Suzanne Sherman
// Suzanne Sherman’s office is lined with chemistry books, and journal articles and papers cover much of her desk. But one new addition, atop a pile on the corner of her desk, is as daunting as any organic chemistry text: a copy of Robert’s Rules of Order, Newly Revised. The thick little book, full of protocol for conducting meetings, is a tool of her new role as chair of the faculty. Not all new leadership is new to the college—Sherman has been on the New College faculty since 1989 – and not all are administration appointees. Sherman was elected by a faculty vote, and her role is liaison between the two. She takes on the role as President O’Shea and the administration propose ideas like increasing the College’s enrollment, and as higher education itself confronts challenges like a smaller pool of applicants and competition from online learning.
11 New College of Florida | nimbus
“Don has lots of ideas of directions the institution can go in, and I think it’s important that he has those ideas, because the landscape of higher education is changing,” she said. “That means we need to have a president with creative ideas, moving us in directions that will allows us to be more stable financially. I think a lot of the faculty gets that. The trick here is moving in directions that we think are beneficial to the mission of the College.” Sherman is a chemistry professor by training, but now finds herself part political scientist, part psychologist, even part attorney, as the book of procedural arcana attests. She sees her job as learning what both her teaching colleagues and administrators want, and making sure they understand each other. “Don is one person, Steve (Miles, College provost) is one person. The faculty is almost 80 people. Problems get solved in a better way when there are a lot more smart people thinking about them. So I really think it’s important to improve that level of communication between the faculty and the administration.” In their few months of working together, O’Shea says she has succeeded in that. “She helps move an agenda that she perceives is in the faculty’s interest,” he said. “She’s also been a source of really good counsel of what will work and what will not work.”
Among Sherman’s priorities for her tenure as faculty chair is developing a system for how New College hires and evaluates faculty in interdisciplinary areas, and conducting a data-driven assessment of the College’s success of getting students into graduate school. At this point, she said, it’s far too early to tell how the faculty – hardly a monolithic group – feels about administration initiatives, which are still evolving and receiving comments and suggestions. And that’s how it should be: “We have
“ P roblems get solved in a better way when there are a lot more smart people thinking about them.” shared governance,” Sherman said. “Our faculty members are invested in this place, and they need to have a say.” That investment comes from the College’s academic traditions, virtually unique in the United States and requiring professors especially dedicated to teaching. “It’s a very intensive type of job for a faculty member, to be so involved with students, writing narrative evaluations, doing tutorials on top of our courses, advising students – this doesn’t happen in this way at very many institutions,” she said. “The product is great and that’s why we do it. That’s why we spend all of our waking hours working, basically. That’s not really true,” she said, laughing, “but it’s close to the truth.”