April 6 Lunch Colloquium

Around the World with the Vega Quartet

 

As part of the EUEC Arts week, Will Ransom, Mary Emerson Professor of Piano, and the Vega String Quartet, Emory's quartet in residence, presented a private concert for us at the Carlos Museum reception Hall on April 6. The program was entitled "Around the World with the Vega Quartet," an apt choice for a group of multilingual musicians from different cultural backgrounds. The members of the Quartet, Domenic Salerni and Jessica Shuang Wu, violins, Yinzi Kong, viola, and Guang Wang, cello and Dr. Ransom provided introductions to each selection and also told us a bit about what they do as a resident quartet at Emory.

The major mission of the resident quartet is, of course, education. Dr. Ransom and the Quartet believe strongly that it is important to educate non-professional musicians who will be the future audience for wonderful classical music. Dr. Ransom pointed out that although Emory has a distinguished music department with 140 majors, Emory is not a conservatory, and over 95% of our music students are double majors who go on to careers in non-music fields. Their contact with the Vega Quartet (as with Will himself and the other members of the Music Department) will help keep them excited about classical music for the rest of their lives. Domenic explained that in addition to teaching in the music department, the Quartet members collaborate with faculty throughout the University. In addition, they teach pre-college student chamber music ensembles, participate in the Young Audiences Program in the Public School System, and also give free public performances, both on campus and off (including in retirement homes in the Atlanta area).

All the varied music in that intimate setting was magical. The first piece was American, a beautiful rendition of the classic by Jerome Kern, "All the Things You Are." But then we took off on our journey and heard music representing China, Italy, Poland, France, Germany, and England. We learned from Yinzi that China's music, like its stories, ends happily. She explained that in The Butterfly Lovers' Violin Concerto, written in 1959 by two Chinese composers, Chen Gang and He Zhanhao, and played by the Quartet, the first section is about doomed lovers, both of whom die, and the second section denotes their reincarnation as beautiful butterflies. This helped us appreciate the pathos of the first and the joy and lightness of the second section of this lovely piece. We learned about and heard Yinzi and Jessica play a Handel Passacaglia, a musical composition based on the harmonies in the first four bars. It was truly amazing to hear how differently the same phrases could be presented and how exciting the performance could be.  In honor of Domenic Salerni's Italian heritage, the quartet played Puccini's Chrysanthemums.  Representing Russia, Guang Wang sang the Rachmaninoff Vocalise on his cello, accompanied by Will Ransom on the piano.  

Dr. Ransom contributed a spectacularly brilliant Chopin Scherzo #1, a piece of program music in which the teenage Chopin expressed his anger and frustration at being unable to return to his family and home because of war. Of course the program ended with a movement of the Beethoven String Quartet Op. 131 since, as Yinzi explained, the two passions of the Quartet members are Beethoven and food. The Vega Quartet will play the entire string quartet at their (free) concert at the Schwartz Center on May 2.

The quartet residency has been funded on an annual basis by the Katz Foundation, which has given a one million dollar Challenge Grant to endow the residency if it can be matched by September 2016. This quartet residency program has transformed music at Emory and is a rare resource that we should cherish. Will reminded us that we might still plan to attend the Spring for Strings auction to help match the grant on Saturday evening, April 11, if we hadn't planned to do so already. And Gretchen Schulz suggested we might express our appreciation for Will Ransom and the Vega String Quartet by making tax deductible donations to this fund (checks to Emory sent to Dr. Ransom) to keep the resident string quartet based on our campus forever.

Shakespeare!

You're invited!

EUEC Theater Excursion

Sunday, May 3, 6:30 p.m.-9:30 p.m.

Lunch Colloquium, Monday May 4, 11:30-1:00 

Gretchen Schulz, Emeritus College member and Resident Scholar of the Atlanta Shakespeare Company (ASC), invites Emeritus College members, along with their family and friends, to join her for a production of The Merchant of Venice at the New American Shakespeare Tavern, 499 Peachtree Street, Atlanta. The ASC has reserved seating on the main floor for Emeritus College guests. Show time is from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. Arriving no later than 6:00 is recommended-or earlier if you plan to have dinner. Food and drink are available and may be enjoyed during the play. The menu is posted online: Click here for menu.

