The Transformative Power of Education
A message from Interim Dean Mandy Munro-Stasiuk
Dear alumni of the College of Arts and Sciences
The last six months have been unprecedented as the presence of COVID-19 made us rethink how we go about the business of teaching, learning, and researching at 91ֿ. Starting March 10, 2020, the University made the decision to close its doors. We all dispersed and continued to work remotely from home. There were no more face-to-face classes, no more lab experiments, no more field trips, no more study abroad, and no more chatter in the hallways, the residence halls, or in the cafeterias. Complete silence fell over all our campuses in NE Ohio. But the work continued. I am proud to say that our faculty continued to teach their courses remotely, and our students worked as hard as ever. As a result, 1,429 bachelors students, 211 Masters students, and 91 Doctoral students graduated from the College of Arts and Sciences this past academic year. Additionally, our faculty were awarded over $17 million in grants. These are extraordinary accomplishments in extraordinary times.
While the campus is still quiet, there have been some significant changes in the College of Arts and Sciences in the last six months. First, Dr. James Blank who served as the Dean of the College for over eight years and has returned to the faculty of Biological Sciences to continue his teaching and research career. I thank Jim for his leadership of the college and wish him the best moving forward. To help fiscally stability, the University offered a voluntary separation package. Sixteen A&S faculty and 13 staff left the university or retired through this plan. On May 15th, I started as the interim Dean. I have a 21-year history with 91ֿ, serving in the capacity of faculty member, Chair of Geography, Associate Provost for Academic Affairs, and Interim Associate Provost of Academic Affairs. I believe I bring significant experience to the table as a proud first-generation student and woman in STEM. We are entering this new semester with a laser focus on student success, raising funds for completion scholarships, being ready to launch new study away and study abroad opportunities, and providing as much internship and research opportunities as possible for our students. These are the resources and experiences we can offer that truly transform lives. I know that as a first-generation student, my university education truly transformed my life.
The power of education
By way of introducing myself, I wanted to personally tell you a little bit about me and why I am excited to serve in this new role as interim Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. It’s a bit of a long story but bear with me.
From age 2 to age 14, I lived at 21F Ruthven Avenue, Perth, Scotland. I don’t mind sharing that address with you as it no longer exists. Ruthven Avenue ran parallel to Hunter Crescent, and both were part of the Hunters Housing Estate. It sounds grand; however, it had the notorious distinction in 1981 as being “the most deprived area in Scotland” and in the worst 3% of all housing projects in Europe. In 1981, I was 12 years old, living on that estate, in a flat, on the third floor of a tenement building. My mum worked in the Stanley Mills textile factory and my dad washed cars and lorries for a living. My dad always had a used car but treated it like new and kept it in tip-top shape, washing it and polishing it every Sunday. It was too dangerous to park the car in front of our tenement flat - other cars parked there were either stolen or vandalized. Despite the fact that sometimes we did not have enough money to put in the electricity meter (yes, we paid for our electricity by dropping money into a metered slot), my dad splurged and rented a small single car garage, amongst a suite of rented garages, about half a mile from the flat. There he could park his prized car without fear of vandalism or theft. To get to the garage, we had to walk across “playing fields” which were actually concrete spaces between the tenement buildings covered in broken glass and plastic bread bags that had been abandoned by glue sniffers. We had to cross the pedestrian “white bridge” which went over the railway line, and a canal called “the Lade” which was always full of discarded shopping carts. Despite all the safeguards my dad put into place for his car, vandals set the garage on fire in 1981, and his shiny red Chrysler Avenger spectacularly exploded. You are probably wondering why we did not move. That was extremely difficult in Scotland if you lived in subsidized housing like we did. You had to request to move and have your name placed on a waiting list through the local housing council. It was not uncommon for some families to deliberately set fire to their homes in order to condemn them and deliberately circumvent the waitlist process. We were waitlisted for 11 years before we finally were able to move to the quiet village of Stanley just outside of Perth.
Hunters truly was rough, but it was also a multi-cultural haven. Families placed in the estate were often immigrants from Italy, India, Pakistan, and the Caribbean. Also, in the late 1970’s and 1980’s there was a ban on Gypsy Travelers setting up camp anywhere in Scotland, and they too were often housed in Hunters.
