Archived Edition: September 12, 2007 | Back to Current	Sep 09, 2010

On the ‘Record’: new Dean of the College discusses her goals

September marks both the start of classes and the beginning of Karen Merrill’s third month as Dean of the College. While settling into her new position, she took a moment to sit down with the Record and speak about her goals for her tenure.



Sustainability is one of the main goals for your tenure. How do you plan to further this goal during your time as Dean?



Sustainability is important on campus, and it’s important for students to take away from Williams as well. And I think that Steve Klass [Vice President for Operations] and Stephanie Boyd [Manager of Special Projects] has been going around saying this nice statement about how we want to make our carbon footprint smaller here, but we want to make our leadership footprint large beyond campus. So in that sense, there really have to be two prongs of this. One is a sort of behavior issue – really getting students aware of what kind of energy use they engage in, whether that means driving cars from one end of campus to another [or] keeping lights on. Very daily behavioral stuff. Again, nothing flashy, sexy or anything. It’s about turning your computer or lights off, reducing the number of refrigerators and appliances. Because of our carbon emissions target, a certain portion is absolutely conservation on campus; and so we feel very committed that if we’re going to commit to the sustainability goals, we’ve got to say that we’re going to change our behavior. For instance, most of the time I never have the lights on in this office. […] If there’s one issue that I hope students will at least try to understand a little bit is that climate change is one that can affect the low-income countries in profoundly distressing ways, so think about how we can talk about climate change in our courses [and] in terms of the kinds of speakers we bring to campus. And what I would hope is students themselves really take an initiative, as they’ve already done, in thinking not just about campus but about the bigger questions and that’s what it’s really all about.



It seems like working with students to set sustainability goals is really important to you. How are you planning to get student input and feedback?



Right. Now, in some instances I’m going to be coming up to you [the students] and asking. And because I was in CES [Center for Environmental Studies] I know the students who are environmentally active; I know about the Thursday Night Group. I’ll be talking with them and working with them, but what I’ve said all along, especially with faculty and administration, is that this needs to be more than just about the students who are actively committed. I’m not saying that every student on campus has to be actively committed with this, but that I’ll feel like we will really sort of advance our own understanding of sustainability if lots of students come to Williams without any interest in this at all and are thinking about [turning off] their computers and so forth. I think that if I worked with different kinds of students, we can get [environmental issues] involved with their work that would be great. My larger goals are more than just working with the core group of environmentally active students, but other groups as well, so I’m a little hesitant to form another committee when we already have a student initiative. It might draw folks who are already actively engaged. Maybe the way to do it is to work with existing groups in campus and spread the word and make change that way.



Are you anticipating any resistance to your sustainability goals?



Well, I think because right now most Americans aren’t feeling the costs or many Americans don’t feel the costs of our energy use, meaning outside the fluctuations of the gas pumps it doesn’t make any difference. In general, you don’t feel the pain if you leave the lights on, so the resistance, I think, is more from not feeling any personal costs. It’s very difficult to make those behavior links, so one might even say there’s a leap of faith involved in doing that, meaning a leap of faith in saying, “I know I’m one small piece of an enormous global problem and yet if I don’t do this, then why should the person next to me do it, why should anybody do it.” And, of course, if everybody used that reasoning then there would be sort of no hope in trying to attack the climate change problem. What is also a leap of faith is we’re feeling some effects of climate change right now but not a whole lot. It feels hot – Convocation was really hot – but because we’re not feeling it [very much] we have to, in a sense, project our minds to 20 years from now. If I don’t change my behavior, if nobody does, 20 years from now it’s that much worse. But again I don’t read the resistance – aside from, I suppose, outliers – as, “I’m going to do this just to be a jerk.” There may be some people who say, “I don’t believe in climate change,” but the science is there, there’s a consensus, so I think the resistance is more simply people aren’t feeling the costs enough to change their behavior, and that’s where I think the educational side is so important.



Outside of sustainability, what are your other goals for the College during your time as Dean?



I think I would say a couple of things: one goal is [as Dean] your job is to try to do what you can to ensure safety, security [while] helping your students, and that’s just the basic goal. You have to do that everyday, but beyond that, in terms of campus life issues, diversity, I think, remains a really important goal for me in that – I said this at the MCC lunch – it’s always a work in progress taking any kind of institution or town and opening it up demographically. Making Williams look more like the rest of the world is bound to create issues we need to talk about, so thinking about how to do that is going to be a major part of my time as Dean. Now do I have specific goals? I’m coming in on a listening campaign. I’m interested in hearing from students what the issues are and how to answer them. Sustainability and the changing face of the campus, those are two big campus life issues. A third one I’d add is there’s a nationwide conversation going on right now about the place of academic or intellectual life beyond the classroom on college campuses and what degree can we weave that into the social lives of Williams students. And that doesn’t mean making students go to a lecture once a week outside of class, but how are we going to make intellectual and academic life be something that’s not bounded by class time and assignments and homework. And that’s something I think a number of us are interested in talking to students about. What can Neighborhoods do in terms of campus life issues? Are they simply there to serve for social outlets or can they have a larger role with different kinds of programming?



How do you see the Dean’s office working with Campus Life to make this residential system effective?



[There is] this figure they throw around about when you change residential life: it takes 7 to 10 years to go get it up and running, so we’ve been in lots of conversation about it. We absolutely think we need to be working with students and doing what students want to do in terms of programming. In terms of the Neighborhoods, I think everybody, everybody is interested in trying to figure out how they can [be] places that students really feel like they own, that are theirs. […] That’s why we have, nominally at least, faculty associates. Can we make that program stronger? I would hope so. I hope we can figure out how to make that goal of faculty-student interactions through the neighborhoods.



Are you taking steps to reduce construction’s impact on students living near the construction footprint?



Meaning Lehman? Dodd Quad? Well, so far I haven’t gotten any complaints, which of course doesn’t mean students aren’t complaining. I guess to simply say we’re not going to be able to mitigate all parts of the construction process. This business that there’s going to be some Saturday morning construction – that’s just what it’s going to be, but students should feel free to talk to me about how it’s affecting them. Nobody loves construction projects, they love new buildings, but that construction process itself is no fun.