmore brand value needs to be increased by 2025 in order for us to compete successfully. ODSP recommends two broad strategic directions. By 2025 we would like Skidmore to become more intentional about its original focus on Mind and Hand. We can do this by encouraging more creative interdisciplinary majors, more engaged liberal learning practices¹ (ELLP), more use of the summer and holiday break periods, more use of Saratoga Springs community opportunities, and more international experience. Secondly, we would like Skidmore to grow by adding satellite campus facilities, adding non-residential online students, and/or adding post-graduate programs.
A. Becoming more intentional about Mind and Hand.
Without sacrificing the core of our liberal arts tradition, we should be clear and unabashed about the connection between the liberal arts and practical skills starting with writing, critical thinking, and creativity. Students should be challenged to be entrepreneurial in planning their academic and extracurricular experiences including but not limited to ELLP, and they should be given more opportunities and encouragement to major in interdisciplinary subjects. Faculty will need to be more imaginative in creating these opportunities and to embrace ELLP as integral to academic achievement.
More summer and winter break programs should be established that give students opportunities for not only ELLP, but more practical training. Examples could include short intensive "crash" courses in business skills for non-business majors, a hospitality industry institute that could train students for the plentiful jobs in the hospitality sector in Saratoga Springs throughout the year, an Entreprep©-type of course for college students, and partnerships with private corporations who could make use of Skidmore's new science facilities during college downtime.
Build an entrepreneurship identity for Skidmore that enhances the Creative Thought Matters mantra. Entrepreneurship should be interpreted broadly to include not only starting businesses, but social entrepreneurship and personal entrepreneurship in the sense of taking charge of one's career. Skidmore already has many academic and extracurricular programs that foster entrepreneurship. These should be expanded and brought under an umbrella with administrative support. ODSP would be willing to provide this support. Development of entrepreneurial skills should become a signature strength of Skidmore, and by 2025 Skidmore should become known as much for this as it is for the arts today.
B. Growth
Skidmore should be educating more students by 2025. It should consider adding connected (online) learning options at a different price point for a certain number of additional students. Such a program could be fully integrated into the college calendar and curriculum with connected students taking courses live with residential students. This makes the program fundamentally different from the former UWW.
Satellite campus locations should be considered for New York City, the west coast, or foreign countries. Whether alone or in partnership with other schools, these locations could allow Skidmore to increase the number of students it enrolls and provide both more interdisciplinary studies and more ELLP.
Post-graduate programs should be added in emerging interdisciplinary fields and in areas of strength, such as the arts or exercise science. These could be masters level and/or certificate programs. They would offer more opportunities for our faculty, give Skidmore students more opportunities for transition to professional careers, and attract graduates from other colleges.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
¹ELLP as defined by CEPP include:
• FYE
• An amalgamation of credit-bearing exploratory research, independent studies, senior experiences, and practica
• Honors forum
• Study abroad
• Credit-bearing internships
• Faculty-student collaborative research during the summer
• SGA-sponsored Responsible Citizenship Internship Award (RCIA) for a summer experience
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 3:
distinctive, excellent, connected
Name of group: Opportunity Program
Number of Contributors: 9
Submitter Name: Susan Layden
Submitter Email: slayden@skidmore.edu
How does your group view the College today?
The staff in the Opportunity Program recognizes that Skidmore has made significant strides in several important areas over the last decade, including efforts around inclusive excellence. We believe that the expansion of OP from 25 to 40 students in 2005 was a significant step toward increasing college access and fostering high academic achievement for underserved students. Moreover, recruiting more high-achieving, high-need students and international students -- as well as initiatives targeting talent pools such as underserved students in the sciences (e.g., the S3M Program) -- has had consequential positive effects on the academic and psychosocial campus climate. The addition of a more diverse faculty and curricular changes, including minors such as IGR, also serve the goal of inclusive excellence. Despite our relatively small endowment and tuition-driven status, and in spite of the fact that we lack some vital institutional features to serve students from diverse backgrounds, such as a true Intercultural/Multicultural Center and majors and minors in Ethnic Studies, we outperform our peer and aspirant schools in several key domains (e.g., retention and achievement of underserved students)— despite pressing and legitimate concerns about campus climate.
While we have much to be proud of, there is still considerable work to be done, and we believe that we are at a crucial crossroads. Feedback from students of color, first-generation students, international students and faculty and staff suggests that our community is struggling to maximize the educational benefits that would result from enhancing the inclusiveness of the campus community. The good news here is that because of some of our distinctive competencies, we’ve managed to “compete” despite fewer resources; and, from a strategic perspective, many liberal arts institutions are also struggling to transform the campus climates of historically white and elite institutions. We believe that this is a propitious moment in Skidmore’s history to distinguish itself as an elite institution in a distinctly different sense of this word.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 1:
Opportunity, Distinctive, Crossroads
How does your group view the external world?
There are external trends that the college needs to consider as it develops its next Strategic Plan. We must think strategically about demographics, public education, STEM and high-tech jobs, career concerns and college costs. Regarding admissions, we hope that the college is following the legal cases that emerge post Fisher v. Texas, and is designing admissions practices that will survive subsequent scrutiny. We note several demographic shifts that will surely influence future planning, such as fewer college-age students, more students who self-identify as people of color, more “non-traditional” students (although here we would challenge the use of this term), more students who want to complete college in three years, and increasing numbers of students with learning and other disabilities. We see pressures for distance learning and concerns over escalating college costs as factors that also intersect with increasing socioeconomic inequality and the diminishing availability of student loans. In regard to public education, we share concerns that the move to increased standardized testing associated with the common core undermines critical thinking and will make students even less prepared for an elite liberal arts education.
Changing demographics of college students means that we must prepare for an increasingly diverse community, and this will entail studying all of our practices to determine if they foster the success of all members of our community. As the cost of an elite college education continues to escalate, economic inequality grows and student loan availability and rates decline, we must consider how this will affect the recruitment and enrollment of high-achieving students from low-income, working-class and middle-class backgrounds. We must also work to offset the negative perception of the cost of this education relative to its long-term value (i.e. liberal arts colleges as vocationally disadvantageous) against the reality of the distinctive and highly transferrable knowledge, skills and experiences that are outcomes of a Skidmore education. While some market forecasts predict an even greater push toward STEM and high-tech jobs, others reveal opportunities for infrastructure jobs in green economies, education, and healthcare (particularly fields related to elder care and physical/occupational therapy). Tracking and understanding these market shifts should help us think strategically about our curriculum and goals for student learning. The recent emphasis by President Obama on increasing the presence of under-represented students in post-secondary education and a call for how we might “scale up the most successful approaches to helping students reach and succeed in college” also provides an opportunity for Skidmore to place itself on the national stage for its model efforts in this area.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 2:
Dynamic, Competitive, Unsettled
How does your group describe the College you would like to see us become by 2025?