Gretchen has secured discounts that will keep the cost at $30 per person. Gretchen will pay for tickets in advance, with reimbursement due by cash or check at the event. If you would like one or more tickets, you can register below. Registration is requested no later than Monday, April 27, 2015. On the evening of the play, you may pick up your ticket (s) at the ticket desk. Mention that you are with the Emory group when you pick up your ticket (s) as well as prior to being seated. And look for familiar EUEC figures waving you towards the tables we have reserved.

The Tavern is located across from Emory Midtown Hospital. Parking is readily available in the Hospital parking deck and in an open lot, also belonging to the Hospital, at the corner of Renaissance and Peachtree, half a block north of the Tavern. Maps and directions can be found on the Shakespeare Tavern website. Parking in the deck is payable upon exit. Parking in the open lot is payable upon arrival.

The front entrance to the Tavern involves one flight of stairs, down to the main level. There is a good chair lift attached to the stair railing. Handicapped parking and an entrance without stairs are available at the rear of the Tavern (see details online).

NOTE THAT THIS YEAR, IN RESPONSE TO NUMEROUS REQUESTS, WE HAVE SCHEDULED A FOLLOW-UP DISCUSSION OF THE PLAY (AND THIS PARTICULAR PRODUCTION OF THE PLAY) AT THE LUNCH COLLOQUIUM ON MONDAY, MAY 4, AT OUR USUAL TIME AND PLACE. WE EXPECT DOUG KAYE, THE ACTOR PLAYING SHYLOCK, WILL BE ABLE TO JOIN US UPON THAT OCCASION.  THOSE WHO HAVEN'T SEEN THE PLAY WITH OUR GROUP WILL BE WELCOME TO JOIN US, AS WELL, THOUGH THEY MIGHT ENJOY THE DISCUSSION MORE IF THEY'RE ABLE TO READ THE PLAY AND/OR SEE IT ON FILM (THE VERSION WITH AL PACINO AS SHYLOCK IS WELL WORTH A VIEWING) AHEAD OF TIME. GRETCHEN WILL MAKE COPIES OF SOME OF HER STUDY GUIDE MATERIAL ON THE PLAY AVAILABLE AHEAD OF TIME, TOO.

Click here to register for the Lunch colloquium

The University in Crisis

SUMMARY REPORT

Emory University Emeritus College

Interdisciplinary Seminar:

The University in Crisis

Fall, 2014

January 8, 2015

PART 4:

A DIMINISHED FACULTY ROLE IN UNIVERSITY POLICY-MAKING AND ADMINISTRATION

"Administrative Bloat"

While the colloquial title for the topic of this seminar was "Administrative Bloat," the serious threat which that trend poses to the traditional university is summarized in the (admittedly somewhat hyperbolic) title of the session's main reading assignment, Benjamin Ginsberg's 2012 book, The Fall of the Faculty: The Rise of the All-Administrative University. The burden of Ginsberg's argument is simple: the unprecedented and disproportionate increase in the number of administrators and their staff at the nation's best universities in the last few decades is changing the character of American higher education by interfering with and even displacing the faculty's traditional prerogatives in the areas of research and curriculum, not to mention institutional governance.

According to Ginsberg, some of the bad effects of administrative bloat are the following:

1. The continually rising cost of a university education, resulting in impossible levels of student debt.
2. The diversion of university income to support more administrators, leading to less funding for faculty.
3. The increased use of adjunct faculty (but not adjunct administrators), undermining the tenure system, which is the universally acknowledged safeguard of academic freedom.
4. The rise of the professional administrator and the usurpation of the faculty's role in university governance even in areas traditionally the exclusive purview of the faculty, like the curriculum.
5. An epidemic of "assessment" - strategic plans, self-studies, surveys, commissions, studies, accountability tests, and so on - which are too often "make-work" projects for administrators and staff.
6. An increase in the general trend toward the corporatization of the university, wherein the following equivalences obtain: administration = management; faculty = employees; students = paying customers; knowledge and skills = the products of an increasingly mercantile enterprise.
7. A fundamental reorientation of the university's mission, wherein research and teaching, which are ends in themselves for faculty, become for the institution products to be sold to society, sources of income.
8. The university as a social institution dedicated to free inquiry and innovative thinking is in jeopardy, since those activities are essentially exclusive to the faculty as the intellectual core of the institution.

