Faculty Meeting Minutes

 

President Philip A. Glotzbach called the meeting to order at 3:32 p.m.

APPROVAL OF MINUTES

President Glotzbach asked if there were any corrections to, or comments regarding, the minutes of the Faculty Meeting held October 2, 2015.  Hearing none, he announced the minutes, as revised, were approved.

PRESIDENT'S REPORT

President Glotzbach welcomed everyone and expressed his regret for not being able to attend last month’s faculty meeting.  He acknowledging the very difficult week that we--students, faculty, staff, administrators, parents, alumni, trustees—have just experienced.  This is the kind of tragedy that constantly lurks just beyond the periphery of every college community.  Specifically, we witnessed the serious injury of two first-year students, a third narrowly escaped injury, and we lost Michael Hedges – all in an instant, in a senseless, criminal act that should never have happened.  Because of these events, our community is hurting deeply.  Every death, of course, is a loss – and most certainly when death comes to a young person.  As President Glotzbach said at Monday evening’s Campus Gathering and Candlelight Vigil, there should be a rule that no life is ever cut short at its moment of greatest promise.  But Michael, it seems, was an incredibly special young man.  At his funeral yesterday in Lenox, his former high school principal and coach said of him that “he was the player you wanted on your team, the student you wanted in your class."  A moment of silence was observed to honor Toby Freeman, Oban Galbraith, William Blauvelt (the fourth student who, fortunately, was not seriously injured), and above all, Mike Hedges, who died from his injuries.

President Glotzbach stated that one can evaluate a community across many dimensions, but one of the most important is surely the way that it responds to tragedy.  In the aftermath of this event, we have seen remarkable work from Gail Cummings-Danson and her staff in Student Affairs (especially Counseling Services), Joshua Woodfork in the President’s office, Debra Townsend in Communications, and many others.  Many members of the faculty and staff have stepped up as well, offering compassion and understanding to students who are suffering in a very direct and personal way as a result of this event.  President Glotzbach thanked everyone who has helped to ease the pain of our community – and most especially the pain of our students. 

President Glotzbach affirmed that we witnessed a remarkable outpouring of emotion and support at Monday evening’s Community Gathering and Vigil.  The estimated attendance was 1,500–mostly students, but many others as well–members of our faculty, staff, people from Saratoga Springs, and parents and relatives from even farther away.   President Glotzbach heard from students that it meant a great deal to them to see faculty members and others who work at the College in attendance.  Most of those in attendance did not know Mike or the other young men involved in this horrible incident.  But by coming, they expressed their sense of connection – their feeling of loss over the fact that someone in the Skidmore family had been taken away from us. 

President Glotzbach reminded everyone that, over the past few years, we have devoted quite a bit of time, energy, and ink to talking about community – what it means to be a community of respect and care and excellence; how we can work to make our campus community better for everyone. Monday’s Campus Gathering and Candlelight Vigil reminded us that this talk about community is not just an exercise in rhetoric.  Our students, especially, felt connected to one another and very personally affected by this loss, and it was both important and meaningful to them to be able to come together as a community.   

Senior Eliza Dumais spoke for many when she wrote the following comments in the Skidmore News:

I am often terrified of collective displays of grief and I found myself torn about whether or not to attend Monday’s candlelight service.  I do not know Toby or Oban personally, and I never had the opportunity to know Michael, so I wasn’t sure I had the right to occupy a seat at the service.  I was not sure I had the authority to carry a little piece of a tragedy that was not my own, and I didn’t want to take away from someone else’s mourning in the interest of my own second-degree sadness.  But the decision to go, for me, was evidence of a version of Skidmore that I had forgotten about.  It was a testament to the willingness of students, from the cornered niches of this campus, to find ways to be together for the sake of something that extends beyond them.   Those who went were there for Michael’s friends from home, for Oban’s father, for the students who were most directly shaken by the accident.   And in part, they were simply there for each other, serving as a reminder that though our peculiar brand of community sometimes gets tangled up inside all of our disparate Saratogian preoccupations, it still exists.

President Glotzbach stated that this he believes this evening marked one of our finest moments as a College.  Personally, over thirteen years, he was never prouder of the Skidmore community than he was that evening.

