February 1, 2023<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Many faculty and staff colleagues believe that SXU has lost its way.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But even in its meanderings, we see signs of the old possibilities. At last Friday\u2019s faculty meeting, there was principled discussion of varied topics. ChatGPT was on the agenda, and many colleagues shared their early experiments with and assessments of, or threat analyses of, the system. Many commented on pedagogical principles that might be developed around AI; about how assignments might be structured to avoid pitfalls or capitalize on new opportunities; about how to approach the teaching of writing; about how there was nothing new\u2014or there was<\/em> something new\u2014in the tool; and so on. Also at this meeting, there was discussion of the student request to adjust our holiday schedule to be more inclusive of Muslim religious holidays. Other topics were raised\u2014some in new business\u2014about the state of SXU in terms of finances, programs, and structure of colleges\/programs. Through it all, the discourse was civil and multifaceted. Time was monitored for each topic; comments ranged, and the overall experience seemed \u201cnormal\u201d\u2014an airing of viewpoints, casual politeness in presentation and reception, and a \u201cmove on to the next thing\u201d progression in the handling of business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But the ordinariness of the meeting made me uneasy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I suppose it\u2019s my impression that we are in the midst of an existential threat\u2014that we are living through an identity crisis\u2014that prompts me to think there was something insidious and dangerous about the \u201cbusiness as usual\u201d feel of things. But this dynamic has been going on for some time, and Friday\u2019s meeting was merely the latest of many others like it the past several months and years. I worry that we are in danger of normalizing a kind of blindness to some essential questions and needed discussions; we\u2019ve lost our sense of priorities and urgent needs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So many of the people who have built SXU, and have drawn on and extended its traditions have left the university. In silence, tenure is disappearing. Institutional memory is sketchy. And so, when there is talk about restructuring, the advocates for the old programs in the humanities in particular are not present. The larger community lacks awareness, and so the supporters of Administration\u2014often those who have been favored with resources or positions\u2014are free to make claims and push agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Since the arrival of the current president, there has been a steady push to shrink general education\u2014in terms of requirements, in terms of majors and programs, in terms of emphasis and value. The push to develop\u2014or rather promote<\/em> (since precious little goes beyond lip service)\u2014professional programs as our \u201cbrand\u201d has created a false dichotomy or tension between professional formation and the liberal arts. <\/p>\n\n\n\n There\u2019s an irony here. In promoting, for instance, a program in nursing as its flagship program\u2014all the while whittling down disciplines that serve general education\u2014the University is neglecting some compelling economic realities. The programs and courses in general education are among the university\u2019s most efficient and cost effective, while those in nursing are most costly. Deemphasizing the humanities, if only in the reduction of general education offerings and requirements, not only weakens the education of students (including nursing students whose programs traditionally have required a fuller formation in the liberal arts)\u2014but it also weakens the university\u2019s bottom line financially.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We find ourselves on a march in pursuit of an agenda, not explicitly stated, to allow for smoother adoption of not only restructuring but also all the changes needed to facilitate the agenda. The march is without check: it brazenly defies governance structures; it employs the disciplining of \u201ctroublesome\u201d faculty according to criteria and practices proscribed by the bylaws and AAUP; it shows refusal to meet faculty halfway on responsible requests (and thus promotes attrition through the loss of faculty who choose to retire or leave the institution); it weaponizes Human Resources to reprimand or intimidate faculty who are perceived as problematic for whatever reason.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On top of all this there is the creation of new committees where faculty representation is limited, or diluted, or pro forma<\/em> (as many initiatives are fait accompli<\/em> upon introduction); there is union busting; and there is direct disregard of Faculty Senate in the closing of programs, and the changing of bylaws.<\/p>\n\n\n\n All of this context leads to a restructuring plan that eliminates department chairs and shrinks the College of Arts and Sciences in ways that are defended as data driven, even though the data are structured in questionable ways, with many factors of what led to current data sets left unaccounted for (e.g., the starving\/closing\/misrepresentation of programs).<\/p>\n\n\n\n The bottom line is that the vision of the administration needs to be discussed in ways it hasn\u2019t been discussed. Is it the right vision? Is it a pragmatic vision? Is it a vision that advances our mission? More to the point, we must discuss, and provide remedies for, the breaches in trust we\u2019ve experienced the past six years. These breaches run the gamut\u2014from questions of governance; to an unwillingness to engage in open dialogue (through established structures like the Faculty Affairs Committee and the Senate); to unnamed policies for resource allocation; to silence about the institution\u2019s disinvestment in the academic product<\/a>; and, of course, to revived, faulty approaches taken to program closures and restructuring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Saint Xavier has lost its way, and in northern, cold waters. Let\u2019s not normalize our waywardness with more meetings and conversations that gloss over our crises in accents of \u201cbusiness as usual.\u201d If that is indeed an iceberg up ahead, let\u2019s not concern ourselves so assiduously with rearranging the deck chairs\u2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" February 1, 2023 Many faculty and staff colleagues believe that SXU has lost its way.\u00a0 But even in its meanderings, we see signs of the old possibilities. At last Friday\u2019s faculty meeting, there was principled discussion of varied topics. ChatGPT was on the agenda, and many colleagues shared their early experiments with and assessments of, … Continue reading Reflection on Friday\u2019s Faculty Meeting (January 27, 2023)<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-614","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life-at-sxu"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bonadonna.org\/sites\/wordpress\/bonadonna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bonadonna.org\/sites\/wordpress\/bonadonna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bonadonna.org\/sites\/wordpress\/bonadonna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bonadonna.org\/sites\/wordpress\/bonadonna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bonadonna.org\/sites\/wordpress\/bonadonna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=614"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/bonadonna.org\/sites\/wordpress\/bonadonna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1295,"href":"https:\/\/bonadonna.org\/sites\/wordpress\/bonadonna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614\/revisions\/1295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bonadonna.org\/sites\/wordpress\/bonadonna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bonadonna.org\/sites\/wordpress\/bonadonna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bonadonna.org\/sites\/wordpress\/bonadonna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}