With loss of faculty, French Studies 'short staffed'

Though the recession has caused cutbacks across the University, members of the faculty of French Studies — a subsection of Penn’s Department of Romance Languages — have felt its reverberations in their already-struggling field.

French Studies is currently “somewhat short staffed,” according to Undergraduate Chairman Lance Donaldson-Evans, who plans to retire at the end of next year.

According to professor Joan DeJean, who has been teaching French at Penn since 1988, French Studies once included nine and a half tenure-track professors — the half because that professor taught in two departments. When Donaldson-Evans retires, there will be three fewer professors.

Donaldson-Evans explained that this shrinkage has come about because faculty members retired or left Penn, and the administration has not replaced their positions over the years because it “runs on a fairly shoestring budget … [recruiting new professors] wasn’t seen as a top priority compared with the needs of other departments.”

“We have lost people, and they have not been replaced in the past,” DeJean agreed, “and now there’s a hiring freeze and it’s a worse time than it was in the past, so you can draw your own conclusions.”

Donaldson-Evans said he is not aware of a search for another faculty member to join the faculty when he steps down.

Associate Dean for Arts and Letters Jeffrey Kallberg said he could not comment on past hiring decisions, since he only assumed the deanship in July 2010. However, he said, the administration reviews search requests “across the whole school and deploy[s] the resources we have.”

“We haven’t made any decisions about this yet, just as we haven’t for any other department in the school,” he said of the prospect of a new hire to fill Donaldson-Evans’ position.

If Donaldson-Evans’ position is not refilled, French Studies “would be down two full tenured-track slots, which means we can offer eight fewer courses per year” as well as fewer freshman seminars and Benjamin Franklin Seminars, he added. The department also no longer offers courses which are open to the public.

This decline in course offerings — reflecting a shrinking faculty — has been a continual process. French Studies offered 24 courses in 2007. It will offer 18 courses in spring 2011, according to its website.

Aside from budget issues, the decrease in French Studies faculty may also reflect a wider trend. According to Inside Higher Ed, the State University of New York at Albany recently eliminated its French department — along with two other languages — when facing budget cuts.

“The influence of French is not as great as it used to be,” Donaldson-Evans said. Enrollment in French courses at Penn has dropped by about two percent in the past fifteen years, he added, but it may be “just a blip.”

French Studies graduate student Francois Massonnat noted the complexities facing the department. “If you're a student, having more professors would be great,” he wrote in an e-mail. But he wondered, if from an administrative point of view, “would having more professors be justified given the status of French studies in the US?”

Nicole Duddy, a College junior studying abroad in France, said course offerings have “been pretty consistent” since she’s been at Penn, and the “quality of the professors has been great.”

French Section Chairman Gerald Prince was also optimistic. In the recent National Research Council survey of doctoral programs, Penn placed second, he wrote in an e-mail. The undergraduate program also consistently places in the top three in national rankings.

As French Studies works to develop its resources, Prince added, moving forward, “I’m sure we can count on the support of the administration.”

Editor's note: This article has been edited from its print version to give additional context to Francois Massonnat's quotes on the challenges facing French Studies at Penn.

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