 Well, it's the top of the hour, so let's begin. I'd like to welcome everybody. Welcome you to the Future Trends Forum I'm absolutely delighted to see you all here today We have a fantastic guest and a very very important topic And I'm delighted that we can have a conversation today now what I'd really like to do is to welcome this week's guest I'm absolutely delighted to be able to welcome LaJeanne Cornish She is at court at Ithaca College where she's the provost as well as a senior vice president for academic affairs I met her this year during various video conferences like most people we haven't met in person of course But I found her to be absolutely brilliant and to be in incredibly challenging position Ithaca College has wrestled with COVID is wrestled with racism and really gone through the fires And I'm delighted that she can join us to share with us what she's learned in the process So please welcome. Welcome, LaJeanne Thank you so much for having a good afternoon to everyone who's joined us today I'm absolutely delighted you could make it you know, I I have to say I when I invite Academic leaders to the forum and I want them to introduce themselves. I find that It's best to ask people to look ahead a bit and to say In order to introduce yourself, what are you going to be working on for the next year? You know, what are the big challenges? What are the big projects that are uppermost in your mind? Well for the next year, I will be working on continuing to help right-size the college We have a strategic plan Which we started in the fall of 2018 and one of the goals of that plan was to Determine and maintain a sustainable size for the institution Academic programs structures and associated resources at every level of the institution We thought when we created this plan that would start in 19 and end in 24 that we would have five years to Complete our plan or implement our plan And then we ran into COVID this fall in the first year of Implementation, which is necessitated that we accelerate our plan We have to reduce the size of our faculty, which is something we knew we were going to do again in advance But the challenges associated with COVID have made us It has required that we do this sooner than we thought I'm looking at the work ahead as in three parts One is aligning the size of our faculty with the size of our student body I don't know if anybody else has experience in drops in enrollment I arrived at Ithaca College in the fall of 2018 or summer 2018 6,500 students in the fall of 2020 we had We had 5,100 students and so yes this so there was a strong in in student enrollment over time If we had looked at this over a period of 10 years, which we have subsequently done We've seen that our enrollment had been dropping over a 10-year period Enrollment was decreasing and the size of the faculty was increasing And so I found myself to be in the position of having to do that Which could have and should have been addressed perhaps before I arrived But must be addressed now in order to ensure that the institution not only survives But thrives into the future So part one is alignment Part two is restructuring and reorganizing How do we restructure our academic programs, our administrative structure even Our school structure to optimize the resources that we have Our resources are very finite And so we need to take a look at resources across the institution Ask ourselves the question about whether or not we're using them appropriately And then Part three is strategic growth Where can we invest in new programs strategically again to help the college thrive Beyond this moment and so as I look forward Those are the things that will guide my work Not only for the next year, but for the next three years Well, I have to say Provost Cornish, you're coming right off the bat and telling me the most difficult things And I admire that I was going to ask you some gentler and easier things and you want to write right to the wire. Thank you That's that's not easy to do Friends I'm going to ask our provost a couple of questions But the purpose of the forum is for you to ask questions So again, if you'd like to share your thoughts, if you'd like to ask our guest a question Either just head to that question mark button at the bottom of the screen and type them in Or press the raised hand button to join us up here on stage. It's really really quite easy I guess my First question I'd like to ask is the question of strategic growth Insofar as you can share it with us right now Where do you think the areas are for that kind of growth? Is it Say allied health care, especially because we're in a pandemic Is there anything in the local issue in I'm sorry in local area in new york? That's especially resonant Where the growth zones? So we know we have a school of health sciences and human performance We have seen an uptick in applications to our school of health sciences Uh in human performance. We are calling it the dr. Fauci effect But it is definitely having an effect as more and more students are interested in going into the health sciences We are applying right now to uh, bring on a pa program to the college So we're hoping that we get accredited to start a physician assistant program, you know, itica new york Uh We're in a rural area and so there are health challenges here And how can we invest in programs that will help our students be able to help people who live in the community where we are We call ourselves a private college serving the public good And so we see an opportunity in our health sciences in particular to have some strategic growth That makes a lot of sense and that's what i'm seeing nationwide And I think we'll see more and more of that Back actually back in I don't know if I mentioned this to you when I when I last saw you But back in March, I was forecasting that we would see a big rise in an allied health as a result of the pandemic I love the name the dr. Fauci effect Um, we had a quick question only