NOV 11
After more than 23 years at Doane, I am leaving at the end of the semester to pursue an opportunity out of state. As one might imagine, leaving after so long brings with it some powerfully mixed emotions. Next week, I would like to spend a few column-inches reflecting on what I will miss. Before I can do that, however, I need to comment on the failures of administrative decision-making that are pushing me out the door. My hope is that this sparks more conversation, such that faculty and staff do not simply accept successive rounds of budget prioritization as the new normal. I fear that if they do, Doane will, in the name of balancing spreadsheets, slowly give up everything that has made its academic life expansive and liberating for students and faculty alike.
I am one of the Doane employees whose positions were eliminated in the budget prioritization last spring. I have until now remained publicly silent about the process and its outcomes. That silence is largely due to President Roger Hughes’ insistence of including a non-disparagement clause in our severance package and threatening us with legal action if we said anything negative about the university. However, since my departure at the academic year’s midpoint renders me ineligible for the severance anyway, I am free to hold those in power accountable for all the ways this process was unfaithful to the ideals Doane claims to stand for, and will lead to outcomes that will make Doane a less vibrant, less academic institution.
Any set of major decisions like these may be judged on two basic criteria: the decision-making process itself and its consequences. Our recent prioritization failed on both counts.
First, the process itself was a black box. Vice President of Academic Affairs Sue Larkin will deny this, and it is true that she solicited input from across the institution, though it is not clear how much attention she paid it. But it is also true that when the time came to make decisions, those decisions were made without any public accounting of how positions were chosen for elimination. Nor was the community ever even provided with a set of criteria. (The closest we came, as far as I know, was President Hughes’ comment to local media that the affected programs were “obsolete.” This may be a good time to remind readers that the affected programs included students’ only professional instruction in politics, religion and rhetoric. How these disciplines could ever be obsolete he did not explain.)
The upshot of this lack of transparency is that affected faculty are left to draw their own conclusions about why it was us who got the boot instead of someone else–or no one at all. I have sometimes gotten the impression that my perspective–and my willingness to voice it–annores certain members of the leadership team; is that why my program was singled out for elimination? In the absence of another explanation, it feels as plausible as anything else.
The consequences of those decisions is another source of failure. The most apparent of these is that students will no longer have professionally trained faculty to teach them about government, religion, or communication. Additionally, the award-winning forensics team will be shut down, and the oldest student-run newspaper in the state no longer has an advisor with a background in journalism.
But the consequences go well beyond those tangible concerns. Indeed, the very character of Doane as a liberal arts institution is threatened by these mindless cuts. Having lost programs in philosophy and physics in the first round of prioritization in 2020, we have now cut much of the rest of the heart out of the broad base of our liberal arts training. One wonders how we expect to prepare students for their lifetime of being engaged and curious citizens if they have no training in elements of society as fundamental as politics, religion, and communication.
Moreover, the faculty I am leaving behind are now going to be asked to do even more (teaching an additional class every year) with even less (school budgets are thinner than ever). Meanwhile, the one thing that survived these budget cuts intact are the six-figure salaries of the people making the decisions. Somehow, those who declared the emergency did not feel it urgent enough to include themselves in the sacrifice.
All of this would be bad enough if there had been a solid plan going in regarding how to use this moment to strengthen the institution. But faculty were told straight out that no such plan existed. At a meeting in May, President Hughes even said he could not promise that Doane wouldn’t be right back here going through the same exercise two years from now. It is hard not to draw the conclusion, then, that the pain and damage this process has caused is for exactly nothing.
I have spent the majority of my adult life dedicated to Doane and its students, and to trying to make this community better in any way I can. I am greatly hurt to watch that work be undone in a moment by administrators who care more about claiming they have slain some financial dragon than they do about the collateral damage they cause in the battle. I hope my erstwhile colleagues take this moment seriously enough to stand up for the mission our leadership seems intent on undermining.
