The Conservatory Faculty who met Tuesday in the semester's last monthly meeting seemed to be in particularly good spirits. They heard a report by President Nancy Dye about the plans for next semester's more intensive long-range planning and reports on the activities of General Faculty committees over the semester.
Between the review and preview, the faculty, accompanied by Dye, sang "Happy Birthday" to Acting Associate Dean Warren Darcy and Professor of Piano Peter Takacs as well as applauded Acting Dean of the Conservatory Katherine Stuart's semester of work in that position. Dean of the Conservatory Karen Wolff will return in the Spring.
In Dye's presentation she reiterated the three major themes she sees coming out of the recently published focus groups report. Dye repeated the presentation she gave at last week's college faculty meeting, focusing on issues of community, teaching and intellectual excitement within the Oberlin community.
Dye pre-empted concerns that the division had no planning team devoted entirely to the Conservatory by explaining that the attempted long-range planning enacted under previous president S. Fred Starr's administration was successful in clarifying and defining the goals and mission of the Conservatory. Dye said that the Conservatory might want to revisit these goals and missions.
Dye also mentioned her concern that the issue of financial aid was notably absent in the focus group report and that she thinks it is an important aspect of long range planning. She said that the College needs to define its specific as well as broad goals in terms of financial aid and merit scholarships.
Despite Dye's request that they respond to the issue of financial aid, faculty members asked questions limited to the process of forming and facilitating the teams and the ultimate goals of the planning process.
In response to questions, Dye explained that groups will be composed of six to seven faculty, alumni, administrators and students and have a chair. She said that each group will receive a charge from her and will meet through January and February to discuss, research and answer the charge.
The result of the teams' work will be the definition of shared institutional values, missions and goals as well as suggestions for policy that will reflect those goals. Dye said that the policy will reflect shared views only to the extent that such a diverse community can share such specific ideas. She also said, however, that she was struck by the similarity of values and missions throughout the Oberlin community.
The faculty were quiet on the issue of planning and after Dye's presentation, discussion was limited to five minutes.
Before Dye's arrival the faculty heard reports from GF faculty committees by members of those committees. "I think it's very useful to have some sense of what's going on around us," Stuart said explaining her reason for including the reports.
Michael Mandaren, director of Conservatory admissions, also gave a report on the status of the incoming class applicant prospects. He said that they have 11,000 prospects now, six percent higher than the number they had last year at this time.
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