With an eye on creating new programs on campus, the faculty will soon vote on the elimination of the Russian department.

Last spring, the faculty passed a proposal from EPAG (Educational Policy and Governance) creating a revised academic program and requiring that each program fit within one of three distinct categories: disciplinary department, interdisciplinary department or interdisciplinary program. In order to maintain disciplinary department status, there must be three full -time faculty members (FTE).

Until two years ago, Russian had three tenure-track faculty. When one of those professors, Rachel May, resigned for personal reasons, the Allocations Committee (now EPAG) switched the position to non tenure-track and hired Hilde Hoogenboom for a three-year term.

With Hoogenboom’s term ending at the end of the next academic year, EPAG must consider the fate of her position this spring. If the committee decides to renew the position, a search must begin before her final year begins. A decision not to renew that position would inherently deny Russian departmental status.

Instead of making that decision within the committee, EPAG brought the issue to the faculty for discussion earlier this month. According to EPAG Chair and Economics Professor Gary Krueger, there will be another discussion at the November meeting and a vote will most likely take place in December.

The October discussion took place after the faculty meeting was officially adjourned, but most of those present stayed.

Krueger, who also chairs the Russian and East European Studies program, and EPAG co-chair and Political Science Professor Andrew Latham introduced the discussion.

“For me this is a rather reluctant meeting,” Krueger said. “The college must examine the program, and we chose to do it now rather than later.”

“Collectively we have not decided anything,” Latham said. “We don’t have a dog in this race, per se.”

The Case to Eliminate Russian

“By any measure,” the EPAG paper states, “the numeric case for Russian is not strong. Russian attracts few majors and few students, yet consumes three FTE.”

That paper, posted online along with the committee’s statistics and the various responses of the Russian department, states that “EPAG does not dispute the curricular value of Russian.”

The central issue, according to the paper as well as the presentation at the faculty meeting, is low enrollments and number of majors.

“We built an excellent Russian program, and nobody came,” Krueger said.

Several faculty members, however, were mindful that language departments comprise the five highest major/FTE ratio.

Provost Dan Hornbach, who also sits on EPAG, offered a slightly different take on the issue. “I don’t think the enrollment issue is the strongest concern,” he said. “It’s about the centrality of Russian to liberal arts as a whole.”

Hornbach said that the elimination of Russian would free up resources that he would like to see go towards bolstering current programs and creating new ones.

He listed Urban Studies, Asian Studies and Environmental Studies as programs that he thinks require faculty support. He also said that conversations are beginning regarding the creation of Chinese and Arabic language programs, as well as a Middle Eastern Studies program.

“We can’t have those conversations until we know we have the resources,” Hornbach said. “In my mind, it would be a good trade-off.”

Following EPAG’s presentation, Hoogenboom and Russian Department Chair Gitta Hammarberg presented their counter-argument.

“We want to hear faculty ideas and solutions,” Hammarberg said.

She pointed out that 15 of Macalester’s comparison schools have Russian programs. Some schools, such as Swarthmore and Amherst, discussed eliminating their programs but ultimately retained them.

“Our enrollment has been bad nationwide,” she said. “We’re concerned about that as much as anyone, maybe more.”

She pointed out that, like all language programs, the popularity of Russian has historically fluctuated according to geopolitical trends. She added that recent enrollments demonstrate the potential for an upward trend.

The curricular strength of Russian was emphasized on all sides.

“No one disputes the curricular value of Russian,” Krueger said. “But for each thing that has benefits there are costs.”

Several faculty members expressed concern with EPAG’s emphasis on enrollment.

“We seem to be too focused on the numbers,” said Religious Studies Professor Paula Cooey said.

“Enrollments should not run the curriculum,” Hammarberg said.

Anthropology Professor Arjun Guneratne pointed out the low numbers in the Humanities and Cultural Studies program, which was awarded departmental status in the spring.

Some faculty also demonstrated concern that the decision regarding Russian is out of context within the larger curricular restructuring that EPAG is simultaneously bringing to the faculty. “We’ve got to have a broad conversation here,” Cooey said. “We’re lacking the overall picture.”

EPAG members repeatedly pointed out the necessity of beginning the conversation now, before allocations decisions come up in the spring.

By the time the meeting adjourned Hornbach pointed out that the remaining professors were mainly from other language departments.

The Argument to Retain a Russian Dept.

“If I seriously thought our faculty would decide against us, I wouldn’t be here fighting,” Hammarberg said. “I’d be at home writing my books.”

Hammarberg said she remains optimistic that the program will be saved.

“We’re trying to keep the discussion going,” she said. “There’s nothing we can do right now except keep our sanity.”

She said that she was pleased with the turnout at the faculty discussion and was encouraged by the number of positive statements.

Hammarberg said that certain comments regarding enrollments were insensitive. “‘We’ve got an excellent program and nobody came’ —I was really angry with that. We’ve got really good alumni doing really important things,” she said.

The proposal that she and Hoogenboom submitted offers two alternative solutions. Ideally, they would keep the Russian department as it stands now, with three FTE, and renew the position held currently by Hoogenboom.

The alternative proposal that they offer is an interdisciplinary department with two FTE. While Hammarberg said that this would be better than complete elimination, there would still be significant losses.

With such a structure, the department could not offer the upper-level language courses necessary to produce graduates with useable skills, Hammarberg explained. There would also be a narrower selection of topics and literature/culture courses available.

Currently, Macalester is the only ACTC school teaching upper-level Russian courses.

Hammarberg emphasized the importance of more advanced language classes, pointing out that oral proficiency in Russian takes much longer to achieve than most other languages.

She expressed concern that the faculty would eliminate Russian in the name of programs that also require significant investment.

“I would love to see Chinese and Arabic,” she said. “But we need to realize that it took us ten years to build up this program. Both those languages are even more demanding than Russian and require even more investment. Are they going to support them in the long run?”

Hoogenboom also questioned the logic behind such a move. “We support these programs, but don’t feel that they should come at our expense,” she said. “They will require the kind of program building that we’ve already done.”

“There are very dirty politics behind this,” Hoogenboom said. “This is one of the stronger departments here and it’s being brought down because of personnel issues. We’re trying to fight a fair fight.”

Russian professor Jim von Geldern explained his situation at the meeting, which some faculty view as instrumental in the current state of the department.

Von Geldern, who began attending law school last year, said that the elimination of May’s position two years ago caused him to re-evaluate his role at the college.

“As I looked ahead I thought there probably wasn’t much of a future teaching Russian at Macalester,” he said. “I saw it coming. You have to prepare for eventualities.”

It was due to foresight, then, that von Geldern said he began law school in order to bring a new skill set to Macalester. He said that he may utilize these skills with a transfer to the International Studies department.

According to Krueger, von Geldern’s move is not a dynamic issue in the current evaluation. “Jim is not a factor,” he said. “The central issue is Hilde’s position.”

Hammarberg said, however, that the move does present complications. “When a faculty member changes fields, it becomes tricky in terms of allocations,” she said. “The position was created in Russian. If he’s moving to IS, shouldn’t there be a national search? There’s no precedent for this.”

According to the Provost, current Russian students will be able to complete their major, regardless of the faculty’s decision.