Photo courtesy of Connecticut College.
This week, I had the opportunity to sit down with Erika Smith, the new Dean of the College. We talked about the community here at Connecticut College, the state of education in the Covid pandemic, and what general advice she has for students.
Some responses have been edited for clarity.
Sofia Raffel (SR): How has your experience been so far being a part of the Connecticut College community?
Erika Smith (ES): So, I first started contemplating coming to Conn in April, and sort of learned about the college and the direction that Connecticut College was going and about Connections, the curriculum, and I was really excited about the way that the community here was described. There was a line in the job profile that was like: “its this eclectic mix of scientists and activists and artists and…” and it was just sort of like this beautiful picture of a community that just kept getting reflected, too, throughout my introduction here. Everybody I talked to was just reflecting back what a great community it is and how well-connected people are and how shared governance really includes everybody. So those pieces were all beautiful, and so when I got here and saw how physically beautiful it was…it was incredible. So, it has been wonderful.
SR: What was it like onboarding in the midst of a global pandemic?
ES: It actually wasn’t very daunting, I think, for two reasons. One is, my remote experience of the pandemic ended when I got to Conn. So, I had been working remotely – and pretty seamlessly. I hear that that was the experience here as well for this team, that that pivot was pretty seamless. You know, I think, jarring for everybody in March 2020. But then once you kind of settled into whatever it was, or figured out whatever the landscape was, it was pretty seamless. I arrived here at the beginning of August, and we were in person at that point. So it was, I think, very nice to be onboarding in person. And then the other piece that I’ll say is that the other reason Conn was appealing to me was how well the college has done around Covid-19 in the year prior. That it felt like a safe place to be coming to, and a team and student life that was really handling the pandemic well. And we see that again after our move to orange, but then our quick, quick move back to green, that was amazing. I continue to be impressed by my colleagues here.
SR: Given the precariousness of in-person learning, how do you see the pandemic impacting academics, and how would you respond to these challenges?
ES: So I don’t consider in person learning to be precarious at this point. I think that we’re here, we had our moment, everyone in the community seems really committed to being in person and very excited to be in person. So, I don’t know that I would position that as a challenge. We’re learning how to do it in this moment, in this global pandemic. It’s been several iterations coming up to this point, it will be different, it will continue to change and evolve. We’re learning things along the way that will make us better equipped to do a much wider range of things when all is said and done.
SR: How has your experience helping to overhaul Brandeis’s core curriculum influenced your perspective on what is important for undergraduate academics?
ES: So, like Conn, Brandeis had gotten to the point where there were some elements of the curriculum that needed to be updated to be resonant with the people who are going to be leading us in the future: you and your peers. So, things like a social justice requirement in the curriculum here is Social Difference and Power. So, I think that, again, you and your peers are leading us in that conversation and in those movements and in that work in the world. It made complete sense that it needed to be included in the curriculum. So, I think that there’s some resonance there. Your previous question about the global pandemic, I think, also nods to how the world is getting smaller, and people are getting more interconnected…Thinking about your education and your experience and how you move out into the world in a global way, and with more skills to do that and more opportunities to do that. I saw that I was working on the Brandeis curriculum, and I see that here as well, with Global and Local Engagement, so I think that there are ways in which it is about the leaders that we see coming up in the world.
SR: What are some of your goals for the College?
ES: So, I’ve been in higher education for twenty-two years. I have witnessed a lot of senior leaders come and a lot of senior leaders go. I think that those who I’ve seen, those who take the time to get to know the place first before staking a claim — immediately setting goals, deciding that this thing is the way that things need to be changed — are the people who have actually been able to effect change that more people can see themselves reflected in. I’ve been asked multiple times since I arrived here, but [I arrived] only two months ago. In the first couple of weeks, folks were asking “what’s your vision?” And I don’t know yet, because I don’t know the place yet, and I don’t think it’s fair for me to come in and say “this is what we need to do” when there are people here, when there are students who have been here longer than I have [laughs]. So rather than giving you a list of goals right now, what I’ll say is: I’m taking the time to get to know the place and to get to know the students. And since this is going in The College Voice, I’ll say, I’m excited to get to know more students. I don’t see as many students as I would like to. People should know that I am pretty intentional about wanting to have connections and build connections and hear students and have student input. So, if anybody has ideas or has things that they want to forge a connection around, I am open to that. I have met with a number of students since I started, as well as faculty and staff, and in those conversations, I always ask people what advice they have for me. And that one I will ask you; I would love your advice.
SR: I think that there is a lot that we have learned over the past year, through remote and hybrid learning, that could be implemented going forward. So, I guess [I would say] to consider some of the things that we’ve learned from last year’s challenges and how those lessons could be relevant in the future. So, on that note, I would ask: what do you think can be learned from our collective experience with remote and hybrid learning, and how do you think those lessons can continue to be implemented?
