The Story
Dean of Arts and Sciences Candidates Visit Campus
The College's former dean, Carl Strikwerda, left the College in July 2011 to become the president of Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania. Gene Tracy has been serving as interim dean ever since.
The following summaries of the candidates’ open forums describe the candidates’ presentations, answering the question: â€"What are the most exciting opportunities for arts and sciences as the core of a great liberal arts university and what would be your priorities to capitalize on them?â€
Name: Daniel Conway
Current Position: Professor at Texas A&M University
Past Positions: Head of Philosophy Department at Texas A&M, Professor at Pennsylvania State University, Faculty Fellow at Harvard University, Lecturer at Stanford University
Education: BA from Tulane University, MA and PhD from University of California at San Diego
Field of Study: Philosophy
Most Recent Book: Reader’s Guide to Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals. London: Continuum Books, 2008. xii + 184 pp.
Challenges/Opportunities Identified:
1) In order to become a global leader among liberal arts universities, we must invest in long-term relationships with students, faculty, and staff, and claim the brand title of â€"leader.†Investing in people by drawing top faculty would be the highest priority, and corporate partnerships would be a good way to fundraise.
2) In order to create a more fully diverse community, we must renew and revise hiring and admission practices to develop a curriculum and administrative structure that substantively reflect genuine commitment to diversity.
3) In order to inspire lifelong commitments to William and Mary, we must raise our standards, add new graduate programs, new undergraduate interdisciplinary programs, and create an alumni internship program to cultivate student careers and alumni support.
4) In order to maximize revenue sources, we must maximize alumni-student-faculty relationships and increase the rate of return on the state’s investment by looking into differential tuition and enhancement fees.
5) In order to maintain an infrastructure ready for the 21st century, we must create an administration that is less cumbersome, more responsive, and more sustainable.
6) In order to promote William and Mary through effective communication, we must do so within the framework of a comprehensive, integrated development strategy, and by having alumni speak to the state legislature regularly about the value of the College to Virginia’s citizens.
Main Emphases: fundraising through alumni-student-faculty connections, corporate partnerships, and more â€"brand†awareness; creating an international presence for the College through study abroad partnerships and fostering relationships with budding liberal arts institutions; maintain the College’s unique small liberal arts teaching with its university capacity for research
Q&A Highlights:
Q: Should we have a second class of non-tenure track faculty to cut costs?
A: Having non-tenure track faculty is a non-negotiable reality, and it can be good – it creates healthy turnover rates, provides good experience, time to develop research, and assistance in the job search for the non-tenure track faculty. A group of non-tenure track faculty can be humanely defined by having a regular rotation of young members and by having tenured faculty become teachers of teachers, rewarded for mentoring.
Q: Why is it difficult to retain minority faculty members and how can we do better?
A: We must be willing to mirror diversity back to new hires by making arrangements in terms of things like their teaching curriculums and administrative structures.
Name: Katharine Conley
Current Position: Professor at Dartmouth College
Past Positions: Associate Dean for the Arts and Humanities at Dartmouth, Chair of French and Italian Department at Dartmouth, Dissertation Fellow at University of Pennsylvania
Education: BA from Harvard, MA and PhD from University of Pennsylvania
Field of Study: French
Most Recent Book: Robert Desnos, Surrealism, and the Marvelous in Everyday Life. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2003. Paperback edition, April 2009.
Challenges/Opportunities Identified:
1) We must remain true to the core vision of liberal arts while being flexible to adapt to new fields.
2) We must expand on current interdisciplinary fields.
3) We must maximize efforts in internationalization to have a local and global reach.
4) We must use technology in order to collaborate, such as in the digitization of archives and the ability to videoconference.
5) We must maintain environmental and architectural sustainability on campus.
Main Emphases: liberal arts education is valuable because it creates an intergenerational partnership in learning and teaches students how to think in new ways, fostering empathy and citizenship; issues need to be addressed as a community
Q&A Highlights:
Q: What is the role of non-tenure track faculty?
A: There is a national concern that the balance between non-tenure track and tenured faculty could get out of whack, so we’re all worried. Non-tenure track faculty can contribute a lot, especially in certain departments. As long as we’re honest and respectful about their contracts and give them good salaries and benefits, it should be okay.
Q: What is your decision-making process like?
A: Very consultative. I look to teamwork to be as fair and transparent as possible. Not everyone will be happy with a compromise, but I would try to make it as fair as possible. For example, at Dartmouth we needed to close a $100 million gap between spending and revenue, and I had to choose between departments as to who could hire new faculty. I chose a weaker department over stronger ones because it had no junior faculty and needed intergenerational balance to increase its strength.
Q: What kind of experience do you have with fundraising?
A: In general, I work with faculty and have them communicate with foundations that give out grants. Specifically, we built an arts complex recently at Dartmouth, and in order to raise money I publicized the success of the arts department (i.e. its famous alumni) and spoke to alumni about its crumbling infrastructure.