Author: Sylvia Morrow

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Opinions

Media Representation for Minorities

“Media cannot reflect society, if society is not reflected in the media.” This slogan for Creative Access, an organization devoted to increasing diversity in the media, is a call for greater representation of minorities in popular media.

The goal of media is broad and varied – entertainment, advocacy, education, escapism – and within media the emphasis placed on each of these goals varies. Regardless, media in all forms represent some combination of what has been, what is, and our vision of what could be. There are two versions of representation problems with minority groups in mass media: the absence of representation and the portrayal of the single story.

Sylvia_quoteFailure to represent a minority is preemptive erasure. It implies that people of this minority group simply do not exist or worse, are somehow unworthy of acknowledgement. Minorities who do not see their identity represented by people they interact with in their daily life stand to benefit the most from media representation. Representation is essential for aspects of identity that are easy to conceal such as gender identity, sexual identity, or religion. Similarly, even if racial minorities, people with disabilities, and age minorities are not isolated from other individuals of their minority group, they may turn to the media for representations of people in their minority group with relatable ambitions.

Lack of representation is an issue, for example, in popular superhero films. Superheroes are models of human ideals that have been magnified and made larger-than-life. They are utopic, god-like champions of good. Yet if film portrays superheroes almost exclusively as white, straight, cis-males, it implies that these characteristics are somehow necessary to the message – that they are part of the ideals being portrayed.

The problem of the single story, as it is described by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, is the acceptance of the representation of an individual or culture by a single trait. “The consequence of the single story is this,” Adichie said, “It robs people of dignity. It makes our recognition of our equal humanity difficult. It emphasizes how we are different rather than how we are similar.” The single story is a narcotic, offering one dimension to placate our desire to understand someone while shutting our eyes to their complexity.

Sylvia MorrowAs a result of the Chapel Hill murders, social media and some news outlets have revived discussion of long-standing concerns about the single story the media portrays about Muslims. Fariha Naqvi-Mohamed of the Huffington Post wondered if the reason the media did not call the murders a hate crime was because the victims did not represent “the burly, secretive, conspiring and dangerous image of Muslims so commonly thrust around in the media….European media did a better job of covering the events then American media. That in itself speaks volumes.” Balanced representation is essential because it is powerful: it will either polarize or unite. Despite social media, mass media still holds many of the volume controls determining whose voices are heard across the nation.

Admittedly it is about as effective to throw accusations at ‘the media’ as it is to jump out of the path of a tsunami, but all of us are to some degree in positions to affect change by being conscientious. Writers, artists, and musicians are primary contributors to popular media and, therefore, have the greatest responsibility. However people in all fields – business, communications, political science, history, psychology, etc. – will in all likelihood at some point be influential in how representation is handled. Sometimes the task is as simple as choosing images for a presentation, but it is situations like these, where the images used are not the primary focus, where we are most likely to resort to a corrupt default, an imitation of flawed mass media.

More importantly, we are all media consumers. It is ineffectual to sit back and wait for mass media to change. Media content changes in fits and starts that must constructively accumulate to affect large-scale changes. Searching out multi-dimensional representations of minorities can be a challenging but rewarding task. Supporting creators and media outlets that offer better representation leads to greater quantities of balanced media being produced.

We live at a time when so much media content is available that we can easily consume large quantities of media without ever encountering a perspective that challenges us; as such, we must be deliberate.

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News

Two Longtime Houghton Faculty To Retire: Lastoria

After 33 years, Michael Lastoria will be retiring from his position as Director of Counseling Services at the end of this semester. Lastoria has been vital to the growth of Houghton’s Counseling Center, as well as student support systems in general.

Lastoria was key in some of the integral parts of the Houghton campus as we know it. In the mid-eighties, Lastoria started what is now known as the Center for Academic Success and Advising (CASA) to support students with learning disabilities. Lastoria said, “obviously it was meeting a need,” and as part of the program’s growth it was transferred to its current management. Lastoria also drafted Houghton’s policies on sexual assault and sexual harassment. “That was also something that we did that I feel pretty good about,” said Lastoria, “Our sexual harassment policy and procedures I think had its beginning in the early nineties, and I played a major role in that.”

