Great Lakes Colleges Association, Strengthening Education in the Tradition of the Liberal Arts
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July 9, 2020

As a consortium of thirteen residential liberal arts colleges in Indiana, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania, the Great Lakes Colleges Association expresses deep dismay regarding the recent Department of Homeland Security rule that would prohibit non-immigrant international students from remaining in the U.S. if they take a full course of study through online classes. This means such students may not be in the U.S. or must leave the country if a college in which they are enrolled operates fully online this fall, needs to pivot to fully online during the year, or if a student needs to take all courses online for health reasons.

The presence of international students is an integral part of our campus and local communities. These students contribute to the diverse and vibrant learning and living environments of our small, residential campuses. Through their enrollment and their engagement in the communities, they contribute to our local economies.

In the spring, the Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP) provided temporary exemptions for non-immigrant students taking online classes due to the pandemic. This recent rule either assumes the pandemic is over or cannot resurface in greater numbers (as we are currently seeing in many areas of the country), even though no vaccine exists or will likely exist until 2021; or it threatens international enrollment in our colleges and universities in an arbitrary, capricious and inhumane way.

We urge individuals, institutions, and other higher education organizations to demand a change in this new SEVP modification. Whether through legal or legislative action, we advocate that this rule be blocked and that the existing temporary exemptions be extended at least until we reach the end of this pandemic.

Michael A. McDonald, President, Great Lakes Colleges Association

On behalf of GLCA Member Colleges and their Presidents:

Mathew Johnson
Albion College		 Lori White
DePauw University		 Carmen Twillie Ambar
Oberlin College
Hilary Link
Allegheny College		 Anne Houtman
Earlham College		 Rock Jones
Ohio Wesleyan University
Thomas Manley
Antioch College		 Matthew Scogin
Hope College		 Scott Feller
Wabash College
Adam Weinberg
Denison University		 Jorge Gonzalez
Kalamazoo College

Sarah Bolton
The College of Wooster
  Sean Decatur
Kenyon College		  

Lauren Bergeron, an Albion College student majoring in history, earned the distinction of having her poster submission accepted for inclusion in the Council on Undergraduate Research (CUR) Annual Posters on the Hill Event in Washington, DC.  Her research project is one of 60 selected from 350 applications to this year’s Posters on the Hill.

The title of her poster is “‘This Insolent and Inhuman Race’:  White Union Soldiers’ Thoughts about White Southerners during the Civil War Era.”  The poster derived from research that Lauren conducted in the summer of 2019 as a member of an Albion College team participating in the GLCA-Library of Congress Faculty-Student Research Initiative in Washington, DC.  Other members of the research team were Destiny Styles, a Kinesiology major, and Dr. Marcy Sacks, Professor of History at Albion College. The title of the team’s project is “White Supremacist Thought and the Struggle for Union in the Civil War Era.”  

Most of Lauren Bergeron’s research had centered in the Library of Congress manuscript division.  She observed that “The experience of researching at the Library of Congress allowed me to find relevant information in one place which was unavailable anywhere else.  It also gave me the opportunity to expand my research beyond manuscripts.

“I was able to spend two days of the program in the Prints and Photographs Division looking through images from the Civil War and clippings from Harper’s Weekly. Though the bulk of my research is focused on what I found in manuscripts, one of the clippings I found in the Prints and Photographs Division fit perfectly into the topic of my research and it is now the focal point of my poster.”

Destiny Styles (left) and Lauren Bergeron

Destiny Styles, another student member of the Albion College team, has a strong interest in African American history.  Her project also drew from original manuscripts of the Library’s collection, including diaries of African Americans, who express the consciousness of being human beings while also being regarded as property by their white owners.  “Working with the African Americans and seeing that they are just human beings who are oppressed changed the views that the soldiers had about them. I worked to find how African Americans felt after going through this war with people who looked down on them and thought of them as property and not humans.”   

Marcy Sacks, Destiny Styles, with Kedar Kulkarni of FLAME University

Marcy Sacks was the faculty leader of the Albion College research team.  Asked about her decision to apply for the summer program with the Library of Congress/GLCA program, she said:  “My interest in participating derives from my long-standing effort to introduce students to archival research.  For the past number of years, I have taken students, mostly underrepresented students, with me to conduct original research at libraries throughout the east coast. In each case, I have witnessed the students develop a self-confidence that is not possible to achieve in a classroom. 

“The travel involves learning how to navigate cities and public transit systems, overcoming the intimidation of entering a research library and utilizing its resources (including the human resources by asking for help from archivists and librarians), and taking ownership of a research project. The experiences are always empowering for the students, and they always reinvigorate my commitment to the act of teaching and providing profound learning opportunities for students.”

A total of three project teams participated in the GLCA-Library of Congress Faculty-Student Research Initiative in the summer of 2019.  One team, led by Dr. Kedar Kulkarni of FLAME University in Pune, India researched a project entitled, Poetic Modernisms, Gender, and Sexuality in Four Indian Languages.”  Another team, led by Dr. David Tresilian of the American University of Paris, researched a project entitled, “Coming to America:  The Early Arab-American Generations.”

