Strategic Working Group #1

In our listening meetings, students, faculty, and staff conveyed a desire for the College to create more opportunities for the community—faculty, staff, and students—to come together to discuss issues and events, such as a recent campus-wide conversation in the Campus Center on the impact of police violence and mass shootings and the teach-in on the February 2023 earthquake in Turkey and Syria. Many staff and some faculty cited the Community Day of Learning as one way Bryn Mawr successfully convened in the past, and while the relatively new practice of teach-ins has helped in this respect despite inconvenient scheduling for some, our working group believes that more such events—and more open discussion of pressing issues of the day—could further strengthen the Bryn Mawr community and would go a long way toward emphasizing the value and even joy of all the learning that goes on at the College, notwithstanding what some see as the tendency of Bryn Mawr students to dwell on how much they have to do (academic work, extracurricular activities, on-campus jobs, etc.). And the Teaching and Learning Institute at Bryn Mawr might have a role to play in further involving faculty, staff, and students in the broad educational goals of the College. Meanwhile, the Presidential “pop-ups” were also cited as a relatively popular way for students, faculty, and staff to congregate and relax.

Perhaps as a result of Covid and the 2020 student strike, certain faculty, staff, and students underscored in listening meetings their sense of feeling somewhat detached from others at Bryn Mawr or at least siloed in what they do in their given department or area at the College. Communication and coordination between departments at the College could be greatly improved, it was repeatedly emphasized. Many staff members, moreover, expressed a desire to participate more readily in academic-related events (i.e., lectures, workshops) at the College. Some staff, in fact, see certain faculty as having become somewhat removed from campus life in the wake of the pandemic, especially when Zoom enables faculty and staff to attend meetings from home. Meanwhile, certain staff members and faculty feel undervalued, given all they do at the College. And in many of the student focus groups, the devaluation of student time was raised. Students mentioned that there are numerous events in which a significant amount of student labor goes unpaid and unrecognized. For example, LatinX Heritage Month is organized by students and funded by the SGA, yet the College did not even acknowledge that the students put together the events and activities during LatinX Heritage Month. Furthermore, somewhat of a disconnect exists between those faculty and staff who want to maintain the traditional “rigor” that Bryn Mawr academics are known for, even as others find the word “rigor” somewhat off-putting and outdated. Putting more effort into supporting and understanding each other is important for building a stronger community. As we diversify not only the student body, but also the faculty, and the staff of Bryn Mawr, greater appreciation and support for each person’s background, perspective, and role at the College are surely warranted.

The pandemic significantly altered life at Bryn Mawr and changed, at least temporarily, the College experience for many, and now, even as the pandemic subsides, Bryn Mawr community members are still feeling the effects of the Covid era. This is particularly the case for Bryn Mawr students and the way they are handling their academics, extracurriculars, friendships, and overall mental health.

Some of the mental health challenges on campus, however, predate Covid. Certain faculty and staff, especially those who have direct contact with students, have observed an erosion in Bryn Mawr student life due to the smartphone and social media, which they see as detrimental to student interaction and student mental health. Studies have indeed shown that with the introduction of smartphones in the late 2000s, society has experienced a rise in depression and other mental health conditions among young people, and Bryn Mawr has been susceptible to such trends.1 Able to find online communities over their phones and to Facetime with family or friends back home, some students, it is felt, have had less of a need to seek out friendships at Bryn Mawr and on-campus social interaction, most notably within Bryn Mawr dormitories or in student-run clubs at the College. Meanwhile, many acknowledge how significantly Covid has exacerbated these mental health concerns among Bryn Mawr students, and as a result some faculty see a subset of their students as less engaged than most students were a decade ago. The upcoming Strategic Plan, therefore, ought to address ways that not only promote mental health at the College (and address the increasing student demand for access to mental health services),  but also reinvigorate the Bryn Mawr student experience.

At the listening meetings we conducted with staff, faculty, and students, many raised concerns about feeling overcommitted and in need of more time to fulfill their responsibilities at the College and to engage with the Bryn Mawr community at large. Why the widespread feeling of overcommitment at the College? Continuing faculty members, in particular, conveyed their concerns about the increasing pressures on their time as they juggled teaching and service with their research/scholarly work, while students, especially first-generation low-income students, expressed frustration that the need to make money, often through off-campus jobs, compelled them to forego community-building events on campus. Moreover, others noted that understaffing at the College has required them to work extra just to keep their departments afloat. Yet is this time deficit, one might ask, so unique to Bryn Mawr? Or is the “time crunch” a more universal, societal concern and an outgrowth of our hectic era and fractured society, as cell phones, the internet, and a steady increase in email communication have cut into our off-hours at home and what has ordinarily been considered downtime? These are questions that our strategic planning group grappled with, and we hope that the upcoming Strategic Plan can directly address, whether through a reduction in the teaching load for continuing faculty, better coordination of remote work conducted by staff, or continued attention to how students are paid for their on-campus work.

