Editorial: Music Theater School Merger

The college decided not to conduct the dean searches in the 2020–21 academic year because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The interim deans will remain in place for the 2021–22 academic year.

Steve TenEyck, professor and chair of the Department of Theatre Arts, said that he was made aware of the potential department move at the end of Spring 2021. He said that the new dean of the School of Music will be responsible for both the Department of Theatre Arts and the School of Music beginning in Fall 2022.

“There are some scheduled sessions to hear from faculty and staff from both units about what this might look like,” TenEyck said via email. “So we are early in the process.”

Walz said conversations between the School of Music and the Department of Theatre Arts are beginning to fgure out how to move forward.

“I am looking forward to hearing from faculty and staff about benefts, and, so far, I have heard ideas around collaboration, curriculum and admissions,” she said via email.

Walz also said there have been conversations about the search for the new dean of the School of Music.

Junior Anchal Dhir is a student in both the School of Music and the Department of Theatre Arts. She said she is getting her bachelor’s in music and has an outside focus in theater arts management. She said she thinks the department moving to the School of Music makes sense to her and seems like a fairly harmless, understandable decision for the college to make.

“The students who are in the music school are interacting with people from the musical theater program,” she said. “There’s so many different events and auditions that are interconnected. It would just make more sense for all the information to be distributed to all of the students in one way.” Dhir said she missed out on important opportunities like auditions because the School of Music and Department of Theatre Arts are not very connected. However, she also said she was not fully aware of what the second phase of the APP was and what the process would entail, but she said she thinks that a lot of the things that will happen are good ideas.

“It all sounds like positive business ventures for Ithaca College,” Dhir said. “It doesn’t seem like anything that would negatively impact students. It all seems like this is positive.”

However, Dhir said that she felt like there was not a lot of open communication about what people should be expecting from the second and third phases.

“A simple email is enough to tell us what’s going on,” she said.

Stein also said the college is reexamining the admissions process. The “Shape of the College” document recommended broadening the way students apply to specifc schools within the college.

The Park Pathways program was included in the “Shape of the College” document. The program is expected to start in the 2022–23 academic year. Students can apply undecided to the Park School, take a variety of classes in different departments throughout their frst year and then declare a major during their third semester.

Jeane Copenhaver-Johnson, associate provost in the Department of Academic Affairs, and Stacia Zabusky, senior associate dean for curriculum and undergraduate programs in the School of Humanities and Sciences, are the co-chairs of the Curricular Revision Liaison Committee (CRLC).

Copenhaver-Johnson said that the CRLC is meant to support faculty while departments begin to think about curricular revision. She said that this is a way to support student achievement and success while at the college. However, she said many of the revised curricular changes will be seen starting Fall 2023.

“Students in some departments may be consulted as their faculty consider changes to programs or majors, as also happens during the regular program review process,” she said via email.

Copenhaver-Johnson said departments started to submit proposals for any kind of curriculum changes this academic year. She said the CRLC will be working with the Academic Policies Committee to review curriculum proposals on a rolling basis throughout the year.

Copenhaver-Johnson said the revisions vary from department to department, depending on how recently the curriculum was last revised or what faculty have been thinking of doing to their curriculum.

“We already have been hearing many innovative ideas from some departments and look forward to collaborating with our colleagues on these exciting curricular developments,” she said via email.

Members of the Ithaca College Senior Leadership team clap during the All-College Gathering Aug. 31, 2021 in the Emerson suites. Ana Maniaci McGough/The Ithacan.

Editorial: Merger overshadowed by lack of transparency

Ithaca College has announced that the School of Music and the Department of Theatre Arts will merge to create a new school: the Ithaca College School of Music, Theatre and Dance. These two are to become one, yet the response to this merging process remains divided, with good reason.

Faculty and staff responses are largely split into one of two camps: the vocal minority who opposes the merger and the majority who favors it.

There are three things of note here: 1. most who are in the majority do not have the security of tenure, 2. those in the minority are not being afforded the time such a large decision should elicit and 3. this is a major decision that was initiated by a primarily interim administration.

How can the interim members of the administration ensure a stable transition and security for students, staff and faculty when their roles are suggested to be temporary? This is a fast-paced, authoritarian move with little regard to what is being ignored — a decision that is the result of disaster capitalism.

The merger aligns with the strategic plan, Ithaca Forever, and is a part of the second phase of the Academic Program Prioritization (APP). The frst phase of the APP dealt with the devastating ongoing elimination of 116 full-time equivalent faculty positions and a number of majors, departments and programs.

The college must learn from its past mistakes with the APP. The new school merger should not be celebrated as readily as it was at the All-College Gathering.

If there is one thing that we have learned from this ongoing, worldwide pandemic, it is not that things need to move fast, but that they actually need to slow down. There is nothing slow about this merger. Faculty members, who both oppose and support the merger, will not fnd a cooperative, fair process when processes are moving along at such a fast pace.

How can those opposed to the merger of these two schools truly be listened to and respected by the college? How can those who support this decision fnd the time to fully support and understand the opinions and concerns of their colleagues on the opposing side?

While there certainly are upsides to the merger — like the fact that collaboration between students in the new school will be far easier and that the dance program is receiving a larger spotlight — it is overshadowed by the lack of shared governance and the growing schism between faculty members.