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The Gaudino Scholars

For the past quarter-century, the opportunity to interpret the legacy of Robert Gaudino has been offered to a succession of Gaudino Scholars. In their hands the concepts of experiential education and uncomfortable learning have themselves been shaped in new ways, drawing on the individual points of view of the scholars and the unique opportunities presented by the moments in which they held the title.

The current Gaudino Scholar, Ed Burger, Professor of Mathematics, took office in 2008.

Julie Cassiday (2006-2008)

Julie Cassiday, Professor of Russian, began her tenure as Gaudino Scholar in the Fall of 2006. She is a member of both the Department of German and Russian and the Program in Comparative Literature at Williams and teaches a variety of courses on Russian language, Russian literature, and world literature more broadly. As a teacher and scholar of foreign languages, literatures, and cultures, Professor Cassiday focused her attention as Gaudino Scholar on efforts to internationalize the College’s curriculum, study abroad, and the growing body of international students at Williams.

Ways in which she carried on the Gaudino legacy of uncomfortable, self-reflexive learning included: screening a variety of international films, including features and documentaries, on the Williams campus &38212; in 2006-2007, this included films on "Bride Kidnapping in Kyrgysztan" and "Four Certain Deaths," which documents life in post-Soviet Russia; in 2007-2008, the Iranian filmmaker Rakhshan Bani-Etemad came to screen two films at Wiliams during the Fall semester; reviewing and revamping the Gaudino Fund’s support for students doing independent projects during Winter Study; “Celebrity Chef” dinners that allowed students to cook and eat with members of the Williams faculty, adminstration, and staff; and collaboration with the Williamstown Film Festival.

James McAllister (2004-2006)

Robert Jackall (2001-2004)

Robert Jackall, the Class of 1956 Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs, was named Gaudino Scholar in the spring of 2001. On September 11, 2001, the Dean of Faculty, Professor Thomas Kohut, asked him, as Gaudino Scholar, to organize the College's intellectual response to the atrocities of that day. For the next three years, Professor Jackall dedicated himself to that purpose. The activities he organized were intensive, and included the first Gaudino Fund course at the College, Terrorism & National Security. That course brought speakers from every end of the political spectrum to the College to discuss the national crisis.

In the fall of 2003, Professor Jackall taught another Gaudino Fund course, named New York New York, co-authored with Marissa C. M. Doran ’05. With five students selected from that course, he then initiated the prototype of Williams in New York in the 2004 Winter Study period, and that led to the Williams in New York program, conducted in fall 2005. Professor Jackall also served as Director of the Williams in New York program.

Mark Reinhardt (2000-2001)

At the beginning of Professor Reinhardt's tenure, the College's annual convocation program commemorated the life and work of Bob Gaudino. Due to the scheduled speaker's last-minute illness, President Hank Payne delivered on behalf of Preston Washington, '71, the speech he had prepared. The remarks focused on seeking intellectual fulfillment over the whole of one's life after College. This foreshadowed what would become Mark Reinhardt's central themes of his term as Gaudino Scholar, experiential education and the character of intellectual life at Williams.

Professor Reinhardt organized several talks and workshops for faculty on the use of experiential methods in teaching. He also put considerable resources into assorted programs that sent students abroad. In January 2001, for instance, he led a dozen students to the Mayan highlands of Guatemala for "Experiencing Guatemala: Politics and Society," a home stay and fieldwork-based course that he co-taught with Guatemalan anthropologist, Alberto Rivera. Professor Reinhardt considers this one of the pedagogical high points of his career to date. He also lobbied the administration to change the policy of providing no financial aid for Winter Study travel courses. Within a few months, the College did revise its rules; students now receive funding commensurate with their regular semester financial aid packages.