Mike Lastoria_courtesy ofLastoria described his relationship with the college as “a good marriage.” “The college invested in me along the way for those 33 years, and I think I gave back on that investment,” he said. An example of this is the family studies minor, “a popular minor,” said Lastoria, which was co-created by Lastoria after Houghton gave him support to pick up the specialty of marriage and family therapy at the University of Rochester. Lastoria said that while many people may disagree over the state of the college on LGBTQ concerns, he has “been instrumental in at least shaking the tree” in terms of how LGBTQ topics are approached in discourse on campus. It is a conversation familiar to Lastoria who has published various research over the years on the sexual behavior of college undergraduates including a 2013 study surveying 19 Christian campuses nationwide.

Cindy Hannigan, Administrative Assistant to VOCA and Counseling Center, who has known Lastoria for over six years said, “I think one of the great things Dr. Lastoria has been able to do in his time at the Counseling Center is to be the very human, likeable, and widely-known face of the Center.  He’s helped to make it a less intimidating place by getting to know so many students in classes, in chapels, in SPOT, on panels… really everywhere on campus.”

Wendy Baxter, who has worked in the Counseling Center for 19 years said, “It has been a really great experience working in this office…he’s really grown this center over the years.” Both Hannigan and Baxter cited Lastoria’s sense of humor as a contributor to, as Hannigan described it, creating a “very easy-going atmosphere” in the Counselling Center. Baxter said, “Mike just has a really fine way of interjecting humor into situations, and humor is important.”

Baxter said she appreciates “the professionalism, the availability, and the accessibility” with which Lastoria conducts himself. She said it has helped her grow as a therapist, and offering this accessibility to students and staff alike has been central to how he “has represented the counselling center well outside of this office.”

Next year Lastoria will continue to teach the classes he currently teaches and may continue some counseling, but retiring from his position as director will leave him working at about half-time. He said, “I still have energy to work and to contribute. Whether or not I do that at Houghton after next year that’s left open, but I’m certainly willing and desirous of doing that.”

Lastoria said he is looking forward to “that time expansion…not having to squeeze everything in at once,” and hopes to audit a few courses in theology, history, and art – some core liberal arts classes that he wasn’t exposed to in his undergraduate degree at Rutgers University in Ceramics Engineering.

Lastoria, who has travelled to Israel, London, Kenya, Tanzania, and Ecuador for the college, said he also looks forward to being able to take “short trips when [he] just feel[s] like it.” He hopes to play more golf which he described as his “passion” and looks forward to having time to do things like keeping up with yard work he currently tries to s

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News

Obama Proposes Free Community College

Last week in the State of the Union Address, President Barack Obama outlined America’s College Promise, a plan to “lower the cost of community college — to zero.”

According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, the proposal aims to waive tuition for community college students who maintain a minimum 2.5 GPA and “make steady progress toward completing their program.” The plan applies to both half-time and full-time students and includes certificate, associate, and bachelor’s degrees. The plan would cost the federal government an estimated $60-billion over ten years, which would cover 75% of projected costs, while participating states would be asked to fund the other 25%.

358209_Obama-Community-College.18Dr. Linda Mills Woolsey, Dean of the College, who said she has “mixed feelings” about the plan, described it as a “well-intentioned” attempt to “meet a projected education gap” and to “make sure that there’s access to education for people from all economic backgrounds.” Woolsey said doing this solely through the community college system, however, encourages the mass-production of education,“we’re imagining a kind of Henry Ford type way to get students through their first couple years of education.”

Eric Currie, Vice President for Enrollment Management, said while initially the plan might “create a challenging moment” for Houghton, the already existing “great transfer processes” Houghton has with community colleges will be an important asset. Currie said Houghton is likely to continue to prioritize the continued development of online programs and of the Buffalo campus of Houghton, both of which more closely meet the needs of the demographic of students primarily targeted by America’s College Promise.

President Shirley Mullen said her primary concern is the current prominence of cost in the dialogue about higher education would make it “easy for the idea of a free two-year college to just be too tempting for students for whom that really isn’t the best option and not the only option,” and usually the rhetoric about cost “underestimates the impact of [four year] education on even one’s financial resources over the long haul.” She described a sadness in the potential loss, not just for Houghton, but for all students pursuing higher education if the proposal draws students away from four-year learning communities that in general provide “a more coherent education overall.” However, Mullen also said, “we would like to have more transfer students” as they often bring a greater appreciation for Houghton and a more focused drive. Currently, transfer students make up 18% of incoming students and 15% of the student body.

