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Honors director steps down amid disagreements
By Allison Bailey
abaile19@mscd.edu

Photo by Jenn LeBlanc • jkerriga@mscd.edu Adolph Grundman will step aside after 10 years at the helm of the honors program. He is proud of the program he created and hopes his succesor will garner more support for the program.

Director of the Metro Honors program, Adolph Grundman, is stepping down after 10 years in the position due to changes in the program.

“I think the major reason was a change in the philosophy of how they wanted to identify my responsibilities,” Grundman said. “I’m not in any way bitter. I thought the job description was changed in a way that would make it difficult for me to do what I like best, which is working with students.”

Recruitment was an area of contention for Grundman.

He said the administration wanted him to visit high schools to recruit students for the honors program, which he didn’t find effective.

He said they also wanted him to take a major role in fundraising, which he has no experience with.

“I just wasn’t convinced I was going to be effective at that,” Grundman said.

Linda Curran, Director of Academic Affairs at Metro, said the administration is currently reviewing applications for an interim director.

“What I can say is that with this change in leadership we are going to take advantage of that decision to make some changes that will help lead the college towards preeminence,” she said.

According to Grundman, the size of the honors program was a critical issue.
He said the administration thought the program, which usually has between 80 and 100 members, was too small for a school of roughly 20,000 students.

The administration never gave him a clear idea of what they felt would be an appropriate number of students for the program, he said.

Douglas Petcoff teaches honors biology and said one reason for the small size of the program is that a large portion of Metro’s students do not come here right out of high school.

Petcoff said that half of the students transfer from community colleges and are not willing to participate in the general studies block of the honors program.

“That may be one reason,” Curran said. “That doesn’t appear to necessarily be true at all other institutions. This is one of the things we want to work with the new interim director when they are named. There are honors programs at similar colleges that are bigger than ours.”

Stephanie Guerra, a member of the honors program, said she feels the college does not put an emphasis on the program.

"We don’t get enough attention academically and that reflects the number of students in the program,” she said.

Guerra thinks that is reflected in the funding towards the program.

“That’s one of the things that we want to change,” Curran said of the program’s funding problems.

“If we are going to grow then it seems to me that the college would have to invest in scholarships,” Grundman said.

However, he said he didn’t feel the college was willing to do that.

Petcoff felt that it shouldn’t be solely the responsibility of the director to promote the program.

“The incoming freshmen are over at the advising office and the advising office evidently isn’t pushing the honors program,” said Petcoff. “I didn’t know it existed here until one of my students mentioned it. He said, ‘You ought to teach History of Science. It’s in the honors program.’ I said, ‘There’s an honors program?’”

Another reason for the program’s lack of visibility on campus is Grundman was only given three hours release by the administration to work on the program, Petcoff said.

“If you want people to develop a higher profile than that, you’re going to want to give them more than three hours release,” he said.

Curran said the new program director will receive six hours release, which was never offered to Grundman.

“Three credit hours is one thing if you’ve been doing it for 10 years,” she said. “We are assuming that a person coming in will have a learning curve. Also, we want them to be doing something different and something more.”

According to Curran there will be an interim director named sometime before the last week of September, although she said she didn’t know how long it would be before the program had a new permanent director.

“I have no regrets,” Grundman said. “It was 10 years well spent. I enjoyed working with the faculty and the students. I just had a great experience and I want to see the program flourish.”

Grundman plans to continue teaching in the history department.