This is an expanded version of a comment made to the New College Board of Trustees at its April 26, 2023 meeting.
My name is Mike Sanderson, I came to New College in 1999 from Miami Palmetto Senior High School.
First, I want to assure you my comments are sincere and offered from my perspective as an alum, specifically, in 2001 and 2002 as editor of the student newspaper I was as involved as any student in the first meetings of this board. However, given the difficulty of a 1 minute comment, I have submitted expanded version of this and my previous comments comments on mikesand.com.
I asked to speak today about the accountability plan. As an alum, I ask the board to focus on the graduation rates. To alums every student who didn’t graduate on time is a friend and classmate whose adult life was delayed, hobbled, or even shattered.
Everyone knows New College’s graduation rate is dragged down by the onerous thesis process, everyone knows it drives students away, before and during the thesis process.
Even when students do complete it, the process is expected to be some kind of ordeal.
This is not historical, I have heard recently that last year faculty make the process burdensome discretionarily for one of our most distinguished graduates.
Tenure is also on the agenda. I see that Professor Baram has written a letter. I wrote a letter for Baram’s tenure in 2002 and he repaid me in 2004 by refusing to let me schedule a Baccalaureate exam two weeks before graduation. This humiliated me in front of my whole family. I was allowed to schedule one for graduation week, the morning of graduation, but the experience was so crushing I took 7 years to do the revisions. Among other reasons, absolutely no one followed up with me to ensure I did receive my degree. Obviously this led directly to a miserable, immiserating post-graduation experience.
Apparently many of these serious issues have been mitigated in the ensuing two decades. Regardless, I take this historical moment to focus on accountability for New College’s unaccountable thesis process and the negative effect it has on our graduation rate.
I urge the New College Board of Trustees and Interim administration:
today, to allow students who have substantially completed requirements to participate in the ceremony with their class on May 19;
boost graduation rate this year by making clear to faculty they will be held accountable if their students don’t schedule baccalaureates in time;
in the coming years, poll students throughout the thesis process about if they think faculty are helping them to graduate on time or placing obstacles, and keep the results private from the faculty sponsor at least until after the student has graduated;
better supervise the upcoming secret degree conferral meeting, and hold faculty accountable for any unexpected surprises sprung on students from that meeting; and finally
accelerate the process to make a masters-level thesis one of several options to demonstrate honors, which I would call “honors project”. Other valid honors projects could include a congressional internship, shipping an iPhone app, making a rap album, or playing baseball for four years, showing the highest level of conduct consistent with an honors college.
The last deserves elaboration before anyone jumps to conclusions. In my life since leaving New College 19 years ago, I have seen how educational and personal development is more than just books and papers. I believe that 4 years of playing intercollegiate sports would be a powerful complement to a rigorous academic education. But the “highest level of conduct” is key.
The term “capstone project” is lame that it should be reserved for the last-ditch option for students whose other projects fall apart, but students doing capstone projects should still graduate.
The process has merit. I remain proud of my thesis, The Great Ringling, about John Ringling’s efforts to develop Sarasota and how that’s built into the grounds of his estate, largely from archival research at the Sarasota History Center. It’s currently being analyzed by the Jane Bancroft Cook library because of its potential interest to the community, and the Ringling Museum also requested a copy for its library. I rather would have walked in 2004 like i expected, and the Board of Governors rather I would have walked as well.
And to the final point about the “honors project”: This must come from the board because the faculty will never go along with moving away from a a dissertation-style honors project, simply because every single faculty member made that life choice to write a dissertation, and that life choice worked out for them, and that’s literally why they’re here as faculty members. The board of Trustees and the Board of Governors should make faculty accountable-- not in the areas of classroom instruction or research, which are outstanding-- but in their role in dragging that faculty understand their job is to have their students graduate, not to prevent it. Tenured or not, faculty should be accountable for doing their job: To graduate students.
