
Winter 2010
Dear Colleagues,
So many exciting changes, so little time, so much physical distance!
That defines our Fall work on the Faculty Council. Every two weeks we meet in the air via conference call, and on top of that we held spring and fall retreats on the Plainfield campus for an opportunity to work intensively face to face. We devoted some of our mid-October retreat this year to getting to know our new President, Barbara Vacarr; Academic Vice President, Marianne Reiff; and Associate Dean of Student Life, Susan Wilson. We were tremendously gratified by the opportunity to brainstorm with a new administration that shares our goal of situating pedagogy, scholarship, and creative pursuits more firmly at the center of institutional life.
In addition to our attendance at regular Faculty Council meetings, many of us serve on FC or college-wide committees. Reports from the FC’s Project on Unlearning Racism (PUR), Pedagogical Innovation and Experimentation Committee (PIE), the Writing Support Task Force, and the Faculty Development Fund Committee (FDF) are included in this letter. The FC also has representation on the college-wide New Initiatives Workgroup, the Board of Trustees, and various search committees. The President and Vice President of the Goddard College Faculty Union are ex officio FC members.
Who are we? Chair Laiwan, MFAIA-PT; Vice Chair Jan Clausen, MFAW-VT; Theressa Lenear, EDU; Celia Hildebrand, HAS; Darrah Cloud, MFAW-PT; Francis Charet, IBA/IMA (GCFU President); Eva Swidler, (GCFU Vice President); Ralph H. Lutts, IBA/IMA (Board of Trustees); Karen Campbell, IMA; Lise Brody, MFAIA-VT incoming; Tracy Garrett, PSYCH; Otto Muller, IBA; Ruth Wallen, MFAIA-VT outgoing; Newcomb Greenleaf, IBA; Sarah Van Hoy, HAS; Sarah Bobrow-Williams, SBC.
For the Acronym Challenged:
SBC: Sustainable Business and Communities
HAS: Health Arts and Science
GCFU: Goddard College Faculty Union
IMA: Individualized Master of Arts
IBA: Individualized Bachelor of Arts
PSYCH: Psychology
EDU: Education
MFAW: Master of Fine Arts in Writing; 2 sites, one in VT, one in Port Townsend, WA
MFAIA: Master of Fine Arts in Interdisciplinary Art, 2 sites as well
Please feel free to contact the representative for your program anytime with your ideas regarding academic issues at Goddard, and consider joining Faculty Council when the position opens up in your program or if you are interested in joining a subcommittee. Debate is always lively and the ideas truly fly.
Cross-Program Spring Retreats
Shortly before our fall FC retreat, President Vacarr announced that a generous grant from the Sontag Foundation would underwrite a series of cross-program retreats engaging academic issues. Together with AVP Marianne Reiff, she sought Faculty Council involvement in the planning process. To date, FC Chair Laiwan and Vice Chair Jan Clausen have been meeting with the AVP and Program Director Jackie Hayes (MFAIA-VT); beginning in January, other members of Faculty Council will rotate onto the planning group. The current outlook is for a series of four gatherings designed to involve faculty, program directors, administration, and staff in wide-ranging and specific reflections on current and future pedagogical practices, something most of us have too little time for in the course of the regular academic cycle. Faculty Council envisions that our longstanding concerns with anti-racist pedagogy and new approaches to teaching and learning (see reports on PUR and PIE, below) will feature prominently in these conversations. An all-faculty conference and on-line journal are envisioned as possible outgrowths of the spring retreats. Attendance will, of course, be voluntary and open to all-faculty, with subsidized transportation to campus and a stipend for attendance. Invitations will go out shortly. It will be energizing and innovative so as to feed and nurture our teaching practices and set the tone for how we enter the 21st Century as a community.
Project on Unlearning Racism (PUR)
In response to an urgent need to move the college further in the direction of realizing its progressive ideals, over the past year, Faculty Council has prioritized work on reversing structural and individual racism, as well as attention to related diversity issues. Together with PD’s, we prioritized anti-racism as an academic issue at the last FC/PD retreat (in March, 2010); we also began coordinating Unlearning Racism caucuses (open to students, faculty and staff) in a number of programs. The FC’s PUR Committee continues to foster the creation of similar caucuses in additional programs and residencies, while providing a chance for those involved to come together across programs.