just brings up on stage. So again, if you're all new to the forum Let me just explain how this works Um, so we have alexia pritchard asked a question with chat And I just put up here on the screen so everyone can see it Are you thinking about online learning initiatives as part of how you think it's a good should invest? Great question. And thank you for the question alexis So I go back to to march the 6th Things started to turn We were on spring break When we decided not to bring our students back for the spring semester And so what we did was we extended our spring break for a week So that we could get some quick professional development to our faculty to help them Try to pivot from face to face to face instruction to online learning What this has done is provided our faculty with a new set of skills that they did not have a year ago And so We spent the summer Learning uh, we got feedback from students about what worked. Well, what didn't work well in the spring feedback from faculty about what they knew and what they didn't know And how much they wanted to learn and so over the summer We developed a flexible by design summer institute in our center for faculty excellence in conjunction With our teaching and learning with technology Colleagues and so our faculty spent three weeks Specifically intentionally designing online classes to implement in the fall We were hoping that we could be on campus in the fall But I asked the faculty to design their courses as if they needed to be taught online With the hope that we could be present But if we couldn't it would be far easier to pivot from online to face to face than it is from face to face to online And so I'm delighted that our faculty now have a new set of skills that we can leverage moving into the future One of our strategic planning goals is to be a 12 month campus And so now that we have acquired all of these new online skills We can teach courses winter and summer so we can you know allow our students to have an opportunity To learn year round and we can be a 12 month campus. So Short answer to your question. Yes. This is an opportunity for us to invest in online learning and and we intend so to do Great question. Alexia and and thank you. Listen. That's just a perfect perfect answer Again, if you're new to the forum, this is one way you can you can quickly type in a question And we get to address it And we have another question I got I said questions are just piling in I don't have to ask They're all coming over. So let me let me grab one from someone who I think may be a neighbor of you This is from Amy Cronin at the new york sex liberal arts consortium And Amy asks how do external partnerships factor into your thinking about how to optimize resources and grow strategically? Good question So we have the cmc our community our kiyuga medical center And they are strategic partners with us if we can get our pa program approved and on board Our students kind of need rotations And so this is our local, you know hospital and so they're going to help with that We have partnered with our school system to see how we can be resources for the students in our Ithaca city schools Um, and so, you know, we partner with with Cornell our colleagues, you know on the other hill Mike Kotlikoff is the provost at cornell university Mike and I are in in contact with one another on a regular basis Paul Reisendorf is our our provost at tompkins community Tompkins courtland community college And so the three of us are always in touch with one another about how we can assist one another But speaking about that cornell partnership for a moment, you know, I met with mike in in november And I said mike, can you just tell me what you have learned from bringing students on campus this fall About your surveillance testing protocol because cornell has been very successful In this and he said, you know those during the biggest lesson Was that the spread was not occurring in classrooms The spread was occurring as students gathered with each other outside of the classroom experience. And so That community contract or compact is very important and students need to I'm going to use the word police themselves Encourage themselves to engage in in behaviors that will decrease the likelihood of spread across the community Mike and I are going to meet again on monday to talk about Subsequent learning that's happened since we last got together But we're also going to talk about the opportunities for us to partner with cornell if possible To help us with our surveillance testing in the spring in conjunction with kayuga medical center So the the medical center is helping the colleges and schools in the area with the surveillance testing So that's another example of partnership that's happening in it Well, it's a great question and by the way, the new york sex is a group of sex liberal arts colleges across the Upstate area of new york and they do some really great work in sharing resources or a big fan And uh, thank you for that question Now, just to give you another sense of the capabilities of what we can do Let me just bring up on stage One of our long-term friends and supporters and someone will always ask great questions This is tom hams coming to you from the houston texas area Hello tom Hey there goodness, um Good to see you guys. So a quick question. I know you're talking earlier about, uh, you know, right sizing the college Uh eliminate potentially eliminating programs and things like that What I don't usually hear in these discussions is um The possibility for increased interdisciplinary work Um, I think one of the problems that we have is of course, there are way too many silos in academia, especially on the teaching side Um, and it seems to me that there's a lot of efficiencies to be realized by Creating a broader set of programs my concern with eliminating, you know bits and pieces is that you know When you start chopping off fingers, you eventually don't have a functional hand