While he was unable to attend last month’s faculty meeting, President Glotzbach stated that he believes that meeting was another moment of tribulation for our campus as well – especially for the faculty community.  From all that he has heard, the difficult conversation that occurred about campus climate, diversity, and inclusion revealed fault lines and pain that must be acknowledged with honesty and faced with courage.  First, we need to heal the wounds that have been opened, and then we need to go forward to resolve the issues that divide us.  He acknowledged that everyone involved in that conversation, to some degree or other, is also in need of healing and support.

President Glotzbach went on to say that there are those who believe they were misunderstood in writing to him privately and offering, for his consideration, some thoughts on our academic culture, the use of resources, and specifically, a critique of his decision to appoint a Chief Diversity Officer.  There are those who shared painful lived experiences and had the fortitude to stand before this body and discuss how those experiences — at Skidmore and elsewhere — have affected their lives.  There are those who spoke of a loss of trust among colleagues.  There are those who are feeling pain because of the rawness of the conversation.  There are those who are pained because they now feel that they have to ask whether Skidmore is the "right" place for them. There are those who feel they have been publicly shamed for expressing their beliefs.  And there are those who are pained because what they witnessed on the faculty floor a month ago did not resemble the Skidmore they'd come to know.

President Glotzbach stated that we need to grant the reality of these emotions, feelings, and reactions.  We also need to affirm that there is a place in difficult conversations for telling our personal stories and affirming their validity.  And, at the same time, we need to acknowledge that the interpretations of these feelings, the analysis of their causes, the implications we draw from them for future actions – all of these – are subject to interrogation and, upon occasion, critique.  In our community of discourse, we need to be able to have the difficult conversations, to challenge one another, and to ask, “What would it take to change your mind?”  Finally, President Glotzbach hopes that we could find it in our hearts to show some compassion towards one another as well, and to embrace the humility that comes from each of us realizing that all of us have been wrong in the past and no doubt will be on the wrong side of the truth again at some point in the future.

President Glotzbach indicated that he hopes, and strongly believes, that we can start by defending intellectual and academic freedom, as he has done in any number of writings that have been shared with this community over the years.  This presumes that we want to foster an environment in which people are free to express their thoughts and opinions without fear of reprisal.  At the same time, he said that we need to take responsibility for what we believe and say, and understand that others may have quite different opinions and may, indeed, take strong exception.  Another recent Skidmore News editorial argues that we have some issues in this area – that we have some work to do in our classrooms.  I suggest that departments read this editorial together and discuss it as colleagues.

Additionally, President Glotzbach believes that all of us would agree that adding to the diversity of a community – in all its dimensions – increases the range of ideas and perspectives available for consideration by everyone.  At the Salmagundi 50th anniversary conference earlier this semester, author Mary Gordon spoke about the shift that has taken place in medicine in recent years in our understanding of heart attacks – a shift from the time when medical opinion regarded the symptoms of heart attacks to be pretty much the same for everyone.  But when the field of medicine opened up to women in new ways several decades ago, some of these new clinicians and researchers began to realize that heart attacks often present differently in men and women.  Previously, heart attack studies had been restricted to male subjects.  Adding women to the research population produced a very different result.  A less diverse community does not always know where its blind spots are – what it is ignoring simply because no one has pointed it out.  We all can profit by asking what we are missing from our own vantage points on life. 

President Glotzbach stated that this is a moment when, in particular, we need to acknowledge the relationship between excellence as an academic community, creativity, and diversity.  We should be focused on the concept of inclusive excellence and how to achieve it – especially for our students. We have done much over the past ten years to change the Skidmore student body – to make it more representative of the world all our graduates will enter:  moving from 11% students of color in 2005 to 22% today, from 1% international students to 11%.  As we have increased the percentage of domestic students of color and international students, we have become stronger on all academic admission markers.  We have admitted increasingly promising classes.  Most of the students in those classes have done well and have graduated – and this goes for our students of color and international students as well.  But we know that some of these new students have not had the quality of experience that we seek for everyone – they have done their work, toughed it out, and made it through.  But they have not always felt that Skidmore was their school – that their presence was welcomed.  We need to change this dynamic.