NOV 18
Last week I used this space to discuss the mistakes in judgment our administration and trustees have made and warn of the consequences that will befall us if we take them lying down. This week, I would like to turn the page. To close out more than two decades at Doane, I want to publicly thank a number of people who have made my time on the faculty here such a singularly rewarding experience, even in the worst of times. There is no way I can possibly thank everyone who deserves it, nor can I do justice even to those I have listed below. But my students know that not being able to do everything is no excuse for doing nothing, so here is my woefully incomplete list of thanks, in no particular order:
- Brian Pauwels and Kim Jarvis once had an idea: there should be a “committee” dedicated entirely to meeting at a local bar on Friday afternoons and enjoying each other’s company, and it should be open to any and all faculty and staff. Thus was the Drink Beer Committee formed. I don’t think anyone has ever done more in a single stroke to improve the social bonds of the institution.
- Dan Clanton and Phil Weitl have long been my movie buddies–and we have seen some terrible ones. Their friendship has been one of the greatest blessings of my time here.
- I once called Heather Lambert in the middle of the night because my wife was in labor with our second child and we had nowhere to stash our first. Instead of hanging up on me, she made a pot of coffee and took care of my toddler. That’s who she is.
- Amanda Irions (now post-Doane) was my partner in countless schemes to improve academic life at Doane, and became one of my very best and truest friends. I don’t know how to sum up what she means to me, except to say that she makes me a better person.
- Danelle DeBoer has been my “work big sister” for as long as I’ve been at Doane. Her advice on every conceivable Doane-based issue has been invaluable, and the times I’ve fallen on my face here, it’s usually because I failed to consult her first.
- Kari Gentzler and Andy Johnson-Wysocki, along with Danelle, took me into their department when the first round of prioritization rendered me homeless. They are also voices of sanity in times when sanity is in short supply. They are the leaders Doane needs, if not always the ones it deserves.
- Kristen Hetrick (also now post-Doane) has been my family’s “dementia doula” as we have dealt with the darker side of watching our parents age. She helps us face some of the worst times with humor and grace. She also always laughs at my jokes, even when they aren’t funny.
- Denise Ellis has one of the hardest jobs on campus, and yet remains one of the kindest and most cheerful people I have ever met. In a position that involves constant attention to detail, and constant correction of faculty who ignore those details, she maintains a tone of positivity and geniality. Even when someone (who definitely didn’t write this article) discovers a major mistake in their final grades an hour before the deadline.
- Patty Stehlik (retired) and Sheryl Skala ran the Service Bureau many moons ago. They saved a young junior faculty member’s hide on several occasions by ignoring the rule that said copies must be submitted 24 hours in advance and creating materials at (sometimes literally) the last minute. And they never seemed put out: we were all on the same team, and that was always reason enough for them to go the extra mile.
- Pat Bohling (retired) took care of Gaylord for years. For much of that time, she and I were the first ones in the building most mornings, and I have many happy memories of trading pictures with her of my kids and her grandkids, who were roughly the same age.
- Lorie Cook-Benjamin (retired) was the Chief Academic Officer in the aftermath of Doane’s first attempt to eliminate my program and position. But she found a path to keeping me on, which led to the Policy and Values program I had the privilege to build for the past five years.
- The inaugural class of Faculty Council came into office at a time when the faculty was strongly at odds with the then-president. I chaired the Council during that time, mostly because no one else wanted the job, and it was one of the most difficult but also the most rewarding professional experiences of my career. I learned so much in those three years about how to present a united front to those in power, and about how to communicate decisions to a constituency. I feel forever bonded to the ten people who sat in that room with me every other Thursday.
- Barbara Herzog was my vice chair (read: co-pilot) in those years. She was instrumental in developing a strategy that would force a recalcitrant administration to recognize the interests of a faculty to which it was openly hostile. Most of the ideas I got credit for in those years were actually hers.
- Finally, there are all the students I have had the privilege of serving over the years, and especially the Policy and Values classes of 2028 and 2029. Your energy, engagement, and curiosity is quite simply the reason I stayed for so long, and the reason my departure is so difficult.
I’m sure there are people I am unjustly leaving out. If you are one of them, please accept my apologies and know that your mark on me is not unnoticed. And to this entire community: thank you for allowing me to grow up here as a teacher and a scholar. Doane is at its best when it puts its people first, a lesson I will take with me when I close my office door for the final time.
