However, Assistant Professor of Geology J. Whitey Hagadorn and Spanish Department Chair Lucia Suarez did not receive tenure despite being strongly recommended by their departments and by their students, said Dean of the Faculty Gregory Call.
“For both Professor Hagadorn and Professor Suarez, there were exceptional strengths in their cases,” Call said. “Certainly, many colleagues and students testified to how much they admired or appreciated their work.”
According to Call, tenure decisions are made after a long, elaborate process that is based on three main considerations: “a reading of each professor’s scholarship, a look at their file of teaching evaluations and [a] consideration of their service to the College.” Eight outside scholars consisting of professors of the same field review the professor’s publications and write a letter of evaluation to the department, which then combines their own recommendation with this outside evaluation. The professor’s former students are also solicited for their opinions in addition to the end-of-semester evaluation forms and the opinions of colleagues from other departments. Three binders that can be up to a foot thick are then given to the Committee of Six, made up of faculty members, who then make a recommendation to the Board along with President Anthony Marx and Call.
Hagadorn and Suarez now have the option of staying until the end of the 2009-2010 academic year and are in discussions with Call over their futures. In a letter to geology majors, the Geology Department promised that they will “do everything that we can to support Whitey during this difficult transition.”
The Board also appointed three new professors, two Assistant Professors in Chemistry and Law, Jurisprudence and Social Thought respectively, and one visiting professor in Music. The Board also discussed various potential economic scenarios and how best for the College to deal with them.
The decisions about tenure are only one of the many consequences of the economic crisis, as all academic departments look to reduce costs. The Women’s and Gender Studies Department has already suspended its search for a professor to study Gender and Media in the Global South and will also be returning their budget surplus from last year to the College instead of cutting their current budget. However, they will also be more wary of their future expenditures in areas such as entertainment, office needs such as copying and contributions to special events.
Similarly, the Religion Department has put two previously approved appointments on hold, according to Religion Department Chair Robert Doran.
“The Department had been hoping to bring someone to the campus who dealt with environmental issues and religion. We had also hoped to ... bring someone who could teach Chinese and East Asian religions. Both of these are big holes in our department’s offerings, and are important for our students as they grapple with questions of worldview and the environment.”
Moreover, the Chemistry Department is looking to cut 20 percent of their budget for the entire year by eliminating the refreshments they once provided at labs and at faculty meetings, reducing their number of teaching assistants and decreasing the amount of equipment they replace. The department is also examining some of their experiments, reducing the amount of materials required while maintaining the intended academic value. However, some of these cuts can only be made once, according to Chemistry Department Chair Mark Marshall.
“Some of these things, such as not replacing equipment in the teaching labs is something we can do only once, maybe twice,” said Marshall. “But things break, they need to be repaired or replaced, so some of these things are one-time cuts in response to these very unusual circumstances.”
Despite the hard economic times that require departments to reduce their budgets, Call promotes an optimistic outlook for the future.
“Though we’re going to face some harder choices and some choices that we haven’t necessarily fully anticipated,” Call predicted. “I get the strong sense that people are more than willing to have the hard discussions and to share some sacrifices if we have to.”