Both staff and faculty voiced a desire for a more centralized meeting space on campus. The Campus Center, Park Science, and now the Health and Wellness Center provide some gathering space, but none of these spaces provides a location that attracts a majority of the students and others in the community. At the margins, more could be done to make the existing spaces on campus more welcoming: some students would like to be able to use their meal plan at UnCommon Grounds; others mentioned the need for a café in Park Science; and faculty expressed a desire for lounges in their respective academic buildings (e.g., Dalton Hall and Old Library) or elsewhere on campus. If Canaday Library is to be renovated, perhaps what is now the Lusty Cup could be turned into a more of a full-fledged café. And some students, staff, and faculty expressed a desire to participate in the planning process as the College creates or changes a given space on campus. In conjunction with the need for more inviting communal space on campus, our working group discussed at some length the value of having a time in the middle of the week during the day when no classes would be held and community members, including staff, could convene or at least spend more time together. As mentioned above, quite a few Bryn Mawr graduates, along with current faculty and staff, fondly remember when coffee and donuts were served daily for students, faculty, and staff alike, and although times have changed, similar events—in addition to the Presidential pop-ups—could go a long way to bolstering the cohesive academic community at Bryn Mawr that so many of us would like to foster. A free time block in the middle of the week, it should be emphasized, would require the College—along with Haverford—to reconfigure its course scheduling and spread classes more evenly throughout the week than is currently done.

The desire for improved communication—and transparency—across the campus was also a theme that arose in the student, staff, and faculty discussion groups. This includes how the College allocates resources and how the College could make more prominent the variety of academic and research opportunities available to students. Some students wish that they could have known earlier about AB/MA programs, study abroad opportunities, Praxis courses, and majoring at Haverford, while some faculty and staff also bemoan missing out on talks and such. More effective ways for the College to promote events on campus should likewise be explored, given the large incoming flow of email we experience most days and the tendency of notifications such as the BMC Daily Digest to sometimes fall through the cracks (some rely on the Daily Digest while others ignore it). Some feel that the main issue with the Daily Digest is that it needs more structure and that certain campus events need to take preference over others. In our era of media oversaturation, more needs to be done for a given announcement to reach its intended audience.

We asked the students the following questions:

• What do students want out of their experience at Bryn Mawr?
• What special aspects of Bryn Mawr would you feel strongly about preserving (i.e., what do you cherish here at Bryn Mawr?)?
• The converse of the previous question: what do you not cherish at Bryn Mawr and wish could be changed?
• What are ways that curiosity can be fostered on campus?
• What are ways that health can be fostered at Bryn Mawr?

What follows is a reflection on the responses we received to these questions followed by additional ideas as well as specific recurring responses to each of the questions: The student listening meetings conducted by Strategic Plan Working Group #1 provided a wide array of opinions on the broad theme of how best to foster a “vibrant intellectual residential academic community” at Bryn Mawr. While it would be impossible to pinpoint any widespread, uniformly held opinion, a number of common sentiments stood out. For instance, one predominant theme that emerged from the student focus groups and from the written feedback we received is that, not surprisingly, students want to feel supported across all aspects of college life: academically, socially, in terms of health and wellness, living conditions, and when they reach out to professors and deans. Our strategic plan working group acknowledges that the College is already in the process of addressing quite a few of the specific issues and concerns mentioned (increasing student wages especially in Dining Services; increasing the number of tenure-track faculty to help alleviate enrollment pressures so students can take more of the courses that they want and need to complete their major; providing additional affinity housing, etc.). Meanwhile, a strategic plan cannot possibly address all of the needs that students conveyed to us, but what could be feasible is a comprehensive approach to fostering academic life at Bryn Mawr achieved by not only bolstering and improving the campus community but also preserving aspects of Bryn Mawr that students greatly appreciate.

In reflecting about how curiosity could be fostered on campus, most students lauded the academic experience at Bryn Mawr but quite a few pinpointed ways that the College’s rules could be made more accommodating. Some, for instance, expressed a desire for a more flexible CR/NC policy at the College, such as that instituted in Spring 2020 (the first semester of the pandemic) and continued through the Fall 2020 and Spring 2021 semesters, when students could decide whether to apply CR/NC well into the semester and could apply Credit/No Credit to a greater number of courses (for more details, see https://www.brynmawr.edu/inside/academic-information/registrar/policies/policy-archive/special-credit-no-credit-policy-2020-spring-2021). A more flexible CR/NC policy, students argued, would encourage more risk taking when it comes to course selection.

While Bryn Mawr students see their dining options as superior to that at Haverford College, some concerns emerged regarding food and food allergies and accessibility to food after dining halls close and athletics is over, etc. A significant number of students would like to be able to use their meal plan at UnCommon Grounds; others mentioned the need for a café in Park Science or a meal plan partnership with nearby restaurants. If Canaday Library is to be renovated, perhaps what is now the Lusty Cup could be turned into more of a full-fledged café. In addition, the grad students we spoke to express a desire for free or more affordable meal passes so that they could eat lunch in the dining hall with undergraduates. Lastly, some students expressed a desire to feel better connected to the campus in order to engage in the vibrant academic intellectual community that Bryn Mawr aims to offer. This includes the transfer students who expressed some dismay upon learning that they could not live on campus once they decided to attend Bryn Mawr. Graduate student focus group participants mentioned that rent costs $1500 a month in Bryn Mawr, so they need to live in West Philly and commute an hour every day to campus. The College’s Strategic Plan might therefore explore ways that would allow all students to feel better connected to the campus.