We would like to see Skidmore be a place where every member feels a sense of belonging, a sense of commitment, and a sense of energetic engagement in the depth and breadth of learning available to each of us to grow from being part of an elite college community. And, here, we do mean every member of our community—from our union and hourly workers—to support staff- to administrative professionals—to our students—to our faculty—and to the senior administration and trustees. For us, the goals of inclusive excellence must move beyond discourse and become pervasive practice, so that it is felt in all spaces in our campus community.
Toward this end, we believe that we need to work with senior leaders at the college to help them better understand the aspects of the program that are responsible for its successful outcomes in order to make informed strategic decisions about the future of OP at Skidmore. In a recent analysis of three model programs completed by Beatrice Bridglall (see Teaching and Learning in Higher Education: Studies of Three Student Development Programs, 2013), Skidmore’s OP is recognized (along with UMBC Meyeroff Scholars Program and Xavier University’s Medical Scholars Program) for its vision and ethos, and academic outcomes; and, central features of Skidmore OP are included in the set of policy recommendations made for the future development of similar programs.
It is important that at this moment in the program’s history (its 45th anniversary), we pause to consider where we’ve been, where we are, how we arrived here, and where we are going and why. The college needs to consider if we will continue to nurture and expand the vision of this program as articulated by its designers and implemented by the OP staff. We believe the college sends conflicting messages about what it wants for its OP and its future; and that this confusion may, in part, stem from prevailing misunderstanding about the vision and ethos of this program. This confusion is revealed in many ways, from the myths that circulate about the program, its students and its practices, to the literal landscape of its offices (OP has moved twice, both “temporarily,” to vastly inadequate offices in Wiecking basement, and this year to better but still inadequate space in Ladd Hall). We hope that this Strategic Planning initiative will provide institutional clarity about, and administrative support for, the continued development of this already strong program and its future students.
As a college, we must take seriously our commitment to inclusive excellence and challenge ourselves to be at the vanguard for advancing these goals. We ask the college to imagine what could be accomplished if we took even more seriously what it means to achieve inclusive excellence, established initiatives for moving beyond representational diversity, and developed truly innovative campus practices supporting excellence for all members of our community. Here, imagine what it would be like for our high-need international students- some of whom come to us from war-torn areas of the world- to be able to settle in to a home that doesn’t involve moving three times during the year or having to figure out how you will cook your food over break. Consider what it would feel like if we developed programs of support that allowed our high-need students and/or other students from diverse cultural backgrounds to truly “compete” with their peers in our MB107 presentations by insuring that they have the business attire necessary to feel confident in their presentation. Think about what it might be like if we examined all of our college practices to determine if they are unintentionally biased by virtue of having their roots in a historically white soil (what, for example, might happen if we didn’t use registration holds as a penalty for not completing financial aid forms—a practice that disproportionately penalizes low-income students from access to the courses they need). What support structures do we provide for our first-generation students and students of color who are not OP students? What are the ideological underpinnings of our current practices, how does our discourse reify these ideologies, and how can we work to change institutional traditions that marginalize different populations within our community? These are just a few of the questions that face Skidmore today and challenge our efforts to nurture an inclusive and more socially responsive and just community. Importantly, we also believe these are all opportunities for Skidmore to distinguish itself among its peer and aspirant schools. We could lead here—building on the strengths of our models such as IGR, OP, international recruitment and community partnerships—and become the campus in our nation that truly understands what it means to achieve its goals for inclusive excellence, a community that encourages individuality but also fosters a sense of belonging—and connectedness-- in and for all of its members.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 3:
Innovative, Interdependent, Interconnected
Name of group: Outing Club
Number of Contributors: 20
Submitter Name: Max Koenig
Submitter Email: mkoenig@skidmore.edu
How does your group view the College today?
Today, the College lacks programming to develop effective community leadership and involvement. There are several programs that are working towards this same goal of leadership training and development, but they are disjointed, disconnected, and ineffective. What we would like to attain is a system that is greater than the sum of it's parts. Unfortunately, we currently have a system that is quite the opposite.
The lack of leadership and community involvement is pervasive. We have a student government that largely ran unopposed, and were voted in by just 10% of the student body. The rare bouts of community assembly have been unorganized, largely misinformed and occasionally embarrassing. Clubs that provide essential services to the College go through boom and bust cycles as effective leadership comes and goes.
We see the issue centering largely on a lack of systematic and intentional leadership development that appeals to students. We would like to bring together programs that already exist at Skidmore (SCOOP, SOLE, ELT, SOC, etc), and rework them to track into each other as a distinct leadership program, focused on the outdoors.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 1:
Leadership, Opportunity, Outdoors
How does your group view the external world?
Colleges that our peers attend, that we socialize with, and go outdoors with, are generally miles ahead of us. Our peers generally receive more training, are given more opportunities for outdoor experiences, and have more structured programs. As a result, they display great commitment to their passions and are, on an individual level, more involved in their communities. Schools like St. Lawrence University, Colby College, Bowdoin, and Bates, all have strong outdoor programs that develop leadership and foster passionate communities. An important difference is the presence of an administrative body that supervises and plans these programs, ensuring their sustainability and legitimacy.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 2:
Leadership, Commitment, Passion
How does your group describe the College you would like to see us become by 2025?
We would like to see Skidmore develop programs to foster community leadership through outdoor programing. Our ultimate goal is to develop a student body that is engaged, passionate, and outspoken. We feel the best way for Skidmore to achieve these goals is through cultivating individual leadership in an intentional manner with programs that feed into each other and allow for continual growth and learning. We already have programs that could easily be transitioned into a long term leadership track, but we are lacking administrative presence and oversight.
In recent years, the Outing Club has grown in scale and scope to start developing leadership and community involvement, but there is no guarantee that this will continue in coming years. We would like to build upon what already exists at Skidmore, while adding on bridges to IGR, Environmental Studies, and The GIS Center, to name a few potential partnerships. By creating this program, we can ensure a sustainable source of student leadership that will foster a passionate community. This program would have a innumerable benefits to the College, at a very low cost of creation.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 3:
Outdor, Leadership, Community
Name of group: Periclean Honors Forum
Number of Contributors: 9
Submitter Name: Catherine J. Golden
Submitter Email: cgolden@skidmore.edu
How does your group view the College today?
Skidmore, a small residential liberal arts college, provides a nurturing environment conducive to student learning. Small classes, teacher-advisors, supportive faculty and staff, student and faculty research collaborations, and a wide range of student resources enable our students to think critically and to prepare for participation in an increasingly global world. Skidmore is responsive to national trends in higher education in our creation of first-year learning and residential communities (Scribner Seminars), enhancement of the sophomore experience, study abroad opportunities, commitment to diversity and intercultural and global understanding, promotion of civic engagement, and increased attention to STEM disciplines (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics), although we are more of a follower than a leader in the world of higher education.
Honors Forum would like to pose the following questions. In recent years, have we maintained our historical strength in Humanities while simultaneously promoting the Natural Sciences? We were once known for our once cutting-edge reputation for interdisciplinary learning with the Liberal Studies curriculum; have we maintained that edge with our current curricular offerings? Our motto is “creative thought matters,” but does our curriculum offer sufficient opportunities for engaging in creative thought? Have we fully realized the goals of our last strategic plan, such as a commitment to student engagement, responsible citizenship, academic achievement, and intercultural and global understanding?
