College Rations Student-Faculty Meals

Author: Andrea Gissing

"The College fosters connections between students and between students and faculty through a variety of cultural, academic and social events - some of which span from the classroom right into the residence hall," says the Middlebury College 2003-2004 Prospectus. Indeed, with a student-to-teacher ratio of 11 to one, students at Middlebury have many opportunities to interact closely with their professors, both in classroom and laboratory settings as well as around campus. However, the number of student-faculty lunches, normally a popular way for students and faculty to meet outside of classes, has been reduced this semester to just one meeting a week per faculty member.

In a memo sent out Sept. 8 to all faculty and staff members, Dean of Student Affairs Ann Hanson and Dean of the Faculty, Vice President for Academic Affairs and Professor of English Alison Byerly invited professors to join students for lunch or dinner in the dining halls, "in keeping with [the College's] goal to strengthen our academic community." As the faculty members would be considered a guest of the College when eating in the dining halls, Byerly and Hanson requested that the meals be limited to one a week and that a student was present at the meal.

This limitation on student-faculty meals has been hard to swallow for some members of the College community. In an Oct. 2 letter to President John McCardell, Hope Stege '04, Student Advisory Committee (SAC) Chair of Geography 2002-03, and Andrew Howard '05, SAC Chair of Geography 2003-04, wrote, "We feel that this request harms both faculty and students, and detracts from the experience of the residential college."

"This is a residential college," said Stege, "and to my understanding, the whole goal of that is to form an academic community that spans all aspects of life. By limiting shared meals to one per week, the College is essentially quantifying interaction between students and faculty. It is also saying that there are certain, prescribed ways in which students and faculty should interact."

According to Stege, shared lunches have always been a positive aspect of her Middlebury experience. "I have gotten to know my professors on a much more personal basis, and for me, that makes it much easier to participate in class, as I know that they have a sense of where I am coming from and that they will be supportive."

Howard agrees, " [The lunches] are a great way to know professors outside of class, start conversations outside of class, discuss term paper topics - it is a nice way to bounce ideas around and a great way to dive into the discipline. My interaction with the professors has deepened my interest in the subject."

This change is not intended to curtail student-faculty interaction. When faculty members eat in the dining halls their meals are paid for by a purpose-made fund in the Dean of Student Affairs office. "A few years ago we budgeted $5,000 for faculty to have lunch with students," said Hanson. "We increased the budget to $16,000, [however] last year the budget was considerably overspent."

Byerly expressed a similar concern about the motives and monetary support for the mealtime meetings. "[The] fund is intended to encourage faculty-student interaction," said Byerly, "and has generally been quite successful in doing that. There have been enough instances of disproportionate use by a few individuals, however, to call into question the wisdom of offering unlimited opportunities for subsidized meals."

"We feel that offering one meal a week through this program allows for regular contact between faculty or staff and students over lunches," Byerly continued. "If individual faculty or staff, or entire departments, wish to eat with students more often, they are certainly able to do that, just not at the College's expense."

Assistant Professor of Geography Peter Nelson, Associate Professor of Geography Guntram Herb and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Specialist William Hegman have found that the decrease in student lunches has been noticeable. "These lunch meetings have become an important component of the cultural landscape at Middlebury. During the first week of the semester, students immediately noticed the change in behavior and were quick to ask, 'Why are we not going to lunch together?' While we now may have more time to work through lunch and prepare lectures and write research papers, it is our role as a mentor and advisor that has been most affected by the reduction in student-faculty interaction," they said.

The change in the student-faculty lunch policy has impacts beyond the Geography Department, they were quick to point out. "The change affects all faculty members across the College."

"There have been much fewer informal interactions between students and faculty," said Vickie Backus, associate in science instruction in biology. "There are probably other ways they could cut funding, especially considering the gains [from the lunches]." These gains include closer student-faculty relationships, an informal forum for conversation and an opportunity for an exchange of ideas that extends beyond the classroom environment, she said.

Stege and Howard's letter to McCardell has asked for the change in policy to be reconsidered. To date they have not received a response, but Hanson said that the change in policy is "on an experimental basis and we will reassess at the end of the semester."