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(02/20/13 6:32pm)
Trustees descended upon the College over the weekend for one of their four annual meetings.
President of the College Ronald D. Liebowitz said that two committees produced resolutions for action. The Audit Committee approved the fall audit and the Budget and Finance Committee approved the comprehensive fee proposal, which increased by 2.7 percent to $57,075, not including the student activities fee. Liebowitz called the resolutions “routine.”
Their visit kicked off on Thursday, Feb. 14, with a dinner to celebrate the seven faculty members who recently received tenure. Dean of Faculty Philip Battell and Sarah Stewart Professor of Biology Andrea Lloyd introduced each of the newly tenured faculty before they explained their areas of study to the board members.
On Friday, board members split up into different sub-committees. Student Government Association (SGA) President Charlie Arnowitz ’13 sat in on the Board’s Student Affairs Committee and the Investment Committee meetings.
“I updated the Student Affairs Committee on SGA’s work this year and some of the issues that are of concern to students, taking advantage of our survey data and also discussing some of our other initiatives,” Arnowitz reported in an email.
Arnowitz said that the majority of the Student Affairs Committee discussion revolved around a presentation given by representatives from the Projects in Creativity and Innovation (PCI).
While Arnowitz would not comment on what was discussed in the Investment Committee meeting, he stressed that the trustees are aware of student concerns.
“I will say that the Socially Responsible Investment Committee (SRI) issues that students have been discussing are very much on their radar,” he wrote. “Student views are being taken seriously.”
In a surprise unscheduled meeting early on Saturday, more than 50 students braved the frigid morning temperatures to greet the 18 trustees on their way to the day’s first meeting. The students — many dressed in cow outfits — donned oversized “Wake Up, Divest Middlebury” posters in a part-presentation, part protest outside of Old Chapel before seven students headed inside to present to the board in an official meeting.
“The purpose of our divestment presentation was not to debate, but rather to present the opinions and evidence gathered by students who favor divestment from fossil fuels and weapons manufacturing to the members of the board for consideration,” wrote Nathan Arnosti ’13 in an email, who attended the “Wake Up” demonstration and presented to the board.
“We also loved that 45 students showed up at 7:45 a.m. on a Saturday to show their support for divestment,” Arnosti continued. “It affirms that the issue has strong support among the student body and has manifested itself through a coalition of multiple student organizations.”
Arnosti said that while some of the students talked with trustees before and after the meeting, the Board had not discussed the content of the presentation in any official capacity.
“I will say that the trustees, along with the administrators present, listened attentively and treated us with respect.”
“I asked [the trustees] to use the opportunity to listen and learn and to see clarification from the students on this issue,” said Liebowitz. “I thought they did a good job presenting various parts of why they were pushing for divestment.”
Liebowitz explained that he and Vice President for Finance & Treasurer Patrick Norton will communicate with the chair of the Investment Committee to “outline the next steps” in the coming weeks.
The trustees also broke into groups to have lunch with roughly two dozen students on Friday.
Harry Zieve-Cohen ’15 attended the lunch and said that Dean of the College Shirley Collado made it clear to the students who attended the event that they should be critically honest when speaking to the trustees.
“I think it is important that our concerns get brought to the attention of the generous adults who run our school,” Zieve-Cohen wrote in an email.
Zieve-Cohen cautioned that the lunch had “limited value,” but said that he “appreciated” the gesture on the part of the trustees.
“The trustees weren’t really at Middlebury to hang out with students, and I think contact with the broader community can serve to help board members think beyond abstract data and theories.
“I think it is important that our concerns get brought to the attention of the generous adults who run our school,” he continued. “Students have valuable insights, but they have little experience and knowledge about how the world works. This sort of real-world experience is where the Board is probably the most valuable.”
(01/24/13 12:45am)
The College awarded tenure to seven faculty members at the end of December, a decision which provides the opportunity to examine the thorough and complex process by which a professor becomes a permanent member of the College faculty.
The Board of Trustees promoted Assistant Professor of Biology Catherine Combelles, Assistant Professor of Anthropology James Fitzsimmons, Assistant Professor of History of Art and Architecture Eliza Garrison, Assistant Professor of Political Science Nadia Horning, Assistant Professor of Philosophy Kareem Khalifa, Assistant Professor of Economics Caitlin Myers and Assistant Professor of Sociology Lynn Owens. These seven will be promoted to associate professors as of July 2013.
“The majority of Middlebury faculty are hired on a tenure track,” said Vice President for Academic Affairs Tim Spears. “Faculty members who are hired without any prior experience would first be reviewed in their third year and then, assuming they pass this review, they would be reviewed for tenure in their seventh year.”
Spears said that the complexity of the tenure process is due to the gravity of granting tenure, and added that tenure is “not a relationship that is entered into lightly.”
“Unless you do something egregious, you may well be employed by the College for the rest of your working life,” he said. “It’s a union between you and the institution.”
The importance of tenure was not lost on recently tenured Assistant Professor of Philosophy Kareem Khalifa.
“This promotion means that I expect to be at Middlebury for a long time,” he said in an email. “This long term commitment means that I’ll continue to look for ways to improve my working environment.”
