Yearly Archives: 2022

LFA President Tobin F. Terry’s remarks at the November 3, 2022 Lakeland Board of Trustees Meeting, delivered with the hope of helping the trustees understand what it means to be an educator at Lakeland. 

Dr. Beverage, Chairperson Vitaz, and Board of Trustees,

I’m Tobin Terry, President of the LFA.

We have 124 full-time faculty who come from some of the top programs in the country and/or have invaluable real-world experience in applied fields. 

These faculty specialize in their academic areas, but are also expert teachers. They understand our students and strive to inspire them to realize their full potential. 

Our faculty know that teaching is more than disseminating information to a group of students.

Teaching is holding office hours to meet one-on-one with students who need additional help, who want to get caught up after an absence, or who crave additional knowledge beyond the course content. 

Teaching is creating a classroom environment where students feel seen, valued, and safe–an environment where they can ask questions without fear of judgment and build connections with fellow students that will benefit them beyond the classroom.

Teaching is providing meaningful feedback to students, communicating in written and oral form what the students’ strengths are and where there are opportunities for improvement. 

Teaching is creating meaningful lesson plans and assignments in response to the specific needs of the students in the room, needs that can only be determined if the instructor has the opportunity and the drive to get to know their students as humans instead of rows in a gradebook.

Lakeland’s faculty members have this opportunity and this drive to educate the whole student, identifying individual needs and working to meet them in the classroom, during office hours, or through referrals to campus resources. 

Our combination of education, experience, and dedication, in collaboration with dedicated staff and college leadership, are why Lakeland has such a positive reputation not just in our own community but nationwide. 

In the interest of demonstrating our value as potential participants in your discussion of equity, inclusion, and diversity, and other consequential decisions, and with the goal of helping you understand the tremendous work being done in Lakeland classrooms, including why small class sizes and personal connections are vital to student success, members of the Lakeland faculty are inviting you to join us in our classrooms. I will be in touch soon with names, dates, and times of classes that faculty are personally inviting you to attend. I urge you to accept. 

We love what we do, and we’re damn good at it. We look forward to sharing that with you. 

LFA President Tobin F. Terry’s remarks at October 3, 2022 Lakeland Board of Trustees Meeting regarding recent board conversations and votes relating to the terms “diversity,” “equity,” and “inclusion.”

Chairperson Vitaz, Board of Trustees, and President Beverage,

I’m Tobin Terry, President of the Lakeland Faculty Association. 

I thank trustee Kessler for her comments at the end of last week’s meeting clarifying her position regarding the special committee to review equity, inclusion, and diversity language. I think many members of the campus and larger community were encouraged by her reassurance that she did not see the special committee’s charge “to review” the language as something that would result in removing, replacing, or diminishing the terms. 

I also thank Chairperson Vitaz for her comments in a recent article published by InsideHigherEd.com. Chairperson Vitaz said that the committee was formed because quote “the board would like to better understand what diversity, equity and inclusion means at the college.” 

I truly believe, as I said in my comments at the last meeting, that in your hearts, you support the values that these words represent. I also believe that you now understand the practical importance of these words.

Reflecting on Mrs. Kessler and Chairperson Vitaz’s statements, I believe that the board is interested in better understanding how Lakeland employees implement these values and how Lakeland students benefit from them. 

Let us show you. 

I hope that the board will consider including the voices of other stakeholders–including students, staff, and faculty–to the committee, as was suggested by Mr. Frager at the last meeting. 

I also urge the board to formally state that the charge of the committee is not to remove the terms altogether. This specification is important because of the origins of the committee, which grew out of an initial motion to remove “equity” and “inclusion” from the strategic plan. Please make official Chairperson Vitaz’s statement that the goal of the committee is to better understand what the words mean for Lakeland and our students.

Thank you for your time, and I look forward to the opportunity to work alongside you impacting lives through learning.

LFA President Tobin F. Terry’s remarks delivered at the September 29, 2022 Lakeland Board of Trustees meeting regarding the approved motion from the September 1, 2022 meeting to form a trustee-only committee to review the words “diversity,” “equity,” and “inclusion” as they appear in Lakeland policies and documents.

Dr. Beverage, Chairperson Vitaz, and Board of Trustees:

Hello, again. My name is Tobin Terry, President of the Lakeland Faculty Association, Professor of English, Lake County father of three.

When I addressed you during the September 1 Board meeting, I urged you to reject a motion to omit the words equity, inclusion, and inclusivity from the College’s Strategic Plan.

In that meeting, I heard that many of you support the principles of equity, inclusion, and diversity but that you have reservations about the words themselves because of their status as political lightning rods.

Let us remember, as Trustee Frager reminded us, that these words have actual, technical, dictionary definitions. They are not legalese whose meaning is open to interpretation.

I explained in my previous remarks that Lakeland’s institutional accreditor, The Higher Learning Commission, mandates a commitment to equity, inclusion, and diversity, as do accreditors for our individual academic programs of study. 

These are the industry-standard terms for an educational institution’s commitment to meeting the needs of all students, and there are no synonyms.

Efforts to distance Lakeland from these terms jeopardize our accreditation. Without accreditation, a Lakeland degree has no value—our graduates won’t get jobs; our enrollments will evaporate. 

There are those who seek to vilify words and values that have long been a part of Lakeland’s legacy and that embody the best of who we are and what we have to offer. These people wish to use the College and our most vulnerable students to start a culture war, but Lakeland and our students are not pawns to be sacrificed in someone else’s game of political chess. 

We are here to show our support of continued commitment to equity, inclusion, and diversity, not to promote partisan politics. You know who we are. You’ve visited our classrooms and offices; you’ve commended our dedication to student success. Our only agenda is ensuring the success and well-being of our students and protecting Lakeland’s ability to continue serving the community.

In the last meeting, this Board voted to form a committee to review these terms in Lakeland’s policies, but I urge you and everyone here to consider what work such a committee could possibly do. Our accreditors require us to use these exact words, and they already have definitions. There is nothing to discuss.