On Renewal

From: Sanford Shugart
To: All Faculty and Staff
Date: 5/08/03 8:36 AM
Subject: On Renewal

A few weeks ago, we enjoyed an annual ritual in recognition of faculty who have served the college for ten, twenty-five, thirty, and thirty-five years. Two of our colleagues were recognized for thirty-five years of service (Ron Reinighaus and Stan Melnick.) In an age when people change jobs and careers as often as hairstyles, this is a remarkable milestone and worthy of our reflection. How have these wonderful professors managed to maintain their vitality in the classroom, passion for their discipline, and love for their students through these many years? How will we assure the same vitality for ourselves and our colleagues as the pressures of academic life are magnified by new challenges in our culture, rapid advances in our fields of study, and our own worthy goals to set new standards for excellence in teaching and learning?

There are few in our society who pursue the same calling through a long, even a life-long career: physician, pastor, nurse, counselor, professor, perhaps a few more. These are demanding professions, calling on our very best intellectual, spiritual, and interpersonal gifts, our deepest and best passions. Because they are professions of passion, those who pursue them long are subject to that particular fatigue of heart and mind known as "burnout." While pondering this risk on a recent trip, I penned the following poem:

Brick Work

It wasn't a work I had chosen, but
I was young and the job came to hand
like each new, rasp-edged brick
and I was taken with the
challenge of the craft.
Head-down to lay to a line
straight and square, feeling the
grain of baked earth and
handling the sanded mud with
quick, smart flicks and jabs,
a precision boxer working a square ring,
mastering tools and letting them
master me: hammer, level and trowel.
Focusing, focusing until every
cell is in the rhythm, speed,
economy of motion, each brick
leading to the next, no hesitation,
no space between the notes and
all notes the same,
brick to brick, course on course,
year stacked on
year until I take on the very
texture of brick, the grit of mortar
rigid joints and flat face of the wall
no view but the brick,
no plan but the brick,
no dream but the brick
and then
the walls, at last,
connect and there is
nothing to do but to set the
iron bars in the
tiny, high window
and wait for
the end.

© February 2003, Sanford C. Shugart

It is a terrible thing to see one's passion become a prison, but we have all seen it. Knowing this risk, we have a responsibility to make conscious provision for ourselves and our colleagues for the renewal of our passions to learn, to teach, and to serve. To this end, I want to call your attention in the coming months to several issues and initiatives designed to address this need.

First, I will ask a working group of faculty and staff, responsible to the College Learning Council, to develop an effective proposal for a paid sabbatical program for faculty and contractual staff. The program should identify a year or two in advance a number of faculty and staff selected by peers for a semester sabbatical with full-pay or a two semester sabbatical at half-pay. Early selection will enable participants to pursue travel-study opportunities, grants in support of their program, exchanges, and other resources to make their sabbatical as rich and renewing as possible. Both a policy for the Trustees' consideration and procedures for eligibility, selection, and follow-up will need to be developed. I will ask the work team to have a proposal completed and reviewed by the various stakeholders no later than October of this year. If implemented on that schedule, the first sabbaticals would be awarded in spring of 2004 for use in spring of 2005.

Second, several faculty have been exploring a growing movement in academia under the name of "formation." Based largely on the work of Parker Palmer and now supported through a center in the Dallas County Community College District, this work invites faculty and staff back to their vital interior work of reflection and connection to their exterior work. Professors Jane Renfro and Mary Allen have taken on the responsibility for introducing this new movement to Valencia. Watch for their invitations to explore this further.

Third, in the spirit of reexamining the "deep architecture" of our organization to support learning, we will be revisiting the way our work is distributed through load formulas, compensation models, year-long scheduling, engagement of adjunct faculty, etc. We may well find sustainable ways to provide a better environment for the vitality of our faculty and staff and the learning of our students. The Faculty Association already has a work team to focus on this area.

Finally, perhaps most importantly, I would like to encourage the organization over the coming weeks and months, to focus our work to a smaller number of our most important activities. I have found Valencia to be a remarkably ambitious community of educators, willing to undertake any number of commendable new initiatives to serve our students and community better. In this process, however, we can lose our sense of proportion, time for reflection and dialog, and the joy of working in such a remarkable community of learners. I'll be looking for small ways we can encourage that reflective atmosphere by focusing on a few very important things first, including our mutual health and vitality.

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