Embracing the singular and paradoxical role of "official gadfly" conferred by appointment as Gaudino Scholar, Professor Reinhardt pursued a number of initiatives raising pointed questions about the intellectual vitality of undergraduate culture, focusing primarily on questions of careerism and on the controversial subject of the effects on intellectual life of Williams's commitment to athletic success. He formed an ad hoc committee of faculty and students, which drafted a memo on the topic and met several times with Provost Cappy Hill, and the new President, Morty Schapiro. This led to changes in the committee that oversees policies for admissions and financial aid. Through a series of public forums, Professor Reinhardt also organized discussions that helped make athletics and admissions one of the defining issues on campus in the 2000-2001 academic year.

Sam Fleischaker (1997-1999)

In his first year as Scholar, Professor Fleischaker, a professor of philosophy, launched the Gaudino Forums, weekly gatherings during which faculty and students could discuss controversial issues of public concern. The forums were designed to raise matters that were close to the hearts of both students and teachers and which might not be discussed in the classroom. Their success was recognized by his successors, who chose to continue them during their terms.

Professor Fleischaker created a one-month Williams-in-India program for Winter Study of 1998 (read student memories of this program). Joined by his colleague in the Philosophy Department, Rachana Kamtekar, he led 33 students to India to study, respectively, "Women's Issues in Contemporary India" and "Modernist Architecture in India." The trips were preceded by a series of six lectures to prepare students for their international experience in "uncomfortable" learning. During his second year, Professor Fleischaker sponsored Winter Study trips by students to South Africa, Nepal, and Tahiti (read course description).

Other highlights of his tenure included a number of service-learning initiatives in and around Williamstown and a retreat for rising sophomores and juniors titled "Living Just One Life" (read course description) during which they pondered how a Williams education fit in with their overall purposes in life.

Read Professor Fleischaker's 1998 report to the Board of Trustees

Read Professor Fleischaker's 1999 report to the Board of Trustees

Jennifer Bloxam (1995-1997)

A member of the Music Department, Professor Bloxam was the first Scholar to come from Division I (Languages and the Arts). Her projects developed along two lines: working to foster experiential education within the curriculum, and organizing students and faculty to undertake extracurricular public art projects that addressed matters of public concern.

Professor Bloxam began her activities by organizing a conference on "Experiential Education at Williams: Past, Present and Future." A summer project with faculty and students led to the creation first of a Winter Study and then of a multidisciplinary course called "Practicing Feminism: A Study of Political Activism." A course in environmental studies, "Environmental Planning and Analysis Workshop," also developed an important experiential dimension when revised by a professor of biology. And an interdisciplinary course called "Sited Scripted Public Acts," created by teachers in studio art and theater, entailed working with and within the local community on performances in public spaces.

The second focus of Professor Bloxam’s tenure was on public art projects designed and executed by a group of faculty and students who were known only by the rubric Just Another Avon Lady. Acting as "guerrilla artists," the Avon Ladies created an AIDS Wall outside the Baxter Hall student center (an enormous supine A, upon whose outer walls all were invited to write, and whose inner chamber was a memorial); the Dummy Project (identical suspended human figures with ethnic labels, upon which all were invited to write); and a Talk/Listen Project (a two-chamber booth, on one side of which listeners could hear unidentified students talking about matters of ethnic identity, while on the other side they could record their own thoughts).

Olga R. Beaver (1991-1994)

Professor Beaver, of the Mathematics Department, became the first scholar to focus on the implications of Robert Gaudino's educational theories for the teaching of the sciences. Immersing herself in the Gaudino materials (especially in Herzog's "Suitable Uses of the Gaudino Fund") she decided that an authentically "Gaudinoesque” approach would consider personal and individual experience as the most important element, whatever the field of study. In particular, Professor Beaver was inspired by Professor Gaudino's Williams in Appalachia program and its immersion of students in the “unfamiliar and uncomfortable."