It should be acknowledged that both Covid and the student strike in the fall of 2020 undoubtedly informed many of the student responses to the questions that our working group posed to them. The student desire for support mentioned above surely reflects the tenor of the late Covid period we found ourselves in during the 2022-2023 academic year, and the array of student concerns underscores the need for a more robust support structure at the College. Counseling services was one of the top needs that students wish to have addressed. Students conveyed their experience that in counseling services only a limited number of easy-to-make appointments were available in the spring semester of 2023 and also more broadly throughout the year. Many students expressed their sense that only a few people in the counseling services could support them, and this was particularly the case for students of color. Students also conveyed their frustration that when in need of urgent help, they had difficulty getting an appointment quickly and easily. Change is already underfoot in Bryn Mawr Counseling Services (e.g., the hiring of additional counselors including counselors of color) and in the Dean’s Office to address gaps in the everyday support for students, but more needs to be done and the College’s Strategic Plan should also include ideas for improving the support structure that students receive prior to declaring a major at the College and throughout their academic journeys here at Bryn Mawr and for making more prominent at the College the variety of academic and research opportunities available to students. How to communicate to students in more comprehensive, successful ways should certainly be a goal for the upcoming Strategic Plan.

Just as Covid informed student responses, the student strike that transpired in the fall of 2020 both directly and indirectly underpinned many of the student opinions we heard. Some students felt that the strike provided them with a powerful sense of agency and the ear of the administration. Related to the strike, certain students emphasized that the College needs to go further in terms of diversifying its faculty and providing greater support for students of color. A broader focus on underrepresented groups at the College would likewise be appreciated by many of the students we talked to in the focus groups. In a similar vein, some students believe that much more could be done to make Bryn Mawr, particularly the dormitories (some of which already require renovations), more accessible to those with disabilities (i.e., ADA compliant) and that more attention should be paid to international students. The Strategic Plan should reflect a widespread desire by the student body to see the College continue to diversify its faculty and to support a student body that is becoming increasingly diverse, be it racially, economically, or the like.

• Opportunities to explore everything that they are interested in academically
  • But sometimes students got lotteried out of all but one of their classes
  • Some students were dropped from PE class
• Narrowing down one’s interests and experimenting with whatever one finds interesting
• Acquiring knowledge
• Being set up to succeed after college
• Getting a return on one’s investment: to get a decent job post-graduation and to get paid well
• Internships
• Research opportunities
• Small school atmosphere
• Supportive professors
• Maintaining connections between students and professors during one’s four years at BMC and beyond
• Building connections
• Access to Resources at BMC even after graduation
  • Career & Civic Engagement
  • Calculus I Lab, technology
• Alumni connections
• Getting to know more people and make a lot of friends
• Strong sense of community
  • Liked that Bryn Mawr was a historically women’s college and could find lots of other queer people
  • To some, the community that had been advertised was sort of an illusion: sense of
    community among the queer community at Bryn Mawr is among white peers not POC.
  • Value community with staff members and other students in addition to professors
• Diversity is a big part of Bryn Mawr
• Have fun

• Accessibility of support (e.g., relatively easy to contact your dean)
• Classes here don’t feel male-dominated compared to Haverford classes
• Students at Bryn Mawr have a strong sense of community: students not afraid to do what they can to help other students
• Opportunity to engage in the community and create your own community
  • Student Clubs
  • Community expands to staff: staff at dining hall ask students how they are doing, have regular conversations with students; students and dining hall staff check in with each other
• Amount of care administration shows towards students when it comes to smaller things:
  • There is always some event sponsored by the President’s Office or some other office
  • Writing a napkin note about wanting a sauce in the dining hall and eventually getting this sauce
• Creature comforts
  • Food trucks
  • Pop-ups to get a stuffed animal or paint something
  • Milk and cookie night at Erdman
  • Pizza nights
• Traditions
• Honor Code
• Blackboards
• Writing Center
• Q Center
• Breaking Barriers Program

• Desire to see the administration help create more spaces for community (e.g., after the shooting, administration took a step to hold campus-wide conversation about impact of police violence and mass shootings with faculty, staff, and students in the Campus Center. It  was nice to see the administration do this. Administration should try to do this kind of thing more often and to open the topics to a wider variety of things).
• Wish for more affinity housing
• Wish for more professors of color in general
  • First semester had professor who was queer and Chinese who could understand students’ struggles
  • Been really empowering to have professors of color
• Board of Trustees not representative of vast majority of students at BMC - out of touch with what current students want and value the most
  • Do not seem to recognize Asian students as minority and the struggles they and the Asian diaspora experience
• Reliance on students to form their own community
• Very big divide between supportive staff and faculty versus other faculty and staff
  • Some administrators seem very dismissive of student concerns: unproductive and frustrating conversations with them
  • Were told that students were over-reacting
  • Only big impetus was student strike: things improved quickly when students threatened not to work
  • Students are tasked very heavily with handling their own emotions
• Certain deans not very supportive
  • A lot of students want to major in a specific field and told it would be too hard for them
  • Students who are pre-health/pre-med went to deans seeking advice and resources and were given incorrect or not very helpful information
  • 15-minute time slot to meet with dean was 2.5 weeks out
  • As a first-year student, one student was looking for classes to fulfill one of the approaches to inquiry and couldn’t understand why her dean kept pulling up classes that she was not interested in.
• Would have liked more support on the academic side of things:
  • ESem is the only course that brought students coming from low-income high schools
    up to college standards
  • No catching up during strike/post-strike (No one said “You missed half the semester
    and here’s how to catch up”)
• Devaluation of student time: there are lots of events in which there is a lot of labor from students that goes unpaid and unrecognized.
  • During finals week, students are asked to sit for hours and facilitate proctoring of exams.
  • Events held by affinity groups on campus
  • Teach-ins not well compensated
  • LatinX Heritage Month organized by students and funded by SGA: administration not acknowledging that students have to put together events and activities
• Increase student wages especially in Dining Services
• Advertising and showing off POC who do well at this school
  • Weird tokenization
  • “Oh, look, we do support students of color.”
  • More often than not, support is not really there
• Counseling Services had limited number of appointments
  • Only two POC on the counseling staff
  • Not many people in counseling services can support us, mentally and emotionally
  • Some students found it difficult to get an appointment or were frustrated that the wait time was so far in the future (e.g., weeks or months)
• Way searches are run is odd
  • Understand that research is important, but one search committee seemed to pick a candidate who was universally disliked by students; this new faculty member is having a lot of trouble connecting with students since starting their TT position at Bryn Mawr.
• More inclusivity
• Career & Civic Engagement Office could do more outreach to alumnae instead of having individual students go out of their way to do their own outreach
• Financial aid office not properly staffed
  • Only one person in charge of financial aid for international students
  • Makes it harder to get a second opinion on anything
  • Would be more helpful if Financial Aid Office had more staff
  • Financial Aid Office should have more people to come up with solutions (e.g., student won fellowship but ended up not being able to accept it due to her financial aid. Financial aid office did not work with her to resolve issues, so student had to turn down fellowship)
• Better communication about academic opportunities
  • Wish I had known about AB/MA programs earlier on
  • Wish I had known more about Praxis courses earlier on
  • Study abroad opportunities
  • Majoring at Haverford
• More support for international students
  • Hire someone in addition to Patti Lausch to advise international students
  • Make Career Fairs accessible to international students (only one or two companies represented at Career Fairs sponsor international students)
  • College buys plane ticket once in four years so that international students can go home once before graduating from BMC
• More transparency/better understanding of how financial resources are allocated/spent at the College
  • Some thought that Roller Rink event in Campus Center was waste of money
  • Some thought Presidential pop-ups were costly and would rather see the College use the money to increase student wages or improve living conditions in the dorms