More recently, President Glotzbach stated that many departments have partnered with Academic Affairs to create one of the most effective diversity hiring initiatives in the country.  Schools such as Hamilton, Williams, and others now are looking to Skidmore to ask how we have done so.  The fact that we are making progress in diversifying our faculty should be a point of pride for all of us.  This initiative became a special point of pride for him a week ago Friday at Ron Crutcher’s inauguration as the 10th President of the University of Richmond.  As part of his inauguration, the University held a symposium on inclusive excellence featuring AAC&U’s Carol Geary Schneider and two other national figures.  During that symposium, a question from the audience referenced the difficulty of diversifying a faculty – indeed, Yale University has just announced that it is setting aside $50M to diversity ITS faculty – and Ron Crutcher talked about how Skidmore has made major strides in this area and that others should look to our example.  But achieving a greater presence among our faculty from formerly underrepresented groups is also not enough.  Although the retention figures for these colleagues mirror those of other groups, we still need to do to all we can to ensure that they too have the quality of experience in their professional lives at Skidmore that we want for everyone on the faculty.

President Glotzbach questioned why is it so very difficult to have these conversations?  In part, he believes it is difficult because we approach them from so many different perspectives, with different kinds of concerns – and those disconnects sometimes make us talk past one another.  Certainly, there are many dimensions to diversity, though race remains the most challenging topic in this country.  We are still fighting through the heritage of slavery, Jim Crow, and other structural aspects of our society that we carry with us even today.  There is a painful history here that is not equally shared.  And it can be challenging to step outside of our own perspective – especially for those of us in the dwindling majority.  The first step is to recognize and acknowledge how our experience has shaped our ability to perceive.

As a white, heterosexual male who was raised in a middle-class Catholic family in the Midwest, President Glotzbach remarked that he was never told that he could not do something because of his gender.  No one ever disputed his right to marry the person with whom he fell in love.  No one tried to exclude him from a college or country club because he was Jewish.  His parents were able to buy a house and build up equity over time, and they were not forced to try to do that in a “red-lined” district where banks refused to make home mortgage loans.  They were never forced to have “the talk” with him about how to interact with white police officers – to avoid being arrested, roughed up, or possibly even killed because of attitudes relating to his race.  He has never been stopped for driving while black – though he knows people who have had that experience in Saratoga Springs.  He has never experienced shopping-while-black – the realizations that salespersons were watching him or following him around the store to make sure that he did not steal anything – but he has spoken with black Skidmore students, faculty members, and staff members who have had that experience in Saratoga Springs.  He has never been excluded from a jury because he was black – though the U.S. Supreme Court is hearing a case about this as we speak.  He has never felt that his place as a student at his undergraduate university was somehow in question because of his race.  Nor did anyone ever question the legitimacy of his appointment as a faculty member because of his race. 

Moreover, President Glotzbach stated that no student ever made fun of his foreign accent.  No faculty member has ever made him feel insignificant by treating him – as a member of the staff or grounds crew or cleaning staff – as though he did not exist or had no value and therefore could be ignored or worse treated with contempt.  And this is just a partial list of the things he has never had to worry about in his life – because of his identity, personal history, or employment status.  But people in the room and at this College do have to live with such experiences and worries. 

As Paul Farmer said the night before, it would be absurd to claim that someone needed to have breast cancer in order to try to cure that disease.  But he also said that the first step in working to eradicate a disease is to talk with those who have it.  Likewise, it is possible for a white person to talk with colleagues who are persons of color, read James Baldwin, Ta-nehisi Coates, Maya Angelou, and work to eradicate the cancer of racism.  But, as President Glotzbach said, there is still part of that experience that is unavailable to him, and so he needs to be humble in the face of that fact and listen to those who have the experiences that he lacks.  Descriptions of lived experience have tremendous power, and they belong in the conversation.  In fact, personal narratives can bring an intellectual rigor to conversation; they can enable students (of all ages, including us) to learn deeply. 

President Glotzbach stated that it is also difficult to have these conversations because they are complicated.  It’s easy to trip up, and no one wants to say anything stupid in front of one’s peers.  But as historian Patty Limerick once said, sometimes somebody just has to step on a land mine and blow things up to get the conversation going.   President Glotzbach believes that’s a fair description of where we have been here.  Some of us stepped on a land mine, and the conversation that ensued was painful.  But it was also a very important one, and now it is proceeding with a new energy.

President Glotzbach asked where do we go from here?  He doesn’t believe we are going to move forward by having another large-scale discussion in this context – at least not for a while.  We need to talk in smaller groups and one-on-one.  In that regard, he asks that departments begin this work.  Some, he knows, already have.  He encourages colleagues to talk to colleagues in those contexts and look for positive, concrete things that you can do within your own sphere of interest.  He asked that those ideas be shared with the Dean’s Office, and they will publish them for the faculty as a whole.

