UMass Russian dept is no more?

[James L. Rice]

To Bob Rothstein & Co., and SEELANGS colleagues:

Congratulations for finding a means of continuing to offer your invaluable
knowledge and services to the UMass community.  There are plenty of
administrators, typically untrained in management and marketing, and more or
less innocent of the subject-matter under their aegis, who find our Slavic
or Russian programs conveniently "unviable".  They are too busy implementing
budget cuts from right and left to take a look at a globe, or to consider
what options a responsible university should keep before its students, or to
take any professional initiative in revising (or helping to revise) the
curriculum in the best interests of the students and community.  It seems to
an outsider that our colleagues at UMass-Amherst may in fact have
accomplished some effective retrenching and regrouping, to offer a program
or programs that are cohesive and visible.  I wonder if they could comment
on their experience along these lines, and on the responsiveness of
administrators (if any) to their ideas?

        The University of Oregon (in Eugene) has a Russian Department with
just three tenured faculty (a fourth position -- advanced Russian language --
was eliminated with a retirement recently).  We still offer an MA, though
our ability to continue at that level is touch-and-go, and will be
reconsidered in the next few months.  At the same time, enrollments in
Russian are quite strong by national standards, and we have contrived to
teach good courses in Bulgarian and Polish (three years) with significant
help from people in other units.  It is quite remarkable, I think, that
since the collapse of the USSR the University of Oregon has hired TEN NEW
TENURE-TRACK PEOPLE in the Russian and East European area -- most of them
NEW POSITIONS, but in most cases these hires did not stem from any wish by
the unit (let alone the higher administration) to build in the area.  For
example, Sociology goes out looking for the best young adept at the latest
statistical methodology, and he turns out to be a bright young Russianist
from Berkeley.  And so forth. "Flukes" from the point of view of our Russian
and East European Studies Center, BUT HERE THEY ARE!  (When the U of O went
out purposefully to hire in the R&EE area with post-Sputnik enthusiasm in
1966-70, only SIX positions were added.)

It seems to me that ways need to be found to persuade administrators to find
new ways of organizing strengths in R&EE studies, making all the programs
under various new rubrics visible and more visible, helping students grasp
the importance of what we do and teach, and keeping alert to the very
interesting job market.
It could be important to pool our experience and wisdom in cultivating
support for our embattled but resiliant field of study, among responsible
administrators. If just ONE such could be identified, it might make a great
difference at your university. Documenting and sharing such local histories
may help some programs to enhance their situations, others to survive.
I'm not currently among the directors of our Russian & East European Studies
Center.  If you have something to share along these lines, you might put out
the message on SEELANGS, and/or contact:

                Alan Kimball, Director
                REESC UO
                kimball at oregon.uoregon.edu
Vsego dobrogo,
Jim Rice   <James L. Rice>
                                        Professor of Russian
                                        University of Oregon