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 1:
competitive with pee, nurturing , collaborative
How does your group view the external world?
We live in an increasingly fast-paced, technology-dependent world that includes numerous challenges including climate change, political instability, and domestic partisanship. We also teach students to take their place in an increasingly global and problematic world. With this view in mind, Honors Forum poses these questions. How effectively are we preparing students to be informed, responsible citizens? Do students have the knowledge, skills, and dispositions to be effective leaders in our communities and face these challenges? Do our students learn the necessary skills in critical thinking and technology to be effective in this world? Has the current obsession with social media distracted from the principles of a liberal arts education? How will we bring innovative technologies into the classroom in light of the growth of information technologies and the increasing attention to the Internet and the current trend of online learning that is initiated in the primary grades? Will this transition to online learning and the growth of the digital humanities threaten or distract us from our time-honored approach to learning in the classroom via printed books? Rather, can we design teaching techniques to stimulate discussion, debate, and critical thought appropriate for our technological world, a trend that shows no sign of abating?
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 2:
dynamic, technologically orie, global
How does your group describe the College you would like to see us become by 2025?
Our vision for Skidmore College grows from our assessment of the College today. We would like to see Skidmore become a leader in educational innovation. We would like to see Skidmore develop a deeper academic culture, one that widely encourages students to develop “the life of the mind” as we call it in Honors Forum. “Excellence matters” would nicely complement our motto “creative thought matters”; ideally, Skidmore in 2025 will foster opportunities for academic excellence and creativity both in and out of the classroom as well as in collaborative research. Skidmore will maintain its strengths in the Humanities as it builds its Natural Sciences, ensuring all disciplines in these areas as well as the Social Sciences, the Arts, and Pre-Professional Programs are richly supported. There will be greater visibility of the strengths of all departments and programs, providing more opportunities for collaboration among departments and programs and interdisciplinary learning. Rather than merely teach about intercultural and global understanding, our faculty, staff, and students will become more diverse, allowing students to gain more opportunities for awareness on campus. Engaged, independent, and technologically nimble learners will immerse themselves in their studies and find ways to enhance their learning by active engagement in local and global communities.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 3:
innovative , academically excelle, informed global citi
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How does your group describe the College you would like to see us become by 2025?
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Name of group: Physics Department
Number of Contributors: 7
Submitter Name: Mary Crone Odekon
Submitter Email: mcrone@skidmore.edu
How does your group view the College today?
The college offers an array of interdisciplinary and pre-professional programs, and has seen recent growth in the sciences. We also feel that there are close connections between faculty and students, as well as between other groups on campus. While these are all strengths, we are concerned that Skidmore students sometimes spread themselves too thinly, and that their academic programs ─ especially those in the proliferating interdisciplinary and pre-professional programs ─ lack important fundamental skills.
Given recent discussions about online education, we are also concerned that if we pursue blended and online courses blindly (as opposed to a tool that is useful in certain limited circumstances), Skidmore's strength as a residential college will suffer.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 1:
interdisciplinarity, connections, unfocused students
How does your group view the external world?
In order to serve a more diverse group of students, we need to find appropriate ways to provide both a fundamental liberal arts education and assistance in finding jobs in a challenging and rapidly evolving job market. We are also concerned that Skidmore may be too seduced by trendy fads in higher education, at the expense of confidence in ourselves as a serious liberal arts college. Finally, the availability of information in the modern world is changing higher education from the delivery of information to teaching students how to process and analyze information; we believe that, rather than challenging the residential college model, this change demands individual interactions and discussions more than ever before.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 2:
trendiness, diversity, challenging job market
How does your group describe the College you would like to see us become by 2025?
We believe Skidmore should recommit to its identity as a residential liberal arts college that values fundamental skills and academic excellence. We should be wary of watering down our education by following trends currently fashionable in higher education and encouraging students to spread themselves too thinly. One way of doing this might be for interdisciplinary and pre-professional programs to be limited to minors (not majors), ensuring that all students have deep, fundamental skills on which they can continue to draw as job markets evolve and current fads change. More generally, we believe that Skidmore should focus confidently on its own version of academic excellence and then "sell" this model to the outside world, as opposed to making decisions based on how we will be seen.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 3:
excellence, fundamentals, confidence
Name of group: Raices
Number of Contributors: 3
Submitter Name: Gerolly Lorenzo
Submitter Email: glorenzo@skidmore.edu
How does your group view the College today?
Our group views the college as a semi-inclusive campus. We always try to bring in people of all races to participate in our club but always get the same people (Latinos). However, we are aware that our priority is to serve the Latino community at Skidmore but it would be nice to have allies of different racial/ethnic groups. The college itself can be very exclusive and segregating so we do see this issue play out in terms of who comes to our meetings and who doesn't. We often just only have our personal friends come to support us.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 1:
Exclusive, Discriminatory/Prejudice, Isolating
How does your group view the external world?
We view the external world as an unfair place to specific groups like Latinos or other races. We do think there are opportunities for people that identify with our group but they are very limited. We know that in the external world we need connections to succeed but it is difficult for some Latinos to network and reach their goals. Also, for many of us that are first-generation students to attend college the transition after graduating can be difficult because we are the first to really enter a professional field in our families. This creates a lot of pressure and anxiety to underprivileged students.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 2:
Unjust , Unpredictable , Confrontational
How does your group describe the College you would like to see us become by 2025?
We would like to see our college to have more of a connection with the external world in providing us with the skills and opportunities needed to succeed. We would like to see the college have a more supportive and inclusive environment. It would be awesome to see Skidmore to have a larger multicultural center and more faculty of color on a tenure track. We would also like to see a black and Latino studies department by 2025. In addition, we want Skidmore to have more speakers of color instead of having white speakers coming to speak about diversity. Overall, we want Skidmore to be inclusive and empathetic about our experiences so that Skidmore can be a place where it is not so difficult to make strong lasting relationships.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 3:
Unified , Heterogeneous culture, Supportive
Name of group: Religious and Spiritual Life Office
Number of Contributors: 1
Submitter Name: Richard Noel Chrisman
Submitter Email: rchrisma@skidmore.edu
How does your group view the College today?
I am speaking for myself here. I see Skidmore as having major assets like good faculty, good library, unostentatious facilities, flexible curriculum, and a highly personalized education. We have emphasized diversity and taken seriously the tensions that come with it. Addressing racial and class tensions, as we do and as we must, should never lead us to think we are "solving" the problem. Every student generation brings in with them their particular subjectivities and the (painful)limitations thereof. If people ever feel we do not "belong," as if some entity is withholding this status, it could be because we forget that community does not "exist" as such for anybody. It has to be created and re-created on a daily and weekly basis through every human interaction. I am not sure there are mechanisms in place at present that help us remember that it is a universal responsibility. Being admitted to a public institution requires verbal intercourse worthy of public life. But this won't occur automatically, and I wish there was a better propaedeutic than the campus judicial system. Perhaps we can cultivate more campus-wide traditions that lift up the values of public responsibility and friendship like "Everyday Leadership".
