Weekly Messages to Faculty

It seems that I did not actually do what I planned and announced - that is, send a Friday message every two weeks over the summer. What a relief for you all! Unfortunately for you, I have now remembered my original intention so here I am. I hope you all are having productive, relaxing and enjoyable summers, not necessarily in that order. I have been in the land where cookies are called biscuits, beer is drunk warm, and the sea-water is cold and salty. (OK, that could be a number of places). Here are some updates, in no particular order, about other goings-on over the summer. Then, read below the line if you dare.

Let’s start with the obligatory comment about the weather. It’s hot. It’s humid. It’s summer. I hope you all are both enjoying it and getting lots done – in the lab, in the field, in your office, on your computer. And I hope there’s also time for relaxation. I leave this afternoon for Europe to visit family, so you won’t be tortured by a Friday message in two weeks. You’ll have to wait an extra week.

It’s possible your Dean forgot about her Friday message, and then suddenly remembered it right before the end of actual Friday. I hope none of you is actually reading this while it is still Friday. There are better things to do at the end of the week (and probably over the weekend, as well). In fact, there’s only one thing sadder than reading a Friday message on a Friday evening, and that’s writing one. But only one among us is that sad.

I promised you a Friday message today without thinking about the fact that I would be on vacation. So, no Friday message today! You can expect one next Friday, when my nose will be back on the grindstone. Or something.

I hope you are all enjoying the beginning of summer. Please find attached a report on goings-on in Arts & Sciences in 2022-23, and some plans for next year.

I expect you all thought you would not be tortured by a message from me, since it’s even later than I usually send them out – but not so! Here I am at my desk in a darkened Ewell wondering how to write to you about a day full of tears and joy and congratulations. This one will be short – no-one wants to think about business right now. So let me just say:

It’s Friday, it’s sunlit, it’s grading time. Thank you for all the time and attention I know you are putting into student assessments right now. It’s a heavy lift, especially for senior grades from exams that take place during the last few days of the exam period. I’m really grateful for your dedication to our students and their academic and social wellbeing.

The last day of classes, and although it’s premature to breathe a sigh of relief, we can see the light. That bell is really loud. I have been musing on the transition from impermanent to permanent state for all matter, not just Dean-related matter, but I’ll save that for those of you who are bold (or bored) enough to cross the line. Plus, after graduation, you will receive these messages less frequently than before – every two weeks, to be exact – but there are some Fridays when I’ll be on vacation and so you’ll be spared.

It’s Friday again, and time for another message, this time from the real thing – an actual Dean instead of the fake one you’ve been putting up with for the past few months. I’ll follow the same format I did last week, business items above the line, and non-business below it. I’ve been musing on how I could have more than one item at the top of the list in the business section, so nothing gets buried. In pursuit of that goal, today’s message introduces a pie-chart version (you’ll see it below the line) so that everything AND nothing is at the top. So bear in mind that the items below are in random-ish order, not order of importance, and you would ideally read through to the end. To help you, here is a clickable table of contents.

It has been an exciting week for the Acting Dean (who will soon no longer need to act, though all the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players). My first act is to announce that in future, Friday messages will be broken out into “Business” and “Non-business” sections, separated cunningly by a line. If you don’t want to read my random musings and attempts at humor, stop reading at the line. I will endeavor to keep what’s above the line as brief as possible. As brief as possible does not mean brief, unfortunately. 

Another week, another Friday, another message. What happened this week? It got cold, it got hot, it got a bit less hot. I will keep this message short and sweet because I have noticed that my messages are getting longer and longer, and I think it is a lot to expect you to read them to the end as you move into the weekend. But this one has a very tasty morsel at the end, so I recommend you keep reading.

Let me start by saying that your Acting Out Dean very much appreciates all the responses she receives to her Friday messages. I like the compliments, I like the comments and most of all, I like the questions: for example, what is a soft-play center? It saddens me that some of you have not had occasion to visit one of these. I would like to enlighten you briefly about what happens at a soft play center, before moving on to discussion of Montessori day care centers for dogs. At a soft play center, children do everything they would do in an outdoor playground, but all the equipment is soft. There are soft slides, soft climbing walls, soft obstacle courses, and my personal favorite, ball pits, where you sit in a soft box filled with soft balls and play extremely softly. In my research, I have discovered that soft play centres are helpful in a number of ways. They allow children to play freely, they are safe (so soft!!!), they are social, they encourage creativity, you can play in them even when it’s raining because they are usually indoors (soft and wet – not a great combination), and one psychologist notes that they are “exercise in disguise.” What could be better than that?

Rain, flowers, spring, sunlight. That’s what has been happening outside my window. And what has been happening inside Ewell this week?