• It would be nice for CR/NC to go back to the way it was during Covid (when students could decide whether to apply CR/NC after seeing their grade in each course)
  • Encourages students to try things that they normally would not try
  • Hard to decide to do CR/NC under current policy, since when in multiple courses, students often don’t get their first grade in the course until after the CR/NC deadline:
    • Current CR/NC policy encourages students to pick a class that they’re not going to try that hard in
  • Want more CR/NC courses perhaps two a semester
• All-campus talks: it would be cool to have more fields
  • Fred Moten
  • Emily Balch speaker
  • Interesting job candidate talks
• Departmental talks
• One central place online that lists all the talks
  • Daily Digest is off-putting (4 out of 8 students in the first student focus group said they read the Daily Digest and they were under the impression that half the student body does not read Daily Digest)
  • Would like to receive information by own fruition (e.g., maybe go online once a week to decide what they are interested in)

• Hire more counselors including additional counselors of color
• Simplify process for getting accommodations
• Improve living conditions in the dorms
  • Provide AC (some suffer from heat exhaustion when living in Erdman)
  • Stop turning doubles into triples and triples into quads
  • Get rid of mice in dorms
  • Get rid of mold in dorms
• Educate students about BMC health insurance
• Extend gym hours
• Make food more accessible
  • Extend hours in dining hall
  • Allow use of OneCard in UnCommon Grounds
  • Partner with nearby restaurants so students could use their meal plan there

• Provide monthly SEPTA passes to Philly so students can take advantage of opportunities/events in Philly.
• Offer more two-course 360s to broaden accessibility of 360 program for S.T.E.M. majors.
• Have a small pharmacy on campus or at least have the College provide transportation to CVS each week.
• Make personal trainers available to non-athlete students as well.
• Record class lectures for all courses (helpful for going back to review information).
• Encourage the posting of course schedules earlier so students have more time to plan.
• Crack down on students smoking in the dorms (DLT cannot prevent it, since there is no punishment; maybe it should be an Honor Code violation).
• More washers and dryers in the dorms.
• More water bottle filters on campus.
• Tours of fun locations on campus for current students (e.g., By the “Radnor dip in grass” students could get a tarp and fill it with water for a pool party).
• More frequent Tri-Co vans (more access to Swarthmore courses).
• Avoid scheduling labs right after lectures for a given course (brain is tired after class, making it difficult to understand what is going on in lab).
• Revamp the THRIVE program.
• Extend period of time for laptop loaners from just four days to two weeks or one month (when one student, who could not afford a new laptop, borrowed one from Canaday she returned it after four days at which point all her files on the laptop were wiped off the laptop before she could borrow it again).

• Assign faculty/staff mentors to cohorts of ten students starting in their first year (e.g., make support that Posse students get from their faculty/staff mentors available to all students).
• Provide creative ways for students (and other community members) to express themselves at the College (e.g., painting a mural).
• Display student art on campus.
• Foster an environment where community members can feel safe to learn about other people’s cultures.
• Provide graduate students with SEPTA passes so that they have easier access to campus events.
• Provide graduate students with meal passes so that they can have lunch with undergraduate students in the dining halls.
• Provide DEI workshops for faculty (similar to those offered to graduate student TAs).
• Ultimate frisbee tournament for entire campus community.
• Annual day-long dance marathon that would bring whole campus together (maybe raise money for kids with cancer).
• Advertise MakerSpace more.
• Open houses for departments on campus at the beginning of the fall semester.

We asked the staff focus group to give feedback/input (or to provide written feedback) on the following questions:

• What do you think students want out of their experience at Bryn Mawr?
• What do each of you want out of your Bryn Mawr “experience”?
• What special aspects of Bryn Mawr would you feel strongly about preserving (i.e., what do you cherish here at Bryn Mawr?)?
• What do you not cherish about Bryn Mawr and wish could be changed?
• What are ways that curiosity can be fostered on campus?
• What are ways that health can be fostered at Bryn Mawr?

