Faculty Discuss Campus Safety, Continued Debate on Distribution Requirements

On Monday, November 4, another faculty meeting took place. Topics of discussion included keeping students safe during election week, upcoming changes to accessibility requirements, a change to the economics program, and continued debate about distribution requirements.

The meeting began by bringing the minutes from the August 27 and September 9 meetings, both of which were approved unanimously. President Audrey Bilger then mentioned briefly that she and her wife Cheryl are looking forward to the annual end-of-year faculty party at their home, which faculty have received invitations for. She moved on to note that the week ahead is a tough, tumultuous one. An email went out last week about campus safety, she noted, and the college is monitoring all of this closely. “We try to stay on top of what’s happening and stay connected to each other,” she said.

Bilger then brought up Vice President for Student Life Karnell McConnell-Black, to further discuss the campus environment. McConnell-Black said that there are a number of folks across campus helping to prepare for the coming weeks. He reported that the emergency response team has developed a set of guiding thresholds, as they did in 2020, to think about ways in which Reed responds proactively so decisions are not made at the last minute. According to him, admin is looking out in particular for external individuals coming onto campus. Considerations include planning who would be an incident commander and preparing communications that might need to be sent out.

In addition, McConnell-Black shared that the team is also thinking about the community, and there are a number of wellness programs to help this. As he shared previously, he said, it’s important to remember that our students have lots of different perspectives, ideas, and political opinions: “How do we create a welcoming environment for them?” He said faculty could help support students by being vigilant: if they see a student’s demeanor change dramatically, it’s worth checking in and making a care referral. Additionally, it can be helpful to acknowledge where students are at, create a space for listening, and invite them in for conversations.

Bilger then returned to the podium and concluded this topic of discussion by saying, “We know that we don’t know so much right now, and that’s deeply troubling.” She moved on to sharing her appreciation for everyone who contributed to the success of Parents and Family Weekend this past weekend: almost 300 parents and families were here, and she saw many parents speaking about how glad they are that their students found their way here. Additionally, she shared that beginning in January, workplace flexibility options will be implemented for staff. The goal is to maintain an in-person workplace while making the workplace “more modern.”

Next, she invited Hieu Nguyen, the new Vice President for Advancement and College Relations, to provide updates on his work. He shared that he has now been at Reed for four months, and he’s been getting to know the team. He’s looking forward to getting to know more and getting better ideas of how to support the campus. He appreciates the work that’s been done in regard to the strategic plan and coming together in the comprehensive campaign.

Up next was Kathy Oleson, Dean of the Faculty, who also began her report by acknowledging the week that we are in. “People are feeling uncertain and anxious,” she said, and she thinks acknowledging these things can be helpful. She encouraged faculty to reach out if there are ways she or her office can support them. She continues to work on planning the faculty retreat, which will be May 28 or 29.

Oleson then brought up Jon Rork, Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning. He shared that there are upcoming changes to federal regulations on accessibility: Title II and the corresponding Section 504. Starting in May 2026, all digital materials, regardless of whether they’re behind a password, must be accessible. This includes colors, font size, accessibility to screen readers, captions, etc. Currently, the CTL and DAC (Digital Accessibility Collaborative) are looking to get a sense of how faculty use digital materials in class so that DAC knows what they have to do in order to support faculty. Rork encouraged faculty to fill out a survey that they were emailed, and otherwise not to worry about this for now.

Next up was Ann Delehanty with the report from CAPP (the Committee on Academic Policy and Planning). She mentioned first that the CAPP website had been revised; she hopes this will help clarify details and reduce anxiety about deadlines. Then, she brought a proposal to change the economics program. Currently, students in all four tracks (Economics, Economics Minor, Economics with a Concentration in Quantitative Economics, and Environmental Studies with a Concentration in Economics) are required to take a macro theory class: either Economics 314 or Economics 304. The proposal was to eliminate the Economics 314 option for this requirement and funnel all students through Economics 304 instead. The motion was approved unanimously.

Jan Mieszkowski, chair of CAT (the Committee on Advancement and Tenure), came to the podium briefly with an update. CAT is in the midst of the fall evaluation cycle, and he urged faculty to send in more information about their colleagues as soon as possible, if they’ve just been hesitating to hit that send button. “Everyone is here because, at some point, someone took the time to write about you,” he said.

