Looking back, looking ahead
I have taught in the History Department at Towson University for 35 years; I plan to retire at the end of this semester. Of all the changes I have seen in this time, two stand out as most telling in the story of the institution: the diversity among students and the expectation that faculty members publish.
In 1988, when I arrived at what was then known as Towson State University (“state” was dropped from the name in 1997), the demographics of the institution looked much different from today. Towson then was mostly a white campus, with nearly nine out of 10 undergraduate students white, and only 8% Black. The imbalance was more pronounced among full-time faculty: Of the 471 full-time teachers, only 18 (4%) were Black. This situation at the university did not reflect the demographic composition of Baltimore County, which at the time was 12% Black.
In the History Department, the faculty of about 20 teachers was made up of mostly older white men. There were but four women in the department, including, significantly, the longtime department chairperson, Mary Catherine Kahl. Campuswide, male professors outnumbered female professors almost two to one at the time.
The teaching load those days was four classes, each with 40 students or so. I was so grateful to have this job, even if I had no real understanding of just how demanding it would be. On my first day — coming just two days before the birth of my son — I threw myself into my lectures, only to realize as my second group of students filed out and the next group filed in, that I was already completely out of gas with two classes left to go.
Few in the History Department published at the time. With all those lectures to write and revise, the endless piles of blue books and term papers to mark, it was hard to find the time for research and publication. The faculty of Towson State was certainly populated by great teachers who were highly skilled at their craft, but in those years publication was not a requirement for promotion.
Now, as my career at Towson closes and I reflect back, I can see great progress has been achieved. This growth is not just the new buildings that have risen up on campus over the past several years; it is much more than that. The university has been transformed.
Today the Black undergraduate student population accounts for nearly 30% of the total, reflecting the present-day makeup of Baltimore County, which is 32% Black. To me this is what progress begins to look like.
However, the university has made only modest gains in faculty diversity. Even now, Black professors at Towson University still comprise just 7% of the total. Achieving gender parity among the faculty also remains a work in progress. The Department of History now has more full-time faculty members who are women, but they still number just over one third of the total. Campuswide, women still account for only 41% of all full-time faculty.
Subtle messages can be more powerful than shouted ones, and if students do not typically see people who look like them in front of the classroom, they might conclude that this is a signal that jobs such as this are not available to them. Towson has made some great progress, but there is clearly more yet to do.
Over my time at Towson, the teaching load was gradually reduced, usually now three courses per semester, and class sizes are also smaller. As a direct result of these changes, no Towson professor can be granted promotion or tenure these days without published peer-reviewed contributions to scholarship.
It has taken the abiding commitment by the university to make the progress that I have seen across my decades here. Now Towson is graduating classes that show greater diversity than ever before. And today Towson professors are helping to shape the conversations that light up their fields and move knowledge forward. These are important gains, but the progress should not stop there.
I may be leaving, but knowing Towson University the way I do, I have every confidence that there will be more victories to come.