What follows is a reflection on the responses we rekceived to these questions followed by additional ideas as well as specific recurring responses to each of the questions:

The staff listening meetings conducted by Strategic Plan Working Group #1 provided a useful, often eye-opening perspective on Bryn Mawr and on how best to foster a “vibrant intellectual residential academic community” at the College. Regarding the academic community that currently exists at Bryn Mawr, many staff members said they are quite proud to work at the College, yet they see ways that staff could be better integrated into the everyday fabric of Bryn Mawr. Too great a divide, quite a few acknowledged, exists between faculty and staff and that more could be done to have faculty and staff working in sync at the College. Many staff would like to be involved more than they presently are in campus discussions and debates, for instance. Furthermore, some staff members noted a siloing of departments on campus, thus suggesting that better coordination between various offices would enhance work efficiency on campus and strengthen the vibrancy of the Bryn Mawr academic community. How a strategic plan could address these concerns remains to be seen, but at our listening meetings with staff members what emerged was the impression that the established culture and traditional ways of doing business at Bryn Mawr sometimes undermine the intellectual vibrancy and overall health of the College.

As we also discovered in our discussions with faculty, the issue of time—or lack thereof—ranks high on the list of concerns for staff. Many noted that not enough hours exist in the day for them to do their jobs and to take advantage of all that Bryn Mawr has to offer. From understaffed departments to constant demands being placed on staff to respond to email, etc., work for some under such time constraints has become quite challenging, especially in the late Covid period when time has seemed at such a deficit. Thus, a common lunch hour, when the campus community could come together in a potentially relaxed way, would be appreciated by many of the staff members we spoke with, given that it would provide staff the opportunity to interact more leisurely with faculty and students than they currently do. Many staff members, incidentally, spoke fondly of the Community Day of Learning that has now been replaced by teach-ins, which have proven harder for staff members to attend. Were a Strategic Plan to implement a common hour when classes did not convene and more campus-wide events or discussions could transpire, staff would need to be closely involved in the planning and implementation of such a schedule.

The issue of remote work was raised by multiple staff members. The pluses and minuses of remote work, especially as it pertains to fostering a vibrant academic community, was discussed in several staff focus groups and in our working group. On the one hand, a generous remote work policy appeals to many staff and is seen as something that can attract to Bryn Mawr good candidates for positions and can keep staff members at the College; on the other hand, remote work risks creating a sparse environment in which staff could potentially become alienated or even fractured, with less day-to-day interaction between colleagues and more meetings conducted over Zoom. Remote work can help with accessibility and time efficiency, but it can also reduce personal interaction and create the need for more meetings or more email. The upcoming strategic plan should take into consideration the ways remote work has changed the workplace environment at the College, as it has throughout society; and the strategic plan might also explore ways to further integrate remote work and how the academic community at Bryn Mawr can best function with so many staff members working on campus three or four days a week.

A final staff-related issue that might be addressed by a strategic plan is the issue of staff benefits. For the most part, generous benefits help attract staff to the College, yet numerous staff members voiced a desire for the College’s educational benefit for children of employees to be applied to themselves so that they could continue their own education and training. A number of staff members hope that the College might someday provide them the opportunity to take classes off campus to further their degree. On a somewhat smaller scale, meanwhile, staff wondered whether more fitness classes and such could be made available to them on campus. And lastly, better support from the College for staff using public transportation (i.e., SEPTA) was raised in our listening meetings.

• Exciting classes that they feel will do them some good in the world
• Access to classes in the areas that they want that they can’t get spaces in
• Resources - physical resources, academic support, funding/money, access to internships, etc.
• Summer opportunities - courses, funded abroad programs, housing, etc.
• Want answers/problems resolved more quickly than what the College can currently provide
• Access to resources they are sold (at some point) by the College that do not necessarily materialize (e.g., When students apply to the College, they are told that all these interesting courses in various fields are available to them, that they can take courses at Penn and Swarthmore, that they can take 360 courses, Praxis courses, that they have many study abroad options, etc. But when they get to BMC, they find out that preregistration is stressful and that they sometimes get lotteried out of multiple courses, that it is not so easy to take Penn classes due to the timing, the SEPTA schedule, the expense of commuting to Penn, that the transportation to Swarthmore is not that convenient (van does not run that often and timing of van does not always work for them to get to class on time or to come back to BMC in time to take another class), that 360 courses are not always accessible to them if they major in certain disciplines, that requirements in certain majors make it impossible to study abroad.)
• Accessibility to professors
• Mentorship
• Attractive learning spaces
• Small class size
• To be treated with respect
• Depends on the student: some looking for space that is nurturing for them personally, others looking for academic rigor, beautiful space, Honor Code, reputation of institution, academic challenges, close relationships with faculty members
• Safe place to be themselves and to challenge themselves
• Safe and nurturing community so that they can ask questions and try something new
• Find out who they are
• Find community that will last beyond here (e.g., social and professional networks)
• Support (emotional, medical, etc.)
• Self-governance

