Sky Harris attends a barbecue each semester that her choir director hosts. The entire choir and the director's family are there.
"We know his family," said Harris, a music education second-year graduate student in the College of Visual and Performing Arts. "These are people who are invested in us as people."
So when Harris heard her VPA professors voice concerns at the faculty council meeting where she serves as the student representative, she didn't ignore them. She agreed.
"We sort of went, 'That doesn't sound right,'" said Harris. "We wanted to be involved."
Harris is talking about the dean search.
On Jan. 25, VPA Dean Carole Brzozowski accepted the newly created position as Syracuse University of performing arts presenter.
Vice Chancellor and Provost Eric Spina told The Daily Orange on Jan. 28 he planned to promote a new dean from within VPA. At that time, external dean searches were being conducted for the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, The College of Arts and Sciences, the School of Information Studies and the L.C. Smith College of Engineering and Computer Science.
Once Harris heard the faculty had concerns about Spina's choice for VPA, she brought in reinforcement.
She helped start a petition that called a town hall meeting for faculty, staff and students in VPA to talk about it. Student representatives for every college in the university and all VPA students were invited to the meeting on Jan. 31.
The consensus? Students wanted to have a voice in the dean selection process. And they wanted an external search, Harris said.
The administration listened. An external dean search would be conducted for the school - but not until September 2009.
Spina announced to VPA through an e-mail on Feb. 7 that the next dean would be named from a list of internal candidates at the end of February. The candidate selected from the internal search would hold the position of dean, with an external search to take place in September 2009.
"The decision-making in the college should come from the ground up," Harris said. "Have we felt like we've really been able to have our voices heard? Maybe not."
They weren't alone.
The faculty wanted its concerns to be voiced in the dean search process, said Elizabeth Fowler, a professor of art and design history and chair of the VPA faculty council.
"It felt like a top-down decision," she said.
Spina will appoint the dean, but an advisory committee of faculty and one student will be involved in the process to voice the concerns of VPA.
"The faculty were heard," Fowler said. "There's officially a board to voice faculty concerns."
Spina said he listened to students, faculty and staff before creating the revised plan, and that all of those groups played a role in changing the process.
"I want to make sure students, faculty and staff all feel their voice is important," Spina said.
Spina decided to keep the internal search because there was a lot going on within the school, he said.
SU is in the middle of the campus-wide capital campaign, and VPA is bringing in professors and expanding programs, Spina said.
"There's work the college needs to do," he said. "If we did an external search right now, we're kind of out of sync."
Holding the external search until 2009 allows the college to make progress now, Spina said. "There won't be this critical period during which the college doesn't have forceful leadership," he said.
But for VPA students, the curtains haven't closed. The dean search issue sparked the students to want to play a larger role in the debates within their school.
"We're wanting to be a part of the process," Harris said. "We want to see this be a collaborative learning environment."
It makes sense that the students voice their opinions, said Megan Kirsch, a sophomore music education major. The students are in the VPA buildings every day and see what is going on, she said.
She said she came to the town hall meetings because she wanted to understand what is going on within VPA and wants her voice to be represented.
"I'm here for the future of the school," Kirsch said. "I don't think it's just about me. What happens now will affect what happens later."
VPA faculty commends the students for their efforts.
"The students have been engaged, which is really, really positive," said Thomas Sherman, a transmedia professor in VPA.
Diversity is a strength within an art school, but at times the many perspectives can make it difficult to speak with a cohesive voice, he said. He is excited about the way the students are interacting.
"There's good momentum," he said. "There is a sense of urgency in communicating."
Harris's town hall meetings might not continue on a weekly basis, but Harris wants them to continue on a regular basis.
Harris said the student government within VPA has not been active for the last few years. Students should meet on a regular basis to discuss concerns and give feedback, she said.
"We're a much stronger student voice together than separate as different schools," Harris said.
Within VPA, there are five different schools. Those include the School of Art and Design, the Department of Communication and Rhetorical Studies, the Department of Drama, the Setnor School of Music and the Department of Transmedia.
The town hall meetings have continued on a weekly basis. Harris uses the town hall meetings to get feedback from all the schools that she can bring to the advisory committee. Right now, the meetings are still about the dean search. The VPA faculty council selected Harris as the student representative on the advisory committee to Spina.
"We have different takes on things," Harris said.
But they agree on wanting to be a part of the dean search process and wanting to have their voices heard in their school, she said. So, they are working together.
The students who meet also identify the problems they want to address in the future, she said. Issues students want addressed in the future include a lack of space and equipment.
"We have no space to work in. We have no space to exhibit," said Ann Hirsch, a first year transmedia graduate student and graduate student representative to the faculty. Hirsch said many schools within VPA want more space, including the School of Music and the Department of Transmedia.
Uniting the school around these issues seemed like a good idea to Hirsch.
"I'm trying to get the information out to students - this does affect you," Hirsch said.
Alec Sim, chair of the Student Association's board of elections and membership, has attended all of Harris's town hall meetings. Sim, a sophomore economics and finance major, acts as a liason between SA and VPA.
SA's slogan is "defender of the students," so it makes sense to support the students of VPA, he said.
"We make sure we look out for the students' best interests," Sim said.
So far, SA has not formally drafted a resolution supporting Harris. But having Sim act as a liason, SA is making sure it is staying up-to-date with what is happening, Sim said.
For Harris, the next step is making sure any concerns are legitimate.
"The students are interested intellectually - not just to complain," Harris said.
There needs to be real evidence and data to show faculty, administration, parents and media, Harris said. The students are also looking at other colleges and universities as examples so they can offer solutions to the problems they have found, she said.
"We're not doing this to be arbitrarily confrontational," Harris said. "We're not just complaining."
The students care about the future of the school.
"Because of the nature of creating and being an artist, if you're doing it well, you're allowing yourself to share a lot of yourself with your fellow students and professors," Harris said. "Ultimately we all have the same goal - that we all have the best educational experience."
sdigiuli@syr.edu
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