And um, that's you know that I'm just wondering how much of that is uh, it's part of your discussion Thank you so very much for the question. I'm going to go back to our strategic plan one of our strategic planning goals is increase Curricular flexibility interdisciplinarity Uh and collaboration, you know, I came from a small liberal arts college I was at goucha college for 20 years before I came to ithica new york and what but fascinates me about ithica college is that We are comprehensive college rooted and grounded in the liberal arts tradition But we have four professional schools. What has frustrated me is, uh, The degree to which these silos prevent us from providing interdisciplinary opportunities for our students Something as simple as a common schedule grid Uh, which just allow us to to break down some of these walls And so part of the work that we are doing is really having deep conversations About how we can provide more interdisciplinary opportunities for our students. I mean, we've got the liberal arts school, which is h&s We've got health scientists and human performance We have a school of business a school of music and the park school of communications The opportunities at ithica college are golden And so I would love for the faculty to have an opportunity to engage in conversation About how we maximize what we have and really make it exciting for students and i'm going to keep going for a minute So, you know, my faculty have a four three teaching load In in some of the schools, which to me is just tremendous How can you be strategic planning goal a model for student success engagement and well being When your faculty are teaching seven courses a year your students are taking five or six courses a semester Depending upon the requirements for the major and so what i've asked the faculty to consider is this Over the course of the next two possibly three years because it will take some time But can we do a curricula overhaul? Can we do a complete curricula transformation? Can we move to a one two and four credit system? Which would allow our students to take four courses per semester and our faculty to have a three two teaching load Scholarship research informs teaching. So, how do we create a situation? Conditions where faculty can engage in their scholarship But then students can engage in deep learning It would help student well being it would increase faculty engagement with students And I've asked the faculty to think about this i've been talking about this quite a bit this week and so I'm looking forward to seeing if faculty take me up on the offer Well, I I wish you the best of luck in that I mean, I think a lot of the disciplinary divisions that we have are a legacy of the specialization of the industrial age And they're not really very Useful or relevant if you go outside the field. I mean I consider myself to be a technologist My degrees are in political science, so I But thank you for that great answer. I appreciate it. Thanks Brian Oh, thank you so much for for coming up and tom by the way just not to sell him short also teaches classes in government Very very creatively very imaginatively. He's idea spaces net is his handle on his website and He's someone definitely you should be following Um, and thank you lejeune for that very optimistic and positive response Um, we have more questions coming in my god. Let me just get out of the way here and put them up on the on the screen um, we have a question from Andrew Clark an edu cause actually who who wanted to come back to that question of programs growing Uh, and he asked about a framework. What type of framework did you create to evaluate your programs? To determine where to grow What should go? So, you know, we have a data dashboard And so it tells us Lots of things it tells us about student interests student demand number of majors number of minors number of credit hours generated Third semester retention this semester retention graduation rate and we can look at it over a period of five years And so we're also taking a holistic approach because we also know that the numbers don't tell the whole story You know an academic discipline might have Few majors, but it could be a service discipline for the institution and provide many service credit hours. And so We had an academic program prioritization Action group that was tasked with Designing guiding principles that would help The folks doing the work look at our academic programs. And so that implement the the guiding principles We're given to our implementation committee We have spent the fall looking at all of our academic programs at the end of this month The implementation committee will create a document called the shape of the Shape of the college document. How will we look moving forward? They will recommend programs for consolidation discontinuance growth and reimagination Over the month of january the entire college community will be giving the opportunity to provide comments On the shape of the college document The document will be submitted to me and the president during the month of february And then before the end of february, we will announce the programs that have been recommended for consolidation elimination reorganization and growth Wow First of all and thank you for the for the key in question andrew. I'm really glad you you specified that and uh, again But provost cornish. Thank you for that Perfect answer. Just just really really detailed describing how we're gonna do this We have more questions coming in and for those of you who are just joining us over the past few minutes I'm so glad to see you again This is the future transform and our guest is provost lejean cornish from if good college in upstate new york I didn't get to ask important question How much snow do you have already? There was a light dusting uh yesterday and so uh, but the ground is is is clear today. So um, may continue Okay, well as long as you can I know exactly exactly how that goes We