As I’m heading into my last year at Carroll, I have reflected on the many ways Carroll has changed, and I have changed since coming here. I came to Carroll in the fall of 2019 from Missoula, ready to take on my French and International Relations majors, be on the debate team, and study abroad.
However, as I start my senior year, the French major has been suspended, and the international relations program has been left to drift away. While the international relations professor retired last year, Dr. Jeremy Johnson, Chair of the Department of Political Science and International Relations noted that “there are no imminent plans I am aware of to hire for the position. We are currently filling holes in the curriculum with classes taught by adjunct instructors.”
But it’s not just my degree programs that have withered in my four years here. Carroll has taken a firm shift away from liberal arts and towards STEM fields. Watching liberal arts professors get terminated has sent a clear message to the liberal arts students that our education is second to that of our science-oriented peers.
We have one of the best nursing programs in the region, and our Anthrozoology program is incredibly rare. I recognize that those successes are vital to bringing in much-needed donations. However, Carroll’s marketing and message maintain the idea that we are a liberal arts institution that prioritizes the education of the whole person in any degree program.
This shift is far from just my perception of the administration’s priorities. According to a list of the losses in the liberal arts at Carroll College from 2012 to 2022 sent by faculty to the board of trustees in 2021, the school has cut 18 full-time liberal arts positions from 2012 to 2021 and several departments have less than half the faculty members they had in 2012. The biggest losses have been to fine arts (from five faculty members to one), sociology (from three faculty members to one), and English writing & literature (from six faculty members to 3.5). Notably, these figures are as of the 2021-2022 school year and do not reflect this academic year’s hiring decisions.
While history, math, biology, and psychology have not lost faculty over the past 10 years, according to the faculty list mentioned above, there has been a 48% decrease in the number of full-time faculty members in the other liberal arts departments (which include classics, English writing and literature, languages, philosophy, theology, fine arts, physics, chemistry, political science, and sociology).
Dr. Debra Bernardi, English and Gender studies professor, is among the many faculty members that have fought against the defunding of Carroll liberal arts programs.
We cannot “keep cutting our liberal arts faculty without an effect on the quality of our College,” said Bernardi.
Carroll’s core notion of “not for school but for life” rightly points out that education must be for the world in which we live. However, leaving their humanities behind is a betrayal of that core mission. Carroll’s administration does a disservice not only to their current students but to the potential humanities majors told that Carroll would provide them an atmosphere to thrive in their current field.
As a French major who came to Carroll before they axed the program, I’ve witnessed this shift and the impact it has had on the college. For a bit of history (provided by Dr. Bernardi), Dr. Anneliese Renck was hired to build Carroll a French program from the ground up. By the spring of 2021, the program had grown to 13 majors and 15 minors with multiple study-abroad opportunities and scholarships. Despite her success, President John Cech issued a report called the “3R Report” in the Spring of 2021, which terminated her position at Carroll “the year before she would have applied for tenure,” said Bernardi.
Bernardi noted that protests by nearly all of the faculty members and over 200 students, including 50 directly involved in the French program, were met with no response from President Cech and the Board of Trustees.
Dr. Cech’s decision to terminate the French professor position was a way to circumvent college policy in the faculty handbook that states that the decision to end a program must be determined “primarily by the Faculty Assembly.” Last year, Dr. Cech and the Vice President of Academic Affairs, Dr. Jenn Glowienka, proposed a temporary “suspension” of the French program in order to “rethink” and redesign the program.
“The Faculty has been much concerned that “suspending” the program is only one more way the Administration has worked to end French, despite faculty commitments to languages at Carroll College,” said Bernardi.
“Personally, as Dr. Renck’s colleague and her former Chair, I cannot imagine why the current admin wants to “rethink” and “redesign” the very successful program she created. Nor can most of us imagine that “suspending” a program and removing it from the catalog will help build this program. It remains to be seen when and if a new French program will be designed—and, more importantly, if the College will support it financially,” said Bernardi.
Bernardi highlighted that the suspension of the program came despite a Faculty resolution stating their commitment to the mission as a liberal arts college and the necessity to retain language programs. Without French, Spanish is the only remaining language offered. As of this semester, the French program is suspended.
Courses continue to be taught for remaining French students by visiting professor, Dr. Julie Crohas.
I’ve personally benefited from the excellent work that Crohas has done as the Visiting Assistant French Professor, but her courses and assistance cannot replace the extensive support of a college department.
“But even if a new French program is built at Carroll, as I see it, Carroll fired an exemplary professor and scholar the year before she was to be up for tenure, to replace her by someone without the salary and job security of a tenured professor,” said Bernardi.
“This as I see it, may have saved the College a little money and it may be legal–but it is unethical and, frankly, unconscionable,” said Bernardi, who clarified that she is not criticizing the quality of the current French instructor, but rather the process followed.
“The Administration’s decisions have damaged the French program, especially, and our liberal arts mission across the College more broadly. Further, by ignoring Faculty about curricular decisions, the trust between Faculty and the Administration has been severely undermined in these past years,” said Bernardi.
While the downfall of the French department may be one of the clearest examples of the administration’s step away from liberal arts, it reflects a wider systemic effort.
I don’t want to undercut all of the valuable work that professors and staff do to support our liberal arts departments or the innumerable successful liberal arts students, but they see the disparity in funding and support as well.
Carroll has strong liberal arts departments and students, and not recognizing that fact or funding those programs hurts both the school and its students.
The administration has an obligation to its mission, its faculty, and its students to pursue the promises of its founding principles.
Doing so is impossible without preserving our liberal arts departments.