Nationally, the institution of tenure appointment has come under fire in recent years — especially at the public high school level — from critics who argue that it is illogical and protects subpar teachers.
But Dean of the Faculty Andrea Lloyd argued that tenure is crucial to retaining elite faculty members.
“Different factors will matter more or less to different candidates, to be sure, but the simple fact of whether or not a position is tenure-track certainly ranks among the most important criteria that a given candidate will use in deciding whether to apply for — and subsequently accept — a particular faculty position,” she said in an email.
Lloyd pointed to 2004 data from the U.S. Department of Education that reported more than 80 percent of private, not-for-profit baccalaureate institutions had some system of tenure. She suspected that the percentage of tenure at peer institutions was “much higher.”
“We would thus be at a significant disadvantage in recruitment and retention, relative to our peers, if we did not have a system,” she wrote.
Spears said that tenure is especially important in areas such as Vermont because there are fewer job opportunities than teachers may have in big cities.
“Through tenure the College is able to make a long-term commitment to a faculty member to come to rural Vermont and make a life here, whereas that same faculty member might have more opportunities in an urban area,” he said.
Khalifa agreed that the College’s teaching level would suffer without tenure, but said that the teaching would also improve if faculty members had a clearer sense of how they were evaluated.
“Right now, many junior colleagues wonder if getting glowing student response forms satisfies the current criteria, while simultaneously suspecting that lowering one’s expectations of student work most easily secures glowing student response forms,” he wrote in an email.
Spears said that while teacher evaluations by students are important, review committees look for trends.
“What the course response forms can do — especially when you read large numbers of them — is show you patterns,” he said. “They can be very useful to the promotions committee when the committee visits classes to observe teaching.”
Faculty members are reviewed on teaching, scholarship and service.
“Teaching is very important part at a place like Middlebury,” said Spears. “It you’re not a good teacher, you won’t get tenure.”
But Spears emphasized that while in-class teaching is the most important aspect of the review process, outside scholarship also plays significant role.
According to the faculty handbook, scholarly achievement is evaluated primarily through the faculty member’s “published, performed or executed works.” The quality of any faculty member’s scholastic work is judged by peer review.
Spears said scholarship is “not an uncommon reason” why faculty members don’t receive tenure. He said students sometimes “don’t understand” the importance of scholarship in the review process, and in the past have erupted when popular teachers don’t receive tenure.
“The whole tradition of tenure is built on the idea that teaching informs scholarship and scholarship informs teaching. If you’re not committed to going out and doing scholarship, then somehow something is going to be missing from what you do in the classroom,” said Spears.
(09/26/12 8:53pm)
Students study abroad for myriad reasons: to travel, cement friendships and experience things otherwise unable to be had in Middlebury, Vt. As many students will find in Europe, the consumption and attitudes toward alcohol are much different than those of Middlebury students. Instead of a tool for weekend release, alcohol is considered a staple of everyday life — not to be abused, but embraced. Here in Prague, this is no different. Due to this attitude, students studying abroad often over-indulge in alcohol consumption at first, before finally accepting and embracing responsible alcohol usage.
As a responsible and loving consumer of Scotch and other whiskeys, I was looking forward to a break from the Natty Lights of Middlebury. But less than a week into my semester in Prague, the Czech government has imposed an unprecedented countrywide ban on all liquors. Apparently, a guy making moonshine on the Czech-Poland border used menthol instead of ethanol in his secret recipe. Ethanol makes the hangover worth it, but methanol causes blindness and, soon after, death, if consumed.
After 35 deaths and counting, the Czech government was forced to enforce the ban. Liquor stores were boarded and study abroad students took to the streets in protest. One student called it “prohibition in Prague.” Most of us thought that the ban would last a week, at most, and that the enforcement would be lax. But with surprising quickness and efficiency, the Czech government conducted hundreds of raids and even the lowliest of absinthe shops boarded up their liquors. The ultimate irony is that after years of trying to evade the law to get our hands on the hard stuff, we finally get to a place where there are no age restrictions and the law finds another way to withhold hard liquor.
It might, however, be a blessing in disguise. In fear of sounding trite, the lack of hard alcohol has taken away a key to some very dangerous possibilities that come from over-imbibing in drinks with more than 20 percent alcohol. As the great Karl Lindholm told us at our first-year orientation, if you stick to only drinking beer and stay away from the liquor, you will avoid a lot of problems. Is it the worst thing in the world to actually remember what happened last night?
Overnight, the Czech black market took control of Prague’s Scotch market. The usually shady Czechs promoting strip clubs and West Africans hawking marijuana were joined by an array of different characters selling the newly illegal liquor. One seven-foot man (who had an uncanny resemblance to Vlade Divac) offered us a bootleg bottle of Bacardi he promised would lead to the craziest night we’d ever had — not fully realizing the implications of his metaphor. Our friend’s landlord even offered to sell me a bottle of Macallan 18 for 600 crown, or $300.
My parents can take solace that I turned down both offers, in hopes that the ban will be lifted and Ireland’s finest will soon start flowing into Prague in the coming weeks.