Last Friday, Septemebr 25th, President Phillip Glotzbach and Student Government Association (SGA) President Charles Tetelman ’16 presented the annual state of the college address. The event was well attended by staff, alumni, and a handful of Skidmore students.
Tetelman began the event discussing how the college is currently in an era of planning and assessment. He stated that, as an institution, Skidmore is looking inward to determine how we need to improve. He stressed the importance of creativity in our community, but clarified that the concept of creativity should not be given more value than the Skidmore students themselves. He discussed our need to become more unified, and listen more to the individual voices of our community, in order to make a meaningful change.
Glotzbach started off his address with a few jokes, which led him into a discussion about how the message that Pope Francis is spreading in his United States travels about returning hope can also be applied to our college’s education. Glotzbach told the crowd that Skidmore is a mission driven institution, and that, as a school, Skidmore strives to prepare students to "change the world" after they graduate. He reiterated Tetelman’s comment about how this is a year of planning, saying that in this planning we need to ask ourselves as an institution: What do we stand for? Where do we want to be as a college? And how do we get there? He then proceeded to talk about some of the college’s shortcomings in areas such as sexual and gender based misconduct, diversity, and bias incidents. Next, he touched on the subject of creativity saying that all tasks require a certain level of imagination and that creativity is necessary for academic success. He finished by saying that Skidmore needs to make good on its promises and eliminate its wasteful and inefficient practices. He then opened up the floor for questions, answering inquiries about how to measure success, how comfortable the college is with taking risks, and how the college intends to address issues of diversity.
The speech portion of the event was concluded with a short address about the measures being taken to revise the all college curriculum. Tables of attendees were then asked to look over the current draft of the College’s five-year plan, and offer feedback.