As last semester wore to a close, a number of students in the history department were rather frustrated about one particular piece of news: Dr. Bella Tendler, who had taught a course on the Middle East that semester at Stern College, would not be returning the following year but would remain at Yeshiva College, where she had taught a number of courses in fall 2012 and spring 2013, for the final year of her two-year contract. The previous spring had brought the news that Dr. Reeva Simon, a history professor at Stern College whose focus was the Middle East, would be retiring and Dr. Tendler was, for those students who had queried about Dr. Simon’s replacement, the solution to the impending absence of Middle Eastern studies on campus. For those history majors who wished to study the Middle East, either as a focus or as a means of fulfilling the non-Western history requirement, Dr. Tendler’s departure raised the previous spring’s question, once again: with five professors in the history department all of whom teach American, European, or Jewish history, when would students next have access to a full-time professor devoted to a non-Western field of study? For some students, the question was slightly different: Why would the college not rehire a teacher whose class had been well-liked, challenging, and unique in its focus on non-Western civilization? The answer to that question was simple: money.
Each year, Stern College is given a budget designed to pay both full and part-time faculty salaries and make new faculty appointments. While new part-time faculty members are usually hired on a course-by-course basis, the hiring process for a full-time faculty member is a much more involved process. Full-time faculty members receive a number of benefits, such as retirement and health benefits, and the college must decide that this faculty member is a necessary addition that will make committing to paying a new full-time salary on a long-term basis a worthwhile investment. In order to hire a new full-time professor, the appointment must be approved by the provost and the salary must fit within the yearly budget. Whether the provost might approve of a new appointment or not means nothing if the yearly budget cannot accommodate a new full-time hire.
Of course, the budget will always allow for some full-time appointments but the way that these decisions are made, notes Karen Bacon, the Dr. Monique C. Katz Dean at Stern College, is dependent upon the economic reality: “We either have the need and meet the need,” she explained, “or we try to create the need…At the moment, because we really are not in a strong financial environment in the country, we’re not typically using that second approach, which is to build the department and hope they will come.” The reality, then, is that those departments that have a larger number of majors are the departments that will receive more of the funds to meet the already existing needs. The number of history majors, and even liberal arts majors is much fewer than the number of science majors at Stern, and so the facts on the ground dictate the direction the funds for full-time hires will most likely be funneled. Dean Bacon added that it would be “foolhardy to keep adding courses [to a department with few majors] not just because its financially unfeasible” but because the courses would be so lightly-enrolled as to be less “academically exciting [and] cross the line between individual attention and lack of intellectual vitality.” Nonetheless, Dean Bacon points out, the college is committed to liberal arts; one of the most apparent demonstrations of this commitment is the fact that history and philosophy are listed in two different categories of the general education requirements, in an effort to encourage the study of these disciplines by allowing students to fill two different requirements in the same department.
Despite current budgetary constraints and concerns, Dr. William Stenhouse, chair of the History Department at Stern College, says that the History department is “hopeful” of hiring a new full-time professor by Fall 2014. “Educationally,” Stenhouse remarks, “I think there’s a need for the history department to represent more than just Europe and America” so the advertisement would seek someone with a focus on North Africa or the Middle East. The process for hiring a full-time professor is approximately a yearlong ordeal, involving a national search that begins with an advertisement in September or October through the American Historical Association, which then hosts a conference in January that a representative of the Stern College History Department will attend in order to meet candidates and conduct preliminary interviews. The typically large number of applications (when the university was hiring for Dr. Douglas Burgess’ position, there were 190 applications for the one post) is whittled down before interviews so that after the preliminary meetings, only two or three candidates are invited to campus in February and by the end of March, the hire is usually finalized.
History major Robin Joshowitz ’14 was excited at the prospect of a new full-time history professor specializing in North Africa or the Middle East. “As a history major, I believe that it’s important to have a well-rounded history education,” Joshowitz asserts, “and it’s frustrating that there aren’t enough classes for a history major to specialize in any field except for American History.” Another history major, Esther Wohl ’14, recalls her disappointment at the news that Dr. Tendler would not be returning in the Fall: “I was really disappointed, because she was the only professor teaching Middle Eastern Studies, which fulfills the non-Western requirement for history majors. It’s so nice to hear that the college is considering hiring another history professor.”
While history majors are certainly more invested in the notion of a broader history department, other students agree that a strong history department is a vital piece of a thriving liberal arts institution. Hadassah Tirschwell ’15, a double major in Judaic Studies and Mathematics, appreciates the benefits of liberal arts at Stern College. “I enjoy the opportunity to expand my horizons through specialized courses in history and philosophy,” she explains, “because I feel that the purpose of a liberal arts education is to experience a wide variety of subjects at a collegiate level and so I look for interesting and thought-provoking liberal arts courses to add to my schedule.
With the likely appointment of a new full-time history professor sometime in the near future, despite budgetary concerns, the opportunities for Stern students and history majors in general to expand their educational horizons will hopefully only increase.