have a great question uh from Phil long He was a great friend and a previous guest on the forum and phil asks From your emergency response experience going online quickly What if any longer term systematic changes might this have brought to light? Uh, how ill equipped our classrooms were Uh to to to move in this direction and so uh prior to cove it We had 30 classrooms capable of streaming With streaming capabilities. Let me put it to you that way Uh, we've done a whole lot of work since the spring and we now have 200 classrooms that have that capability And so we made a major Investment in technology Because again, we want to leverage this technology moving forward We've learned that our faculty continued to need professional development in designing and implementing online courses But right now the professional development that is needed at them will happen over the month of january Because we will bring students back at the end of january prayerfully Is around dual instruction, you know, many of our courses will be hybrid in the spring Many of our students have chosen to remain home for the spring So we have to date we have about 2900 students Who have committed to returning to campus in the spring and we also have 700 students Who have chosen to remain at home So how can our faculty provide what i'm calling dual instruction? Teaching those at home and those in the classroom that are socially distanced at the same time And so we're going to spend the month of january providing our faculty with opportunities to practice With the technology because we know it's still a work in progress Well as usual phil long asks a deep good question. Um, and um, and lajeure nails it. Um, right away Um, that sounds like a high flex classroom. Is that a term you're all using? Well, thank you. Um, right now that is the high flex classroom. That is what it is And we've just called it dual instruction because our faculty said do I have to do both at the same time? Then i'm like, yes, we have to learn how to do both at the same time and we know That we are are growing in this area. Uh, we are not expecting perfection We are expecting connection And and continued engagement with our students In the in the chat just really quickly. I put a link to the uh, uh, our most recent session on high flex That we had we invented the term that dr. Brian Beatty. So if you'd like to put that aside for another time Also, robert mark morgan Just shared a a link to a fascinating project. I'm going to quote from him there This is an interdisciplinary program at washington university in st. Louis But the important thing to connect higher ed silos with everything for interdisciplinary course offerings to a podcast And there's a link to it there And i robert i'm going to have to follow up afterwards and uh, and pick your brains about that because that sounds fascinating Uh, we have a question that came in uh earlier, uh from someone who can't make it today and i want to put this up this is from wonderful wonderful thinker who specializes in among other things publication and uh textbook materials michael johnson And he asks Now after all of this stuff in the middle of your big strategic, you know redesign What programs are in place to help ensure students path to graduation? The right classes in the right order in the right terms, etc um great question And so, you know degree works is a wonderful program Uh that allows students to see where they are on their path to getting their degree We had not as an institution uh optimized or Use all of the functionality of degree works to to our best ability and now we are putting that into practice for the spring semester Because we really do need to know what our students need what we're offering How available it will be for them to to finish the path to to graduation And if we become the 12 month campus strategic planning goal Then courses that we know students need can be offered in the winter and in the summer so that we can help students graduate on time It may be that as you offer more and more classes online that uh you get more and more flexibility for that Absolutely Michael thank you for that question and And now everybody there's more questions are piling in. Oh, this is this is great I'm going to see if I can combine a few of them because uh, this is so rich Let's see. Um sally uh muriamu From portland state asks a really key question here How can this strategic mission be realized with shared faculty governance? There is in my opinion faculty resistance and disciplinarity Yes, um sometimes Uh, but when we listen to students and they and they tell us what they're interested in students vote with their feet and they vote with their seats Uh, and as we look at which majors have increased which minors have increased Which majors and minors have decreased over time? Uh, it it may tell faculty something with regard to shared governance The faculty have played a role they we had a faculty committee that designed the guiding principles to You know to to to inform the academic program prioritization process and so uh can't do anything without the the faculty's participation In this with regard to how positions will be eliminated and the order in which they will be Eliminated we have a faculty handbook and the faculty handbook Clearly articulates the order in which this work must be done When we need to reduce the size of the faculty due to a decline In enrollment and we are following section 4.9.8 of the faculty handbook to the t um as faculty expect us to do Well, that's a great question sally and and i'm i'm struck by how Easily to mind you had that specific location in the regulator right there. That's that's powerful Let's see we have even more questions coming in. Um, and so, uh, this is one that kind of builds on Tom hams's question And this is from uh david hul who asks, uh, what is it like a college doing within the curriculum to develop problem solvers in climate change So we are about to