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updated 4/20/04

Dear colleagues:

The hard-working gang exploring our academic structure deserves thunderous applause for their mighty labors and wise recommendations.

They would turn our feeble convening groups into empowered "academic groups" and grant them the resources they need to do the primary work of the college: teaching. Hurrah!

The clumsy, muddled schools with their mishmosh of professors and programs would no longer have much to say about hiring or curriculum. Hurrah!

Gone entirely, I hope, would be the school cores that foist onto students already struggling to meet the requirements of the general-education program and their major a third layer of demands. Good riddance! The current curriculum is too complex because of the three layers.

Also gone entirely, I hope, would be the unit councils that foist onto professors already stretched thin by responsibilities to the Faculty Assembly, the AFT, and their convening groups a fourth round of meetings.

Good riddance! Everything the unit councils do could be done better by the smaller "academic groups" that the committee recommends.

I hope you will join me in working with the committee to specify the details of our new structure. Power to the convening groups! Get the schools off our backs!

Let's just be sure that what the committee is currently calling academic groups can be interdisciplinary as well as disciplinary.

Gordon Bear, Professor of Psychology

(I identify myself in terms of my discipline. If I tell you my school, you learn nothing about me except where my mailbox is. It's irrelevant to my identity and my work. Does your school have anything intrinsic to do with your identity and your work at Ramapo?)