Thursday, June 17, 2010

Defender Boot Camp

I'm spending a week away from the Sage campus and am up the hill at RPI, where I'm on faculty for the Basic Trial Skills Program with the New York State Defenders Association. The program pairs experienced trial attorneys with communications coaches to teach public defenders about both trial and client-centered practice.

This is my third summer with the lawyers and I learn as much about acting from them as I did from my best theatre professors. More than that, I learn why public defenders desperately need such a program. Most are in counties or practices that have them overtaxed with clients and under-resourced for the work they are expected to do. Under such circumstances, the idea that we are "humans defending humans" can go out the window and our state defense practice can turn into a machine. This week endeavours to teach active listening, empathy and trial advocacy to amazing young lawyers who take back new skills to the damaged system within which they practice.

This "lawyer boot camp" is the brainchild of Jonathan Gradess, Executive Director of NYSDA. Jonathan is a mastermind at pedagogy, team-building and the timetable. He is simply one of the best leaders I've ever known. The week is a continual process of fine-tuning, to get the program to the highest caliber it can be. Jonathan enlists amazing trial attorneys and communications coaches from the Capital Region, New York State and beyond. Cessie the mitigator is from Troy; Jamie the retired P.D. is from Chicago. Joy the acting teacher is from Los Angeles; Henderson the trial attorney is from North Carolina. And the list goes on, all professionals who give a lot of time and energy to training our next generation of public defenders.

By the end of the week, the students have picked mock juries, delivered opening and closing statements, practiced cross examination and direct, plus listened to lectures, practiced in communications labs and participated in group discussions. The twelve-hour days are exhausting, but the commitment is inspiring. They all go home tomorrow, hopefully energized and changed for the better. I'll be in my acting classroom this year, maybe staging horrific dramas like they see everyday in real life. Knowing their stories and their struggles deepens my understanding of the human condition when presenting it. In that way, an artist can be a public defender. Call it understanding at an arm's length.

Friday, June 11, 2010

Transparency at Sage

After a week of fairly gloomy news in my house, I wasn't surprised to open the Times Union today and read that Moody's had downgraded Sage's long-term debt rating. Sometimes you have one of those bad weeks and this news was just par for the course. However, the fact that it wasn't surprising to me is also a tribute to the administration at the Sage Colleges. Our leadership has been committed to transparency on an ongoing basis, so little information that was in the article was news to me. Someone once told me, "the devil you know is better than the devil you don't." In my eight years with the institution, the financial news at Sage has rarely been good. We all personally know what this stress and frustration feels like, perhaps having struggles with a household budget or simply because we live in New York State. What I admire about our administration is their willingness to be open about money issues, the steps being taken to correct problems and even regularly seeking advice of employees. There is comfort in shared knowledge.

Sage has had many triumphs recently, including both good news in admissions and development. On a faculty level, I work with many happy students (I wish there were many more) who love their experience at Sage. Students are expected to complete high levels of research, performance and scholarship before graduating and they rise to that challenge. Their attitude and accomplishments reflect well on our commitment to their learning and I wish a Moody's rating could show that, too.

I am now serving on a task force to redesign the first year curriculum. Our work has been very ambitious, making great steps towards developing a more focused and creative course of study for freshmen. The efforts will reinforce our already excellent retention rate, but also help our students to see themselves as part of a global learning community. This comes from the use of shared texts in core classes, including The Penguin Atlas of Women in the World, by Joni Seager; and Half the Sky, by Nicholas Kristof and Sherry WuDunn. It also comes from placing students in Living Learning Communities, where they share a common living space and a core of common freshmen classes. What is exciting to me is when, through classes like English 101, Nutrition 101 or Physics 101, students see knowledge and ideas being shared across many disciplines. We are breaking down learning silos at Sage and developing students who will think both broader and deeper.

Still, the Moody's rating is a reminder of work yet to be done. I don't think Sage has ever figured out its "unclear niche", which encompasses two colleges, both co-ed and single-sex, and a graduate school, having different programs offered on each campus, in two cities separated by one river. It is a puzzle that, while it fits in theory, doesn't create a clear picture. Until that puzzle is figured out, we can't count on admissions to be the driving revenue source of our institution. Also, cosmically, Sage is simply in need of a break, some piece of luck that will help to move the institution on to the next level. I know we create our own luck, so I am hoping that the strong work being done to shore up the financial and academic picture at Sage will allow that cosmic magic to happen--soon.

Monday, June 7, 2010

On tenure

I am going up for tenure and promotion in the fall and spending the summer putting together my file for review. This process involves both information gathering and analysis, then reflecting on that information to make my case to the review committee. The stakes are high because if you don't get tenure, you are asked to leave the institution. If you do, you have a job for life--in theory.

This process puzzles people outside academia, who are not given the same assurance of job security. Tenure can be a tool to recruit and maintain excellent faculty, but it can also make it impossible for the institution to shed themselves of faculty who are under-performing. I knew a tenured faculty member whose favorite coffee mug read "I'm dead wood, but they can't fire me." Smug as that seems, he happened to be a very good professor. I've seen all examples and believe that faculty with sufficient passion and egos continue to achieve long after tenure.