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 1:
Public, Responsibility, Community
How does your group view the external world?
Again my views alone. The world is unpredictable, disordered, and beautiful. I try to love it as it is, for what it is. But it hurts when I see that the lucky only get luckier. I am certainly among the lucky, and knowing this gives me no comfort. I don't feel safe if everybody isn't. I don't feel free if everybody isn't. The (limited) security I do have, I know, is an illusion. In the cause of the greater good I am a prayerful activist, which I have learned from my religion. Religion hasn't always been among the better angels of history, but it is religion's essential purpose to create angels on earth, I believe. I am committed to having our students take religion seriously enough to see the difference.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 2:
Beautiful, Disordered, Unpredictable
How does your group describe the College you would like to see us become by 2025?
These thoughts are strictly my own. I would wish us to take a more comprehensive view of the college experience than we presently do even under the "liberal arts" banner. The many different rationales for higher education include intellectual, moral, and career development, among others. These goals compete with each other in people's minds, but in reality they are sub-sets of a single endeavor, that is, if I may call it so, a spiritual endeavor. We tend to shy away from such language, perhaps because of our wish to avoid any semblance of sectarian religion, and properly so. And yet an opportunity is missed thereby to bring the competing rationales into some coordinated relationship so that we can call ourselves a single community and not many different ones inside a degree-granting envelope. I believe we require a fresh vocabulary for what we do here.
Could such a language arise from the ancient Socratic imperative, “Know Thyself”? It has long served, inchoately, as an umbrella under which the disparate activities of student, faculty and staff take place in higher education. I regard it basically as a spiritual motive, and if we amended it to read, “Articulate Thyself,” we have just put this imperative in more familiar academic terms. For, to articulate is to discover and become aware of oneself. It is true of teachers, students, anyone on committee or in an office. It is generally true abroad in the world, but it happens to be the particular mission of higher education. That makes college a spiritual endeavor, if we just had the guts to put it that way.
Accordingly, I would encourage us not to create any more programs (the calendar and our e-mail load will not sustain it!) or adopt fresh initiatives (the last four were excellent and could just be renewed). Rather, I think it would serve us and our students best to practice our present commitments and disciplines more deeply. The means to this end is to give greater emphasis to reflective practices, in and out of the classroom. For this reason, when I came here in 2009, I took it as my charge to rehabilitate the Wilson Chapel as a spiritual destination. It is one of Skidmore's greatest assets among many and could play an important role in fulfilling our deep educational goals. Thank you for asking!
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 3:
Self-knowledge, Spirituality, Reflection
Name of group: Roommates
Number of Contributors: 2
Submitter Name: Zia O'Neill
Submitter Email: zoneill@skidmore.edu
How does your group view the College today?
It is a college that has come really far since its establishment. For such a relatively new school, it has gained favorable recognition among U.S. liberal arts schools and is becoming more well known each year. Skidmore is a college that truly does not have one type of person, there are athletes, artists, and intellectuals alike. We appreciate being encouraged to pursue our various interests and to support each other. We are pleased with our experience here, but we have a few small recommendations that will improve our life on campus.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 1:
Well-regarded, Variety, Growth
How does your group view the external world?
College age students by definition know college students at other academic institutions and have a tendency to compare our experiences with those of our peers. We look to large universities and note that at Skidmore we are given the opportunity to take classes in departments vastly different than our major (taking a Computer Science even though a student's an Environmental Studies major); but we also see these larger institutions as having access to a greater number of resources such as diversity of activities to participate in and large departments with more options for classes. Then we look at much smaller schools where we admire their close-knit community and faculty-student relationships, but we appreciate that we have more opportunities to meet other people and have greater course offerings. When we see our peers in similar institutions we are jealous of their cities or beautiful locations, but then we are reminded that here in Saratoga we have the opportunity to go to college in a wonderful town.
Aside from college students in the external world, we see ourselves sheltered from real-life situations and cautiously enter the search for jobs upon graduation. We want the external world to be as accepting and radical as Skidmore but we are confronted by the reality that this is not so. Also we see the external world as less adventurous than us and captivated by the idea of economic success dictating all.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 2:
Comparison, Grass is Always Greener, Sheltered
How does your group describe the College you would like to see us become by 2025?
-More energy efficient (solar project, less air condition in unnecessary places (Filene and the JKB theater), more bike friendly (especially near Case Center), etc.
-Dining hall to purchase more organic foods, especially fruit
-Enhance integrations of the diversity of the student body.
-More aesthetically pleasing (too much cement and plain architecture)
-More study days
-Less art and biology requirements in order to take more advanced and interesting courses.
-Updated underclassman dorms
-More social spaces/nicer lounges
-Nicer study rooms in the dorms
-Smoke free/campaign to reduce smoking
-Longer library/gym/academic building hours on weekends
-More theater guest speakers
-Accept high AP scores to replace introductory classes
-Increased opportunity for community involvement
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 3:
Spaces, Aesthetics, Requirements
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How does your group view the external world?
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How does your group describe the College you would like to see us become by 2025?
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Name of group: Scribner Library
Number of Contributors: 18
Submitter Name: Ruth Copans
Submitter Email: rcopans@skidmore.edu
How does your group view the College today?
Skidmore's identity as a small, residential, liberal arts college is essential to its success and its future. The faculty to student ratio and the individual attention it affords our students, the student-centered approach to campus planning and priorities, and the broad, interdisciplinary education that the college provides make Skidmore stand out from the many of our peer and aspirant colleges.
Although we are a traditional small, residential, liberal arts college, Skidmore is constantly changing and evolving. Skidmore dreams big and expects big things from itself and its graduates. The recent and anticipated physical changes to campus, the emphasis on science in the curriculum, and a willingness to explore the digital world of higher education attest to Skidmore’s commitment to progress and growth.
Some have voiced concerns that there are negative aspects to the College’s growth; that it has become more bureaucratic and hierarchical, and as a result communication with employees has suffered. Compared to several years ago, the College feels more corporate and less “like a family.”
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 1:
Successful, small, residential, liberal arts college, Evolving, Corporate
How does your group view the external world?
Although the external world seems scary and unpredictable, Skidmore seems to be financially stable and well-positioned relative to some of our peers and other colleges. However, questions about the value of a liberal arts education in the face of ever-escalating tuition and fees along with an extremely difficult economic environment for job-seeking graduates must be addressed. Changing demographics are also worrisome.
Uncertainty about the external world raises many questions about the future of the College. Will Skidmore turn more and more to international students to maintain enrollment levels, especially international students who will not need financial aid? Is the College prepared to provide additional resources to support international students?
Will our staff be able to provide all students with the support that they need to find jobs, be it technical training, internships, or career opportunities? Going forward, opportunities to get “real world” experience will be more important than ever
Despite our concerns, we believe that Skidmore is doing a good job of preparing its students to enter a complex and problematic world by providing a well-rounded education with high standards, one that emphasizes critical thinking skills and a global awareness.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 2:
Troubled, Uncertain, Complex
How does your group describe the College you would like to see us become by 2025?
