Personal notes on my experience leading Fairhaven College of Interdisciplinary Studies, Western Washington University
Background
I learned of the open position for dean of Fairhaven College (at Western Washington University) in the fall of 2004 from a friend of mine who was a provost at another university. I was unaware of the opening until he called to say he had noticed the announcement in The Chronicle of Higher Education. He nominated me. I applied and was awarded the job. I began work in 2005. I had the privilege of being a member of the first class of students attending Fairhaven College recruited from outside the university of which Fairhaven is a part, beginning in 1969. The period from 1965 to 1975 was a tumultuous time of many countercultural movements in America, among them a Progressive College Reform Movement during which many new liberal arts colleges were founded with the purpose of offering liberal education in new ways (with new curricula and pedagogies). [See my article: “Fairhaven College and the Progressive Curriculum,” in The College Curriculum: a reader, edited by Joseph DeVitis, Peter Lang, 2013 pp. 143-167. Appendix 1] My experience as a student helping to invent Fairhaven College in its early days led to my lifelong interest in the philosophy of education.
After the “Fairhaven Experience,” my graduate education at the University of Chicago further deepened my interest in interdisciplinary learning. Its committee structure that crossed departmental disciplines offered me the chance to study the history and philosophy of the life sciences, and the relationships among ethical, political and aesthetic value judgments. My research and teaching career continued along this line of development. I wrote philosophy and poetry. Later I recognized how much my habits of learning were due to my early experience at Fairhaven. So I was thrilled with the prospect of returning to lead Fairhaven College — a community of learning that had fostered my development – in order to nurture the community that had nurtured me. [Appendix 2]
At Fairhaven I had been a student activist involved in the debates that would shape the early policies and procedures, if not the mission and goals, of the College. I had kept in touch with some of my college mentors, so I knew of the on-going debates and issues involved in the subsequent development of the college. I knew of some of its problems and opportunities. And my kids had just graduated from high school; it was a good time for a personal transition — to take on new challenges, to stretch my skills, and apply what I’d learned thus far in life.
I brought to the candidacy for dean my experience teaching in three universities, leading as chair of a philosophy department, and administering as associate dean of general education and assessment. I had thought a lot, though written little, about alternative modes of creating opportunities for liberating and empowering learning. My position as dean would offer me the chance to deepen those ideas and to experiment with educational structures and methods that might better foster critical and creative thinking — activities that address the student as a whole person with multiple adults roles to prepare for (as supervisor or employee, as citizen and neighbor, as partner and parent). I welcomed the chance to contribute to the improvement of an already great college in its pursuit of excellence. And so I started work full of excitement and hope.
I soon discovered that the deanship of Fairhaven College is more complex than the usual deanship at a more conventional college (at this time in the history of higher education in North America). Because Fairhaven is intentionally a unique community it unavoidably has a semi- autonomous psychological space in the university which is its host. It has its own culture. In its founding days, Fairhaven’s campus was a significant distance (literally cow-pastures away from the main university campus) not only geographically, but a political and psychological distance as well from Western. Because of this intentionally thin relationship, not only must Fairhaven’s