Currie said while he supports anything that will bring education to more people, he would have liked to see the government offer to pay two years of tuition for eligible students at any college that was able to meet a given price cap. “I would say challenge us all to rise to the occasion. Not just community colleges,” said Currie. “Challenge whoever is willing to go and make it happen…I think that that edifies some of the best things about our society which is innovation, entrepreneurship…and the kind of take charge personality, and yet still meeting people’s needs.”

The needs of the people are not just financial. Woolsey said she embraces the social good of widely-available free education, but is not sure “it will do what we want it to do if in the process we lose the richness and variety of higher education.”  Woolsey said, “These small private colleges and even some of the midsized, private Christian colleges offer an education that’s more varied, sometimes more creative, and certainly more focused on the individual.”

Though at this point it seems highly unlikely that the proposal will make it through congress any time soon, Currie said, “Whether it’s President Obama or the next President or the President after that, I think that something like this is going to come through…it’s on the radar in the federal government and in the state governments that they feel that they really want to have an impact on this issue, and I think they feel it’s important.”

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Stories In Focus

Seven Months Since Graduation

Recent Houghton alumni face the world after college.

Recent graduate James Delventhal joked, “Best part of being done….laughing at the rest of you from afar….I AM KIDDING!” In reality, Houghton’s May 2014 graduates described a diverse range of experiences and emotions as they have been navigating their first year out of undergraduate studies and for most, away from the place they had spent the past four years of their lives.

Sylvia MorrowOne of the few common threads described by recent graduates was the challenge of establishing firm financial footing. Danny Kim, now a first year medical student at Saint Louis University School of Medicine noted that even the small things like “breakfast cereals and chocolate milk” add up. Freelance videographer Steve McCord is living with his parents “because it’s cheap and there’s free food.” Amy Coon who is also living at home while employed as an artist in residence at a Clay Arts Center said, “It’s definitely not easy to return home after being away for four years at college, but I’m very thankful for the opportunity to save some money and to spend time making art.”

Similarly, Sarah Hutchinson, now working at Jericho Road Community Health Center in Buffalo said she has struggled with budgeting now that she has to balance daily expenses with “big items like rent and loans.” Sarah Munkittrick, now living in Sydney, Australia also expressed being caught off guard by the cost of “internet, electricity, rent, food… Things that are just available for you at college that in the real world you have to pay for.”

Graduates who have moved into the workforce had mixed reactions to the adjustment of no longer being in school. David Richards, who recently returned to Houghton to start working as an assistant coach for track and field said he has found it challenging to go without “the structure” provided by student life. Similarly Coon said, “I actually miss paper writing and assignments. I felt like I was actively learning. In the real world, you’re learning but in a less intentional way.”

On the other hand, William Strowe, who works as an interim student ministries director, expressed relief and said the best part of being done with college is “not worrying about researching, writing, or receiving grades on papers.” Hutchinson said working a nine to five job has given her considerably more free time compared to her time in college where between homework, work-study, and extracurricular activities she always felt like there was something she ought to be doing. Now, she said, she feels like her “personal growth has skyrocketed.”

Like many other graduates who have found the change socially challenging, Jessica Miller, now a research coordinator at the University of Pennsylvania’s Positive Psychology Center said it’s taken her longer to get to know people than it did at Houghton. However, she also shared that she has already run into other Houghton alumni, “People always say that Houghton follows you everywhere, and I was happy to discover that to be true.”

Moving forward some graduates, said they do not expect much change in what they will be doing at this time next year. Others, such as Hannah Lily who is an Assistant Manager at a Cenex Convenience Store, are still searching for a more permanent situation. Lily said, “in a year I hope to be working as a high level marketing executive…or at least have a marketing job” but since graduation she has learned that “sometimes, having a degree means absolutely nothing! …sometimes I think it’s my work ethic that will actually take me places.”

Inevitably graduation does not quell all doubts. Many recent graduates have no clear vision of where they will be this time next year such as Strowe who said, “I’m just going with the flow!” Hutchinson said, “Ahhhhhhhhh—ask me in a few months!”, and Coon said, “When you graduate, the possibilities are endless, but it’s more scary and overwhelming than exciting.” Munkittrick said, “I have no idea what next year looks like, still trying to figure out next week!”