The American Association of University Professionals (AAUP) sees tenure as necessary to protect academic freedom, but remember Ward Churchill? He was a tenured faculty member at the University of Colorado who ignited national ire by declaring that the technocrat workers in the World Trade Center were "Little Eichmanns." Whether or not his status gave him the right to say that, tenure did not protect his job after the the Governor of Colorado called for his dismissal.

So note to self: if tenure is achieved, at least keep your nose to the grindstone and remember it is your job to provoke deep thought--maybe even in a Churchillian manner. For now, I'm sifting through eight years of Student Opinion Surveys and looking at my competence on a one to five scale. These surveys are a student's final gift or revenge, as I get to disclose the glorious and shameful in the pursuit of job security.

Thursday, June 3, 2010

Blogging Insecurities #1

My greatest insecurity in starting this blog is my shaky grammar. Grammar was a course I bluffed my way through starting in the seventh grade. I did not love the instructor or the rigidity of the subject, so only passed, and that is what my grammar skills are today: only passable. Writing terrifies me. Would you believe that to get an M.F.A. in acting, no writing is required? Script analysis and make-up application are essential to the degree, but writing is not.

I can only timidly grade student writing, but am still offended by egregious errors. I think if you are going to make writing mistakes, proofread carefully and then make the same mistakes and misspellings consistently. Of course, texting has certainly affected the way students write. R U LOL @ dis? OMG--reeeeeallllyyyyyy? Shakespeare played fast and loose with the English language and brought it to great and lasting prominence, so maybe that is what the texting generation is doing today: revolutionizing language, but with technology. As someone who encourages rule breaking in learning, I appreciate that. Still, we all need to be competent at the rules before we break them and that is where students often trip up.

I always defer to Dean Sharon Robinson on this subject. Besides her administrative duties, she is an English professor and teaches a course called "Perfect Grammar" which motivates students to call out everyone on their imperfect grammar. Dr. Robinson practices what she preaches. She is an elegant speaker and once glared at me in a curriculum meeting for dangling a participle. She believes that simple clarity is the point of good grammar, but notes that issues of class and snobbery are often how people are judged when they misspeak. I asked for a quick grammar lesson to include with this blog. Here are her thoughts:

Most egregious written errors:

* Thinking that "however" and "therefore" are conjunctions that may be used like "but" or "so"; they may not.
* Misuse of the semi-colon. The semi-colon separates two sentences related in content (except for the lesser use, to separate items in a list when individual items in that list contain a comma).
* Making plurals with apostrophes. We do make possessives with apostrophes. All those yard signs that say "The Smith's" are wrong. I can barely stand to talk about apostrophes.
* A lot IS ALWAYS TWO WORDS (unless of course one means "allot," i.e., distribute).

Most egregious spoken errors:

* Subjective vs. objective pronouns: Mary gave a lovely vase to me husband and me (not "I"). If you wouldn't say "Mary gave a beautiful vase to I," then don't use it just because someone else is a co-recipient.
* Lie/lay: We lie down; we tell our faithful dogs to lie down. "Lay" is either the past tense of "lie" (I lay down for a nap yesterday at noon) or a different verb altogether (Lay your books down on the table).


Thank you, Dr. Robinson, for the tips and this handy reference website: www.grammar.quickanddirtytips.com. Hopefully, this blog will be my opportunity to clean up the mess I started in seventh grade and write in fear no longer.

Wednesday, June 2, 2010

ALL THINGS SAGE

Welcome, to what I hope will become a weekly look at Russell Sage College through the eyes of a faculty member and proud Troy resident. This first blog will be like the "pilot" for a television series: an introduction of characters, the setting of time and place, and plotlines that that carry you in future, so...let the set-up begin!


A career in academia is not a job, but a lifestyle choice. There are long hours of teaching, socializing, organizing and learning during the school year and though I might get a breather in the summer (thus I begin this blog), September is never far from my mind. I teach theatre courses in the Creative and Performing Arts Department, several freshman courses in the general education curriculum, summer courses, direct two productions a year and act occasionally with the New York State Theatre Institute. Russell Sage College is a close-knit campus with terrific students and abundant intellectual resources. I hope to tap into the minds of my colleagues when writing these blogs and cover many of the lectures and events that occur on campus.

My wife and I live downtown with our nineteen month old daughter, an old dog and middle-aged cat. As working parents, we have become very skilled at juggling schedules and individual needs to maximize our family time and enjoy Troy. Until last fall we were happy homeowners, but outgrew our tiny house in Little Italy. We are now renting a larger space on Washington Park while figuring out our next step, much of which has to do with where our daughter goes to school. We love Troy for the festivals, markets, architecture, restaurants and friendly people. Living here has been very good to us.

That's enough set-up for today. Like they say in acting, if you give it all away, the audience won't want more. Enjoy your June and I look forward to sharing my thoughts with you.