ES: So, I am right there with you, and so I very much appreciate that advice! All through the pandemic last year, I was leading a team similar to this team. We went remote, maybe March 16th. I was saying to all of them, “what are we learning from this? So, we’ve had to make this abrupt pivot, where it’s going to be messy for a while, we’re gonna have to figure some things out, but enter it with the spirit of, ‘what are going to be our takeaways? What are the things that we’re going to get rid of, because they don’t work anymore?’” And, out of that, both there and here, there were things like paper processes that were moved online, things like quick drop-in appointments that were moved online. There were these smaller interventions and changes that were made that made, I think, kind of a big change in the end. And then there are some of the things that we’ll continue to grapple with around what modes deliver the highest quality of teaching and learning. And, I think, most will agree that hybrid is particularly difficult because you’re having to tend to in-person and remote people. But I think it continues to be something both where educators have had this – I will call it an opportunity, other people might not use that word [laughs] – opportunity to make this rapid shift. One of the other things I say about this is that the pace of change is very slow, I would say in many things, in many sectors, in many fields, education being among them. The types of changes that were made just in the last year, 18 months, 20 months, would have taken decades to make. Everybody was forced, and I think it worked well in some cases, I think in other cases it really clarified that an in-person experience is what is paramount here. I think on the learning side, students learned a lot, I hope, about themselves as learners. I think one of the things that I heard both from students and from instructors was that when you use Zoom, it changes participation. So, you get your introverts who are far more likely to use the chat and participate. And I’ve heard time and time again, “definitely my pedagogy should be delivered in person. But how do I draw on that and learn from that to ensure that my introverts continue to stay engaged?” And I think that, on the student side, students should also feel like you’re in this self-evaluative moment. The education landscape changed, but your learning experience also changed. So, if there are things that worked well for you that these are things that you wouldn’t have done either. So, I think that it really has created an open door and an opportunity for the entire system to move forward.
SR: How do you plan on expanding Connections to reach full participation?
ES: So, I would actually expand the full participation piece to the entire division. As Dean of the College, I oversee the academic resource center, the Hale Career Center, the class deans, study away, the registrar’s office, and sort of partner to manage fellowships. So, Connections is present across all of those areas in some way, shape, or form, and there’s more. I think my aim would be to be looking at each piece, including Connections, with an eye towards “how do we get to full participation.” And it means, I think, different things in different areas. There are different components of the student experience, the student academic and co-curricular experience, where full participation would be manifested in different ways. And I think that this is part of my learning and my onramp is, what are the groups of students that could use greater access to any of these experiences. The one that’s at the top of my mind right now is the Gilman Scholarship, which supports students for study abroad, and students just don’t know about it. So, I think that raising the profile on some of these things, building bridges, I know that one of the most effective ways of making that kind of connection, especially at a small place like Conn is to walk with someone to the next resource that you want to have them take advantage of, and have everybody feel an equal sense of comfort. Somebody that I was talking to recently said “we want every student to have a consistently joyful experience”. I think that should be the aspiration, and I think you can get that when people are feeling like the full breadth of the experience is accessible to them and attainable for them and that they can invite other people in.
SR: What advice would you give to students at Connecticut College as they strive to get the most out of their education and college experience?
ES: So, this one I was happy to have in advance [laughs], because I was able to pick out the things that I really like to share with students. One is, figure out your self care go-to. Your routine. What can shift your mood, what can put you in a good place, what can position you to be most successful, and make sure that you do it with some consistency. Another one that I share with students is, the most important time to reach out for help is when it’s hardest to reach out for help. So, I have seen many, many students have — and I say this with love and respect — hiding behavior when something gets hard. And I get it, that when you hit a difficult point you just don’t want to confront it, that is exactly the moment that you need somebody. You need to reach out and get somebody in there so that you don’t get into a space where the distance between you and your success gets wider and wider and wider and wider out of the fear of reaching out. I would say, as somebody who was very narrowly focused on a path undergrad, it’s okay to change your path and change your mind. I didn’t change it during undergrad, but I did change it post-undergrad, and everything turned out just fine. And actually, I’m doing things that are important to me, things that matter to me, things that I’m good at, and I think that that’s what one should strive for, is to realize that potential and to make good on their strengths. And then the last: don’t let noise, like, environmental noise, distract you from why you made the choice to be at Conn. We both made the choice to be at Conn. We looked at the academics, we looked at the environment, we looked at the location. And everybody else here did that too, and said “this is the place.” And then we went to [Alert-Level] Orange… It was an uncomfortable moment. It was a moment of uncertainty, it was a moment of challenge, and I think that people can be undone by those moments, I think people can be really knocked off balance by those moments, I think people can really lose focus in those moments. The decision to be here, and all of the great, great reasons to be here are so much bigger than that moment. And that’s what I would end with: don’t be distracted by your… growth opportunities. They’re hard. They’re uncomfortable. That’s what growth is. But the reasons that we’re all here together in this community are so much bigger than them.