However, Jason Orlando, who is about to go to Airborne school and continue training to be a special forces medic said, “I found I was fairly prepared for life after college.” Similarly, James  Vitale, who is pursuing a Master of Divinity from Luther Seminary, said, “even in the midst of all this change I feel I am a well rounded, well adjusted person in general, and I definitely have Houghton to thank for that.” Tyler Miller who is now a full-time teacher in Olean said, “I enjoy being able to put my education to use out in the real world. You get a little antsy to see if you can make it out here while you are in school, and it is really fun and exciting to put yourself to the test.”

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Opinions

Justice for Michael Brown

Following the grand jury decision to not indict Darren Wilson for any crimes in the killing of Michael Brown, the matter remains, in the hearts and minds of many, unresolved. What now?

On the most basic level, we must resolve the injustice in Brown’s death: a human being died at the hands of a police officer under circumstances steeped in a deeply troubling senselessness or even maliciousness.

Brown deserves justice, but justice is not wholly dependent on what happens to Wilson. Complete justice involves a larger scope. It requires tackling not just an individual but the system from which that individual emerged and the flaws in that system which people perpetuate with continued unresponsiveness.

By now you have probably heard the prevalent slogans, “Black Lives Matter” and “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot.” These simple but poignant phrases address two major concerns in Ferguson: racism and police brutality. Advocating police accountability offers partial solutions to both.

Sylvia MorrowAs Michael Jeffries said in The Boston Globe, “The simplicity of the phrase [Black Lives Matter] is a national shame.” While we struggle to figure out the degree to which Brown’s race influenced Wilson’s actions, Jeffries pointed out that, “Brown is described as ‘it’ and ‘a demon’ in his killer’s testimony.” While this does not directly indicate racism, it portrays with disturbing clarity Wilson’s sense of otherness towards Brown: Wilson has stripped Brown of his humanity.

“Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” addresses the police’s use of excessive force. A chart compiled by PBS Newshour indicated witnesses agreed with high consistency that Brown put his hands up in surrender when Wilson fired upon him. At least six of Wilson’s shots hit Brown, two of which impacted his head. After Brown’s death, the police abused peaceful protestors. According to a Vox article by German Lopez, “police donned riot gear, wielded sniper rifles, rode on armored vehicles that resembled tanks, fired rubber bullets, and launched tear gas – a chemical weapon banned from international warfare – into demonstrating crowds.” Beyond the obvious physical harm this caused, the police’s actions blew open an already perilously wide trust gap between the residents of Ferguson and the police.

According to The Washington Post editorial board, “Congress in 1994 told the Justice Department to collect and publish national numbers on the excessive use of force, but federal officials have never managed to do it.” The system will not change without transparency.

In the past few years American police forces have started implementing body cameras and car dashboard cameras. The Ferguson Police Department owns cameras, but Police Chief Thomas Jackson said the department does not have the money to implement the technology. The Ferguson police would better serve their community by wearing cameras than wearing riot gear.

SylviaShadee Ashtari and Sara Boboltz said in the The Huffington Post that police obtain military-grade weaponry largely through the 1033 program which provides “billions of dollars’ worth of surplus military weapons at no charge” to police departments nationwide. The police action following Brown’s death indicates a significant need for greater accountability regarding the equipment and its use. It would make more sense if police received free cameras and had to budget for weaponry according to necessity.

Similarly, Wilson’s actions against Brown imply a basic need within the police force to increase officer training that focuses on de-escalating an altercation. Retired police sergeant and criminal justice educator Peter Jirasek told The Huffington Post that “if you only seek to wound someone by shooting, you do not have justification to shoot at all.”

I feel powerless when faced with an issue as ubiquitous and enigmatic as police accountability, but as a first step we can sign various petitions created as backlash to the police’s use of force against peaceful protestors and supporting the dissolution of the 1033 program. In the long term we can pay closer attention to the bents of the politicians we vote for. Maplight, a nonpartisan research organization, has a map displaying which house representatives voted for a congressional amendment which would have effectively disbanded the 1033 program had it passed. We must educate ourselves because we have no simple or quick solution to injustice; we must vote into power politicians committed to standing with us in solidarity.

Ferguson has the power to take the media attention it has already gained and direct the attention of politicians, police, and voters alike by putting the spotlight on important conversations – racism and police accountability – so let’s talk.

