The Closure of the Canadian Studies Office
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Dear friends,
Recently, the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences informed me that she intends to withdraw all funding ($35,000, which covers our staff and office costs) from the Canadian Studies Center on Main Street. The Dean’s plan right now is to shut the office down on June 30 and to move our administrator to another job in the College. This money will be reallocated to areas that the College deems to be of higher priority.
Founded in 1964, the University of Vermont’s Canadian Studies Program is one of the oldest, most respected programs in North America. Its reputation and long, productive history was what lured me to UVM five years ago and has continued to attract new tenure-track faculty such as Professors Amani Whitfield, Shelly Rayback, and Pablo Bose, all of whom are doing fascinating, cutting-edge research on Canada.
Although the University administration is justifying their cuts to our office with the argument that we only have three majors and two minors in our program and very few connected faculty, this does not accurately reflect the student and faculty involvement in our program. As of 2007-08, we have 10 tenured and tenure-track faculty and three lecturers teaching courses on Canada, and our program today is the strongest it has been in years. In the past year alone, our associated faculty from the departments of History, Geography, Romance Languages, English, Political Science and Anthropology taught 22 courses with either full or partial Canadian content, reaching close to 600 students.
Last year, 65 of our students and 15 Canadian Politics students from Saint Michael’s College travelled to Ottawa as part of our legendary, annual field trip to Canada’s capital, a trip that has run every year since the mid 1950s. Our program also hosts many high-profile events across campus, such as the visit to campus in October by the Grand Chief of the Council of the Quebec Crees, who spoke to a standing-room-only crowd at the Livak Ballroom about the relationship between the Cree and the Governments of Canada and Quebec whose massive hydro projects have flooded traditional lands in order to provide electricity to Quebec and much of New England.
The closure of our offices will, we believe, effectively end our chances of continuing to receive the Program Enhancement grant we receive each year from the Canadian Embassy in Washington. This year’s grant was close to $10,000 and it is what allows us to run the annual student trip to Ottawa, and the many events we put on at UVM. It will also end the travel and research support we frequently give to our associated faculty, which often doubles what their home departments are able to provide.
Needless to say this cut will have a profound impact on the shape of our students’ education and on the research and teaching done by the individual faculty members associated with our program. This decision is something that will affect all of us in one way or another. Given our proximity to Canada and its importance in Vermont’s history, economy and daily life, this will also most certainly be a major embarrassment to the University of Vermont. Canada does matter to our students and faculty, and it’s important that it continue to have a strong place at our state’s flagship university.
Over the last several weeks, I’ve kept things quiet about this decision as we tried to negotiate a compromise solution and demonstrate the need for the continued presence of the office and support staff that enables us to run all of these programs. These attempts appear to have been unsuccessful. Unfortunately, our attempts to persuade the administration are now turning to the media, a move that, as an untenured professor at UVM, I have chosen not to direct. Although I have recently spoken to a Burlington Free Press reporter who called for information as part of a story they are doing on our program, this statement on my blog will be my primary contribution to this effort. I will provide information about our program to those who ask, but I will leave the rhetoric to my fine, tenured colleagues and to all those in the UVM community who are upset about this decision.
Finally, I’d like to add that, although I disagree strongly with this decision and the arguments being made to justify it, I have great respect for the people currently leading the College of Arts and Sciences and the University of Vermont. I realize that Dean Miller and Provost Hughes are faced with difficult decisions every day and I believe them when they tell me that this was one of them. I remain hopeful, though, that a compromise can be reached that will see us keep our well-utilized space and support staff that are so crucial to the continued success of our program.
If you would like to offer your support, I encourage you to leave your comments below and/or contact the offices of the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, the Provost, or the President.
Respectfully,
Paul Martin
UPDATE: The Free Press article is now online here. This is a lengthy, balanced article that was on the top of the front page today with a large picture of one of our students. The rest of the article took up a good deal of a page later in the first section of the paper. As one of my friends noted earlier today, it’s one of the longest articles he’s ever seen the Free Press write.
10 comments
Our countries have a lot to learn from each other and it is sad that this window on Canada is closing. My father-in-law started the first Canadian Studies program in Canada at Trent University in the 1960’s. One of the strengths of such a program is its inter-disciplinary nature, something that we need more of in this complex “nano/techno/bio” age.
