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Un froid de loup

As they say down East, it has been “some cold”; un froid de loup, as they would have called it in medieval France: so cold that the wolves emerged from the forests in search of food. Fortunately we don’t have any of those on the Carleton campus, at least not of the four-legged variety. But the deep freeze outside has been more than counterbalanced by the intensity of activity within the walls of Paterson Hall and other campus buildings, some of it good and some of it less so. Fortunately, last week was book-ended with a couple of very positive high notes.

It began bright and early on Monday morning with a guest lecture for Peter Coffman’s medieval art history survey course. I have not done a lot of teaching in the past decade, and virtually none in the last three years, so I faced this prospect with some mixed feelings. Don’t get me wrong … I love teaching, or at least used to … but when one doesn’t do something for a period of time, self-doubt can quickly creep in. Could I still engage an audience? Would my voice hold out for 80 minutes? Was I still sufficiently in command of the subject that I would be able to address any questions comprehensively and intelligently? Well, I survived it; in fact, I enjoyed it enormously, which augurs well for my post-decanal future. Of course it is entirely another question what the students thought … but at least no one walked out!

And the week ended on Friday afternoon with the January meeting of the university Senate, at which a significant number of FASS proposals were given formal approval, among them the new Ph.D. in Ethics and Public Affairs, the post-baccalaureate program in Women’s and Gender Studies, the co-op program in Psychology, and three new undergraduate “minors” which are all very dear to my own heart, one in Archeology, another in Digital Humanities, and a third in Medieval and Early Modern Studies. Senate also gave approval to a three-year “general” B.A. in African Studies. I shall confess to feeling a certain satisfaction at seeing curriculum projects brought to a satisfactory conclusion, especially given all the hard work put into them by their faculty “champions”, to whom I extend grateful thanks and hearty congratulations. There are not too many more new or expanded programs in the FASS pipeline at the moment … in fact, off the top of my head I can only think of three: Curatorial Studies and Northern Studies at the graduate level, and for undergraduates the proposal to expand the existing “minor” in Indigenous Studies to a “combined honours”. But in large part that’s because we have added so much in recent years, and with the new Bachelor of Global and International Studies degree admitting its first students next September, we shall all be exceptionally busy. BGInS, incidentally, has received almost 500 applications despite its “soft launch”, which is particularly welcome in light of the continuing decline in the applications to our B.A. programs.

And there was another reason to celebrate at the Senate meeting, as it was the first to include two Contract Instructors among the ranks of the senators. At a rough guess, something like 30% of the undergraduate teaching in FASS is done by part-time faculty members on short-term contracts, and in some units it may be even more in a given year, depending on sabbatical leaves and administrative secondments. So it is only fair that this group have some voice in the academic decision making processes, for which the Senate is the highest authority. And I was particularly pleased to see that one of the two newly-elected Senators was none other than our own Rosemarie Hoey (English), one of the most dedicated sessional lecturers I have ever known.

But January is now, as they say, “history”. What delights will February bring? I guess we’ll find out soon enough.  And in the meantime a few more degrees of warmth would be very welcome.