After today's final faculty meeting of the academic year, we bid farewell to five beloved faculty members who were moving on. As part of pandemic-forced belt-tightening last year, the university had offered long-serving senior faculty the option of retiring early with some benefits and emeritus status, and five at our college were among those who opted for this. (Many others, myself included, were made the offer and didn't.) The five, all women, have contributed so much the place really is unthinkable without them. Two began as part-time faculty. One came to the New School three times - first as a teenager to the Freshman Year Program, then back to teach after graduate school for a few years, and then for a final burst a little after I arrived. Between them they helped craft some of our most valued departments and programs - cultural studies, arts in context, literature, history, civic liberal arts. One moved from theater to arts in context to writing. Several have worked also in other divisions, two of them have been key to the establishment of the Faculty Senate, and all served in innumerable positions in the ever shifting but never shrinking world of committees where faculty get to know each other. All will be sorely missed.
A zoom farewell is far from ideal, not least because it's not the same when everyone is toasting with a different beverage, but it was lovely nonetheless. You felt people really looking at each other, channeling fondness and care! As resident historian I'd been tasked with supplying the dean with early photos of our departing colleagues, and the chairs of their current departments said a few words, before others chimed in. Stirring tributes and charming memories were shared, but the real activity was in the chat, where the tools we've developed over the year for that kind of discussion participation were put to ideal use. Tributes, thanks, affirmations of others' tributes, gushing forth like a stream. (And the transcript is of course available, along with the zom recording!)
I did my bit in the chat, having fond memories of working with all five though leery of appearing to claim a special relationship in a collective setting, but for one I felt I should actually speak, a professor of literature and environmental humanities who has occupied the office next to mine for a long time. Others with offices nearby had spoken about how "the 4th floor won't be the same without you!" but I had a special in, since Elaine and I share a very thin wall. I thought this was the time to come clean that I had beeen able to hear years' worth of meetings she had with student advisees, and sometimes listened in. (She must be able to hear as much from my end, but although we spoke often about all sorts of things, in her office and mine, in the doorways and in the hallway outside, we've tactfully never mentioned this.) I told of how moved and instructed I have been by the way she tailors her advice to each student, challenges them to take themselves seriously, changes their lives!
This unwittingly provided a motif for the dean, who wound things up referring to how we would never forget these departing colleagues. "You're in the walls of Lang!" Elaine, Elaine, Colette, Sumita, Stefania - thanks for everything.