This has been a very quiet week in Ewell. To relieve the boredom, the Ewell team has been amusing itself in the following ways. On Monday, we went to the beach. On Tuesday, we went to a soft-play center. On Wednesday, we toured some wineries. On Thursday, we were bungee-jumping. And today, we are downhill skiing. I write to you from a Black Diamond slope. And none of us interviewed for a job. 

Sorry to intrude on your spring “breaks,” but if you didn’t get a message from me, you wouldn’t know it was Friday, and TGIF, so I wouldn’t want to deprive you of that knowledge. Not much to report this week. It has felt a little bit like being on a hamster wheel, which was not the way I hoped to spend the break (I would have preferred a scratching post, or even perhaps a nosebag. Actually, definitely a nosebag, with chocolate in it). But hamster wheel it’s been, and now I really admire the exceptional resilience of hamsters. (Scroll down for some delightful hamster images, and here’s one you don’t even need to scroll down for: ??.) So, what was on our wheel in Ewell this week?

Good evening from Ewell! Outside I hear the sound of something breaking, and I think it’s spring. Spring has inspired the following thoughts: “The earth laughs in flowers” (Ralph Waldo Emerson); “Spring is the time of plans and projects” (Leo Tolstoy); “If we had no winter, spring would not be so pleasant” (Ann Bradstreet); “Once I was a sentimental thing. Threw my heart away every spring” (Ella Fitzgerald); and my favorite, “There’s so much spring in the air – there’s so much lazy sweetness in your heart” (F. Scott Fitzgerald). So welcome to a week of lazy sweetness, during which I hope plans and projects can take a back seat to sentiment,  flowers and laughter, and winter should be remembered only in a spirit of wistful gratitude.

Today’s Friday message starts with a quiz, brought to you by the Acting (Out) Dean. The answer can be found at the end of the message. Warning: do not immediately scroll down, though I know the suspense is unbearable. There is a clue embedded in the body of the message itself.

Have you tasted your Cornerstone treat yet? Mine was medium-bodied, not-too-dry, juicy, with hints of sweet plum, red currant, graham cracker and licorice. Oddly reminiscent of a 2018 Ravenswood Cabernet Sauvignon (because you know I wouldn’t have known to say “graham cracker” in a list of flavors – I got it off the Ravenswood website.) Nothing like marketing for wine and paint (arsenic, careless whispers, startling orange, snugglepuss, spill the wine, dead salmon – I got those paint colors off the internet too).

Greetings on this rainy Friday. I hope you are all planning restful and happy weekends after what has seemed like a very busy week. Last weekend was Charter Day, which included a happy and raucous Dean’s lunch for the Council of Arts & Sciences (our philanthropic advisory board) and other friends of A&S. This morning, Vice-Dean Silvia Tandeciarz, A&S Development Officer Gerald Bullock and I had the pleasure of touring the new Arts Quarter buildings with two generous supporters of the project. The building was awe-inspiring: large, airy spaces; beautiful vistas and perspectives; and perfectly designed acoustics (for which we have another donor to thank). Even better than the building were the special clothes we had to wear: neon vests (which Silvia says were color-coded to show we were idiots who had to be watched carefully by those in authority), hard hats, and some special glasses which I tried to smuggle out of the building without success. My hope is that we will continue to be provided with these special clothes even when the building is open to all. I have always wanted to wear a hard hat, and once was not enough.

I have some difficult news to share today. After a lengthy review and much internal discussion with faculty, we have made the painful decision to discontinue the German Studies major. We understand the hurt and frustration that come with such a transition, and we do not make this decision lightly or quickly. Discontinuing the major has been under discussion for years and in moving forward, we are being responsive to national and global changes in student demand, as well the increased need to meet external requirements set by the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia. For those who are curious about the process, degree program closures are implemented via the Institutional Change process.

I hope the first full week of the semester went well for all of you. A number of updates this week.

It was a pleasure to welcome so many of you to our welcome back gathering on Wednesday. It was wonderful to see so many faculty and staff in attendance and we’re really grateful to you for warming things up before the semester’s cold hands really take a grip on us all. I hope the first day of classes went well for you all.

As the beginning of the semester creeps ever closer, we would like to invite you all to come and enjoy the magic of Ewell on the first day of classes. Our tasty food, sparkling beverages, and friendly people will be waiting for you starting at 4:30 on Wednesday January 25th. Some of us are new – there’s a small Acting Dean on the loose – and we also recently welcomed our new Communications Director, Abbie Schaefer, to A&S. Please come and stay a minute, an hour, or several hours. Otherwise the small Acting Dean will have to eat all the food herself.

This is my first Friday message as your new Acting Dean, and I am honored to be the person sending it. It’s a joy and a privilege to work alongside you, and I look forward to supporting and learning from you all during my semester in this role. I am especially grateful to the wonderful team that Maria assembled in Ewell for all their advice, hard work and support as I transition into this new position. Here are some highlights of the work we’re doing now, and plan to complete or undertake in Spring 2023.