launch a new center for climate justice Uh, that will be led by slander steingraver and we are really excited about that We are and it will be an interdisciplinary Center for climate justice combining our environmental science folks with some of our folks in the natural sciences Some of my environmental studies people as well People from our political science department from our history department From our center for the study of race Uh ethnicity race culture and ethnicity. We are excited about it. We've just gotten Funding uh, we've got a million dollar grant given to the college to to get it off the ground But environmental justice is very important to our students as is climate justice And so again, we are excited to launch a center for climate justice and at the college That's great. Is any of that public yet? Uh, not quite We are trying to get the dollars in and then we can announce I would just personally like to follow up with you on that later on. Um, the uh My next book project is looking for examples of exactly that kind of thing. I'd be glad to Pick your brains and learn more about it and and to write about it David good question very good question Um, and then we have uh, let's see speaking of faculty We have a question from gail ballard at that north i'dahoe college where I bet it can get pretty chilly right about now gail She asks about faculty development professional development general um What kind of professional development opportunities do you have homegrown or third party? Homegrown we have an amazing center for faculty excellence, which is led by A faculty member from the park school of communications whose area is systemic design systems design And gordon roland is phenomenal at what he does. We have what we call faculty fellows Faculty who are experts in in teaching and scholarship Who get us up to a six credit course release so that they can work with their colleagues within the center for faculty Excellent, so we have faculty helping teaching and providing professional development for their peers. And so Uh, our center for faculty excellence is is absolutely amazing Hmm. Yeah, that's great. That sounds terrific. Uh, and thank you for raising the uh professional development question um, let's see. We also have uh some, uh Technology questions but before we get to that there's one more on the kind of administrative faculty side And this is a follow-up from phil. Um because he's phil. I'll let him do this. Um He uh, he asks um, what kind of changes will you make in tenure? Some are thinking about ways of radically changing the workforce in different ways For example, he says are you are you moving towards, you know x year term appointments, you know three Absolutely not. I have told my faculty it is my job as provost to advocate for the faculty We believe in tenure. We are committed to tenure. We are committed to having tenure eligible faculty And that will continue moving forward at at the college. There will not we're not moving in the direction of term appointments If I had my way, we would be 75 10 to 25 80 to 20 if I could do it But there is a real commitment to tenure at at the college Well, that's great. Uh, can you hear me? Okay, I can very good very good. Sorry. I just uh, I just Quickly had to uh, refresh the page. Uh, thank you phil for that very direct, uh, answer and thank you Resurrent for that incredibly direct response That is uh, just that's that's crucial to this now. Let's uh, and by the way, uh, sarah sanger gario just shouted Her delight at course release. Um, I mean she put that in all caps with exclamation points So uh, I just want to let you know that you've got another fan here. Um, we have uh questions about Um technology, uh, steven airman who is a wonderful wonderful researcher on this. Um, he asks In your classrooms capable of streaming Can people outside that room hear what students say in the room? Can they see the student? It was talking and gesturing I'm gonna put that on the screen again that that went away too quickly I'm not sure about the answers to that question Another thing that we've learned is that many of our classrooms weren't set up for this Some of the best classrooms have wide walls Where you know, this type of technology could be in use and people could see one another We don't have a lot of those kinds of classrooms And so I've seen faculty have an ipad maybe in front of them or use their computer Screen while talking to the few students are in front of them because of social distancing reasons for the same time For this at the same time, but I don't have an answer to that. Um, so that that's something I need to investigate more My technology guru Dave while who's also with edge of cause by the way Dave has just done an amazing job helping to outfit our classrooms and get us ready for the spring But I I don't know the answer to that question I appreciate the uh the candor of the answer and I also appreciate the shout out to your tech guru So who it looks like he's had to do an awful lot of work This semester so kudos to him We also had another question and leslie harris at bucknell college asked and I want to make sure that we get this back in This is crucial The title of the session motions confronting racism, which it does. I wonder how ethical college is integrating anti-racism work into its curriculum. Thank you, leslie great question and so In december at the end of the fall semester We had three racist incidents happen on our campus in our classrooms Students made me and the senior leadership team aware of what was happening We held listening sessions for students my student affairs vp arosana ferro chris macna mare professor chris macna mare who is the chair of faculty council The three of us got together and held a listening session With students we brought together all of the leaders of our students of color organizations on campus We wanted to just hear about their lived experiences on campus As a result of what they shared