FC is in a unique position to look at anti-racist pedagogy from a cross-programmatic perspective and can facilitate the distribution of resources, including effective workshops and facilitation, throughout the college as a whole. Using as starting points the Diversity Toolkit https://goddardfacultycouncil.wordpress.com/resources/ and other resources offered by caucus participants, faculty explore developing a range of pedagogical strategies suitable for different contexts, and will engage in ongoing dialog to establish common ground and values.
Additionally, as a complement to the program-based anti-racism caucuses, the Faculty Council is supporting the research and development of workshops that can be offered to the various residencies.
Led by FC Chair Laiwan (MFAIA), and Vice Chair Jan Clausen (MFAW), PUR will become a collaborative and team-based network where point faculty and caucuses will be kept informed as to discoveries, practices and breakthroughs encountered by all those involved. Innovative IT and virtual tools will be explored and utilized to develop methods of communication that can be accessed by all, thereby strengthening the cross-program dialog about anti-racist perspectives and strategies.
Head researchers are Education faculty Sharon Cronin (EDU) and Theressa Lenear (EDU), who initiated Unlearning Racism work in their program at around the same time the Faculty Council began its related initiative. Initial program-based point faculty are Muriel Shockley (IBA), Celia Hildebrand (HAS) and Karen Campbell (IMA), who will be involved with PUR in conjunction with their work to coordinate and facilitate the anti-racist caucuses for their programs. Additional point faculty from other programs and residencies can join as this project develops and where college commitment and funding to this important pedagogical work is advanced. Port Townsend Student Life Coordinator Lori Macklin (staff) and MFAW-VT student Kermit Hooks have actively joined the committee work of PUR.
Our long-range goal is to promote broad involvement by councils, staff, administration and trustees with PUR’s processes and discoveries, while at the same time encouraging these constituencies to develop further complementary approaches to anti-racist dialog, learning, and action.
Pedagogical Innovation and Experimentation (PIE)
For several years Faculty Council has been very interested in bringing pedagogical innovation to the fore of college-wide discussion. Such discussions are particularly important now given the changing landscape of the college, the prioritizing of this issue at last spring’s FC/PDC retreat, and the upcoming cross-program retreats supported by the Sontag Foundation. Examples of experimental innovation that we are focusing on include the appropriate uses of new technologies and alternatives to the traditional five-packet model of engaging our students that are used in the Psychology program or currently being explored in the MFA-IA and IBA. Members of Faculty Council have developed a proposal for an interim Pedagogical Innovation and Experimentation (PIE) committee that will institute dialogue among faculty while simultaneously working with PDs, members of the administration, and student representatives to create a college-wide structure supportive of innovative pedagogy, interdisciplinarity, and cross-program dialogue. Additionally this interim group will be charged with developing a more permanent structure for PIE.
In our current proposal, now before the administration, we plan to begin with structured cross-programmatic faculty conversations around two topics, collaborative learning/innovations in packet structure, and Project for Unlearning Racism (PUR). We envision experimenting with a combination of scheduled conference calls and/or Webinars and an on-line discussion format, with documentation of these efforts made available to all faculty. Chaired by Ruth Wallen MFAIA-VT, the PIE Committee currently includes Faculty Council representatives (Otto Muller IBA2, Jan Clausen MFAW-VT, Theressa Lenear EDU, and Darrah Cloud MFAW-PT). In the near future, we hope to extend our membership beyond FC to include other faculty members.
The Faculty Development Fund Committee (FDF)
Funds are available to support Goddard faculty in their professional development, research, writing, creative work, etc. These funds are administered by the Faculty Council and its Faculty Development Committee based on guidelines established in collaboration with the Chief Academic Officer. During the 2010-11 academic year, these funds will be awarded to faculty for fundable activities from July 1, 2010 up to June 30, 2011.