Skidmore should maintain its identity as a high quality, residential, liberal art college. It should be outward looking and prepare students to live in a more global world. That preparation should include travel abroad and internships, but also focus on eventual job placement. It should produce educated citizens who are prepared to face (and improve) complicated, difficult realities.
The College should continue to explore opportunities for sustainability and energy independence.
Skidmore should cultivate support from its alumni on many fronts, not just fund raising. They could serve as a rich resource for creating opportunities for our students in and out of the classroom, on and off campus.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 3:
Successful, small, residential, liberal arts college, Sustainability, Integrated alumni
Name of group: Senior Staff - Finance and Administration
Number of Contributors: 10
Submitter Name: Michael West
Submitter Email: mwest@skidmore.edu
How does your group view the College today?
Overall good reputation as a quality college
• Positive student enrollments, including international and students of color
• Overall good place to work - generally competitive salaries and benefit programs
• Heavily tuition dependent
• Low endowment per student and other resources compared to peers
• Need for more integrated decision-making, planning and implementation
• Many employees do not feel their contributions are valued by the college or other areas, impacting negatively feeling of community and morale
• Planning needs to be more strategic, comprehensive and with a longer view
• Communication with employees generally needs improvement
• Need to strengthen policies and procedures and implement consistently without regard to other factors
• Fundamental business conditions for higher education remain stressed in 2014 and the intermediate term, with continued price resistance and challenging federal budget near term
• Heightened competition for students, donors, and government funds combined with pressure to increase compensation and invest in programs and facilities will challenge financial performance
• New delivery models for instruction are intensifying competition
• Employees struggling with workloads, colleagues demands, feel overtaxed and many external pressures, including regulatory (see selected comments below)
• Financial markets continue with great uncertainty
• Some long serving employees may not have perspective of the external world
• Some employees feel undervalued, unheard and unappreciated
• Limited opportunities for personal and career growth
• Lack of urgency to coming external change, many unwilling or resistant to change
• Classes of employees, faculty, adjunct faculty, administration, exempt, non-exempt, union, and others frequently impacts relationships, and sense of value and community
• Inconsistent communications across the college, divisions and departments
• Certain overlapping work, work at cross purposes, too many competing initiatives at the same time competing for limited dollars
• College is challenged in recruiting students with the financial means and willingness to attend, noting last year and likely in the future we had few students qualified to attend the College remaining in our pool not needing significant financial aid after acceptances
• After multiple years of tightened control of operating spending, pressure is building to invest in new initiatives, capital such as the New Integrated Sciences Building Addition and Renovation, new instructional and administrative information systems, faculty and non-faculty compensation, and program renewal
• Difficult period of time facing the College regarding mission, operating model, risk and more. Competition fierce for the best students, faculty and staff
• At a crossroads with curriculum and technologies and approaches to keep liberal arts current and relevant
• At times not able to follow thru on decisions, impacting future decision making processes
• Overall, good administrative programs and services with limited resources
• Overall, efficient administrative programs and services
• Financially have come through recent severe recession as well as could be expected, maintaining relatively strong financial position and Moody’s Rating of A1
• Overall good instructional, support and residential facilities well maintained
• Sustainability efforts including efficient use of resources, reducing carbon footprint and programs strong
• Recent very successful Campaign, and excellent initial start to new Campaign
Key Supporting Points
Our employees have shown enormous resilience, commitment, and loyalty as we have worked to prioritize what remaining staff needs to do, recognizing we cannot cover all that was done before the recession. We have a significant way to go in balancing our expectations for what work needs to be done, on the one hand, with the amount of work that can be done given budgetary constraints, on the other. Either expectations or staffing levels or both need to change, and we need to find a way to work with staff, managers and supervisors to find that balance. We need together to set goals, prioritize work, and communicate better. [Adopted from a Report of Middlebury College, see reference below]
Workload is tightly tied to compensation issues, affecting recruitment, retention, and overall well-being, but it also affects institution’s ability to fully enact its long term plans. Academic institutions excel at adding programs, services, courses, and processes but fail horribly at doing away with the same. Unless institutions manage to do the later, the current workforce will be unable to achieve adopted goals impacting morale and community. [Adopted from an article on Strategic Planning, NACUBO, see reference below]
Establishing future fiscal stability. A prevalent and urgent consensus centers on higher education’s need to change its overarching economic models. The call for initiatives to change the budget model is problematic at best, for many reasons: 1.) The maximum of strategic planning that the plan drives the budget, not vice versa. Also, that the Academic Plan should precede financials and the Strategic Plan. Consequently, changing a budget model for the sake of change without trying to achieve a plan objective is difficult to support, 2.) The nature of the budget process and the flow of capital are typically built for incremental change, with the not-for-profit budget heavily grounded in fixed costs (60 percent or more in personnel). There is simply not enough capital to make bold transformational changes, 3.) With few expendable resources, institutions are often and necessarily risk adverse. [Adopted from an article on Strategic Planning, NACUBO, see reference below]
The silos that exist and the territories that have been established for decades in higher education-and administration in particular-need to dissolve so that we can move forward. [Tyson Cooper, NACUBO, see reference below]
Please also refer to submitted reports from our area, “Curating the Campus” and “Always a Better Way”, NACUBO Business Officer December 2013 upon which many of these comments are derived, “A Summer Report (August 2012) to the Middlebury Faculty” Middlebury Web, EDUCAUSE 2012 Horizon Report, and Moody's Investor Services Report, November 2013.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 1:
Quality, Workloads, Constraints
How does your group view the external world?
• Weak general economic conditions continue to affect families willingness and ability to pay, particularly for liberal arts colleges
• Lagging recovery is also reducing discretionary spending capacity for higher education
• Affordability remains a key issue as unemployment remains relatively high, incomes stagnate and labor force participation rates lag
• Macroeconomic pressures undercutting ability to grow net tuition revenue and ability to raise prices and bolster other revenues
• Many question the value of higher education, especially liberal arts education
• Most view the residential traditional higher educational economic model may not be sustainable
• Demographics and the economy impacts to Skidmore is more complexity, ambiguity, and change requiring strong leadership in times frequently without clear answers, creating solutions that require more buy-in, and support from colleagues across campus
• Increasing pressure for hiring and retaining entry level employees as local business expand in Saratoga and with the potential expansion of the Casinos
• More open and accepting of change, more strategic, nimble, responsible and accountable
• Regarding technology, all are bringing more and more diverse technology to Skidmore, with most not fully adept at the technologies they need to be successful, with all very dependent on this for success and support from the College
• Middle class is being squeezed out of higher education
• Less federal support with increased regulation and significant administrative burden
• Increasing and substantial pressure on cost and value
• Students and families (consumers) looking for accountability for high investment
• Need to evaluate our product(s) in a critical and honest way to ensure its value and relevancy in today's and tomorrow's world
• Expectations for administrative services is high given the prices charged, nearing $60,000 while cost cutting pressures build for these support departments
• Towns and cities are expecting more contributions from colleges and other non-profits
• Union activity is extraordinary in the higher education space and Skidmore is not immune
• Expectation of partnerships and internships with local business such as Global Foundries
• Numerous instructional and other opportunities with internet, web, and powerful local computing
• Numerous instructional and other opportunities with external changes in the industry and the world
Please also refer to submitted reports from our area, “Curating the Campus” and “Always a Better Way”, NACUBO Business Officer December 2013 upon which many of these comments are derived, “A Summer Report (August 2012) to the Middlebury Faculty” Middlebury Web, EDUCAUSE 2012 Horizon Report, and Moody's Investor Services Report, November 2013.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 2:
Value, Affordability, Squeezed
How does your group describe the College you would like to see us become by 2025?
