A move to change the name of Castleton State College to Castleton University is not sitting well with the some faculty at the college.
An anonymous letter was circulated to media in Vermont, including VTDigger.org, critical of the fact that the name change proposal was “never presented to the faculty, either at our monthly faculty assembly meetings, or informally over e-mail.”
“The first time the word ‘university’ was presented to the faculty (or staff) was via email on June 26th from the college spokesman, Jeff Weld,” the anonymous letter, signed “Concerned faculty,” said.
The announcement to faculty was made several weeks after news came out about the proposed moniker.
The name change is expected to be voted on next week by the new long-range planning committee of the Vermont State Colleges Board of Trustees.
Helen Mango, president of the faculty assembly, on Friday said in a phone interview that she has been contacted “by a small number of faculty members,” with concerns over the faculty not being more formally included in the name change proposal.
“While the name change had been fairly casually mentioned at meetings with administrators over the past year or so, it didn’t seem like it was an imminent change,” Mango said. “We had sort of expected that something of this magnitude would have been part of a larger, more dedicated discussion among all communities on campus.
“It just seemed that all of a sudden, it was going to be in the hands of the board of trustees to change the name to a university, which seems to be a fairly significant step,” she said.
Faculty have expressed concerns about the college’s new identity and how a change to the school’s name and programming could impact its core constituency, which is largely Vermont students, Mango said.
Both in-state and out-of-state undergraduates coming to Castleton are “looking for an education in a small, beautiful, safe place where they get a lot of faculty attention.”
She and other faculty worry that the school could send the “wrong message” and “lose track of that aspect of who we are.”
“I don’t want to discredit the views of the people who think that changing the name is a good idea,” Mango said. “I’m sure they have valid ideas for wanting to do this, it’s not a frivolous decision. It just would have been better to get all the constituencies together. We don’t all agree, and it would have been productive to have a conversation about who we are, and what we want to present to the world.
The Castleton name change discussion has come up at the first two meetings of the new VSC Long Range Planning Committee, and at the most recent meeting, a consensus showed there is support to move the request from the Castleton administration forward to the full board at the end of the month.
Jeb Spaulding, chancellor of the VSC system, said he is confident that the conversion of Castleton to public university status “is totally in sync with the goals outlined in the Castleton plan that has been widely discussed and supported at campus and community level.”
Weld, the Castleton spokesman, said most faculty support the change. “A single letter from an anonymous individual does not change that,” he said. “We are confident that the letter is not representative of the overall feelings of the faculty.”
The name change was part of the Castleton Plan, the college’s strategic plan approved after a year-long planning process which included input from members of the faculty, staff and students, Weld said.
“The proposed name change has not been an under-the-radar process, and it is supported by three years of planning, and more than a decade of growth to get us to the point where we can confidently ask the VSC Board of Trustees to vote on the designation,” he said.
The faculty assembly in the fall of 2013 endorsed the Castleton Plan, Weld said, “with zero dissenting votes.”
There have been multiple meetings and communications with faculty over the name change proposal over a three-year period, said Weld.
Weld said, “Given the overwhelming support for the Castleton Plan and the positive feedback for ‘Castleton University’ since the conversation started this spring, we are confident that it is the proper course of action to take.”
Andy Myrick, professor of construction management at Vermont Technical College in Randolph and president of AFT Local 3180, the union for statewide faculty in the VSC system, said he didn’t have a judgment on the name change.
“I think there are some really good things going on there, and if a name change draws attention (to Castleton), I think that’s a good thing,” Myrick said.
Read the story on VTDigger here: Some Castleton faculty feel left out of name change consideration.