with us and and I won't lie some of these stories Were hard to hear and and heartbreaking I decided to ask the faculty to Engage with me in a slow read Over the month of january and so my office Purchased 1,000 copies of kandies how to be an anti-racist And made it available to anybody that wanted to have it on the campus faculty staff or students Uh, we distributed the books in in january and then as you well know, uh by march We were no longer on campus Over the summer Our students we had listening sessions for our students via zoom Because after the george floyd killing Our students were not on campus, but they were feeling the effects of it 24.2 of our students identified as students of color And so this continued to bring to the surface Some of the racial tensions that are on our campus So While we were home faculty said, okay, lejour We need to return to the book you provided us with the book We were going to have you know teaching circles book groups around the book But we haven't we haven't talked about it. And so I asked the faculty through faculty council We have a faculty council executive committee that has six faculty members I meet with the fcec as they are called on a bi-weekly basis But during the summer we met weekly so that I could hear what was going on with the faculty Keep them aware with what was going on on the administration side and for us to continue to keep our students In our minds. And so I said to the faculty I said faculty council I need you to take the lead In leading book circles to discuss this text. It's very important You know, our students were saying our faculty need training diversity training and I said it's more about education Um and continuing education not a one and done training We need to read. We need to listen. We need to talk to one another So the 25 faculty agreed to to lead book circles Not only did they discuss how to be an anti-racist They discussed uh, robin d'angelo's white fragility Some faculty brought in plays But we had two weeks of discussion around this As a result of this our students We had a zoom session with students to check in with them to see How they were feeling and and their questions were pointed and they said well provost What's going to be different when we return to school in the fall? And so I said well, what are you expecting? And they said well, we don't want empty statements from faculty telling us how they're going to be better We want actionable items And so to the credit of of my white faculty They got together and they had some hard conversations with each other And they wrote a letter to the faculty and students and staff of color Owning their complicitness in the maintenance of of Structures structural racism on our campus And they said how committed they would be to changing things which includes conversations around You know decolonizing the curriculum Okay You know We then we had an anti-racism institute that was started this summer so 27 faculty members participated in an anti-racism institute and uh Applications for the institute just went out last week and we have 43 new faculty members who said I want to be a part of that And and if you get selected to be a part of the institute You have to agree to take what you learned back to your department and share it with the people in your department Because we believe in in the teacher of teachers model But there's still a whole lot of work to be done. I'm not going to lie to you and say everything's rosy because it isn't Uh, we've got to confront A lot of our own personal issues. Um, we've got to learn. We've got to read. We've got to be willing to have Courageous conversations We've got to be willing to create brave spaces not safe spaces But brave spaces where we admit our biases where we admit what we don't know and Be willing to learn and to change because our students expect that of us Hmm Well, thank you. That's a that's a great history of what just happened over the past year. Leslie. Thank you very much for Um, bringing that topic right directly into focus and and leisure and thank you so much for for itemizing that That's quite a career. Um for the faculty as well as the whole community you go through During a pandemic as well Um, there've been some back and forth in the chat about um about Let's see about brave spaces And we have a couple of if it had college alumni here And and a couple of neighbors someone's just down the road from mid Fayetteville. Um, so You know, there's a lot of a lot of connections here today I'm really glad of So folks if you have more questions specifically about racism and anti-racism This is a great time to ask keep in mind that we only have about 11 minutes left before the end of the hour Let's say the um All folks are thinking of that again You can just press the hand raised button just to join us here in stage in effect. Let me make it even easier I just put on the screen a teal colored box So if you just click that that should haul you up on stage right away um, so if you want to join us and talk about uh racism and anti-racism And the experience of handling that at a small college At a rural college under enormous stress This is a great time to uh to press that and while folks are thinking about that I want to make sure that we get to a couple of other questions Uh, this is one from sarah sanguario. Um, again back to uh technology support Are you bringing in additional instructional support staff to help support those faculty? There's a danger of burnout for existing support staff Uh, we have not Needed to hire additional support staff at this time What this did teach us though was the ways in which our Center for faculty excellent staff could work with our teaching and learning with technology staff To support our faculty They each had their own website for resources for faculty and we were like wait a minute Why don't we put this together so it's all in one place? Uh, the instructional designers are in the teaching and