The Necessity (and Benefits) of Ceremony

by Sarah Kain Gutowski, Chair, New Member Mentoring Program 

By now you've had a whopping two-three days to acclimate to SCCC while classes are in session -- but this will be your first full week at the institution (at least as a full time faculty member). You're bound to have some questions. When you have them, I'd advise you to write them down and save them for your mentor; on Friday, the campus NMP coordinators and I met to brainstorm mentor/mentee pairings -- and so you should be receiving word soon(ish) about who your mentor is, and they'll contact you shortly after that.

Also, you've had the opportunity to attend our annual Convocation -- and that event may have created questions, too, such as: why a convocation? Is this really necessary? 

The answer is that no, convocations generally aren't necessary. In fact, they're a fairly recent part of Suffolk tradition. And sure, it can be a drag to stay on campus longer -- or travel 30-40 minutes to Ammerman from your home campus -- but instead of grumbling or groaning (or maybe after grumbling and groaning, because I was certainly guilty of both), perhaps we should consider why such ceremonies and traditions (whether new or as old as the institution itself) are beneficial. More specifically, we should see what moments of the convocation we can find useful to our daily professional lives as we move forward with the academic year and our careers here at SCCC.

Best. Bingo. Card. Ever.

I can imagine it's disorienting to go to Convocation on your first day at work. You file in to the gymnasium behind fellow faculty you don't really know yet, not knowing what to expect. People are taking photos. For some reason that's not entirely clear to you, there are cheerleaders and a dance team. (Are they usually present at Convocations? you might ask your more experienced neighbor. No, they answer, they usually aren't.)  It's really, really cold. You wish you had a snack. You wish you had your academic robes (or, you feel kind of foolish wearing yours next to faculty who are not . . . but then, the extra fabric sure helps against the cold!). You wish, at the very least, you'd printed out that Bingo card from McSweeney's that's making the rounds of Facebook and Twitter and even, good lord, The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Then things get going. There are some opening remarks, soft joking, a general atmosphere of optimism and celebration that the more cynical of us (author raises hand here) regard with a healthy bit of side-eye. There are a few trending buzzwords from higher ed initiatives thrown around (Hey! "Initiative" -- there's one!). Still, it's interesting to observe how these things work -- these ceremonies, that is -- and what is considered worth celebrating.

Being a wise, wait, wizened, nope, seasoned (yes!) faculty member, here's what I would say is worth remembering: 

1. The Chancellor's Excellence Awards ceremony. If you are teaching faculty, Thursday's ceremony should, at the very least, make you aware of the awards, and, at the most, help you shape the rest of your career here. These awards are prestigious and competitive, and nominations come from the college community. The nomination and selection process is rigorous at the local level and the SUNY level, and so we should look to these winners not with envy or de-facto admiration, but with a careful and appraising eye. That's not to say that award winners aren't worth our cheers and celebration -- but I'm talking about using the fact of the awards, and their distribution, not as a kind of yard stick (not something you measure your own accomplishments against), but as a source of professional-development information. Specifically: look at the bios of the awardees. Look at their accomplishments, plus the types of service they've completed and the associations they've joined. These are possibilities for your career, too -- particularly as you just begin your tenure here. What looks interesting? What looks challenging? This exercise can be useful when determining what not to do with your career, too. Not everyone gets to be (obviously) a Chancellor's Award winner -- but not everyone wants to be a Chancellor's Award winner. (Although we can all agree we'd like some cool-looking medal-bling for future ceremonies, ammaright?) If you don't want your career to include the kind of activities or markers that the award winners have, what do you want it to include? Anyway, moments like these can help you think about, early on, the kind of career you'd like to have at SCCC.
2. The Professor Emeritus Awards: Similarly, if you listened to the biographies of the Professors Emeriti (including that of the fabulous Ellen Schuler Mauk, former president of the Faculty Association), you would have heard a long list of varied accomplishments. Here, I would point out that these former faculty members were being honored because they never stopped being active and engaged faculty after their final promotions; none of them sank into an abyss of reclusiveness and anonymity after retirement, but rather remained vigorous participants in (and advocates of) higher education. This is something to observe, and something to marvel at: how they didn't burn out. How they remained invested. It may seem difficult to imagine career burn out at this point, but in about seven years, you may find yourself a little, well, spent. Tired. And if that happens, it might help to remember and consider professors such as these. If you see any of them around campus, ask them to divulge their secrets.
3. Dr. Suzanne Johnson's speech: As new members, you probably felt that you were getting your first good look at our administration -- President Shaun McKay, Vice President for Student Affairs Chris Adams, and of course, Vice President of Academic Affairs Suzanne Johnson. But what you may not have known is that most of the college community was having their first real introduction to Dr. Johnson, because she just began her tenure as VP this summer. Her keynote speech was optimistic, geared appropriately toward our student audience (the most substantial reason to hold a convocation in the first place), and peppered with some personal information that let us know a little more about who she is and what she values. The most refreshing revelation from this speech (and the most important) was that she, a key member of our administration, sees the community college degree not as a certificate that proves job-worthiness or -readiness, but as process, steps taken to make one a more learned citizen capable of substantial, reasoned and valuable contributions to society. This is a message I attempt to ingrain in my students every semester, as I suspect many of you do as well, but it was particularly heartening at the beginning of the academic year to hear such a sentiment from the mouth of one of our administrators.
4. The Shark: As yes, the shark. The foam fins! The fanfare! The instrumental Metallica! (C'mon, you know you weren't missing Hetfield's hyperbolic growl.) Some of you may have been thinking, really? A mascot? Is this important and relevant, academically? The answer is, of course, no AND yes. Sure, we could survive as a commuter school without a mascot. And yes, there's often a little too much emphasis placed on sports in higher ed. But it's worth remembering your own undergrad experience, and any sporting events that you attended while there: school mascots provide students with a sense of unity and camaraderie, while the traditional humorous antics provide a kind of cathartic release from the tension that can build from too many hours of studying in isolation. Having a school mascot gives our students one more reason to feel like they belong to a college with a cogent identity, even if they commute daily to that school instead of dorming, and even if that school is divided between three campuses instead of contained in one sprawling mini-city. 

Hopefully, if anything, the Convocation gave you a better sense of the identity of SCCC, for better or for worse. Pomp and circumstance can be a little wearing, I know, and particularly after the stress of a full day of classes -- but it has its purpose, and very real ramifications, and it's important to reflect on those effects, if even for a brief while. Because faculty who are more informed and educated about the institution to which they belong, and faculty who think honestly and critically about the programs and celebrations and values of the institution, are faculty better poised to teach, and serve, and shape the future of that institution.

That's right! You're responsible for shaping the future of SCCC ... No big deal, right?

( Happy first week back!)