Privilege & Poverty Planning Meeting

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Present: Susan Burch, James Davis, Laurie Essig, Lisa Gates, Jon Isham, Roberto Lint Sagarena, Marcos Lopez, Peggy Nelson, Sarah McGowen, Liz Robinson, Shawna Shapiro, Michael Sheridan, David Stoll, Steven Viner

JCD and Peggy Nelson provided quick history of the efforts on this front

  • Consortium of schools pursuing this kind of curricular opportunity formed several years back, through the efforts of folks at Washington and Lee, and with the backing of Tom and Nancy Shepherd, alums of W&L and Middlebury respectively
  • 2005 efforts stagnated due to confusion and setbacks in the pursuit of federal funding
  • Consortium efforts revitalized in the last couple of years… RDL signed an MOU in 2011
  • Middlebury has participated in internships associated with Shepherd program for a number of years (out of Tiffany Sargent’s office, EIA), but our curricular offerings lag behind
  • This spring JCD is offering a course on “Privilege and Poverty” as an interim offering, until we make long-term decisions about the program and an intro course

Should we have a program in poverty studies?

  • Students are interested. They currently approach the topic through education, economics, sociology/anthropology, environmental studies, and sometimes religion.
  • Many of us are interested in the intellectual consideration of economic inequality, from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, for professional and personal reasons
  • There are lots of intersections with the curriculum
  • Students are predominantly interested in domestic privilege and poverty.
  • 2005 concerns: internships wagging the curriculum, risk of “look at the poor people” approach, funding
  • Current concerns:
  • the proliferation of minors creates implicit requirement to staff a program even after interest was waned… do we want to take care not to contribute to that scatter of energy
  • faculty time to contribute to courses in a poverty studies curriculum

What should we call such a program?

  • Consensus for “Privilege and Poverty” rather than “Poverty Studies” – the latter is too intellectually constrained in its context and risks conveying paternalism

Curriculum – Introductory Course

  • Interdisciplinarity vs. multidisciplinarity – which is the better way to craft the intro course?
  • How do we make sure all significant intersections are covered?
  • One idea: 2-3 faculty representing broad range of curriculum, perhaps other participating in more limited roles?
  • weave Addison County-based experiential learning into the course from the beginning? (JI)
  • Should the intro course attempt to be something of a survey of the multidisciplinary approaches to studying privilege and poverty, or should the first course be one in which the ethical questions are raised to orient further study in more disciplinary-based electives? (RLS)

Other questions

  • Will there be a paid director? JCD: Hard to tell right now, because we’re not sure what we’re creating. Right now JCD is the acting director and liaison with the Consortium, and the efforts are being funded out of the VPAA’s office.
  • Will this become a minor/major?
  • What are the benefits of a formal construct, versus an informal cluster of courses? (Minor adds element of faculty control, but are there other ways for us to maintain the intellectual integrity and formalize advising without going the minor route?)
  • Should we call it a cluster?
  • Are there other stakeholders not present who could give it meaning and development?

The meeting ended with an agreement that we should focus next time on the shape of an introductory course. James will provide syllabi from other institutions, and we’ll entertain several different strategies for crafting an intro course.