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News

LGBTQ Conversation

College aims to improve discussion for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning students.

LGBTQ

 

 

 

Faculty and staff at Houghton College work to improve the campus climate surrounding same sex attraction through a new study, community voice document, and discussion group.

Michael Lastoria, director of counseling services, emailed a survey to Houghton students on Tuesday, Nov. 4, as part of an ongoing study to understand the experiences of Christian students who experience same sex attraction and study at Christian colleges. Lastoria said this new survey is “undergirded” by previous research but is “more comprehensive.” The study will survey Christian colleges nationwide, and Lastoria said ideally it will follow up with students multiple times over the course of ten years, “but we’re shooting for five years at this point.” Lastoria said past results have indicated that lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer/questioning (LGBTQ+) students “feel kind of alienated” on Christian college campuses while they attempt to “make sense of their sexual attractions as believers.”

A component of the survey will evaluate emotional health to explore whether LGB students experience “some stress because of…the climate that they find themselves in.” Lastoria said he hopes this new survey will yield a more comprehensive picture of the areas in which students relate feeling unsupported whether that be spiritual, social, or administrational. Previous studies have indicated that “mostly it appears that these young men and women feel that alienation not so much from administrators or faculty or staff, but they feel it from peers.” It appears that LGB students feel more supported by the gay community than the church, and Lastoria said, “we just felt that there’s something wrong there. This is not quite right.” Lastoria said he anticipates first wave results emerging from this initial survey with second wave and comparative results to follow.

Lastoria also – along with four other staff members – offered his input to a Houghton College document titled, “Same-Sex Attraction: Our Community Voice.” According to Lastoria, President Shirley Mullen tasked Robert Pool, vice president for student life, “to formulate a statement for the college.” The committee consisted of Lastoria, Pool, Michael Jordan, dean of the chapel, Richard Eckley, professor of theology, and Dennis Stack, dean of students. They felt unqualified to offer a “theological statement,” said Lastoria and instead proposed a community voice discussing “how we ought to be with one another.”

The President’s Advisory Board, faculty, the Board of Trustees, the Parent’s Council, and a few LGBTQ+ Houghton students have all examined the most current draft which the President’s staff recently approved for distribution. Lastoria said he believes that when it comes to talking about LGBTQ+ topics and interacting with and supporting LGBTQ+ students the college has not been “the best that we can be” which motivated the document’s creation. The community voice communicates a desire to rectify the “discomfort and awkwardness” around discussion of sexual identity, to put aside the “crippling polarization that popular media presents,” and to acknowledge support for the Wesleyan church’s statement on same sex attraction while realizing that Houghton is a college and, therefore, has “students, not members.” Lastoria said the community voice “is there for our community to be in conversation about” and, for example, he could imagine staff using it to spark discourse in the future “when we train RAs and train residence life staff.” Jordan said, “I think it’s vitally important for Houghton going forward to realize the value of responding relationally” and that matters of sexual identity “don’t exist in a vacuum outside of people’s lived experience.”

With this goal in mind, Jordan came up with the idea of starting an LGBT discussion group which he has been co-leading with Lastoria this semester. Every other Tuesday night (the next meeting is Nov. 20) from 7-8:30 p.m. a mix of Houghton students and staff meet in the basement of Gillette to discuss LGBTQ+ topics.

Jordan said he felt discussion about sexual identity had been “kind of consigned to silence in our community” which he saw himself as having “the position and the personality temperament to help break.” Jordan went through “significant conflict in [his] previous church” which made the conversation something he “care[s] a lot about.” He said at Houghton people wanted to talk about sexual identity but were “really scared”, but Jordan felt confident starting this discussion because he went “through one big conflict” and “came out on the other side.”

So far the group has discussed sexual identity development among college students and theological perspectives on same sex attraction. Jordan said the group has no “prepackaged agenda,” rather Jordan and Lastoria wish to “model good discussion and then encourage good discussion among the group.” Sophomore Michael Carpenter who has attended the discussion group said, “I was pleasantly surprised by how comfortable I feel talking about things that would be hard in most other settings.”

