April 12, 2024
Dear friends,
I hope you are faring well and moving through the second half of the semester with all the dedication, humor and gusto I’ve come to expect from the Faculty of Arts & Sciences. You are a force to be reckoned with and in many ways, you are the William & Mary experience for our students.
Speaking of the William & Mary experience, tomorrow is Day for Admitted Students and many prospective students will have their first taste of what life could be like for them on this campus and in our community. I’m grateful to those of you who will spend your day welcoming them and their families, and to the University Admission team for their hard work in coordinating this day.
I’ve brought you a few offerings this week; I hope you will peruse attentively and then vault across the line – or hop. Or crawl. We’re all moving at different paces at this point in the semester.
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First, thank you to those of you who made the effort to attend the Faculty of Arts & Sciences meeting on Tuesday. I was happy to see so many of you there in person. I also want to apologize for the truncated nature of the discussion about the Teaching Faculty Framework. It should have been at the top of the agenda. Our teaching faculty are an incredibly impressive group who have transformed the lives of generations of students. I feel lucky to work alongside them, I’m grateful to them for everything they do, and I’m also impatient to complete the implementation of the framework. It is designed to give them more predictability and stability in the jobs that they do so well. I’m glad that we were able to schedule a special meeting for this coming Tuesday, April 16th, at 4:00 in the Ewell Recital Hall, with a Zoom option: https://cwm.zoom.us/s/97367981484. I hope we can complete our discussion and vote at that meeting.
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A huge congratulations to Elizabeth Harbron, Director of the Charles Center, and Kathleen Powell, Chief Career Officer and AVP for Advancement, on the selection of their proposal, Applied Learning for All as the university’s quality enhancement plan (QEP). This five-year initiative is part of William & Mary’s reaffirmation of accreditation by the Southern Association of Colleges & Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC). As Provost Agouris shared in a message to campus earlier this week, the next step will be developing a five-year plan. I’m so grateful to Elizabeth and Kathleen for their innovative ideas and steady leadership, and look forward to supporting them in this effort.
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The Future of Arts & Sciences committee sent a detailed update email this week (attached in case you missed it earlier). I’m excited about their progress and grateful for their thoughtful work. I encourage you to engage with the committee: two listening sessions are coming up next week. There will be additional opportunities to share your thoughts with the committee in the future.
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Today, we welcomed our Council of Arts & Sciences to campus for their biannual meeting. This philanthropic advisory board of alumni, parents, community members and donors work to strengthen and expand the impact of Arts & Sciences. We’re grateful for their support and infusion of ideas and energy.
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Nominations and applications are now open for the 2024 President's Award for Service to the Community. Presented at Opening Convocation, this award carries a $500 cash prize that will be donated to a community agency of the recipient's choosing. This prestigious award is open to any returning student and to one member of the faculty/staff. Nominations are due by April 26 and applications are due by June 7.
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I’m going to periodically send you reminders that we are going to have a party, and here is your reminder: We are going to have a party on Tuesday, May 7 at 5 p.m. in and around Ewell Hall to celebrate the end of the semester. All A&S faculty and staff are invited and I hope you will attend. You all deserve to celebrate your hard work and successes this semester.
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Today’s line is very black and very bold. I don’t know how to make it look the way it usually does, so you’ll just have to put up with its boldness. I have been thinking a lot about the eclipse as the week progressed, because it’s a hard time for us in many ways: uncertainty over what the new school will look like and the impact on A&S; highly stressed students and families with different expectations of us than they have had in the past; change on the horizon everywhere you look. But change can be beautiful. There was something about seeing a shadow pass over the sun and watching the sunlight continue to shine that has kept me going. But eclipses are not only expressed in light; they are also recreated in sound. Remember Bonnie Tyler, “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” 1983? What a great song to dance away your youth to. For more dancing this weekend and a totally different feel, try “Total Eclipse” (1743) by George Frideric Handel from the oratorio Samson. And then to relax after your wild dancing, try reading Annie Dillard’s essay “Total Eclipse” (2017, attached), or Virginia Woolf’s “The Sun and the Fish” (1927), mentioned last week. As some of you already know, the eclipse references in this week’s message are crowd-sourced from messages you all sent me – for which many thanks. I love it when people respond to my Friday message.
Have a wild and wonderful weekend.
Take care, Suzanne