• A college of excellence, creativity, and innovation (including non-academic areas)
• A college that is a leader, strategic, integrated, flexible, and nimble
• A college that is affordable and accessible
• A global, international, diverse and inclusive college that values difference and respects all
• A sustainable college with a holistic sense of our people, fiscal, physical and environmental resources
• A college that employs a highly qualified workforce, enhances professional development and wellness, and compensates well compared to peer groups, and rewards excellent performance, creativity and appropriate risk taking
• A college known for civic engagement with real world applications, internships, and successful graduates employed in chosen fields compensated well
• A college that strongly supports information technology and other administrative resources across the institution
• A college with a strong set of ethics and core values that all members know about and believe in, strive to follow, incorporate into policies, processes and behaviors
• A college that is integrated in its planning, implementation and is collaborative rather than a silo approach, focused on fewer initiatives and more holistic goals
• A college with excellent communication, an excited, positive and engaged community, more accepting of all members and departments
• A college with an endowment per student and other financial resources above our peers to fund our needs and key ambitions
• A college recognized as among the best by our peers and others, students, faculty, staff, alumni, and trustees with high demand in enrollments, graduates, faculty and non-faculty positions, and in annual and total giving
Please also refer to submitted reports from our area, “Curating the Campus” and “Always a Better Way”, NACUBO Business Officer December 2013 upon which many of these comments are derived, “A Summer Report (August 2012) to the Middlebury Faculty” Middlebury Web, EDUCAUSE 2012 Horizon Report, and Moody's Investor Services Report, November 2013.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 3:
Excellence, Strategic, Integrated
Name of group: Social Work
Number of Contributors: 6: 3
Submitter Name: Crystal Moore
Submitter Email: cmoore@skidmore.edu
How does your group view the College today?
The Social Work Department (SW) continues to draw inspiration from the current strategic plan. Student engagement and academic achievement, intercultural and global understanding, informed, responsible citizenship and creative thought matter are visible and meaningful in our program.
In many ways, Skidmore is a traditional liberal arts college determined to express that tradition with excellence. In other ways, most notably by offering professional degrees, Skidmore is better than the traditional liberal arts college.
SW is a profession concerned with justice, a fair distribution of wealth, individual liberty and equality as well as personal wellbeing; it is a profession drawing knowledge from numerous academic disciplines and its own research and practice base. In this regard, SW honors a liberal education, Lucy Scribner’s vision for Skidmore, as well as the concerns students, parents, and public officials express about relevance, passion, and career development. Moreover, historically high and worsening inequality in US, enduring patterns of racial segregation, and demographic change—the graying of America, for example—combine to make the profession important. It sounds cliché but the world needs more social work majors.
In the coming years, informed responsible citizenship will require Skidmore graduates to struggle with problems such as poverty, hunger and violence, an increased prevalence and incidence of anxiety disorders, depression, addiction, and divorce, health and educational disparities, child abuse, and chronic stress. This incomplete list demands effort from liberally educated, creative, and critical thinkers engaged with the world. The SW program balances a reverence for the liberal arts and the examined life with a commitment to praxis, social responsibility, and the students’ career aspirations. In this regard, we believe Skidmore should celebrate the SW program as a model for a 21th century liberal arts education.
Linking the liberal arts with professional development is especially important if the College continues to admit increasing numbers of low SES students. Our experience and the literature suggest these students are especially concerned about job prospects after graduation. As the College recruits more of these students, it is important that the College enhance and build the programs this student population values and needs. If not, the diversity effort in admissions becomes self-serving marketing.
In some respects, we see the College as reluctant, conflicted, and cautious about career development. For so much of our history, Skidmore has been self-consciously younger than our comparison and aspirant schools, working hard to catch up with them, and in some respects denying and minimizing our vocational roots. We would like to see that change. For example, investing more in SW would permit our faculty to engage more students in programs such as IA, ES, IGR. It would permit SW to expand its international offerings and offer electives to students in majors such as Psychology and Government who routinely work with us now as they look for jobs and plan for graduate education in social work.
SW’s signature pedagogy involves working in the field under close supervision while still engaged with student and faculty colleagues. This means the program collaborates with off-campus partners through old fashioned, face-to-face interactions. Consequently, the Department considers the distance version of eLearning a sad capitulation to corporate interests and a threat to good pedagogy, particularly from our educational perspective. We do not believe that efforts to make the College larger, more impersonal, or less costly are the same as making the College better. We believe small classes, personal relationships among faculty and students, and individualizing the educational experience are critical strengths to preserve. While the SW program prepares students for work upon graduation, the vast majority of Skidmore SW graduates earn advance standing at top-rated graduate programs around the country. We believe this is the best way to reduce the cost of education.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 1:
crossroads, vulnerable, constrained
How does your group view the external world?
SW as a profession faces several threats. Privatization (i.e. managed care) and other mechanisms giving control of mental health, child welfare, and health care programs to for-profit corporate entities that are unaccountable to the public is one such threat. De-skilling, squeezing costs, and a reliance on chemical interventions in service of profit also undermine the profession. The College faces similar threats from for profit education, MOOCs, and distance learning.
A related threat to SW is the strategic demonization of nonprofits, unions, and public employees by conservatives and business interests. As the influence of a business logic grows and corporate control of the media results in news reports about overpaid, not-for-profit fat cats, lazy public bureaucrats, and greedy unions concerned only with seniority and narrow self-serving agendas, social workers in not-for-profit settings suffer. We see higher education facing a similarly destructive narrative the conversations about costs, faculty tenure, pay, and benefits, and student loan debt.
As pressures for not-for-profits to provide high quality, evidence-based services with low or no administrative costs grows, these agencies will use more independent contractors, contingent, and part-time employees. Unabated, this trend promises to do for SW what it has done for manufacturing, retail, and finance. Colleges are already importing these practices to our great detriment and shame. Our hope is that Skidmore can resist them while managing fiscal constraint.
SW majors attend the top graduate programs in the country; they are destined to be leaders in their organizations, communities, and in the profession. This should be true of all Skidmore graduates.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 2:
challenging, troubled, uncertain
How does your group describe the College you would like to see us become by 2025?
We envision a College that is congruent, focused, and connected. We want to be part of an authentic institution – an institution that builds connections – interdisciplinary collaborations; relationships among faculty, students, and staff; partnerships with the broader community, locally and globally. We envision an institution that focuses on its most important priorities, one that is ultimately committed to social justice.
