College keeps Affolter: Student campaign to keep teacher proves a sucess

As Visiting Assistant Professor of Education Studies, Tara Affolter’s time at Middlebury neared its end, the Keep Affolter movement took off. After  President of the College Ronald D. Liebowitz received a letter from education studies minor Jay Saper ’13 on behalf of the Institutional Diversity Committee (IDC), of which he is a member, and the subsequent campaign demonstrating student support behind her, Affolter was offered and accepted two more years at Middlebury, with interest in making her a part of the community for as long as is reasonably possible. Affolter completed her PhD in 2006 at the University of Wisconsin, Madison and then “inched her way into academia” teaching English to high school sophomores during the day and education courses to college juniors and seniors in the evening.

Affolter came to Middlebury because at the time the education studies department was looking for a leave replacement for two professors and she was looking to move closer to her sister in Montpelier. Affolter’s background was a good fit with what the department was looking for.  During her time here, Affolter has been impressed by the provisions made for visiting professors, the scholarship and engagement of Middlebury students and the ability to teach with rather than to students.

“Coming from a big university to a little place like this there’s no way in most other places that visiting people are treated the way that we’re treated here,” she said. She was “nothing but pleased” with the support and respect that she and students working on her behalf have challenges our community.

“We make a shorthand reference to the administration or Old Chapel but would like to see a more nuanced decision of seeing the humanity in all the people that are involved in these struggles,” she said.

All parties involved were impressed by the positive tone maintained throughout the deliberations around keeping Affolter and the lack of resistance to the move.

“It was pretty great to learn how receptive the administration was to students who were really passionate about a professor and dedicated to keeping her here,” Saper said. “Energized students can make anything happen on this campus if they’re really dedicated toward pushing and persisting that what they want is really in the best interest of the college.”

“The College listens to students in the hiring process, through student evaluations, references, and other feedback and this was a part of that,” said Dean of Faculty and Rehnquist Professor of American History & Culture Jim Ralph.

Though the extension of Affolter’s contract does not set a precedent for such appointments in the future, Shirley Collado, dean of the College and chief diversity officer, said, “The College strives to be as creative as possible when we are trying to retain talented faculty who contribute to the classroom, scholarship, mentoring students and certainly to diversity goals at the College,” and that attitude will continue to prevail in the future.

Among the essential components to the package allowing Affolter to stay at the College were her appointment as mentor to the Posse Scholars in the Class of 2015 and the inclusion of a first year seminar in Affolter’s course load. With the biggest group of Posse members that Middlebury has ever seen scheduled to hit campus in the fall, Affolter’s excitement about the program could not have come at a better time. While the administration approaches most Posse mentors with the request, Affolter’s interaction with Posse scholars in her classes at UW- Madison led her to request to be a Posse mentor within her first weeks at Middlebury. Until this time, the brevity of her term appointment prevented her from being a Posse mentor, and she is thrilled to be a part of Posse in a formal capacity.

“One of the most exciting pieces of [staying at Middlebury] is being the Posse mentor for the incoming class,” she said.

In the next couple of years, Affolter will be offering new courses including this semester’s popular “Social Justice and Education” and a class on inclusive education that she is still crafting. Her first year seminar is yet to be defined but will likely focus on race and inequality in U.S. schools. On a larger scale, the addition of another professor in Education Studies frees up all of the department’s professors to introduce new classes as they shift into new positions. Courses in environmental education and peace education are in the works for next year to be offered by the other members of the department.

Affolter will also be involved in the programming of the Center for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity (CCSRE) next year as the center’s theme will be race, ethnicity, and education. She will continue to share her belief that “peoples’ lived experiences and stories matter” and she will try to push students to break down the neat barriers that they erect between life and theory.

She hopes to be seen as “an ally and a person that can use [her] privilege of being a professor as a way to draw attention to issues of diversity and inclusion,” but Affolter reminds us all to remember that “this work is much bigger than any one person and as soon as we decide that we have this chief diversity officer or go see that professor in education studies,  it’s her work —  we’ve actually lost the bigger picture.  That’s problematic.  It’s just another way to marginalize the issue.”

Additionally, Affolter would like to see an increased awareness of diversity of abilities and the way that disabilities — both visible and invisible — play out in people’s lives.

“It’s about using universal design to create an environment that invites everybody into the learning,” she said.