The members of the First Year Studies Advisory Committee wish to voice our great concern over the recent announcement of faculty job cuts at Rensselaer. If carried out, these cuts will have significant repercussions for Rensselaer’s first-year students as well as the efforts of our First Year Studies Program to promote improved pedagogy at Rensselaer. Central to our concern is the possible termination of our FYS Advisory Committee member and pedagogy specialist Julie Gutmann.

Gutmann has been an essential member of the FYS Program for well over a decade. As our pedagogy specialist, she has been at the center of the program’s efforts to develop sound ideas about teaching and engagement with first-year students. Moreover, she is the only professor in our program with formal training in pedagogy and we are fortunate that she has been willing to share her expertise with faculty both in and outside of our FYS program. Indeed it is fair to say that the value of our program rests largely on the work Gutmann has done over the years that she has been a member.

Gutmann’s enthusiasm for teaching is infectious. Through workshops, “pedagogy brown bags,” and the meetings of our “teaching circle,” she has provided our FYS instructors with invaluable insights about teaching, advising, and mentoring first-year students—students who are each undergoing one of the more dramatic and perhaps traumatic periods of change that they will ever experience. Gutmann has helped the professors teaching in the FYS Program understand how to mentor students in this transitional time—this has been vital to retention and maintaining a motivated student class. Indeed, she has played a vital part in the development of the “Integrative Studies” pilot program that was based on close collaboration between FYS and the Student Life staff of the Office of the First-Year Experience. Largely as a result of Gutmann’s efforts, the faculty of our FYS Program has gradually developed a genuine culture of teaching and learning, something we’ve been able to convey to the rest of the campus community through FYS summer seminars and presentations at the annual Rensselaer Colloquium on Teaching and Learning.

If there is a match at Rensselaer to Gutmann’s enthusiasm for teaching, it can only be her own devotion to her students. She has developed some very special courses, such as Life Writing, that have won tremendous praise from her students. Many claim that taking classes with her has been their most significant educational experience at Rensselaer. On numerous occasions Gutmann has also conferred individually with faculty who needed assistance in getting started on the road to excellence in teaching.

Moreover, during her time at Rensselaer, Gutmann has continually reached beyond her teaching and service load in order to develop a positive teaching and learning environment at Rensselaer. This has been shown in many ways: Gutmann has been one of the central organizers of the McKinney awards program; Gutmann is the faculty advisor for Statler & Waldorf, the student literary magazine; and Gutmann is among Rensselaer’s major contributors to the world of poetry.

In sum, Gutmann is one of the strongest instructors at Rensselaer and has spent considerable effort developing and sharing an instructional style that really works with our students. Unsurprisingly, an overflow of students are drawn to her courses and many continue to seek her counsel throughout their academic careers and beyond. Unquestionably it would be a great loss not just to FYS but to the entire Rensselaer community if we were to lose her.

The First Year Studies Advisory Committee strongly urges Rensselaer to extend Gutmann’s contract, and we encourage you to pass along our entreaty to whoever among the administration might reverse this mistake. We would welcome a meeting with you, should you have any questions.

FYS Faculty Advisory Committee:

Jim Fahey

John Gowdy

Tomie Hahn

Ralph Noble