This is sad and disappointing news. I look forward to hearing more as the story progresses – hopefully the media attention will help encourage the administration to take another look. Here’s wishing you the best of luck with your efforts in this.
This is indeed terrible news for the Canadian Studies Program. In the Free Press, Fogel asserted the closure and withdrawal of funds was in part due to the “low” level of interest in the major (compared to other majors the university offers), however I believe the statistics indicate a “very dedicated” interest by a small number of students and faculty. All involved are undeniably invested in the discipline as much as those in other Arts and Science programs and therefore deserve adequate funding.
I think this is good news. I feel bad for the faculty, but college costs are skyrocketing and the budget needs to be trimmed of any excess. It seems ridiculous to spend any money at all on such a little-used program. Of course, I do think Canada is an important trading partner of ours, and I don’t mean this to disparage any of the good folks involved in this program. If I were a student, though, I would not want to be going deeper and deeper in debt just to fund “Canadian studies.” Or numerous other pet-programs that no one really has any interest in, other than the faculty.
I should mention that I also don’t think colleges should be in the business of ever-more bloating student housing programs, “student centers” or — in my mind, worst of all — athletic programs, stadiums, and so forth.
Thanks for joining in this conversation, Michael. I’m not sure where you’re getting the idea that this is a little-used program. In fact, up until our administration, under the previous Provost and Acting Dean, chose not to support us renewing our participation in a US DOE grant we’d held since 1974, we were bringing in to the university over twice what the university was putting into Canadian Studies. The money that funds our trips and visiting speakers doesn’t even come from the University of Vermont, but unless UVM shows it’s serious about supporting Canadian Studies, our ability to prove that our program deserves that support from the Canadian Embassy is severely compromised.
While we keep hearing stories about this cut being justified because there are “only three majors and two minors” our thirteen associated faculty taught nearly 600 students on campus last year. Our office here also helps to support the activities of Canada House, two suites of students in the Living/Learning “Global Village” residential learning program. The cut to our program has worried the students of UVM so much that on Tuesday the Student Government Association passed a resolution supporting our program and calling for the cancelling of these cuts altogether. These students are not those who are majoring and minoring in Canadian Studies. After all, I think it’s a bit much to expect this to be a hugely popular major on campus, but it’s there for students who do really want to pursue this. Many, many more students, though, benefit from the existence and robust health of our program and the existence of our program office.
This is anything but a “pet-program that no one really has any interest in, other than the faculty.”
Thanks for checking out my blog and for offering your thoughts on this.
I just saw the news in today’s Globe & Mail. What a shame.
Thanks Dr. Paul,
This info make me thinking.
It sounds like there are only a handful of students truly involved in the program, however dedicated they might be. I can’t imagine many students come to UVM and say “I’ll only attend if they have a Canadian Studies Program!”
I also have to wonder if your attitude is partly to blame — Canadians have a reputation for being snobby, pompous America-haters, that, while generally not true, you seem to reinforce with your blog and website.
Imagine if an American were teaching in the UK, with a blog called “As American as Possible…under the circumstances,” and regularly posted about how wonderful the US was and how much the UK sucked. Don’t think it would go over very well. Just a thought.
Michael, first off, let’s get one thing straight. I like Vermont, I like the US, and I don’t think you’ll ever find me talking on this blog, or in my classroom, in a disparaging way about the United States. I’m not a huge fan of its current government but I’m just as critical of my own. Second, the title is a reference to a story about a Canadian contest to see if someone could come up with an equivalent to the phrase “As American as apple pie.” The winning entry (the title of my blog) speaks to Canada’s inability (and unwillingness) to define itself in any singular way. Always the compromisers who are hesitant to offend anyone, or so the stereotype goes, that seemed to be the perfect answer to that question.
The US is a fascinating place to be, and I’m happy to be here. Will I ever consider myself to be an American or take out US citizenship? No. That said, living in this border zone where I feel those tensions between one’s physical identity (I live in the US, pay US taxes, and am in most functional ways the same as most Americans) and one’s intellectual one (I vote in Canada, watch Canadian television, and spend my days as a professor teaching and writing about Canada) is a continually fascinating and unsettling experience. That’s what this blog is about. It’s not to talk about how great is Canada. It is great, believe me, but so are the American people. Those ideas are not mutually exclusive.
Hi! After reading this post I felt really bad for the faculties. Its a matter of shame and at the same time very dissapointing.