Tales from the teachers’ lounge Faculty tell the CSF story
FACULTY TELL THE CSF STORY
ON THE LASALLIAN TRADITION
“I’d gone to Notre Dame and I ended up coming here to finish in 1968. I’m sitting in the bleachers of this decrepit building in the first-day ceremonies and the president says, ‘I want to welcome you to the Notre Dame of the Southwest.’ I almost fell through the bleachers. When I was there, I never had the sense that there were any religious undertones. Now, some of the things that the Lasallians may have espoused philosophically, sure — but not at all religious.”
— Tony O’Brien, documentary studies
“When I first came in I was kind of leery — ‘Oh, the brothers will object to the language in this play.’ There was never any of that kind of thing. I remember one of the Christian Brothers always wanted to help and would organize the front of the house … there was a big sense of community that was not forced on you or paraded in front of you. You became aware of it.”
— Phil Chapman, performing arts
“The principles of the tradition historically involved the idea that rich kids would be in the same school as the poor kids. The liberal nature of the principles emphasized a kind of acceptance and tolerance that was relatively new wave. I was there during a time when the role of the brothers was steadily decreasing. Many of the brothers were brilliant orators and scholars and really charismatic, and others kind of folded off into their own little enclave over time.” — Kevin Zoernig, contemporary music
“When earning my MFA at Loyola Marymount University, I did theater and I found myself being judged for not being a Catholic. It was constantly pointed out that I was not one of them. … But at CSF I came to find out the Christian Brothers didn’t really care what your religion is. Their job is to help you find this really amazing life.”
— Cheryl Odom, performing arts
“I didn’t know much about it and I didn’t teach under its philosophy, other than that we took the students that everyone else rejected. They really flowered at the College of Santa Fe. Those brothers did an extraordinary thing.”
— Polly Tapia Ferber, contemporary music
“It’s a wonderful pedagogical tradition, and it was really interesting seeing all that multicolored hair on campus next to the brothers teaching in their traditional robes.” — Matt Donovan, creative writing
“I studied with Brother George in the education program, because I got my teaching certificate [at CSF]. He was an educator in almost a spiritual sense, but he was funny and he really understood kids. He always understood our problems as educators.”
— Char Rothschild, contemporary music “The notion that you don’t just help the elite — you help the people who don’t have much, you help the people that are struggling. I can’t ever get over that. With writers, you don’t know who is going to make an enormous leap forward really quickly if they’re given a chance.” — Greg Glazner, creative writing “I was raised Jewish and my own leanings are Buddhistic, but the idea that you would serve God through teaching really resonated for me. That in doing that, there was a kind of spiritual component in the background — and I don’t mean religious; I mean care for the soul.”
— Dana Levin, creative writing
“I don’t know about the Lasallian tradition, but one thing about media is that it is easy to see what former students are up to. When I see my former CSF students, I see artists, educators, performers, professionals, craftspeople, rock stars, entrepreneurs, and activists. What I see in common, however, is a group of souls with good hearts, each carving out a meaningful life for themselves and making a personal contribution to society.”
— Peter Gordon, contemporary music “The College of Santa Fe was founded by the Catholic Lasallian Brothers, whose focus was fostering a sense of social responsibility and contributing in some way, however small, to right injustice. What fools they were. They had no idea the kind of money they could have made if they’d focused on profit. Profiteering is anathema to education. Full stop.”
— Peter Zapp, performing arts
Performing arts “There was a big sense of community that was not forced on you or paraded in front of you. You became aware of it.”
Performing arts “Profiteering is anathema to education. Full stop.”
ON ACADEMIC CULTURE
“We all had a very strong belief in the liberal arts. The conversation that always existed [when we were creating the curriculum] was the difference between an art school and a liberal arts school. We were all on the same page about not wanting to be an art school. … You didn’t work at the College of Santa Fe for money. We all ended up buying a lot of our own supplies out of our own pocket, at least I know I did. It was a job and you got paid and you had benefits. But I don’t think, for anybody, that it was about the money.” — David Scheinbaum, photography
“In an odd way, the creative departments, for better and for worse, were on their own, meaning there wasn’t a huge amount of support from the administration and the presidents who, one after another, didn’t exactly understand the creative departments and sort of supported them and sort of didn’t. These different departments got to find their identity and grow up on their own. There was a real plus to that. I think one of the gifts of the College of Santa Fe was that it didn’t just turn into an art school. It was a liberal arts school. I’m a real believer that an art education should have a really solid liberal arts grounding, because then people have something to make art about, instead of just art for art’s sake.” — Nancy Sutor, photography
“A big part of the college as a whole, and the moving image arts department, was about community and respect for everybody in that community and the work they did: supporting students in expressing their ideas and providing a safe environment to discuss their ideas, especially when they might be controversial. It was about having a community of students, faculty, and staff who believed that everybody had a right to be there.”
— Deborah Fort, moving image arts
Art history “If you think about what the strengths of the college were from the mid-1990s on, they were all centers of excellence in one or other area of the arts.”