Jordan said he recognizes that students with traditional beliefs on sexuality may find alternative views “horribly inconvenient” or even a “very threatening thing” for which he hopes he can act as a “pastoral role model in saying: Yeah, look this is how I understand things too, but you don’t have to operate out of a place of fear.” In an effort to keep discourse civil, Jordan began with “heavy ground rules” with the goal of helping people “learn how to talk about this without hurting each other.”

Lastoria said, “We have this idea out there of how we’d like to see the climate in our community change. We can’t mandate it. We can’t make a rule and say, ‘OK, everyone’s going to be nice from here on out.’ You know, good luck with that. But we can begin to talk about how we think we ought to be. And we ought to talk more about how we think we ought to be. And we ought to try to do how we think we ought to be.”

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Stories In Focus

Open the Door to the Camp Closet

In the back corner of the Neilsen Center, past mop buckets and parked industrial floor cleaners, a chicken-wire fence encloses the camp closet. Around two dozen grey, blue, and green hiking backpacks obscure the wall directly across from the closet door and, on the ground, lifejackets spill over the top of a variety of plastic bins. The walls to the left and right are equally hidden by sleeping bags rolled into fading red sacks; stacks of pots, pans, and bowls; and hard plastic coolers for drinks and food all organized into neat wooden shelves, some sagging beneath the weight. Students can rent the majority of the equipment stored in the closet for minimal daily fees.

timthumb.phpWhile Houghton has had a camp closet since 1979 when Houghton began adventure programming, more recent policy changes have made the camp closet more student focused. This semester, Robert Smalley, assistant professor of recreation, took on responsibility for overseeing the camp closet, which was previously run by the Wilderness Adventure Program. According to Smalley, “A lot of this equipment was used by young kids all summer long,” when Houghton ran a youth program. These trips typically resulted in equipment damages making some gear unusable, so the end of this program should mean that “the quality of our equipment stays good for longer, and we don’t have to replace it as much.”

Regarding the current equipment, Smalley said he needs to “see what’s usable and what isn’t usable,” but some of it is relatively new. A few years ago a group of students were granted student government money to buy new equipment that “doesn’t go to outside groups at all – it’s just for Houghton students to use.” Additionally, when Houghton sold the Star Lake campus, equipment from their camp closet came here.

Smalley intends to improve renting coordination because some of Houghton’s outdoor recreation classes utilize the equipment. In the past, conflicts have arisen from schedule mismanagement; for example, “sometimes the [canoe] class would start and there’d be no canoes or not enough canoes for a class.”

Equipment is lent to Houghton programs “free of charge as long as they sign things out and then agree to return them in good condition.” Individual Houghton students and non-Houghton groups can also rent for low fees; for a 2-man tent and sleeping bag it costs two dollars per day and $0.50 per day for a sleeping pad. For now, Smalley has chosen not to offer canoes for individual rental and for liability reasons he never rents out climbing ropes, but usually he will lend canoes and trailers to Houghton programs. Junior Matthew Munkittrick said he borrowed “a backpack, tent, and stove for a weekend, and a pair of climbing shoes for a night.”

Smalley said he has been “a bit of a stickler” when it comes to safety but only because he wants to protect the students who use the camp closet gear; college groups need to have someone experienced with the equipment leading. “If the conditions aren’t going to be good, I will tell the people I think you ought to reconsider. Or I might even say I’m not going to give the stuff to you because I don’t want to be part of a dangerous thing…I just would feel terrible.”
Students can contact Smalley to make rental requests, but need to plan ahead as request forms are due at least three days before the desired pickup date. As the brisk autumn nights start to give way to wintry frosts and the fall camping season comes to an end, Smalley said he has had only a trickle of requests. Senior Sean Daigler who had never heard of the camp closet before said, “this is actually a really cool thing” supporting Smalley’s suspicion that “there’s a lot of potential here that hasn’t been tapped in regards to student use.”

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News

Two Faculty Searches COntinue for a Third Year

For the third year, the chemistry and communication departments will continue their search for new faculty to fill a biochemistry and a web communication and media arts position. There are currently eight open faculty positions departments are attempting to fill this semester, including the biochemistry and web communication and media arts positions.

Faculty SearchSpeaking about the biochemistry position, Professor Karen Torraca, department chair of chemistry, said, “It’s really difficult to find someone who has a strong Christian faith coupled with the biochem piece and that wants to teach.” Torraca said it is hard to draw in candidates when there are “much higher salaries in industry.” Similarly, Professor Douglas Gaerte, department chair of communication, said the web communication and media arts position is tough to fill because applicants generally have “all kinds of job opportunities outside of education that potentially could make a whole lot more money.” This semester, the communication department is restarting the search for this new position after college administration asked them to suspend it for a year.

