Whither the Academic Department?
My perspective on this blog is shaped entirely by my current professional experience. As Chair of the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at the University at Buffalo (SUNY), my mission is clear: I am charged with spreading democracy throughout the world by educating global citizens who are not only fluent in multiple languages (French, Italian, Spanish, and sometimes Portuguese and Catalan, in the case of RLL), but also culturally conversant in the history, art, literature, and civic life of societies that speak these languages. No really, that's what I do for a living!
My primary way to achieve my mission, however, is anything but idealistic: Butts in seats. Our viability as a department depends on generating revenue for the College, which of course is determined by the number student butts land in our classroom seats. Accordingly, we have to adapt programs and curricula in order to attract more students paying the highest tuition rates: namely, paying MA students and international students. So long as these students we hope to bring in accord with our primary mission (the spread of democracy), I'm all in favor with the adjustments we're making. We have to create new micro-credentials in cultural competence for students in health sciences, education, law, management. We have to incorporate international education as a required element of undergraduate and graduate curricula. We have to provide our current students international experience in the target-language, and mobilize our connections to HEIs across the Western Hemisphere and Western Europe to recruit students to Buffalo.
But let's not make any mistake about it. My colleagues in RLL view our mission from the neck up, as in freeing students' minds. My colleagues in the dean's office view our mission from the ass down, as in getting as many of them to sit down as possible. This is no critique of either side, since I agree with the prerogatives of each.
Nevertheless, the department is being pushed in two incompatible directions. If we do not grow enrollments, we will be progressively reduced only those courses that have consistently higher enrollments. In our case, that would mean RLL becomes a service department offering introductory and intermediate Spanish, maybe some French, and probably no Italian. This is a horrible fate to be avoided at all costs. If we therefore strive to grow enrollments, it likely means that we have to venture into arenas and disciplines well outside the traditional configuration of literary-cultural critics and second-language acquisition linguists. We would have to partner with professional schools, thereby threatening the integrity of our disciplines.
In either case, the traditional academic department is breaking down, and giving way to new inter-disciplinary centers that may or may not be very well thought out, and may or may not have a defined mission. I need only point you to what just happened at the University of Tulsa as mentioned in my previous post.
Unless of course we can find a different path. Thus this blog you are reading now.
My primary way to achieve my mission, however, is anything but idealistic: Butts in seats. Our viability as a department depends on generating revenue for the College, which of course is determined by the number student butts land in our classroom seats. Accordingly, we have to adapt programs and curricula in order to attract more students paying the highest tuition rates: namely, paying MA students and international students. So long as these students we hope to bring in accord with our primary mission (the spread of democracy), I'm all in favor with the adjustments we're making. We have to create new micro-credentials in cultural competence for students in health sciences, education, law, management. We have to incorporate international education as a required element of undergraduate and graduate curricula. We have to provide our current students international experience in the target-language, and mobilize our connections to HEIs across the Western Hemisphere and Western Europe to recruit students to Buffalo.
But let's not make any mistake about it. My colleagues in RLL view our mission from the neck up, as in freeing students' minds. My colleagues in the dean's office view our mission from the ass down, as in getting as many of them to sit down as possible. This is no critique of either side, since I agree with the prerogatives of each.
Nevertheless, the department is being pushed in two incompatible directions. If we do not grow enrollments, we will be progressively reduced only those courses that have consistently higher enrollments. In our case, that would mean RLL becomes a service department offering introductory and intermediate Spanish, maybe some French, and probably no Italian. This is a horrible fate to be avoided at all costs. If we therefore strive to grow enrollments, it likely means that we have to venture into arenas and disciplines well outside the traditional configuration of literary-cultural critics and second-language acquisition linguists. We would have to partner with professional schools, thereby threatening the integrity of our disciplines.
In either case, the traditional academic department is breaking down, and giving way to new inter-disciplinary centers that may or may not be very well thought out, and may or may not have a defined mission. I need only point you to what just happened at the University of Tulsa as mentioned in my previous post.
Unless of course we can find a different path. Thus this blog you are reading now.
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