• Feel like I’m making a difference (have an impact on the community)
• Feel valued
• Respect in general and respect from faculty in particular
• Intellectually stimulating environment
• Interacting with interesting people who are really engaged
• Community and camaraderie
• More opportunities to get together as a community – common hour, space
• Supporting overall professional growth
• More professional development opportunities (e.g., classes at nearby universities)
• Competitive job market for open positions at Bryn Mawr
• Good salary and benefits
• A place that nurtures staff
• To feel supported and trusted
• Feeling of being acknowledged
• Staff recognized for their contributions
• Having more opportunities to collaborate
• Having ways to get outside of our own silos
• More consistency and proactive planning around institutional identity
• Transparency regarding parental leave
• Transparency regarding pay structure
• More opportunities to be proactive and have interactions with students
• Flexibility with scheduling – when and where you work
• Improved physical workspace – decrease rodents, climate control, increase toilet paper
• Hire more people to do the work – overworked, urgency for deadlines – lack of time

• Being part of a women’s institution
• Cherish the mission
• Traditions
• Trees, landscaping
• Benefits
• Education and visiting educators – visiting speakers – this is a gift
• The College is very thoughtful and inclusive. Discussions about world events. Actively engaging in uncomfortable topics.
• Tri-College

• Have enough staff to do the work that needs to get done
  • Many staff members are doing multiple jobs in addition to the one they were hired to do
  • Would like recognition for wearing multiple hats for a long period of time
• Want higher wages
• More flexible remote work policy
• Get rid of the word rigor without getting rid of the concept of challenge
• Get rid of paper timesheets
• Finding more ways to celebrate/have more joy in the community
• A more proactive stance to the College’s DEIA efforts
• Being more transparent about the College’s operations
• Shared training around language and technology
• Having more time/staff/resources to be proactive about all aspects of our jobs and systems
• Having open lunch hour
• If something is put in place for faculty and students, do not neglect staff.
• More staff education – support the education of staff versus children of staff
  • Being able to support taking classes off campus to further their degree
  • Tuition remission for the staff equal to what staff get for children
• More support for professional growth
• Support transportation – public transit
• Get rid of false barriers of staff benefits
• Access to free fitness classes in the gym
• More opportunities to connect and have conversations
• Staff and faculty – feels like there is a division, create opportunities for “inter-mixing”
• Connect with faculty in-depth, feeling welcomed to come into the space
• Faculty and staff are treated so differently, and they do not connect with each other. How can we become more unified? The connection would enhance the student experience.
• Making connections across staff departments – how is this fostered?
• Increasing lead time on event announcements
• Bring back Community Day of Learning – positive experience interacting with all aspects of the College (students, faculty and staff). Teach-ins replaced this. Difficult to attend because work gets in the way.

• More pass/fail classes to try something you’re not good at it.
• Do you uncover the P/F grade for academic honors?
• Lot of events on campus and a ton of things you can go to … if you have time.
• QR codes around campus as a way to pull up ideas around campus. Do students use them?
• But it does inspire people to find out more.
• Learning-based goals make it possible to take the time to attend a lecture as a component of the job. That incentivizes learning and curiosity.
• Teach-ins do a good job of building curiosity. Went to teach-ins as a way of getting beyond courses.
• Bring in external speakers to talk about timely and newsworthy topics.
• Not always known whether staff are welcome at particular events. Are they just for students or faculty?
• Plenty of curiosity on campus…not enough time to engage

• Physically – more fun or play or outdoor activities. We should find ways for staff to join things. Tennis, yoga class, walking club, not really aware of all of them. The more of those, the better.
• Encourage work/life balance. Don’t penalize those who choose not to respond at night after hours and on weekends.
• Resources to promote mental health (e.g., access to counseling)
• Access to nutritionist
• Keep Health Center open at night.

We asked the faculty to give feedback/input to the following questions:

• How can we strengthen the student experience of Bryn Mawr as a truly vibrant intellectual residential community?
• How can we do the same for faculty?
• What policies and practices of Bryn Mawr would you feel strongly about preserving; and conversely, are there existing programs, structures, and systems that hinder the College from achieving our goals?
• What are some ways that intellectual curiosity can be fostered on campus beyond the classroom?
• How might we re-think the ways that we organize advising and student life and co-curricular programming in order to promote student health and enhance experiences of belonging and inclusion?

Questions 1 and 2 were answered directly, while answers to the following questions can be found within the Detailed Feedback Items I - IV below.

• What policies and practices of Bryn Mawr would you feel strongly about preserving; and conversely, are there existing programs, structures, and systems that hinder the College from achieving our goals?
• What are some ways that intellectual curiosity can be fostered on campus beyond the classroom?
• How might we re-think the ways that we organize advising and student life and co-curricular programming in order to promote student health and enhance experiences of belonging and inclusion?

