coldhearted scientist وداد

…our toxic department? It’s not that students are losing interest in the field, it’s that we are alienating them because the toxicity is so evident. What is needed?

1. Graduate students. Faculty should not gossip about students to other students. Sharing good news, or giving information about opportunities others have taken and that are still available, is one thing, but criticizing them or their French makes everyone paranoid and resentful, and causes people to struggle for position and bicker.
2. Undergraduate students. Faculty should support each other, and in the case of French, not leave everything “undergraduate” to one person. Undergraduate means the major, not just the lower-level courses, and everyone should be talking to majors about careers in a concrete way. Spanish faculty should support and promote each others’ courses and show their excitement about the field, not demonstrate defeat and resentment, regardless of how they feel. The language clubs are great institutions and we should all be supporting opportunities for students in German and Arabic.
3. Faculty. The department, and decisions and plans for it, appear to be made by a small group from French, along with some other French-interested faculty in the university and the administration. It often appears that the objective is to protect the interests of that group, not to strengthen the department or its programs. Those of us who are excluded from decision making also lack needed information about what is planned for us. We thus waste a lot of energy and time, or have our energy and time wasted by those in the inner circle. Should we fight for our majors or has a decision already been made to cancel them? It’s hard to discern, and the fact that we are never given much information (or information that appears to match the reality on the ground) feels like treated as less-than. It’s hard to feel part of anything so it’s understandable that people who want to be happy just concentrate on their own work: but that doesn’t get majors, and it’s only possible to do if others are doing administration and service. So if there is no other person to do administration and service for you, and the impact of the no-majors comes straight to you, you have to deal that. Your workload doubles, really.
4. A result of the lack of information and the existence of gossip creates a gap where more gossip and speculation form. People try to talk about what to do, how to survive, and disagree in their analyses, and begin to bicker. Those in power continue may not recognize that our atmosphere alienates students. They don’t do the early-on seminars English and History do, and they then blame the lack of student interest on national issues.
5. We have more power than that. We have to stop thinking all we offer is language training and remember we are major humanities disciplines, and respect that and be proud of it, the humanities are worth fighting for.
6. Personally, I would restructure the major such that interesting courses in English, particularly about career, happened early on, in tandem with the language courses.
7. On the question of study abroad: French works with one place in France, and Spanish with one in Spain. French seems satisfied but Spanish students need more.

Axé.