Yesterday I sat through what will probably be the last history department faculty meeting of my career.
It was on ZOOM.
Next Fall the history professors, five in all, will join three political science professors to form the Messiah University Department of History and Politics. I still don’t fully understand why we are merging. The administration tells us that it has something to do with saving money, but I have not seen documentation about just how much money it will save. I have also not seen any reports on whether or not the amount of savings will make-up for the sense of loss, disconnection, and morale many of us in the old history department are experiencing right now.
Let me explain:
I came to Messiah College almost twenty years ago because I was excited about working in a Christian college that had a strong history department. Not many small Christian colleges have stand-alone history departments. The fact that Messiah had such a department was an important part of my decision to turn down other job offers.
For the last two decades I joined my colleagues in building what I thought was a very strong liberal arts college history department. I was proud of it. We all were.
I had the privilege of leading this department for eight years. As chair of the department I tried to cultivate a sense of community among students and faculty built around the discipline of history. When I recruited students I sent them hand-written note cards that often spilled-over into extra pieces of stationary inviting them to join a rich fellowship of historical thinkers–a community built not solely around doing fun things together, but upon on a particular way of seeing the world that stemmed from our work as interpreters of the past. I poured my heart and soul into Open House presentations in an attempt to convey the passion for the study of history that these prospective students could expect to witness every day in the Messiah University History Department.
Over the years I developed a sense of loyalty to a university that seemed to value this kind of department community, even amid a precipitous nationwide decline in students coming to college to study the humanities. History departments at evangelical, Catholic, and secular universities noticed what we were doing at Messiah and invited me to their campuses as a consultant.
I even spent hours producing and hosting a YouTube series called “A New Kind of History Department.” Watch those Spring 2015 episodes here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12.
The faculty first learned about this merger about a month ago. In one fell swoop a significant part of how I perceived my work as a history professor was gone.
I will try to adjust to the changes and find my way in the combined department. I will continue to teach history courses and advise history majors. My new political science colleagues are great people and I am sure they are dealing with their own sense of loss. And I even get to keep my office!
But right now I can’t help but have a diminished sense of investment and commitment.
I didn’t realize it would hit me so hard.