“I will always remember the morning I arrived at the theater to teach and the lobby was filled with what looked like all the students in the department, sitting on chairs, pillows, the bare rug, ledges, or just standing, their eyes glued to a TV set that was showing the first 9/11 plane crashing into the tower. Their faces were shocked, frightened, tearfilled, bewildered. … Of course, all our classes that day were devoted to shared thoughts, feelings, and a sense of community mourning and concern for all those lost souls and for one another: ‘This is what we humans are and this is what we do.’ No lecture of mine could ever teach them more fully about what it means to decide what it is you would die for.” — Peter Zapp “The cool thing about a theater education is that it prepares you for a lot of other stuff. You are learning about time-budgeting, about working with a team and you can’t let down the group, about communication skills, because you are constantly in conversation about the project you are working on. … I would say 75 percent of my Facebook friends are my former students. Most of them are still in theater, one way or the other.” — Cheryl Odom “There weren’t that many art history majors, so we did a lot of work figuring out how best to teach global art history to studio arts students. We were working around issues of global competency before that was a thing, really. If you think about what the strengths of the college were from the mid-1990s on, they were all centers of excellence in one or other area of the arts. You have to have a much wider range of classes [in the liberal arts] and a deeper faculty bench to make a believable case to parents that you are a liberal arts school.” — Khristaan Villela, art history
Photography “I think one of the gifts of the College of Santa Fe was that it didn’t just turn into an art school. It was a liberal arts school.”
“The College of Santa Fe’s size meant that you could work closely with other departments. It meant that things were kind of intimate. I work in a very large state school now. They both have advantages and disadvantages. One of the great things about a small school is that everybody knows each other and it makes certain kinds of collaboration easier. The setting in Santa Fe is unique and the history of the school itself ... was all about being student-centered.” — David Stout, moving image arts
“Santa Fe has always been a place that is nurturing of inward-looking people and people who are in need of some kind of healing. There needs to be a place where such students can go. The school didn’t know how to embrace that — and I don’t know how you would. It’s not like you can say, ‘We’re rehab with credits.’ But I think that some parents of kids who were having really difficult adolescences viewed the school that way.” — Dana Levin
“I lost my sister in 2008, very suddenly. I remember going back into the classroom, to an intermediate poetry workshop, and how compassionate the students were. One of the things people used to say about the creative writing students was that they were kind of high-maintenance, in the sense of having a lot of issues, like many writers or artists. But I remember it as a community of people you want to be in when you’ve had a sudden loss.” — Valerie Martínez, creative writing
ON THE COLLEGE’S CLOSURE
“I think the Brothers and the board had an image of who they were and what they wanted the college to be. Then you had these high-powered artists come in, and there was a big clash: Who are we? What are we really doing here? And who is being recruited?” — Polly Tapia Ferber
“It was kind of a perfect storm. There was financial mismanagement at a time when there was a big recession. It was a hard time for a lot of small private schools. A lot of the faculty had been talking for years about really emphasizing the arts. Some of the administration who will remain nameless really didn’t want that because it wasn’t supportive of their own career trajectories.” — Deborah Fort
“We were able to triple our enrollment in music majors. It was a little ironic. We felt like we were really successful and then it was like, ‘Oh, I guess we’re not as successful as we thought.’ It’s a bad model for our youth, isn’t it? Like doing your best doesn’t really matter because things are likely to fall apart in the end.” — Steven Paxton, contemporary music
“It was deeply inexperienced leadership [that caused the school to close]. I think that they held on to this idea that they were a liberal arts school, when the only liberal arts they offered — outside the evening and weekend programs — was political science and not much else. And I’m not sure that adds up to a liberal
arts school. They refused to accept their identity as an art school. The presidents that were there from 2000 to the closing had no experience. Their senior leadership at the vice president’s level was very weak. They wouldn’t focus on increasing enrollment in a way that was effective. In some ways it wasn’t much of a surprise that they couldn’t overcome the problems at the school. It was entirely unfortunate, because it had so much opportunity and potential.” — Gerry Snyder, painting
“I’ve been talking to some other folks recently that were close to the story and there are a number of factors that contributed to it. The old identity was not dealt with in an effective manner. That was combined with an ineffective admissions department, ineffective development department, financial issues. It was too much for one institution to handle.” — Khristaan Villela
“The administration didn’t really understand what the college could be and how it could achieve its highest self. I wasn’t part of SFUAD at all, but they used the model of the College of Santa Fe and hired back many of the faculty and kept the departments as intact as they could, which is good. But I think forprofit education is not the answer at all. For all the problems that the College of Santa Fe had along the way, I really am proud of the collaboration between the departments. I found some wonderful colleagues to share those conversations with.” — Nancy Sutor
“Different CSF presidents mortgaged it, basically. I think that’s how it got lost. When Laureate took over, the school did change some and I think we did a good job. An influx of money came in for things that hadn’t been there when the College of Santa Fe was limping toward the end. It’s too bad it didn’t work out.” — Susan York, sculpture