From our vantage point, the College can do several things over the next ten years to maximize its return from the SW Department. We would like to build on our mission, pedagogical strengths, and fit with the College’s emphasis on Transitions and Transformation. We would like to collaborate with other Departments and Programs in developing an interdisciplinary social justice center, an idea that has been discussed along the Tisch hallway for years. We envision this center as a physical and virtual location in which collaborations among various Departments, Programs, and the broader community to promote social justice ideals, community research, and practice. This center could function promote interdisciplinary collaboration among students and faculty, promote pedagogical innovation, and connect the College to local and global communities while promoting civic engagement, service learning, and community-focused research.
This center would require resources, beginning with a deeper appreciation for the possible links between a liberal arts college and the non-academic world, an institutional commitment to such goals, and additional faculty lines in SW. We would like the College to see its investment and effort extending beyond the success of our students to include the common good. In other words, in 2025 we would like to see Skidmore College affirm and extend Lucy’s vision by renewing the current plan and extending its reach.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 3:
congruent, focused, connected
Name of group: Sociology Department
Number of Contributors: 9
Submitter Name: Rik Scarce
Submitter Email: rscarce
How does your group view the College today?
Skidmore is well positioned to do so much more than it is doing today. For one, we need to revise the all-College requirements in ways that capitalize on Skidmore’s strong and growing emphasis on interdisciplinarity; those changes should be far-reaching, but among them should be an extensive, even radical, revision of the one-time experiences model found in the current emphasis on core curricular areas (one Social Science course, one Humanities…). On a related theme, creating knowledge requires democratizing the learning process and incorporating the broadest diversity of perspectives possible; that step implies democratizing and diversifying the campus literally and culturally—including creating an open space for decision making
As we consider such wholesale changes to our identity, we argue that social justice belongs at the center of our mission as an institution. Social justice is not a stretch, given our history, and it is a dire necessity locally, nationally, and globally today. Skidmore really has no ethic, a sense of common purpose that binds the individual to the group and a lens through which agents understand their place and their role in the community: an identity that unites us all, our individual differences notwithstanding. In short, we advocate for the development of a purposeful intellectualism, one grounded in social justice.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 1:
Social justice, Engaged community, Purposeful intellectualism
How does your group view the external world?
Skidmore is too focused on our peer and aspirant institutions in the sense that it is overly-reactive as opposed to positioning itself to be a leader in higher education. We are confident that we have the administration in place to lead—to take chances, perhaps even to chart a new course as we suggest above—and many in the faculty are prepared to meet those exciting challenges as well. “Make no small plans” should be seen as a call to educated action as relevant today as it was a century ago. Guided by the liberal ideal of the life of the mind, yet engaged and active in addressing the needs of the world, Skidmore should commit itself to meeting the challenges facing higher education and should commit our students to meeting the challenges of society and the world.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 2:
Leadership, Action, Commitment
How does your group describe the College you would like to see us become by 2025?
To reiterate, in the next decade Skidmore should position itself as a leader in engaged higher education—as an institution that supports and rewards both intellectual and practical risk taking: “acts of radical imagination and interpretation,” as one of our colleagues put it. Such an approach is necessary in a world where change of all kinds is a taken-for-granted and where the bases for assessing those changes’ benefits and dangers risk becoming unclear. Following the pack by merely following the path that others have trod rather than assuming the status of leader threatens to find Skidmore falling farther behind in terms of key trends in academia (witness, for example, our late entry into film and media studies). It also risks wasting the student, faculty, administrative, and staff talent that can be directed toward addressing serious issues through scholarly and practical means. In its engagement, Skidmore needs to emphasize building community across difference, supporting those who are in need through action and inquiry.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 3:
Imagination, Interpretation, Engagement
Name of group: Student Academic Services
Number of Contributors: 6
Submitter Name: Susan Layden
Submitter Email: slayden@skidmore.edu
How does your group view the College today?
The Student Academic Services staff believes that the college has made substantial progress toward implementing important strategic initiatives over the past ten years, and this has helped us cultivate a more inclusive campus community around areas of access and student success. The creation of Student Academic Services, and its partnership with the Office of Academic Advising, is one example of a model program for supporting the success of all students. We’ve made progress in improving the services provided to students with disabilities and athletes—so much so that our support for athletes, support for students with disabilities, and approach to peer tutoring and study groups are distinguished among our peer and aspirant groups. We’ve enhanced our international student population in ways that have made significant contributions to positively transforming our campus spaces—both inside and outside of the classroom. However, despite significant progress our work is not finished. We have work to do on universal design and accessibility, and we need to develop procedures and policies for managing students with temporary injuries requiring academic access modifications or support services. And while we’ve developed stronger peer tutoring and study group/ drop-in tutoring models, we must do more to provide greater support in the evenings and for the sciences. Support in the sciences, more specifically, requires thinking about supplemental instruction, alternative pathways to completing science majors, summer courses and bridge programs, etc.; all relevant to our work on inclusive excellence. This is all the more important given plans for the Center for Integrated Sciences: for this to truly be a center for our campus is must also embrace our goals of inclusive excellence, and our students--- all of our students--- must have the support mechanisms and inclusive pedagogy necessary to allow them to excel as part of this initiative. We still do not have formal, dedicated staff or structures (other than academic support through SAS) charged with the psychosocial support of students of color who are not enrolled at the college through OP (here, we think of the Centers and Swing Dean models at many of our peer and aspirant schools), and ESL support is another area that needs to be developed. Finally, we believe that our community must recognize the reality that some of our students—particularly a growing number of our international students—require services for the entire year, including all breaks.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 1:
Resourceful, Polarized, Transitioning
How does your group view the external world?
The SAS staff sees increasing interest in US education by international students (applicants from China are the current trend at Skidmore); increasing numbers of students with disabilities accessing higher education; increasing numbers of students arriving in college with a previous mental health diagnosis; and, more students who are on the autism spectrum. Staff in SAS identifies the core standards and its effects on students’ ability to think critically as an area affecting our future.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 2:
Dynamic, Networked, Unsettled
How does your group describe the College you would like to see us become by 2025?
We believe that Skidmore has an opportunity to become a leader in higher education if we seriously embrace the goals we’ve set for inclusive excellence. We should be proud of our efforts to become a more inclusive community, especially our growth in international students. However, like our peer and aspirant schools, we still struggle with realizing the potential for our community that emanates from this inclusion. We envision a Skidmore community that leads the nation in its outcomes in this area, and we believe this is achievable if we commit to developing innovative campus practices that support excellence for all members of our community. This work will require changes to the curriculum and to our campus support structures. We need to overhaul long-standing practices that disadvantage members of our community, whether they be faculty, staff, exempt or non-exempt employees, or our students (who are the reason we are all a part of this community) from achieving their potential. We can provide many examples of practices both inside and outside the classroom that may have been logical and sensible at one point in our history, but are now problematic in the context of an inclusive community. We challenge the college to think anew, and to create new practices even if this means abandoning some of our long-held traditions (such as registration holds, closing the dining hall from December 20- January 2, travel seminar policies for high-need students, and turning all of our housing over to Special Programs in May when we have students requiring year-round housing).