Academic Experience

• Put more emphasis on and provide more support for co-teaching beyond the 360 program.
• Interdisciplinary courses attract students.
• Have faculty affiliated with different dorms; have a set term and then rotate so that many people get opportunities to participate; attach a stipend; perhaps propose or offer timely themes or topics to bring students together (versus waiting for challenging issues to arise and being reactive).
• Develop a Community Advisory Board with students to build relationships between and among students, faculty, staff and neighboring organizations and institutions focused around a sense of community connection.
• Expand summer research program for students – students’ research experience makes them very competitive as they apply for jobs or graduate school.
• Career and Civic Engagement should reach out to more departments to identify internships in different disciplines.
• Faculty need to model for students intellectual resilience and tolerance. We should invite speakers on campus who represent unpopular views and have students and faculty openly debate these issues from different perspectives.
• For the benefit of faculty as well as the benefit of students, make it easier for faculty to eat in the dining hall with students without having to go through procurement of meal tickets; make it easier simply to use OneCard.
• Faculty engagement with students and advisement needs to begin as soon as students arrive on campus, rather than relying on staff and students to set the tone. The Academic Fair is not effective beyond class recruitment.
• It was noted that S.T.E.M. students and faculty have the opportunity to interact more closely through the labs. Faculty in the Humanities and Social Sciences could consider having the equivalent of a lab where faculty and students could gather to discuss academic matters outside of the classroom.
• Have informal brown-bag sessions to share people’s work in class and life—constructive spaces to talk about energized and energizing engagement; each year, four different units could sign up to host these (faculty, staff, administrators). Pensby successfully offered forums like this, and in an earlier iteration, the Center for Science in Society did the same.
• Faculty and staff should make an effort to support student athletes: attend their sports events, wear Bryn Mawr swag and show school spirit.
• Revive the practice of having the campus read the same book and schedule events around this collective reading.
• The Athletics Program could sponsor community wide events, such as “Yoga on the Green.”
• Revisit and strengthen the ESem program, as some note the lack of faculty interest and engagement in the ESems, which would be a logical place to create a cohort of students since all first-year students are required to take them. One idea would be to ensure that only continuing faculty teach the freshmen seminars, with adequate compensation. Those faculty could then serve as the students’ advisors for the first year or until they declare majors. Others felt that it is unfortunate that the ESem does not last beyond the first semester.
• Create an Institute for Pedagogical Partnership or Teaching & Learning Commons to build upon TLI and to continue the development of culturally sustaining, equitable, and inclusive pedagogical approaches at the College.
• Regularize and fund weekly coffee hour, as Director of Theater has proposed and offered. The coffee hour could be held two days a week, once in OL and once in Park; or it could alternate between these two spaces.

Residential Experience

• Hold a college wide poster session on Family and Friends Weekend. Encourage all students to participate and share what they did over the summer or the projects they are working on.
• Come up with more interesting and fun activities for students and the rest of the community. Popups have not really worked especially for faculty who need to plan ahead. Some ideas for activities include mock debates between professors, annual book giveaways from the faculty, academic trivia games, outdoor fairs.
• Make faculty families feel welcome on campus. They should be invited more often on campus to events such as the Labor Day picnic.
• Make all events more visible throughout the campus. Posting them on the Daily Digest has not proven to be the most effective way of advertising events.
• Have kiosks with all the posters from across the campus. Make activities, lectures, more visible to more members of the community.
• Make LED displays announcing the day’s events available in Dalton, Old Library and other buildings where classes are held. If you are attending an event, announce it in class and encourage students to attend. Follow up with discussions or informal conversations in class.
• We could take advantage of our graduate programs and provide opportunities for integrating graduate students into our community.

Mental Health

• Strengthen the services and programs of the Health and Wellness center: hire more full-time psychologists and other staff, make more times available to more students. Perhaps consider integrating members of the School of Social Work as counselors or therapists.
• Make all student support networks more visible and accessible at all times, not just in moments of crisis.
• Link coaches to deans and Health Center and faculty (and family and RAs); create wellness teams with the students included in the discussion.
• Implement more timely communication from the deans with faculty about mental health issues. Talk openly about the issues students are facing and the issues we are facing with them.
• Help students deal with different types of anxiety. Not all anxiety is a sign of mental illness in need of intervention.
• Extracurricular activities such as sports are an important component in addressing mental health issues such as anxiety. Student athletes need to be supported by their professors.
• Create more cohorts of students earlier on to help build a sense of inclusion and belonging.
• Students should be made to feel at home in the community. The ideas listed above on the need for free time and physical spaces for interacting with various members of the community both within and beyond their department or program have a huge impact.

• Schedule more frequent and less formal “work-in-progress” events.
• Allow for faculty to have lunch together at a regularly scheduled time every week in a dedicated space, perhaps reserving one of the rooms in Wyndham for that purpose.
• Have an annual informal party to welcome new faculty, perhaps division by division.
• Further develop Pedagogy Circles for DEI to be responsive to faculty interest and need, such as the Pedagogy Circle for BIPOC Faculty (see this article).
• Revamp the faculty mentoring program, which has been inconsistent and only marginally successful. It needs to be more transparent and robust.
• Involve emeriti faculty. They should not be ignored, since their experience and knowledge of the
• College would be beneficial to younger colleagues and the College as a whole.
• Faculty from across the college and disciplines could be involved more in student and faculty orientation.

Those many faculty members who participated in the listening sessions understand and support the College’s long-standing commitment to the teacher/scholar model. Faculty overall devote themselves wholeheartedly to teaching and mentoring undergraduates and graduate students while simultaneously striving to produce first-rate scholarship. At virtually every single meeting, however, we heard serious concerns about the amount of work that faculty are expected to do. The College, like so many small liberal arts colleges, survives on the basis of many people doing extra work beyond teaching and research. The competing demands on faculty time seriously impact the ability of faculty to participate fully in activities, programs, and events that make for a vibrant intellectual community (and some faculty on leave even stated that, had they been teaching, they probably would not have found the time to participate in these discussions). Therefore, if the upcoming Strategic Plan is to work towards fostering and maintaining a vibrant, intellectual academic community at the College, it must surely address ways to create more time and space for unhurried, unharried academic engagement.

Over the decades, the College has created many new programs, majors, and initiatives that have proven difficult to staff and fund. Often, these endeavors pull faculty away from their home departments, which in certain cases are already understaffed. The need to contribute to programs, minors, and concentrations places an additional burden on everyone. Moreover, there is a great deal of both visible and invisible work—the supervision of senior theses, teaching independent studies, formal and informal mentoring, etc.—that some faculty believe is not sufficiently recognized or compensated. The way that the College and departments handle the supervision of senior theses, for instance, strikes some faculty as unfair.