President Glotzbach said that some of us will participate in the Interest Group that is being formed and we need to continue our hiring efforts, which he knows we are doing.  And we need to continue to take advantage of the Multicultural Classroom Pedagogy workshops.  Additionally, DOF/VPAA Beau Breslin has already announced some additional initiatives from his office.  President Glotzbach will have more to say from his office in due course.

President Glotzbach concluded by acknowledging that our community is hurting in a number of very real ways.  On Monday evening, we came together as a community to acknowledge that pain, to offer one another support, and to affirm the validity of our community.  As noted above, something incredibly positive came from this horrible tragedy.  Our faculty community is hurting as well.   We have a choice:  we can give in to the pain and, in some cases, resentment, and anger that we may be feeling and pull back, disengage.  Or we can step up and bring our best selves to these conversations.  We can show up, stay in the room, bring our courage, honesty, humility, and openness and make this another moment that makes us all proud to be associated with our wonderful College.

Following his report, President Glotzbach opened the floor for questions.  A discussion ensued concerning the ways in which Skidmore can take a lead in addressing the safety of the students who may be walking on Clinton Street at night.

DEAN OF THE FACULTY AND VICE PRESIDENT FOR ACADEMIC AFFAIRS' REPORT

Beau Breslin, Dean of the Faculty and Vice President for Academic Affairs, echoed President Glotzbach’s comments.  He reminded everyone that in addition to the students that were injured in the accident, there were many other students who witnessed the accident and are also deeply affected and hurt by what they saw.  He thanked the faculty for all their compassion throughout this difficult time.  

DOF/VPAA Breslin and Professor Sarah Goodwin shared a Powerpoint presentation on the draft of the Middle States self-study.  DOF/VPAA Breslin indicated that the topic of the Middle States self-study was Integrative Learning.  The idea for this topic was, in part, due to the general education conversation that focused on integrative learning and to use the Middle States reaccreditation process as an opportunity to think about that and, following CEPP’s lead, to use it as a utilitarian tool.  The idea of integrative learning is to make connections across traditional and non-traditional boundaries, which is the heart of liberal education.    Professor Goodwin reviewed the chapters in the self-study, noting that the self-study contains a lot of data and encouraged everyone to read the report, along with each chapter’s recommendations.

DOF/VPAA Breslin reviewed the timeline for the submission of the self-study, noting that the draft has been distributed and there have been some revisions.  An open meeting will be held on November 16 to review the self-study.  The self-study is scheduled to be sent to the copy editor by December 15 so it can be delivered to the Middle States team by January 14, 2016; thus, DOF/VPAA Breslin encouraged anyone with any recommendations or suggestions to forward them to him by early December.  DOF/VPAA Breslin thanked Professor Goodwin, Lisa Christensen, and Ann Henderson for all their work in putting together the self-study.

Following DOF/VPAA Breslin’s report, a question was raised as to whether the Middle States self-study should be a topic for discussion at a faculty meeting.  DOF/VPAA Breslin indicated that it should be possible to hold a discussion at the upcoming faculty meeting in December.

OLD BUSINESS

On behalf of the Committee on Appointments, Promotions, and Tenure (CAPT), Professor Mehmet Odekon withdrew the Motion that was presented at the last faculty meeting (see attached).  

NEW BUSINESS

On behalf of the Committee on Educational Policies and Planning (CEPP), Professor April Bernard introduced the following Motion (see attached):

MOTION:  CEPP moves to approve the proposal, originating from the faculty of the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, to establish two distinct departments: The Department of Computer Science and The Department of Mathematics.   

Professor Bernard stated that, in accordance with the Faculty Handbook, an open meeting to discuss the separation of the two departments will be scheduled prior to the next faculty meeting.  An email will be sent at a later date setting forth the date and time for the open meeting.  There were no information questions raised. The motion will lie over until the next meeting.

