Why I Love the Russian Department

It’s exciting to see more and more students take up Russian as their second or third language. In light of increasing student interest in the department (among other factors), the Russian Department was recently awarded a second tenure track position. And so the search began for another professor to teach in the ever-growing Russian Department.

Why do I love the Russian Department? Well, there are too many reasons to list on this blog. One of the reasons, however, is that the search for a new professor was not undertaken by the administration alone. Various candidates for the position lectured for my class so that both administrators and students alike could get a feel for each candidate. Students were invited to morning coffee sessions and lunches to speak with each candidate. Of course, I attended many of these events so that I could ask the candidates questions about their teaching philosophies, styles of teaching and course proposals. That’s not all – each candidate was required to give a presentation to faculty members within the Department of Modern Languages. Students were invited to these presentations, and they (we) were encouraged to comment or ask questions after the presentations.

Following the most recent presentation, the Chair of the Department of Modern Languages came up to me and said, “Thank you for taking the time out of your day to do this. We really appreciate it, and we value student opinion. It would be great to get your feedback in writing before we make a final decision.” Additionally, my Russian professor came up to a few of us and said, “You guys are so great. We really want to hear what you guys thought about each candidate.” Well first of all, I went to the presentations, coffee sessions and lunches because I really care about the Russian Department. Nevertheless, very few other schools value student opinion and feedback as much as Holy Cross. I can’t even begin to describe the feeling I had when I sat in that semi-circle in the Department of Modern Languages alongside faculty members. They were so kind and encouraging, and they made me (all of us) feel like we were wanted and that we were important assets in making a decision about the tenure track position.

I never thought I would be able to do something like that in college. I always thought that college was so bureaucratic, and that decisions were made from the top-down with little regard for opinions expressed at the bottom (the students). So Holy Cross, thank you for allowing me to take part in such an important process. You continue to prove to me that I am not only a member of a college, but a member of a community.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 10th, 2012 at 3:34 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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