This is the first year that Professor Kenneth Bates, department chair of business and economics, is trying to fill the two tenure track business positions – a finance position replacing Professor Richard Halberg, who opted for an early retirement package two years ago, and an accounting position to replace Professor Lois Ross, who will be retiring at the end of the year. Bates said, “Many of our candidates fade away real fast when they hear what the salary is.” However, Professor Kristen Camenga, department chair of mathematics and computer science, who is hiring for both applied math and math generalist positions, said lower salaries are “a secondary issue if you have people that have bought into the location and the mission fit” and who understand that the “finances of the area” include relatively low living costs.

In some cases, Houghton’s rural setting can be a disadvantage to faculty hires as a matter of the candidate’s personal preference. For the art department, however, location can be especially challenging. Professor Gary Baxter said, “A lot of artists realize that their best chance of being successful as an artist is to be in an urban setting” because of better access to museums, galleries, and a larger community that will support their work. In other areas, as Gaerte said, “Our location is not consistently a detriment.” Professor Aaron Sullivan, department chair of biology, who is hiring for the genetics position, said Allegany County’s limited job opportunities for the spouses of married candidates could be a concern as “many are unwilling or unable to commit to commuting long distances.”

For some departments, finding a candidate with the appropriate academic qualifications is one of the greatest challenges. As all eight open positions are for tenure track, search committees are seeking candidates with terminal degrees in their fields. Applicants for the web communication and media arts position who have been working professionally “haven’t necessarily been going to school in that time,” said Gaerte, making it challenging to find an applicant with sufficient experience in both industry and academia. Similarly, Bates said among the applicants out of the business world, very few fulfill the terminal degree requirement because “while in academia we see [PhDs] as an asset, in the business world usually those are considered liabilities.” There is some flexibility, however. Bates said the business department could hire someone without a terminal degree, but could put a contingency on hiring that the candidate would work to earn their doctorate by the time they are eligible for tenure.

Candidates are made aware of Houghton’s faith statement and community covenant early in the application process. This creates, as Camenga said, a “self-selection process” such that candidates that do not fit with the Houghton culture have a better chance of “figuring out they don’t fit before they ever come, before there’s the investment.” Sullivan said while this does “limit the pool of candidates,” in his experience, candidates are often “looking for the opportunity to integrate their faith with their discipline.” For Torraca, however, many of the qualified candidates for the biochemistry position, which will replace Professor Irmgard Howard, who retired in 2013, are “either not strong Christians or are more agnostic.” Torraca said finding candidates that are mature in their faith has been crucial component to the biochemistry job search as “ethical implications come up a lot more often than in some other chemistry areas.”

For art candidates, Baxter said, the conservative Christian environment of Houghton “cuts your pool of applicants significantly…in half or maybe even more than that.” Bates, however, said for the business department “within the spectrum of evangelical Christian faith, we’re widely open to different perspectives.”

In the mean time, many departments have hired interim or adjunct professors to keep programs functioning, but filling the tenure track positions would be ideal. Camenga said, “It’s really about providing some stability for the department” whereas short term hires means “you spend your time every year searching.” The Math Generalist position will replace Camenga who is leaving at the end of the academic year, and the applied math position will replace Professor Jun-Koo Park who left at the end of the spring semester. His position has been filled for the year by Brandon Bate, interim assistant professor.

The music department is seeking to fill a music theory and composition position, and the art department hired Alicia Taylor, interim assistant professor, to replace Professor Jillian Sokso during the search for a tenure track professor. For the finance position, Bates said the department has “hired from the outside” on a course-by-course basis but that in the past two years the department has “stopped teaching a few elective courses.” Senior business administration major, Bradley Oliver said while the adjunct professor for finance is “fulfilling the minimum requirements,” there are problems with accessibility as “he is only on campus once a week.”

The chemistry department has been holding out for the ideal candidate who, Torraca said, would be someone “who can really help develop the biochemistry program.” Gaerte said, the web communication and media arts candidate “has to be someone that sees this as their mission…that’s why most of us are here anyway.”