OTHER

Institutional Policy and Planning Committee

On behalf of the IPPC, Associate Professor Tim Harper led a discussion on the proposed Strategic Plan.  He stated that IPPC has not focused on the priority initiatives just yet and are welcoming comments and suggestions.  IPPC has held an open meeting to discuss the Strategic Plan and wanted to bring it to the faculty for greater discussion.  Joshua Woodfork, Vice President for Strategic Planning and Institutional Diversity, discussed the next steps and timeline of the Strategic Plan, noting that the Strategic Plan will be brought back to the faculty as a formal piece of business on December 4 which will lie over for vote of endorsement at the February 4 meeting and will be brought to the Board of Trustees for ratification at their February board meeting.  He encouraged anyone with any questions, comments, or feedback to forward them to him via email. 

A brief discussion followed regarding further details on resources, the meaning of “contrarian” in the document, and increased space for seminars.  VP Woodfork indicated that he would take these suggestions into consideration.

Faculty Executive Committee

On behalf of the Faculty Executive Committee (FEC), Professor Denise Smith shared a PowerPoint presentation on faculty governance reform focusing on the new faculty service cycle, in which faculty will serve three consecutive years out of the six years between sabbaticals.  Faculty will be able to choose the years in which they would like to serve, and faculty will still determine who will serve on committees through an election. 

Professor Smith reported that FEC is in the process of determining the process and concepts for the election process and are proposing that one election be held during a faculty meeting.  By holding the election during a faculty meeting, it will allow the maximum use of faculty choices for serving on committees without the risk of being elected to multiple committees.  The current election system can no longer be used as there will be insufficient members of the pool to allow for choices on the ballots.   Thereafter, Assistant Professor Greg Gerbi ran a simulation of how the election would be run during the faculty meeting noting that preferences of faculty members will not be shown on the ballot, only their names, and that it should take approximately 4 minutes to vote per ballot.

COMMITTEE OF THE WHOLE

A Committee of the Whole was held to discuss FEC’s proposed voting system.  Professor Denise Smith, as Chair of the FEC, was appointed as chair of the Committee of the Whole.  A 15-minute time limit was set.  At the conclusion of the Committee of the Whole, Professor Smith rose and reported that a discussion on FEC’s proposed voting system was held and encouraged everyone to attend one of the open forums scheduled for November 9 and November 13.

ANNOUNCEMENTS

• Associate Professor Eric Morser, Director of Civic Engagement, announced that the Subcommittee on Responsible Citizenship and the AVD Fellows have defined the criteria for Applied Civic Engagement courses and will be sending out information about these courses in the very near future.
• Barbara Beck, Associate Vice President for Finance and Administration and Director of Human Resources, reminded everyone that the deadline for benefit elections is November 25.  Every benefit-eligible employee must make a new election for the next calendar year by the deadline otherwise they will not be able to receive benefits for the coming year.  She encouraged everyone to attend the benefits fair on November 9 in Murray Aikins.
• Assistant Professor Eunice Ferreira invited everyone to attend a staged read of a Raisin in the Sun on November 13 in the JKB Theater.
• Paul Calhoun, Dean of Special Programs, invited everyone to attend Saratoga ArtsFest Friday to be held in the Tang starting at 5:00 p.m.
• President Glotzbach reminded everyone that Skidmore Cares is one expression of the strength and values of the Skidmore Community.  This year’s Skidmore Cares will be held on Friday, December 4 at Scribner House.  Skidmore Cares was created ten years ago to provide a concrete way for all of us to come together during the Holiday Season to strengthen our ties with one another – across all divisions of the College – and to make a contribution to the larger Saratoga Springs region.   The Holiday Season is a time when we gather as families, as friends, and as colleagues.  It is a special time of year when we pause to celebrate the strength of the bonds that unite us and to express our gratitude and love for those with whom we live and work.  By supporting Skidmore Cares, all of us add to the meaning of the Holidays.  Most of all, we reinforce for one another the bonds that unite us as human beings in a world that sometimes seems to be moving too fast and that is becoming more fragmented and impersonal.  Skidmore Cares reminds us that we have the power to oppose those trends in our own community and our own relationships.  We have the capacity to join together, to affirm one another’s unique value, and to act in common to make a difference in the world.  On behalf of he, Marie and all the members of the President’s Office, President Glotzbach thanked everyone for supporting Skidmore Cares. 
• On behalf of Michael Casey, Director of Advancement, Kim Verstandig invited everyone to a reception at the Tang immediately following the faculty meeting.

The meeting was adjourned at 5:20 p.m.

 

Debra L. Peterson
Executive Administrative Assistant