Finally, Suzy Renn, chair of the Ad Hoc Committee on Distribution Requirements, took the podium to share updates on the distribution requirements process. First, she shared results from the survey sent out after the September 25 faculty meeting. In summary, 52% of faculty found a lab requirement important, 55% found a language requirement important (including 13.2% that want students to be able to test out), 80% found a quantitative requirement important (including a large portion in favor of some sort of broad definition of this requirement), and 20% found a depth (2 in 1) requirement important.

She then presented five potential models that they see as possible. The first possibility is to keep the current model, but fix the student learning outcomes in Group I. The second option is to modify the current model. This would require eight classes across three groups: three group I classes, including one language; two group II classes; and three group III classes, including one quantitative. It would add flexibility by removing the 2 in 1 requirement. This is similar to the models used by Williams, Swarthmore, Wellesley, and Macalester.

The third option was called the adjustable/balloon model. It would require 8-9 classes across 5 groups: Group X (arts/lit), Group Y (HSS+), Group Z (NS+), Lang(?) group, and Quant(?) group. Students would have to take 8-9 classes across groups, but, would have the flexibility to take more in some groups than others. This is similar to models used by Pomona, Lewis & Clark, and Carleton.

The fourth option would simply require students to take 4-5 classes in a different area (major, group, or division) which they could additionally add proficiency requirements in. This would require substantially rewriting accreditation documents. Finally, the fifth option would be to have no requirement, which Renn called the “yolo” option, similar to that used by Amherst and Grinnell. This would require rewriting a LOT of accreditation and maybe even governance documents. 

Renn displayed a QR code to a form (also sent out via email) where faculty will rank their preferences among these options. A second survey will also be sent out, she said, for written feedback. The faculty then jumped into the discussion.

Several professors expressed their frustration at the idea that keeping the current option is still on the table. “Are we building on the work of the past two years, or are we starting over?” said Libby Drumm (Spanish). She expressed her concerns about the idea that we could fix the group I SLOs, given previous conclusions by the committee: “How can we consider something that a committee that has worked for two years has said is ‘incoherent’?” Peter Steinberger (Political Science), who was previously on the Ad Hoc committee for two years, said he’s also frustrated. In July, the committee distributed a report with many concerns about the current system. He said he wanted to know whether those arguments were wrong, rather than, in a sense, condensed and not looked at. 

In response, Renn said, “We DON’T want to ignore that work.” The committee is just trying to provide options that are potentially viable, she said, and if Faculty rank the current option low, it’s not going to happen. Additionally, several of the options are new, based on feedback from the last faculty meeting, and the previous committee hadn’t considered them. 

Faculty also discussed the details of a potential language requirement. They debated whether students should be allowed to test out: would it be fair? How would we go about determining proficiency in languages that Reed doesn’t offer? Additionally, several professors spoke in favor of allowing students to count language classes taken at other institutions, such as while studying abroad, for languages that aren’t offered at Reed. Kristin Scheible (Religion) said she thinks reducing choices would deter students, and wants to preserve moments of discovery and reinventing oneself. Chauncey Handy (Religion) also clarified that classical “non-living” languages would count.

Multiple faculty expressed concerns about how changes to distribution requirements would affect course enrollment. Renn said the committee is looking at that and doing their best to predict: “I will not put something in front of the faculty that we can’t staff.” Luda Korobenko (Math) said she wanted to know the situation with enrollment for departments where it’ll decide whether the department survives or not. “We’re talking about breadth, but what we really mean is that we don’t want languages to die out,” she said, and she doesn’t understand why they’re not honest about that. Steinberger said that at the end of the first year, the committee produced a report with numbers. “I think we were hiding nothing,” he said. “I think we were quite transparent about that.”

Adam Groce (Computer Science) said he thinks people will have trouble deciding between options without knowing how these other details will turn out, and encouraged the committee to have some sort of fall-back plan where non-controversial things could be done. He expressed his concern that in the end, faculty will have to pick between a new option and the current one, and he wants to make sure they don’t somehow end up with no change.

Several professors expressed their appreciation to the committee for the work of compiling previous discussions and listening to feedback. Charles McGuffey (Computer Science) reminded his colleagues, “Our decision is not what will be perfect, but what will be best for us.”

With that, faculty ran out of time for further discussion, and the meeting was adjourned. Bilger closed by saying, “Everyone please take care.”