By Logan Monteleone
Outgoing News Editor
Determining that offering an art history major is not viable for a program with only one tenure-track, full-time faculty member, Associate Professor and Chair of Art and Art History Dr. Benjamin Tilghman proposed a suspension of the major that was approved by the College earlier this month. The temporary suspension is intended to allow the program time to consider options for how to continue offering an art history major concentration that reflects liberal arts standards
A suspended program must be either fully cancelled or restored after a three year period in accordance with the Maryland Higher Education Commission. The proposal to suspend the major received approval from the curriculum committee before it went to a faculty vote on April 6.
In a time of limited resources and challenges for liberal arts colleges and humanities programs at most institutions of higher education, flexibility and a willingness to adapt to meet the demands of the times is important for programs like art history, Dr. Tilghman said.
Dr. Tilghman deemed the art history major a non-viable option after Nancy L. Underwood Associate Professor of Art History Dr. Aileen Tsui retired last May and her position was not refilled.
The six currently-enrolled students with a declared art history major will graduate this May. The option to declare the major will not be available starting in the upcoming fall.
Dr. Tilghman said that students who want to major in a subject need to have more than one full-time faculty member considering 1) a single professor cannot offer the comprehensive, expansive range of courses necessary for a quality experience as an art history major and 2) students should have more than one faculty member to consult as an advisor and mentor.
To the point about “breadth and depth,” Dr. Tilghman’s expertise is in art from the medieval and Renaissance periods, along with Islamic art, public art, and environmental humanities. The department needs a modern and contemporary art professor who studies the twentieth and twenty-first centuries with a global perspective to offer students an appropriate range of teachings, Dr. Tilghman said.
Regarding the potential to rely on visiting professors to fill gaps in course offerings, Dr. Tilghman said relying on adjunct faculty brings instability, high turnover, and vulnerability into programs that rely on visiting faculty instead of replace tenure-track ones.
Reliance on transient visiting professors as a permanent cost-saving option rather than hiring tenure-track faculty members, or ‘adjunctivitis,’ is an issue facing colleges across the nation, according to PBS.
Adjuncts do not have advisees, and their short-term tenures do not allow for investing and focusing on individual students’ success in the way that small liberal arts colleges like WC value, Dr. Tilghman said.
The suspension of the major will free up Dr. Tilghman’s time to focus on fundraising, grant writing, and researching other programs to consider innovative pathways for reestablishing the major. Methods for helping the art history program sustainably adapt may include partnerships with other departments, like communication and media studies or sociology, in offering interdisciplinary cross-listed courses.
The art history program is “actively pursuing specific grant opportunities,” Dr. Tilghman said, that may have the potential to bring a grant-funded faculty member to the institution. If the specific grant opportunity materializes, the art history major could be available again as soon as fall of 2027.
Comparing WC’s art history program to those at peer and aspirant institutions also informed Dr. Tilghman’s decision to propose a suspension of the major. Liberal arts institutions with one faculty member often do not offer students with the option to major in art history; at Washington and Jefferson College in Pa., for example, students can minor but not major in the topic, and at Allegheny College in N.Y., students can earn a micro-credential in art history.
Sensitive to the relatively small amount of student interest in art history programs compared to programs outside of the humanities at WC and elsewhere, Dr. Tilghman said he supports a distribution of College resources that reflect the need of a given program based on student demand.
“In a time of limited resources and in a place that always is working with sort of limited resources, the College will need to decide which programs will get fully funded and fully staffed and which programs maybe are going to be underfunded or understaffed. The art history program is not the last program that’s going to face this pressure,” Dr. Tilghman said. “So as much as I want to be like, ‘Hey, everyone, don’t panic,’ I also want to say, ‘We really need to pay attention to this.’”
Provost and Dean of the College Dr. Kiho Kim said there are not “any hard and fast rules about what constitutes a viable program, at least in terms of faculty size,” noting WC programs including French and German are offered by a single faculty member. Dr. Kim said the decision to continue offering a program is mostly dependent on the faculty member.
Considering the College has “an increasing need to be really efficient with our resources,” Dr. Kim said, the decision not to hire a replacement for Dr. Tsui was determined by weighing the number of majors and student interest in the program with the need to allocate money to help more popular programs grow.
Dr. Kim mentioned the curriculum reimaging proposal as part of the longer-term solution for encouraging students to pursue programs that they may be discouraged from majoring in in favor of traditionally “career-oriented” programs.
Dr. Kim mentioned the curriculum reimaging proposal as part of the longer-term solution for encouraging students to pursue programs that they may be discouraged from majoring in in favor of traditionally “career-oriented” programs.
There is no guarantee that the College will restore the major by the end of the suspension period, Dr. Kim said, emphasizing that factors including enrollment and interest will shape future decisions.
WC students studying art history and faculty members across departments at the College agree that art history is a critical part of a liberal arts education and a program whose future is worth investing in.
Identifying humanities and arts programs as “an essential component of the liberal arts curriculum,” Dr. Christine Wade, Professor of Political Science and International Studies and Political Science Chair, said that supporting rather than turning away from the arts is especially relevant and necessary in times of challenge.
“Folks like to argue that degrees in [arts and humanities] majors aren’t as marketable as degrees in other fields, but CEO’s of major corporations have repeatedly shared that the skills they value the most … are those derived from the study of the arts and humanities,” Dr. Wade said. “Judgement and creativity are the value propositions of the future. We should be driving that narrative rather than succumbing to incoherent “market forces.”
Senior Mattie Gilliam, an art history and history double-major with a minor in Asian studies, said they “do not believe that just a minor is sufficient for a wildly expansive field like Art History.” Gilliam finds concern about the art history program warranted, especially given challenges facing humanities programs nationally. However, Gilliam said they have faith in Dr. Tilghman and in WC to effectively restore the major by the end of the suspension period.
“I believe art history holds the ability to reveal important cultural and historical perspectives through the consumption and study of art, which offers us lots of insight on human cultural history,” Gilliam said. “I think it’s important to understand that [Washington College] isn’t going anywhere, and because of that, we have the time and determination from the Art History department we need to pull things back together.”