In Celebration of Faculty

Due to various scheduling quirks, this is a big week at Georgetown for recognizing and valuing faculty, packed into consecutive days.

First, the president’s office is holding its annual welcome reception for new faculty. This follows a successful welcoming of new faculty by the Faculty Senate leadership a few weeks ago. These events are always filled with good will and excitement of the new. This year’s event is held in the Dahlgren quad, whose tent has become a core location for outdoor gatherings and celebrations.

New faculty array along many lines. They represent completely distinct fields of inquiry. Their research lives are organized in different ways – some in groups, some in solitary work. Those whose research is organized in groups look forward to establishing their new Georgetown group. They are filled with questions about facilities, potential collaborators, and student assistants. The solitary scholars are quizzing the new environment on how to organize their time to be maximally productive.

All the new faculty are anxious to share their experiences in the classroom and their interactions with undergraduates and graduates. One faculty member who entered Georgetown after teaching at another university noted that he had to alter his syllabus after a few class meetings. He had misjudged the level of student engagement with the material. He found the class absorbing threshold concepts in the course more quickly than was true at his previous institution. Our recent surveys of students suggests that more of this might be going on this semester. The self-reported engagement of newly-returned students is higher than during the remote-learning semesters last year.

The second event is the fall convocation, this year occurring the next day after the new faculty reception. This event has two features. First, we honor those faculty throughout the university who have recently been promoted. Last year, we did not have a full in-person ceremony noting these achievements, so we have more faculty to honor this year. In typical Georgetown fashion, this is a formal affair, with key players in academic regalia. A procession into Gaston Hall precedes the individual honors of the promoted faculty.

The career steps of an academic are relatively small in number. Many work organizations have many different levels that bring with them new titles signifying progress in responsibilities and career success. Academics move from a first position as an assistant professor to an associate professor to a full professor. The small number of steps increases the perceived importance of each one. The first promotion brings with it a grant of tenure in most universities. The stakes are high. Not earning that promotion entails movement to another employment.

In short, it is completely fitting to honor these newly promoted colleagues in a very public and formal way. Their achievements are, indeed, notable and rare.

We are usually joined in these fall convocations with families of the new promoted faculty. It is deeply heartwarming to see their pride, joy, and gratitude for their beloved family member. It is similarly wonderful to see colleagues from the departments or programs of the honorees. They work day-to-day in the same field. Some of them have taken on mentoring duties and feel some personal achievement in the success of their mentee.

The second feature of the fall convocation is a major address by a leader in higher education. (This year, Carmen Twillie Ambar, president of Oberlin College). The purpose of these talks is to provoke more reflection on the “why” and “how” of higher education. It’s a joy to be part of the combined presence of an advanced thinker and those honored for their past performance and their promise for the future. It inevitably is energizing to be reminded of the critical importance of what happens at Georgetown and what the honored faculty are doing with their lives.

In short, these two events force us to stop the day-to-day work of our lives and to be reminded of the richness of our collective faculty resources and our collective raison d’etre.