If there is one thing that Conn does right, it is attract excellent faculty members. The school does not, however, always manage to keep the people that it should.
Five faculty members have resigned at Conn, effective at the end of this academic year. Significantly, these professors (English and Africana Studies professor Courtney Baker, History professors Anne Marie Davis and Jen Manion, Art History professor Qiang Ning and Japanese professor Takeshi Watanabe) have reached different points in their academic careers. Some have tenure, and some are tenure-track. This suggests that Connecticut College is doing poorly with faculty retention across the board, especially given that tenure-track positions are few and far between and extremely hard-won. Conn currently has only 164 tenure-track or tenured positions which may be adjusted depending on faculty departures within departments. How departments hire is determined by the yearly staffing plan, which Dean of the Faculty Abby Van Slyck draws up in consultation with President Bergeron and faculty members, along with some student involvement. This year’s, which mostly governs the 2017-2018 academic year, adds three tenure-track lines, bringing the total number of tenured and tenure-track positions to 167. In addition to the 167 tenured and tenure-track faculty positions, Conn employs 33 full-time non-tenure-track faculty members, some of whom are visiting and others of whom are permanent, as well as a number of part-time faculty members. Adding these lines is an “unusual step,” Abby Van Slyck writes in the staffing plan, as “each tenure-track line represents a significant, long-term financial commitment on the part of the College.” She undertook the addition on the recommendation of the Faculty Steering and Conference Committee (FSCC) in order to provide Connections with “long-term, committed resources and … stability,” she wrote.
Of course, some turnover is to be expected. People retire, after all, and they do resign sometimes. Five resignations is certainly not unprecedented. In the last few years alone, there have been a number of faculty resignations. There were five resignations in 2012-2013: two full-time lecturers in the Chemistry and Psychology departments; two tenure-track professors in the Human Development and Math departments; and one part-time Dance professor. Roger Brooks, who was then Dean of the Faculty, noted that the resignations in Math, Chemistry, and Dance were “unexpected.”
There were no resignations in 2013-2014 according to the staffing plan drawn up that year.
There were five resignations in 2014-2015: four tenure-tracks (one each in the East Asian Studies and History departments and two in the Psychology Department) and one lecturer (in the Chemistry Department). Abby Van Slyck termed the East Asian Studies resignation an “unexpected vacancy.”
This year is striking, however. Every one of those who, as Associate Dean of the Faculty Jeff Cole put it, “have resigned to take positions elsewhere,” are all either tenured or on track for tenure. Professor Ning and Professor Davis’ resignations were termed “unexpected vacancies” in the April 7 draft of this year’s staffing plan. These jobs are often, though not always, career-long. But in the last four years, eleven tenure-track or tenured professors have resigned, five in this year alone.
Clearly, other institutions are beating us out in opportunities for career advancement. Professor Manion will be a faculty member full-time at Amherst, and will not have the administrative duties that they currently do as Director of Conn’s LGBTQ Center. Professor Baker is starting a Black Studies program at Occidental College. Professor Watanabe is assuming an assistant professorship, his current rank at Conn, at Wesleyan.
It is also noteworthy that each of these professors teaches and studies subject matters that are not, at least traditionally, taught at the university: gender and sexuality, race and the non-Western world. Part of this work is to legitimize historically marginalized people and knowledge. It is important that this project of legitimization occurs – and continues to occur – with the academy, because the academy is itself commonly understood to be a main, perhaps the main, site of legitimate knowledge and knowledge production. One of the ways in which colleges and universities demonstrate their commitment, or lack thereof, to professed ideals and endeavors is by attracting and retaining faculty who support those ideals and endeavors. This turns rhetorical commitment into concrete commitment – or it doesn’t.
The strength of our commitment to faculty retention determines what will be taught and how. It prioritizes certain kinds of knowledge and production of those kinds of knowledge while deprioritizing other kinds. This prioritizing, of course, is inescapable to a point. But in choosing what to prioritize, we are choosing to back or not back our professed values. We are choosing to legitimize and enfranchise some students and faculty, while disenfranchising and delegitimizing others. We are telling students and faculty if and where they belong at Connecticut College. We must take care to ensure that we reflect our rhetoric in our concrete commitments by actively working to retain our great professors. •
