Classics Advisory Service
1994-5
Report to the Board
of Directors, American Philological Association from
Michael Gagarin, Director
The Campus Advisory
Service of the APA is now in its 25th year of providing
assistance to colleges and universities in initiating,
reviewing, and strengthening programs involving the
languages and civilizations of ancient Greece and Rome.
Its most visible accomplishments have involved the
support and occasionally the rescue of threatened
departments and programs, but perhaps its more important,
if less publicized, work is the constant provision of
advice and support for programs being reviewed or
otherwise seeking to improve themselves. Officially
sanctioned outside reviews have been a great help both in
advising faculty about strengthening a program and in
persuading administrators of the value of a Classics
program.
My first call after
becoming Director of CAS (on September 1, 1995) was from
an institution where one of the two classicists had just
retired and the department Chair (not a classicist)
wanted help in establishing the case for a permanent
replacement. He and other faculty strongly supported
Classics, but they needed advice about Classics programs
and help in persuading the higher administration of its
value. In my view, the health of Classics in America --
and contrary to some published reports, the profession
overall is healthy --lies in these small programs with a
handful of majors, where two or three or four classicists
teach Latin and a little Greek, keep up a regular cycle
of Classical Civilization courses for students' general
needs, and contribute to a multitude of campus-wide,
interdisciplinary programs. In such situations the
retirement or ineffectiveness of a single professor can
put the entire Classics program in jeopardy; and yet,
these are also the programs that have contributed the
most to the growth of Classics in recent decades and will
probably continue to do so in the foreseeable
future.
Thus the task of CAS
is threefold.
To assist
institutions wishing to review Classics programs by
providing outside reviewers and lending the APA's
support to their recommendations.
To assist
programs threatened with elimination or
reduction.
To assist
programs, especially small programs, in strengthening
their programs and adapting to changing
needs.
We will, of course.
continue to provide these services as needed, but we must
be careful not to let the second of them consume such a
large share of time and energy that they detract from
what, in my view, is the greater need for preventive help
(task 3). Ideally, we should be working with Classics
programs long before a crisis develops, both to ensure
that no crisis materializes, and where possible to make
the case for strengthening and adding to the program. I
hope to focus somewhat more of the time and energy of CAS
on this area.
To this end, I would
like to work together with the staff of the APA (who have
already gathered a large amount of relevant information)
on developing a resource guide of "strategies for
success" aimed primarily but not exclusively at smaller
programs. Such a guide would draw on the experiences of a
variety of successful programs and would include case
histories. As a first step I am planning a panel for the
1996 APA meeting on "Small Classics Programs: Strategies
for Success." I would like to hear from anyone with
relevant experience to share or anyone who might wish to
participate in this panel.
I do not intend to
neglect larger departments, some of which have suffered
substantial cuts, while others have seen corresponding
growth. I intend to focus on their situation (with which
I am, of course, more directly familiar) in the
future.
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