learning with technology Not in the center for faculty excellence. And so we say wait a minute. Let's think about the way we organize Can we move a couple of those instructional designers over to the center for faculty excellence? And so we are really rethinking what we're doing as a direct result of what's happened to us And and it's working and so that's the the i'm going to say that the silver lining Of the pandemic it's brought together And created synergies that that we really didn't even You know use Optimize on our campus and and so now we're taking advantage of these resources in a new way to benefit not only our faculty But our students as well Well, thank you. Thank you. That's uh, that's a great answer and Before uh, before I welcome george to the stage. I just want to point out a couple of quick notes in the In the chat. Uh, david hul recommends unconscious bias in schools, but benson and ironman for reading Erica swain says It's things like this the willingness to change why I always love is good college Joel bloom says dr. Cornish. Thanks to you. I'm going to encourage my son to apply to ethical And uh, any cronin says i'm an ic alumna so I keep an eye on what's going on So happy ic has lagered in these challenging times So I just wanted to share all of that and I want to welcome our dear friend george station from csu moderate bay george Glad to see you. Hello, and um, is my uh audio one it is Thank you. Um, so, um, I I guess as usual I haven't been in the forum for a while, but I usually bring two questions And sometimes they're related But um to the immediate note since we're noting books, um, I saw a disturbing article I think it was lit hub that was uh Noting that after a surge Over the summer book sales On topics such as anti-racism may seem to be dropping back down as if we're seeing things as an unfortunate fad Um Like people might think they're done or something because they gave it a little bit of work over the summer So just want to encourage everyone who's white in the forum here today not to stop reading Just because we got through a very rough fall semester But um on the, uh other topic today I was actually right-sized in my previous career. I'm retired, uh, navy and so when I hear right-sized I'm concerned about what happens next Um, so I'm wondering what support, um, either hr or other type of support The college will be offering any staff or faculty Who might be in for a rough move during the pandemic? And how would you be guarding against the disparate impact on staff and faculty of color as any restructuring happens? Good questions. Um, we still need to think about those things and so if you are If you are a faculty member who is tenured and your position is eliminated We need to give you the opportunity to retrain retool and to join another department where it makes sense. So to do If you are tenure eligible or a non-tenure eligible faculty member in a multi-year contract We need to give you a terminal contract or a year of grace. I'd like to call it If your position is eliminated We don't provide such a benefit for Tenured eligible faculty or non-tenure eligible faculty who are in their first year Uh, I had a town hall with faculty today earlier today and over 350 faculty attended That town hall with me and the entire senior leadership team And one of the requests made of us was if we could provide continuing library privileges Email to our adjunct and contingent faculty who will be affected by the right sizing And I said while we had not yet had that conversation Um, I don't think that that's a great ask. And so we should we will have that conversation to see You know, how we can support them if that is possible Um, we can at least have the conversation That's for our faculty of color or bi-pop faculty. You know, I'm glad you asked that question Uh, at Ithaca college most of our continued faculty are white. Um, we don't have a lot of faculty of color And the newest faculty of color are in our tenure eligible lines Uh, and so they too will be impacted. And so we are looking at strength of program We are looking at at reductions holistically But I have to adhere to the guidelines that are written in section 4.9.8 of the faculty handbook Which say that when we need to reduce we start first with our part-time faculty Followed by adjunct faculty followed by people in term appointments Followed by non-tenure eligible faculty Followed by tenure eligible faculty and lastly tenured faculty As reductions are recommended We will take care to look at the places in which these these faculty members work We will look at strength of program and we will do the best that we can but in closing I have to say this You know, these rules were written by faculty And if faculty care tremendously for BIPOC faculty Now more than ever is a time to rewrite faculty legislation To provide protections for BIPOC faculty and afford them the same privileges that we do tenured faculty If it means that much as an act of shared governance, they can rewrite legislation and I'll stop there Okay, thank you for going there with it because my follow-up was going to be to ask If there was anti-racism work that needed to be done in your faculty handbook itself I know that faculty are capable of rewriting that So if faculty choose to do so that would be certainly be outstanding And I'll close. I know Brian only has a few minutes left To say that that student question you got About what's going to be different is one of the best questions from any level at any university I've ever heard with any of this work. So I'm taking that question back to my own campus Brian, thanks for taking my question and comments today. Absolutely. Thank you for making them Really appreciate it. Always good to see you George Thanks I am really conscious that we are almost out of time. So I'm going to try something kind of funky here I'm going to combine three questions into one Because they're all they're all combined and we can pull them