Academic Affairs

I’m just heading out to attend the last two Parent/Family weekend. It’s been a lot of fun, though I am a little exhausted (though certainly not the only one). These are my thoughts as I head out the door.

One of the President’s expectations, strongly supported by all of the VP’s, is that as we continue our quest to make our academic programs stronger that we look to beef up the academic component of everything we do. Academics is everywhere. We’ve changed the orientation program to strengthen academic expectations. We’ve changed things in the residence halls to facilitate learning. We created new rituals–specifically the new student convocation–to make it clear that we have high expectations for our students. Even in athletics, we attend to academics. Many people don’t realize that when Vice President Kowpak reminds us that we are the Number 1 public institution in New England and the 19th ranked Division 3 institution nationwide the we’re talking about the academic performance of our athletes.

We’ve also committed to strengthening the academic component of Parent/Family Weekend. On Friday, 73 parents attended 7 classes that they had pre-registered for, just like their students. Today, we have our first Celebration of Academic Excellence during the Weekend. We’ll be showcasing Student-Faculty Partnerships, from studying abroad to undergraduate research initiatives to community outreach.

This is exciting stuff. It’s also rather new. We’re trying new things on our campus and we’re having tremendous success. But we don’t always succeed. A class is missed, someone forgets to show up, we’ve been a little late in notifying people about a few things. For those, I apologize to those affected.

 For today, I ask that everyone take great pride in the revitalized commitment to academic achievement and to our core purpose as an institution of higher education. It’s nothing short of thrilling…mistakes and all.

Tags: academic excellence, orientation, parents, residence life by enetzhammer // No Comments »

Last week, we were finally able to go public with our big announcement: Rick and Jan Cohen have endowed our first chair, The Cohen Chair for Holocaust and Genocide Studies. We’ve been itching to shout about this for some time now, and the day was a marvelous one.

President Helen Giles-Gee did a great job of explaining the four reasons why this is so important to Keene State College:

First, the gift is the largest single gift in the history of the College. It speaks to the continuous and strong commitment the Cohen family has had for the education and particularly for this public college. Theirs is a long standing recognition that supports the need for high quality higher education for all of this State’s citizens

Secondly, their gift supports the development of academic curriculum in Holocaust studies extending its study to include genocide to address not only the past but unfortunately the atrocities of today. This is a gift that truly will serve the world. 

Ihird, this gift creates a perpetual academic position of leadership. An endowed chair is an academic distinction awarded to a scholar in recognition of past and potential original contributions to the individual’s discipline. The scholar serves as faculty providing oversight for curricular development, teaching and research with colleagues and students.

Fourth, the Cohen’s gift signals the importance of a contribution to enhance quality of the academic program for not only the good of students at this institution but for the good of us all.

Keene State College is honored and privileged to receive this endowment from the Cohens. As the president suggests, a gift of this nature is both a recognition of the high quality of the academic program and a partnership that will allow us to be even better in the future.

This is a big deal. This is a very big deal.

Periodically, I’ll be blogging about some of the other big deals on campus. There are so many ways we demonstrate academic excellence in exciting an innovative ways. This blog is a great opportunity to feature them.

 For now, thanks to the Cohens and to the faculty and staff of the Cohen Center for Holocaust Studies who have done great work–the kind of work that merits such an incredible gift.

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This afternoon I get to spend some time with Judy Cramer, a Keene State graduate from the 1980s. I first met Judy when we became colleagues at Buffalo State College in the mid-1990s. She moved on to a position at another school a few years later, but we’ve remained friends. Last year about this time I received an email from Judy that started, “I opened the new issue of Keene State Today and imagine my surprise….” So, we’ve reconnected as members of the Keene State community.

Judy achieved some degree of fame at Keene State as the first woman to be sports editor of the Equinox and the first woman to be sports director of the radio station. She has since gone on to develop a reputation as an important scholar in the areas of women in radio and women in sports and sports journalism. She’s currently an associate professor at St. John’s University.

So, why is this a momentous occasion worthy of a blog entry? The prospect of Judy’s visit has got me thinking about the role our alumni play at Keene State College. My interest at the moment is a curricular one. Our colleague and Alumni Board president David Gagne speaks often about the interest of our alumni coming back to serve the institution. And they’re on campus frequently. But I wonder about the degree to which we think about our alumni as those who can offer an important classroom experience for our students.

As a faculty member, I was often confronted with this issue. I’d get a call from a dean or someone in advancement that began, “So and so from the class of 19-something or other is going to be on campus next week. Wouldn’t you love to have him guest lecture in your class?” I remember at the time that my thinking along these lines: What am I going to give up if I turn a day over to so and so? Why is advancement getting involved in how I handle my classes? I have a set curriculum and it doesn’t allow for this tangent.

A few short years later, I became the dean who made the phone call to the faculty member. As I began to network with alumni–one of the things I loved about being dean and now about being Provost–I came to realize that these were not just friends of the college who wanted to bring their war stories to classes. These were people who had integrated the knowledge and experiences gained as a college student into successful careers. They were master practitioners who had much to offer our students in the classroom.

It was the theater department faculty who really helped me to change my thinking. They were constantly bringing back alumni, often on no notice, and were marvelously effective at integrating the alumni perspective. Students got a demonstration and testimonial of how college learning is the foundation for post-college success. And they buckled down. The department faculty built a theater–literally and figuratively, by the way–by integrating alumni into their curriculum. They recognized that alumni were a key indicator of the success of their program.

 When we’re asked to engage our alumni in a classroom experience, we should think less about the cost and more about the benefits to our curriculum and to student success. It forces us to be a little nimble, but I like that challenge, too.  And if it supports other institutional goals, well we’re all a part of this community and should support the goals of the institution.

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