We also think that staffing in SAS may necessarily change as result of college demographics. The college needs more dedicated support and/or structures (such as a true Multicultural Center, Social Justice Center, or Swing-Dean type position) for non-OP students of color that is focused on high academic achievement and psychosocial care. The expansion of services for students with testing accommodations is another area requiring evaluation, and this has space implications. The growth in both international and domestic students who need ESL support also requires strategic study. Finally, staff believes that it is necessary to develop more bridging structures with academic affairs, and to clarify the mission of SAS with faculty.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 3:
Visionary, Innovative, Compassionate
Name of group: Tang Museum
Number of Contributors: 16
Submitter Name: Ian Berry
Submitter Email: iberry@skidmore.edu
How does your group view the College today?
In general, Tang staff feels like the college is in a good place. We focused much of our discussion on the museum and how the Tang serves as a distinctive part of the college. The museum is poised to complete its own 2020 Vision plan early next year. Recent work on the museum’s mission statement was helpful to aid our forward thinking. Substantial progress over the last year with regard to various policies and implementation of several internal initiatives have contributed to a stronger museum that reflects the overall goals of the college and excels in its leadership role among our peers. The past year’s changes have given the museum stability, confidence and momentum. Our reputation in the art world and among college and university museums remains unique and strong.
Key points (attributes and activities) that form the Tang’s view of the college and itself include:
Focus and success at mentoring students
Providing authentic engagement with students
Promote visual literacy – across the disciplines
Facilitate and produce ongoing Thursday night programming by and for students
Changing experience of students and faculty through collaborations
Focus on interdisciplinary goals when choosing artists and ideas to present
Cultivate positive collaborations with students, artists and exhibitions
Recognize the impact our work study jobs, internships, and independent studies have on students and record their successes out of class and post graduation.
Important impact on a wide variety of publics.
The Tang is an important place to welcome the community to Skidmore
Supporting artists in a very close and responsive way
We want to remain the best, independent, and quality contemporary art experience (thought provoking) outside of New York City
Creating exhibitions that teach about society with exemplary art and objects.
Showcasing our collaborations, bringing the essence of what we do to people. Produce children’s programs and school suitcase programs as outreach to thousands of children.
Art access to K-12 kids who normally couldn’t get to a museum, or have in depth art experience.
Good hosts to our varied visitors, including expert care, top notch installations, pride in detail and an intimate relationship. Quality we are known for.
The Tang, as the college, opens minds.
We provide a platform for critical thinking and citizenship through Visual Thinking Strategies that value listening to the responses of others.
We change the world
We make a measurable difference in people’s lives.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 1:
curious, ambitious, empowering
How does your group view the external world?
The Tang staff notices the emphasis on STEM education and the high cost of liberal arts education as important external factors influencing the college. In light of the college’s shift toward the sciences, the Tang can act as an integral support and a counterbalance with the overall goal of strengthening our position as a liberal arts institution. We have an important impact on students through developing creative and more sensitive decision-making, while providing on-the-ground training through student/staff interaction.
Keep doing this, do it more, do it better.
We can be self-sustaining by raising funds toward our endowment.
We can prove the value of a liberal arts education with data.
Tang staff came up with many words to describe the external world and most represent an uneasy and concerned view. They include:
Unsettled
Potential playground
Global
Polarizing
Challenging
Complex
Uncertain
Disconnected
Diverse
Success-obsessed
Power-hungry
Violent
Environmentally-at-risk
Apprehensive
Panicky
Competitive
Increasing-disparity
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 2:
uncertain, competitive, potential playground
How does your group describe the College you would like to see us become by 2025?
How much outside of Skidmore should our priorities extend? Do we realistically have enough resources for students and our audiences outside of Skidmore. Conversely the point was raised that we have the opportunity to fill the arts void to disenfranchised groups, opening our doors in a new, innovative and standout ways.
We want to realize a greater number of Skidmore students participating in work experience opportunities at the museum.
Devote more time to student management, add another endowed intern, make new programs directed at student mentoring.
We want to more risk taking and experimental in our programs and offerings with faculty and teaching. Let us be known for that first. Increase or laboratory-like environment. Work to maintain liberal arts traditions into the future. Keep us unique and distinctive and guard against outside pressures for training and immediate market results. The impacts of our teaching will come out in ways hard to capture in a wide variety of instances.
More Artist events
More space for education and collections
More interdisciplinary events
Better broadcasting of our events and our successes
Better at publicizing events for our external audiences
More planning or more efficient, earlier planning
Better web site in all ways
More nimble, welcoming architecture and space
Possibly do fewer things with higher quality
More opportunity for student/faculty collaboration
Triple the size of collections
Do a better job of keeping track of alumni (steward them as ambassadors)
Words to describe the college in 2025:
Affordable
Diverse
Inclusive
Accessible
Risk-taking
Brave
Distinctive
Respected
Dream builder
Collaborative leader
Community-connected (Regional and Saratoga Springs)
Self-sustaining (financially and energy-wise)
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 3:
inclusive, risk-taking, collaborative leader
Name of group: Treblemakers
Number of Contributors: 7
Submitter Name: Zoe Silver
Submitter Email: zsilver@skidmore.edu
How does your group view the College today?
A few years ago, we don't feel like there was an aura of inclusivity. Nowadays, however, all-inclusivity is becoming a sort of trend. There are many groups now that are all-inclusive and aim to offer certain experiences to anybody who is interested. We as a club try to bring opportunity to Skidmore, but we don't think there is a basis for this in the college outside of the all-inclusive clubs. Our club at least is frequently a home and family for many first year students, and a huge part of our membership is made up of freshman. We hear a lot from freshman that our club is a welcoming and safe place for them, often one that they can't find elsewhere on campus. We hear this so often that we think there should more options for feeling safe besides clubs because, while we can offer a welcoming environment, we can't be the only support system for people who may need more serious help.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 1:
inclusivity, safe space, first years
How does your group view the external world?
For college life in general, a cappella groups are very present, almost like a symbol. The fact that we are an all-inclusive group is very unique, and sometimes odd to other people. Not only to Skidmore, but to the external world, the concept of an all-inclusive a cappella group is very new and interesting. We think that other colleges would benefit from providing various all-inclusive environments instead of fostering environments of exclusivity.a
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 2:
a cappella, unique, environment
How does your group describe the College you would like to see us become by 2025?
By 2025, we would like the college to be a community where people can participate in any activity they want to without feeling judged or out of place. The "clicks" that are so prevalent today will no longer exist. There will be no divide between artists and athletes and no divides within those groups. For instance, all a cappella groups will accept and collaborate with each other. People will be encouraged and able to have friends and connections to many groups and types of people.
Give us 3 keywords to summarize your response to Question 3:
all-inclusive, no clicks, community
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Submitter Email: ltjiez@wreawm.com
How does your group view the College today?
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Name of group: wZRnKxfp
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Submitter Name: john
Submitter Email: barny182@hotmail.com
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