Building on considerable prior experience with Williams minority students, she focused on bringing experiential learning during summer and Winter Study projects primarily to students of color, or to those students whose proposals involved study of the third world. The projects were wide-ranging and included a philosophy major’s trip to study a tropical rain forest in Mexico; a group study of the sociology of the homeless in New York City, and a trip by seven students to a small rural Mississippi town to live there while gathering oral histories of descendants of slaves as well as of Freedom marchers.

Thomas Spear (1989-1991)

An African historian and chair of the African and Middle Eastern Area Program, Professor Spear, like his predecessor William Darrow, emphasized the art of teaching, particularly on a diverse campus. He sponsored workshops on teaching and the curriculum and organized a faculty/student working group to examine in depth the relationship between a variety of pedagogical styles and a culturally diverse student body. These projects culminated in the Spring of 1990 in a two-day "Gaudino Teaching Forum" under the title "Pedagogy and Pluralism.”

In addition, Professor Spear took up a Global Studies project that had been left unfinished under his predecessors; among the results of the discussion group he organized and led were the initiation of two courses: “Service, Community and Self” and “Globalism: Perspective and Resources.”

William Darrow (1989)

Professor Darrow, a professor of religion, served as Gaudino Scholar for only one year before accepting a position as Dean. Still, in that period he brought to fruition a proposal for a "Pedagogy Seminar," recast as a more ambitious "Gaudino Teaching Forum.” It initiated several events, including a challenging workshop with a facilitator from the Harvard Danforth Center.

Kurt Tauber (1984-1988)

Professor Tauber used the position of Gaudino Scholar as a stimulator of change on campus. He led the formation of a committee whose self-defined mission was to examine critical aspects of the Williams experience, suggest changes, and see to it that the proposals receive serious consideration. In the course of its eight-semester existence, this "Gaudino Committee" researched and developed 22 proposals, 20 of which were publicly debated, defended, and submitted to the relevant college committees or administrators.

Kurt Tauber's Report on the Proposals and Activities of the Gaudino Committee and Gaudino Scholar, 1984-1987

Some proposals, like the Freshman Residential Seminars, student-initiated courses, Arts and Science Fair, the international Cultural Festival, the enlargement of the Contract Major program and Related Course Listings, were accepted and, at least temporarily, institutionalized through the regular channels of College governance. Two proposals, for "Summer Project Stipends" and for "Summer Learning Experiences," were included in the Third Century Campaign.

Professor Tauber also sought to give specific expression to aspects of Professor Gaudino’s legacy, in the form of projects that involved leadership and activism. The most ambitious of these was the "Gaudino Project on Student Leadership and Nonviolent Alternatives," out of which was to grow the Center for Common Security and "LEAD USA." The student leaders of this project became the teachers of a successful Winter Study course, entitled "Pedagogy for Empowerment."

The third student-organized enterprise was a series of "Gaudino Roundtables," which stimulated significant discussion for two consecutive years.

Early in 1988, Professor Tauber also persuaded Professor Philip Kassinitz, a specialist in the sociology of race and ethnicity, to offer an experimental "Williams-in-New-York" course in the Winter Study Period 1989.

Raymond Baker (1982-1984)

Professor Baker, the first Gaudino Scholar, set a model for innovative use of the position, since he felt that Professor Gaudino’s gifts were idiosyncratic and that attempts at imitation were bound to fail, to the detriment of the Memorial Fund’s larger goal.

The most prominent and far-reaching of his projects was a Williams-in-Cairo program, which lasted more than a decade and deeply affected the minds and lives of almost 200 students.

Also, Professor Baker developed the outlines of a service-learning course, “Williams-in-Williamstown,” which his departmental colleague, Kurt Tauber, would later put into practice and teach. In addition, he organized “Gaudino Forum Weekends” and experimented with “Gaudino Internships.”

In the second Gaudino Forum Weekend in 1982, Professor Baker tackled the subject of homosexuality at Williams and drew into the conversation prominent Williams alumni and alumnae, a decade before that topic was widely considered a proper subject for open discussion on campus.