apart If you like depending on how much on how much time you need with these One question has to these are all questions about your response to racism One question comes from Charles Findlay Who asks about what areas of I believe the academic system can be revisited Besides content decolonization And so we've got that And then we have a question here from Michael Eisenberg from University of Washington who asks Do you think that online learning exacerbates the problems of systematic racism or offers opportunities to improve? Let's do those two together. Can you riff on those two? I'm going to do the best that I can We need to de-center whiteness In the curriculum Whose story is being told? Who's isn't? Whose voice do we hear? Whose voices don't we hear? I think to our school of music They do performances every year and our students of color said can we ever study? composers who aren't white and so What my school of music did this year was to say all right We're going to make sure that we include pieces of women I mean pieces of music by women and people of color in every performance this year sometimes It's a matter of the question not being asked and so Are we asking the question? With regard to online learning I'm going to say that online learning um exacerbates things for Students with the least means regardless of the color of their skin um This has been a challenge And and one of the reasons that we so want to open In the spring as many of our students have said how hard it is for them to learn at home You know it's heartbreaking to see a student say I don't want you to see where I live I don't want you to see No, you know my my learning space. Can I please come back? So at least even if I'm learning in my room if 80 percent of my classes for spring are online I would rather be online in my room at Ithaca college than at home Sharing Wi-Fi with five six or more people in a space that's not dedicated for me to learn and so This is pointing out a whole lot of disparities for a whole lot of people first gen and beyond and so We need to take note of of the lessons that are still out there for us And think about ways that we can continue to support our students because This is not a a one and done pandemic. We will be feeling the effects of this For for years after this it's going to take us some time To get it together again. And so I would encourage us to think To ask our students How were you most impacted during your time away? What did you need and then how can we help you moving forward? The students at the center of that process. Yes Lejeune it is exactly the top of the yard. Can I can I share one more question from one more person? I have a meeting with my president and so i'm going to blame you for being late I feel okay. Okay. This is a really quick question This is from melanie hogue at southwestern university in texas and she asks How supportive and engaging are the people and businesses in the surrounding community? In terms of your anti-racist work and your climate change work So I would say they're very supportive. All right. We have a group called the local leaders of color group Which is comprised of faculty and staff from cornell Ithaca college tc3 And business community and when I mentioned that I had asked my faculty Staff and students to read how to be an anti-racist They asked their folks to do the same and so We are walking this together and that's the only way we're going to affect change is if we walk together Bravo. I on that high note. I'd like to wrap things up All right. Thank you. Thank you Cornish for being a fantastic fantastic guest I'm so delighted at your answers. It's just been a terrific terrific Look into how you've been thinking and responding and the great work you've been doing There's a whole bunch of of cheers and praise to you from uh in the chat box and in twitter Um, I don't want to get you in trouble with your president. Uh, especially now, please tell them I said hi It's entirely my fault What's the what's the best way people can keep up with your work and what I think the college is doing? Uh, you can reach me through l cornish at Ithaca dot edu I'm still a technological Uh immigrant and so I'm still working some things out So please be patient with me. It has been an absolute pleasure to spend some time with you today I wish that you all stay well be well and take good care. Brian. Thank you so much. Thank you If you're a digital immigrant, you're always at home with us. Okay. Thank you. Thank you And don't go away friends. Uh, I just want to let you know, uh, what's happening over the next few weeks Uh, can I just say thank you all for your great great questions? And for everything that you've been sharing today And uh, thank you especially from the alumni and from the people nearby just a quick look ahead Remember that we have one more future transform session coming up next week That's on a work life covet balance and then we have a winter holiday But then we bounce right back. We have a whole series of great programs coming up. Check my blog We'll have a whole list of these and of course you'll be emailed about each one of these as they come up Our reading for our book club speaking to climate justice is plunging ahead So you can join us in any time for that If you'd like to keep talking about all these issues everything from antiracism on campus to climate change and community to technological support with a whole Bevy of ways for you to do that including twitter And if you'd like to go back into the past and look at how we've previously had sessions on these issues Everything from covet to faculty to racism to climate change just head to tinywell.com FTF archive for more than almost 240 recordings right now And in the meantime, let me just echo our provost and guests wishes. Thank you all for a great great discussion Please in this holiday season and the season of great chaos. Please take care and be safe Look forward to seeing you online Bye. Bye