Ginsberg's book presents some disturbing statistics. Writing of "the enormous variation among schools in the number of managers and staffers they employ," he asks, "why does Vanderbilt employ sixty-four staffers for every one hundred students when Emory manages with a still grossly inflated thirty-four, and the University of Wisconsin makes do with only seventeen deanlets per hundred students?" (p. 204) He continues: "[I]f Vanderbilt or Duke or Hopkins or Rochester or Emory or any of the other administratively top-heavy schools lost a few notches in the USNews rankings because of their particularly egregious administrative bloat, their boards would be forced to ask questions" (p. 209).

Seminar members agreed that Emory might consider several measures to address this apparent imbalance:

1. The Board of Trustees should be presented with a "benchmarking" survey comparing Emory's administrative staffing levels per 100 students with that of other comparable universities.
2. A strategic plan should be developed whose goal is a certain percentage reduction across the University in the number of administrative positions, including support staff.
3. Faculty participation in shared university governance should continue to be enhanced at all levels, including perhaps the election of a senior faculty representative from each school to the Board of Trustees with ex officio status, but including at a minimum the establishment of a democratically elected faculty governing body in each school and unit of the University -- in accordance with the Principles of Shared Faculty Governance recently adopted by the University Faculty Council.
4. A centrally located faculty club should be established to promote the kind of social interaction among faculty that is critical to a culture of shared university governance.

 _____________________________________________________________________

The general topic of this seminar has been the institution of the university and the status of higher education generally at the outset of the twenty-first century. Universities are in the throes of critical change, and it seemed opportune that a cohort of highly experienced and knowledgeable academics in the Emeritus College convene to investigate and evaluate these changes, consider their potential impact, and make some determinations about actions that our University might consider in light of them.

We hope that our suggestions will be taken in the spirit in which they are offered, that of a positive and constructive attitude to the institution that all of us admire and respect.

Edited by: John Bugge

Professor Emeritus of English and Chair, Executive Committee

Emory University Emeritus College

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Emory Travel Program

Our excursions afford the opportunity for the faculty study leader to impart his or her knowledge of specific subjects or sites to the group. This is typically accomplished through lectures; a reasonable expectation is between 3-5 lectures per trip.  Most programs will be co-sponsored by another institution and the available lecture time will be divided between the study leaders. Additionally it is an expectation that that the study leader be available to the participants for informal discussions or to answer questions throughout the journey. All accommodations are paid by the travel program with the option to take a companion at a discounted rate set by the travel partner.

Bianchi Excellence Award

It is time for applications for the third annual Bianchi Excellence Award. The award, named in honor of the founder of the Emeritus College, Eugene Bianchi, Professor Emeritus of Religion, is funded largely by his own very generous bequest to Emory, as well as by contributions from many of his retired colleagues.

The Award is meant to advance the interests of the Emeritus College by providing its membership with financial support for ongoing intellectual activities by means of small, strategic grants to cover expenses incurred in pursuit of a broad range of activities, including, among others, research and writing, lecturing, training, development of teaching materials, and presentations at academic conferences. The Award will foster continuing professional development and thus play a significant role in building a vibrant emeritus community at Emory.

In the past two years the Bianchi Excellence Fund was able to support at least two Awards each year in amounts ranging up to a maximum of $2000 for a twelve-month term starting September 1st - the start of the normal academic and fiscal year.  

The application process is open to all retired members of the EUEC and applications must be received by May 15, 2015.

Click here to read about how to apply.

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