For AY10-11, applications will be assessed using the criteria listed in the guidelines. In all cases receipts are necessary before reimbursement can occur. In some cases, since the notice of the awards may occur after the costs have been incurred, preservation of receipts is critical. Please keep receipts from activities for which you are hoping to be reimbursed.
The AY10-11 Application Deadline is December 31, 2010.
Applications for activities from July 1, 2010 to June 30, 2011 may be submitted at any time up to the deadline. Applications after this deadline may be considered but will be subject to the limitations of the funds available. All reimbursements or grant requests must be submitted on the Faculty Development Fund special reimbursement form no later than June 15, 2011.
The New Initiatives Workgroup (INIW)
The New Initiatives Workgroup is the college-wide body that reviews proposals for new Goddard programs, which may be submitted by individuals or groups from either inside or outside the college. Darrah Cloud MFAW-PT represents Faculty Council on this work group, with David Frisby EDU also serving as a faculty representative. As Darrah describes the process:
“Members of the INIW examine the concept proposals, give recommendations and send them back to the originators with suggestions. We either send the initiatives forward or decline to move on with them. If they move forward, the next step in the process is a full-blown proposal, addressing all of the issues involved in launching a new program at Goddard. This proposal is addressed by the INIW and at this early time in the process sent to the PDC (Program Director’s Council) and the FC (Faculty Council) for input as well. In the last year, Faculty Council has offered substantial comments on many proposals. This information is gathered and sent back to the originators for incorporation into their Comprehensive Proposals. Final Comprehensives are then delivered back to the INIW and, if the decision is made to proceed, an implementation committee is created to make the new program happen. Historically, before the birth of the INIW, new programs like HAS have grown organically from other programs like the IBA.”
Currently in the pipeline are some exciting new programs, described in more detail in a recent letter sent out Jennifer Tripp Mead. Talks are also underway for Goddard to partner with the Audubon Bus, an historic mobile learning center.
Many other exciting new initiatives are being worked on and in various stages of development.
Writing Support Task Force (WSTF)
In response to longstanding faculty and student concerns, in academic year 2009-2010 the Academic Dean appointed a Faculty Council-led Writing Support Task Force (WSTF) to investigate options for strengthening student writing across all Goddard programs. Faculty Council Chair Laiwan, author of an earlier proposal for on-line academic support, chaired the effort, with input from Vice Chair Jan Clausen, HAS FC Representative Celia Hildebrand, and student members Jennifer Bruno and Paula Fitzhenry. The Task Force’s mandate was strengthened when the Faculty Council and Program Directors’ Council named academic support as one of three top-priority issues needing attention at their March retreat. Task Force members met through e-mail exchanges and phone conferences to examine the writing-related challenges and opportunities faced by the Goddard community. In August, the WSTF issued a detailed report whose recommendations include interim measures to designate faculty members with writing expertise as tutors available to students in all programs for academic year 2010-2011. For the long term, the report recommends that Goddard plan for a permanent writing support function by drawing on the rich history of composition studies since the 1960’s, including debates over questions of language, power, and access—questions with class, ethnic, and racial overtones that have particular resonance in progressive education. The report stresses the urgency of offering writing support to students on the basis that it is a standard function within contemporary higher education—every bit as necessary as a library or IT support. At Goddard, it becomes all the more pressing because our pedagogy is even more heavily writing-based than is typical for classroom-based college programs. After some delay, the Academic Dean has promised to arrange for interim writing support for the remainder of the academic year. President Vacarr and AVP Marianne Reiff are currently exploring the possibility of a consortium arrangement to create a virtual writing center in conjunction with the Association of Vermont Independent Colleges (AVIC).
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As we look forward to 2011, Faculty Council priorities include ensuring that the conversations initiated at the upcoming retreats become the foundation for sustained cross-fertilization among programs. We are also mindful of the fact that faculty participation in college-wide academic initiatives requires the commitment of adequate budgetary and other supports to invite sustained (and sustainable, i.e. burnout-free) involvement. We look forward to continuing pedagogical innovation at Goddard, and to giving all faculty a more resonant voice in the life of the college.
With best wishes for a restful holiday and an energetic,
pedagogically inventive New Year,
The Goddard Faculty Council