As a young child, other than when I was on the estate, I carried the stigma of being from Hunters. This was particularly evident from my teachers at the time and from many of my classmates. In retrospect, this was embedded in both classism and racism. Most of my teachers already labeled me as “not so smart” because of where I lived. They believed I would end up working in a factory, as that was what most Hunters kids did, and thus I was given less attention than the “higher achievers”. Regardless, I actually enjoyed school, and I enjoyed the work. I would quietly work during the day and always do my homework on time.
Once I started secondary school at age 12, I tested into classes with the smarter kids. All my Hunters peers tested into the lower performing classes and they were all placed together. For me, this was quite the accomplishment, and it meant that I could blend in with the kids from the “posher” surrounding council estates. Do not misunderstand me. These kids still came from poverty, but they were still the elite in my mind. My new teachers had no idea that I was from Hunters and treated me well. However, a memory that still sits strong with me to this day, is when my history teacher took our class out to look at the dilapidated post-war housing estate of Hunters. We only looked at it from afar as it was “too dangerous” to visit. Our teacher told us to jot down our first impressions. He told us to pay close attention to the filth and the decay. Of course, I stayed quiet. By this stage of my life I was starting to feel quite ashamed of where I lived and grew up as everyone I interacted with, made me feel that way.
At age 14 we finally moved out of the housing scheme to Stanley, a small village on the outskirts of Perth. I continued to attend the same secondary school. Stanley is a small, quiet, quaint village, well-known for salmon fishing, river canoeing, and the textile factory that my mum had worked in for years. We lived in the last row of houses in the village with a view over farmers fields. It was quite the difference from living in the city.
Because I was in the classes with the smarter kids, there was much discussion of, and preparation for attending university. This sounded exciting to me, but my bubble was always burst when my dad would declare that people like me don’t go to university - that university is only for posh people - that I would not fit in there. Unbeknownst to my dad, at 16 years old, my teachers made me fill out a common university application choosing up to five universities. I chose four. My number one choice was the University of Glasgow, number two was Edinburgh University, number three was the University of Aberdeen, and finally, there was the University of Dundee. One by one the acceptances came in the mail. My dad was livid that I had gone behind his back. While I was accepted to all four universities, I responded to none, and started to apply for factory jobs…because that is what kids like me did.
When I was 17 years old, my dad sadly passed away. This was a difficult time for my mother in particular but we persevered and moved on. Not long after that, I received a letter in the mail from the University of Glasgow welcoming me to the Freshman (freshers) class! It turns out that in the Scottish system then, you did not need to respond to your university offers. The assumption was made that no response meant that you chose to go to your top choice. The letter detailed how I had been awarded a grant and had a room in the residence halls. All I needed to do was show up on a specific date in September 1987.
My mum had a different philosophy on life. She was much more adventurous and told me that she would support to do whatever I wanted to do, and she would support any choice that I made. So only a few months later, I packed up and left for Glasgow. While it was only 60 miles from home, it was a world away.
I met lifelong friends from all over the world while in Glasgow. I had mandatory trips to all the corners of the British Isles and to Europe. I worked on Archaeological excavations in Italy and London and participated in a field expedition to the mountains of Norway. Being fascinated by glaciers, one of my advisors suggested that I should think about doing graduate work in Canada. So, in 1991, I moved to St. Johns Newfoundland and attended Memorial University of Newfoundland to get my Masters. In 1994, I moved to Edmonton Alberta, attended the University of Alberta, and received my PhD. In 1999, I submitted my doctoral dissertation, rented a U-Haul, and drove for three days to Kent, Ohio where I started as a brand-new assistant Professor of Geography. What an accomplishment for a wee lassie from Hunters!
I believe that my arriving at Kent, Ohio, truly demonstrates the power of education. The University of Glasgow made is easy for me to attend University. Doors were open and welcoming, and absolutely no structural barriers were put in place to me attending university. And remember, my parents did not attend college, they had no formal training of any kind, and we had no money. By the very virtue of where I lived, my primary school teachers had already pre-determined my future. Attending college was not even a tiny iota of a thought until I attended secondary school. But by attending college, a whole new world of opportunities opened up for me, and truly transformed me to the person I am now, sitting in the Dean’s office at 91ֿ. And that…is the power of education! That is why I now dedicate my life to putting students first. I did so as a professor, I did so as the Chair of Geography, I did so as the Associate Provost of Academic Affairs, and I will continue to do so as the interim Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.