While the College provides quite a generous amount of leave time to tenure-track faculty, particularly junior faculty, widespread consensus exists among Bryn Mawr’s continuing faculty that the established teaching load of 3/2 (five courses taught per year) is onerous and, for some, bordering on unsustainable. Although one can find numerous examples of other institutions requiring continuing faculty to teach five or more courses per year, many of our peer institutions have shifted to a 2/2 teaching load (four courses taught per year) for its continuing faculty or are more generous when it comes to giving teaching credit for the supervision of senior theses and other forms of mentoring. The 3/2 teaching load is not a selling point when it comes to attracting candidates for positions at the College. Opinions vary on how best to achieve this more manageable teaching load for faculty: some believe that it will require the College to expand the number of continuing faculty and/or hire more interim faculty, preferably on multiple-year contracts, while others see the need for departments to reduce the requirements for their respective majors or to reduce the number of electives offered in a department in a given semester. The College could simultaneously devise a more creative, less condensed scheduling of classes than what currently exists at Bryn Mawr, thereby providing more offerings to our students and more options in terms of time slots. And perhaps the College could reduce leave time slightly (e.g., the year-long post-tenure leave) and reduce the large number of course releases handed out each year (e.g., a course release to each department chair) to help achieve the more manageable course load of 2/2.

A reduced course load of 2/2 would go a long way toward addressing the time and work issues described above. Given that the incoming Dean of the College is planning to restructure the advising system at the College and hopes to have more faculty involvement, a reduced course load of 2/2 would also allow for some continuing faculty members to participate more readily in pre-major advising of 1st-year and 2ndyear students.

Time and time again, faculty expressed the desire for expanded opportunities for the community to come together in formal and informal settings. There is a general consensus that the College needs to establish a time in the middle of the week when classes are not scheduled, so that different members of the Bryn Mawr community can come together regularly. The more creative, less condensed scheduling of classes mentioned above could help us establish such a weekly time when no teaching takes place. From faculty using OneCards in the dining halls to a weekly coffee hour (such as that organized by Theater this past year), ideas for further interaction between faculty, staff, and students abound.

Some faculty members emphasized the lack of inviting, central public spaces on campus for faculty, staff, and students to convene. Mentioned, for example, was a conspicuous lack of student or faculty lounge space in Old Library and Dalton. We might create or redesign welcoming, well-lit areas around the campus, such as the underused or forgotten spaces in the libraries or the beautiful 3rd floor of Taylor, to encourage intellectual and social exchange. And let’s not lose Arnecliffe, some faculty emphasized. Parts of the college, others argued, are not fully integrated into the campus. For example, faculty at the Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research mentioned being siloed and wished that the Blue Bus could run between their school and the main campus. Or consider Athletics: the Athletics faculty would like to be more visible on campus and bemoan the fact that faculty are seldom seen at sports events or their facilities. They are also invested in the students’ success and wellbeing and their contributions should not be seen as ancillary to the academic goals of the College. Better communication could also exist between Athletics and the rest of the faculty to minimize scheduling conflicts.

Faculty are especially concerned with the continuing effects that the pandemic has had on our students, both in terms of mental health issues and academic preparation. Many brought up the changing nature of the Bryn Mawr student body and the decline in study skills among quite a few of our current students. In listening meetings, faculty underscored that the intellectual experience of students is not emphasized enough and needs to be re-placed squarely at the heart of BMC; it not only sets the college apart in times of educational diffusion but “justifies” our high price tag. We must remain an intellectually-demanding college. Several faculty remarked that lowering standards to be inclusive insults every BiPOC student and faculty member on campus.

There is, simultaneously, a need for better communication and coordination with the Dean’s Office. Faculty understand that the Dean’s Office is overstretched and overwhelmed; and, as a result, deans are at times unresponsive (or slow to respond) to faculty and student concerns. Academic issues tend to be minimized, moreover. Many faculty expressed hope that the reconfiguration of the Dean’s Office under the incoming Dean of the College will alleviate the perceived lack of cohesion and communication between the office and faculty members. Some faculty welcome the new Dean’s plan to restructure the advising system at the College and agree that faculty advisement should begin in the first year rather than trying to pick up advising piecemeal in their second year. Others, however, see this restructuring as presenting challenges.

Lastly, faculty voiced a great deal of concern about how to address the growing mental health issues among students. A big challenge is how we can support students while maintaining academic standards. See below for suggestions on how we can meet this challenge.

Several other disparate issues were raised at the listening meetings with faculty. Some, for instance, bemoaned the lack of local housing for junior faculty, remarking that it contributed to a lack of cohesion among the faculty in general. Others brought up the changing nature of the Bryn Mawr student body and suggested that the College revisit the notion of not giving grades to 1st-year students in the fall semester or the entire first year to alleviate the anxiety that characterizes the first-year students. Some faculty members wish we could do away with grades altogether. And some, echoing concerns voiced by staff members, expressed a desire for more clarity—and generosity—when it comes to the College’s parental leave policy.

Certain faculty members, lastly, said they feel demoralized and insufficiently recognized for their work. Recognition need not be remuneration. A note from someone in Taylor or a chair, recognizing a faculty member who has taken on extra dissertations or student projects or exhibits, goes a long way, while the annual celebration of faculty publications seems insufficient. S.T.E.M. faculty, moreover, noted that they do not get credit for work during the summer, and they hope that teaching credit or monetary compensation for this summer labor will be considered.