Our Journey, Day 52

I had a meeting with my fellow historians at Bemidji State yesterday, to discuss what we plan to teach in the spring 2024 semester. There were already some courses on the books, of course; but since the retrenchment and the possibility that the History program might be eliminated, we wanted to review what we were offering. We decided that the best strategy would be to try to maximize enrollment. The classes with the most students in them are our introductory surveys, because they fulfill the history goal area in the Core Curriculum. We used to call this set of courses the Liberal Education requirements but a few years ago it was decided that "Liberal" was a scary word. I'm serious. In retrospect, I guess I should have recognized that as a sign of trouble.

In any case, we're limiting our upper-level courses in the spring. Each of the three of us was going to teach one. Instead, I volunteered to drop mine so the other two who will continue working at BSU can hopefully achieve better class sizes. There are some History and Social Studies Ed. majors who need upper-level courses for their major requirements. But they'll have to live without a final semester of Latin American History. Instead, I'll be teaching World History I for the first time, online.

That will be an interesting challenge for me, actually. I've taught Latin America several times, but not Ancient and Medieval World. That will be an interesting subject to add to my portfolio, giving me both the World History courses as well as both the US. I'm actually looking forward to the challenge of putting together an online World course. I have a general idea of how I want to teach it, but it'll be interesting putting it together and doing it for the first time.

One of my colleagues said something like, "way to be a utility player!" Obviously, it doesn't really matter what I teach in the spring, since I'll be done at BSU in May. But I would like to see the History program survive. We think we're making the right move, removing an upper-level course that might attract ten or a dozen and adding an online survey that might reach its cap of thirty. But we've thought we were doing what the administration had suggested before, and it didn't do us any good. We actually worked pretty hard to choose what we thought was the right mix of courses to maximize enrollment while still providing the sequences students needed for the majors. We were pretty close to the goal the administration had set for average enrollment -- and as I've mentioned before we were closer than several other departments that didn't get cut. So it looks like the decision criteria were not what they were telling us they were. Makes it a bit harder to plan, and it leads you to wonder whether there really is a plan, or just a sort-of random series of negotiable issues?

Ultimately, I suppose the solution to that puzzle might be not to try to anticipate management's next move, but instead to decide what is best for students and do that. If the History major is eliminated, which students? BSU began as a state normal school, training school teachers. So it does seem likely that Professional Education will survive. History already serves an order of magnitude more Social Studies Ed majors than History. And as long as the university remains committed to actually having the core requirements all available on our campus, instead of through the rest of the Minnesota State system, there ought to be a need for at least the History surveys.

There has occasionally been some talk about specializing a bit more on each of the university campuses. I'm not sure where the universal nature of a university gives way to the specialization of a "Center for Excellence" or something like that. Some people at BSU have imagined us as a place where Sustainability and Indigenous Studies might do well. History added a course last year that focused on the United States and Native Americans. I co-taught that with another white guy, which we got away with because we weren't teaching indigenous history, but rather the history of the relationship between white society and native. It actually fulfills the new Indigenous course graduation requirement, so maybe that will offer a measure of security for the guy who can teach that.

You may be wondering why BSU is instituting a new Indigenous course graduation requirement, when we're in the situation we're in? And how committed they really are? I wonder too; I'm not sure whether this is a value or a branding statement. The idea as it was originally developed (before retrenchment) was that people who come up to study at a place that sits between the three biggest reservations in Minnesota ought to learn a bit about the people who were here first and still live here. I agree. I'm going to say that again, just so people don't misunderstand what comes next. I agree. I also think (and this is the type of thing you could never say in a planning meeting at BSU, which may also be part of the problem) that this may not be obvious to prospective students or to the employers we're trying to "partner with" to save BSU. We dropped the term "Liberal" but we're going to hang onto this, at least so far. And only sort-of: we're probably not going to make any waves that would offend potential corporate sponsors. Like Enbridge, who built the Line 3 pipeline against epic native resistance? How's this going to work out for BSU? We adopted a Land Acknowledgement a couple of years ago that is read before any official event. It claims we will "stand with" native people to fight injustice. How much of the eye-rolling that takes place when it's read is due to racism, I wonder? And how much is actually due to an understanding that maybe these are just more pretty, empty words?