The Great Lakes Colleges Association held a Presidential Summit on Mental Health and Wellness December 11-13, 2019 in Ann Arbor.  Approximately 100 people in 12 campus-based teams attended, including presidents, chief academic officers, deans of students, directors of counseling/health/wellness, athletic directors, faculty, and students.  The purpose of the summit was to provide ideas, resources and tools to support campuses as they continue to foster a campus climate of wellness and deepen their understanding of student mental health issues on campus.

Throughout the summit, participants were encouraged to learn from outside speakers and panelists as well as from each other, share with others in similar positions both formally and informally and work together on campus-based plans of action.

Presidents Mauri Ditzler (Albion), Greg Hess (Wabash) and Jorge Gonzalez (Kalamazoo) confer during the summit.  

The summit started with a keynote from Sara Abelson of the Healthy Minds Network at the University of Michigan. She shared national data and trends gathered from the Healthy Minds Network annual survey of college and university students. The following morning, participants heard from national organizations, including Nance Roy of the JED Foundation, who gave an overview of JED’s comprehensive approach for campuses; Laura Horne of Active Minds about frameworks for engaging students in this work; and Carlton Green of the University of Maryland, representing The Steve Fund to share their Equity in Mental Health Framework. Following meetings of those in like positions across GLCA institutions, two afternoon panels focused on Innovations and Best Practices and Building Institutional Capacity for Inclusive Mental Health and Wellness with specific focus on students of color, LGBTQ+ students, and student athletes. More information and resources gathered through the summit will be added to the GLCA website soon and speakers are listed here. All panelists and presenters were accessible during the summit for consultation and networking.

Throughout the day Thursday and on Friday morning, campus teams met to share what each team member was learning and to develop specific steps for the campus action plan. At the end of the summit, teams presented their top take-aways from the summit that could impact their own campus as well as ideas for consortial collaboration.

Panelists field questions during the Summit.

As a result of the summit, seven campuses have indicated an interest in pursuing the JED Campus program in the coming years, in addition to four that have already begun this process. The GLCA will collect campus action plans and share them with leadership of all the institutions, and the GLCA will follow up with campuses to review progress made in about six months.

The rigorous schedule and impressive exchange of ideas among all participants created a rich environment and provided meaningful tools for each campus to utilize in order to help all students thrive.

This is the third presidentially led summit GLCA has hosted in the last decade, the first of these, on diversity and inclusion, took place in 2008 and a second Summit, on Title IX and sexual respect, convened in 2014.  

 

January 13, 2020

The Great Lakes Colleges Association is pleased to announce
the winners of the 2020 GLCA New Writers Award for Poetry, Fiction, and Creative Non-fiction. Now in its 51st year, the New Writers Award confers recognition on promising writers who have published a first volume in one of the three genres.  Judges of the New Writers Award are faculty members of creative writing and literature at GLCA’s member colleges.  Winning writers receive invitations to visit GLCA member colleges – where they give readings, meet with students and faculty members, and discuss technique and creativity in the
writing process. 

The 2020 winner for Poetry is Aaron Coleman, Threat Come Close,
published by Four Way Books.  Our GLCA judges note:

Aaron Coleman’s historical
imagination excavates racial history in this country, not veering from what is discovered, but inviting it, even dwelling in it personally.  The poems explore the lyric interstices of black experience in the U.S. and youth and coming of age – including a growing consciousness of sexuality and desire.  The book’s apt title, Threat Come Close, can be read as a statement of fact and also a provocation.  The poems learn by looking and loving outward, and there is much to learn by looking through the eyes of these poems.  There is superb lyricism and a fine balance between an unabashed celebration of words and a near-plain style voice of witness.  “I am made of what I am afraid to remember,”
he writes in the prologue poem, locating himself simultaneously in a cultural history inclusive of – yet never collapsed into – his own personal history.

Judges of the Poetry entries were:

Christopher Bakken, Allegheny College

Chanda Feldman, Oberlin College

Janet McAdams, Kenyon College

The 2020 winner for Fiction is Eric Schlich, Quantum Convention, published by University of
North Texas Press.  Our GLCA judges note:

Always humorous and wildly inventive, this collection is remarkable for the variety of characters and situations it portrays. In the title story, Schlich captures suburban malaise and our secret selves as the main character goes to a convention where every
possible alt self exists – and every possible alternative wife! The range of protagonists that Schlich convincingly portrays – a religious young girl, a neurotic adult loner, the actress who played the Wicked Witch of the West, and more – demonstrate impressive skill.  Movement between realist and speculative modes combined with imaginative and varied story structures make the stories compelling, both individually and as a whole.  These are very teachable stories that exemplify different facets of literary imagination and craft.  They make a reader see and feel in new ways even when dealing with old themes. 

 Judges of the Fiction Award were: 

Peter Grandbois, Denison University

Mary Lacey, Earlham College

Christiana Salah, Hope College

The 2020 winner for Creative Non-fiction is Sarah Viren, MINE: Essays, Published by University of New Mexico Press.  Our judges note:

Deeply inquisitive and probing, generous and judicious, Sarah Viren’s Mine is a series of meditations, memories buoyed to the surface by love and loss and wonder. She transforms and illuminates the world as she mines it, whether it be
accepting a murderer’s futon, becoming “unmarried” to her partner after crossing state lines, or singing the ballad, “Tom Dooley,” to her daughter.  She examines her world precisely and with startling self-awareness, threading her own experiences to conversations on contemporary culture, community, politics, and the arts.  Viren’s essays are extremely well-crafted, and her prose beautiful.  The voice is mature, full of wisdom and insight. A brilliantly rendered account of what it means to be of a place, Viren’s collection also answers what it means to be of the world and what it means, ultimately, to be here today. A ruminative, absorbing book.

Judges of the 2020 award in Creative Non-fiction were:

Amy Butcher, Ohio Wesleyan
University

Peter Graham, DePauw University

Bruce Mills, Kalamazoo College

For more information on the New Writers Award, please
contact Gregory Wegner, Director of Program Development ([email protected]), or Colleen Monahan Smith, Executive
Assistant to the President ([email protected])
at the GLCA.

Additional information is available on the GLCA web site: GLCA New Writers Award

Details for the  2021 Students of Color Leadership Conference (SOCLC) will be forthcoming over the next couple of months.  The announcement will include whether it is in-person or virtual, the date, and registration details.  Please note that this opportunity is open to GLCA institutions only.

 

Liberal arts colleges observe two kinds of ceremonial events.  One of these – commencement – centers on students as new matriculants or graduates, commending their hopes and achievements as they embark on a next phase of life.  The other – inauguration – involves similar academic regalia and ritual, but its subject centers more on the college itself – its founding, notable achievements, leaders, and events that have brought it through the decades to the present moment, when it celebrates the installation of a new president to lead the institution into the future. 

A recent presidential inauguration of Dr. Hilary Link at Allegheny College exemplified the ritual in grand style.  These are events in which the extended community of the college assembles; all of those who participate can see and feel themselves to be part of something larger than themselves.  There is emotional power as the procession advances across campus to the inaugural gathering place:  faculty and staff, students, alumni, trustees, members of the community, and beyond.  Delegates from other academic institutions signify that this is a celebration not just of one college, but of liberal arts education in the U.S. and abroad, with all the values and aspirations it affirms. 

Beyond these elements, the speeches of welcome to a new president collectively tell the story of a college.  There are recountings of its humble beginnings in the nineteenth century as an institution of learning founded at the edge of the frontier by leaders of a protestant denomination for the purpose of training clergy. The details include the number of students first enrolled (less than two dozen) and of faculty (two or three), the initial cost of tuition (less than $50), and increments of growth through time.  Sometimes there is particular notice of an extraordinary president who served for two decades or more, as well as transformational moments, including the decision to admit women to the student body.

Events of this kind in any era express hopes for the continued vitality of a college, while also acknowledging forces that could prove challenging in the time ahead.  Our liberal arts colleges face heightened challenges today, ranging from financial and enrollment concerns, to growing questions about the value and utility of a liberal arts education. 

This balance of affirmation and apprehension was evident from the speeches given at the Allegheny inauguration.  Three of the key speakers addressed the relevance and importance of a liberal arts education in the current age. 

Some paraphrases of such statements affirming the liberal arts included these:

  • Independent liberal arts colleges are a small segment of higher education in the U.S., but the small campus residential experience prepares students especially well in fostering respect and celebration of differences.  Inside and outside of class, our colleges prepare students to reflect seriously on the possibilities of democracy, including the development of empathy for others.
  • Puzzles can be solved by assembling pieces that are all readily at hand, but to solve a mystery requires a deeper process, entering a world of possibilities not yet foreseen and drawing on other realms of knowledge.  We may think we know what we are preparing for, but the study of liberal arts helps prepare us for futures we haven’t imagined. 
  • Immersion in the study of languages was a window into other ways of seeing and thinking.  It was a way of shifting the angle of the lens and seeing familiar things from an altered perspective.  The experience of otherness – whether though the study of language, study abroad, or other means of experiencing different cultures – is a key element of learning and development. 
  • Liberal arts education can teach students the humility and openness to see things from other standpoints, to pursue avenues that offer different ways of understanding, and to embrace rather than reject otherness. 

These paraphrases cannot express the richness of the speakers’ statements in the context of their full remarks.  Collectively, however, the thinking delivered at this inauguration offered compelling narratives of the power of liberal arts education to shape and transform a life beyond what one might have imagined.

An inauguration demonstrates that the ability to tell stories of the impact of the liberal arts on individual lives is one of the most effective strengths our colleges possess.  Individual story-telling of this kind is an advantage that could be applied to even greater effect in making the case for the liberal arts beyond our own academic communities.

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This year three new presidents have been appointed  by member colleges of  the GLCA – Matt Scogin at Hope College, who was inaugurated on September 13, 2019; Hilary Link at Allegheny College, who was inaugurated on October 18, 2019; and Anne Houtman at Earlham College, whose inauguration is yet to be scheduled. 

By Gregory Wegner

Photo by Bill Owen