Editor’s Note: This is a regular Reflections article series, and this issue features longtime Siena Heights faculty member and Dean of the College for Professional Studies Deb Carter, who is retiring in September 2015 after more than 33 years at SHU. Reflections recently sat down with Deb to reflect on her time at Siena Heights.

How did you get your start at Siena Heights?

“Well, it’s an interesting story. I was a teacher of hearing-impaired children in Berrien County, and I had young children (at home). I was working part-time because of my little kids, and administratively they decided to only go with full-time people. I had enough seniority that I could bump somebody, and I just didn’t feel that I could that. So I resigned from my position not knowing where I was going to go or what was going to happen next. This was May of 1982. In the summertime, a friend of mine called me and said she saw a very small ad in our local newspaper … and it was advertising Siena Heights College needs a part-time person to oversee a new degree program for adult students. I hate to admit this because I’ve spent 33 years of my life here now, but I had never heard of Siena Heights College. I had no college experience. No higher ed experience. All my experience was K through 12 teaching hearing impaired kids. … My friend talked me into calling the number, and I got David James, who was the director of Admissions at the time, and I said I was interested in looking at this. (He said) ‘Can you send your resume?’ … So I mailed it. And then a couple of weeks went by, and I got a call, and David said, ‘Our dean is coming out to your area, and he is going to be interviewing candidates.’ … So I met Norm Bukwaz, who was the dean of Admissions and off-campus programs, and we had a conversation. And my curiosity was, ‘what on earth could you see in my background?’ I don’t know that I would have looked at me, because I didn’t have higher ed experience. … (But) I was called and offered the job, and it fit my criteria because I had little kids and (I) worked part-time. And I was hired at, believe it or not, 10 hours a week, roughly two evenings a week. … To this day, I’m grateful for that strange little happenstance … that was I was able to connect with a place that I love dearly.”

What are some of your early memories of the Benton Harbor campus, as well as the adult degree completion programs?

“I started work July 1st (1982), and we offered our first three classes in the fall of 1982. Norm (Bukwaz) taught one of them. We hired Tom Muldary, who was on the faculty here in psychology, and maybe Tom Radecki. … The earliest memory was of a feeling as though I was thrown into a deep end of a pool because I felt that there was just so much about the whole world of higher ed and degree completion that I didn’t know. I used the 800 number constantly. I was constantly calling and talking to Norm. He was very responsive and it was wonderful. I remember the early students who came into the program, and just how exciting it was to realize that we could be in a position to help them meet a goal. I have to say that excitement has stayed with me all these years because there’s just something wonderful about meeting somebody with previous college credits, looking at it and analyzing it, doing a degree plan and helping them meet their goals. It was just a very exciting thing. And I have to say that it was our very first community college program. We did not have any programs on community college sites until then. I learned a lot in that first several years about the importance of relationships, the importance of presence, the importance of curiosity. People really do like to tell their story. … I love to hear peoples’ stories. It was a great experience to realize that I was, in many ways, establishing a blueprint for this.” [br]  [br]

 [br] How has higher education in general changed during your time at Siena Heights?

“It’s going to make me sound like a dinosaur, but when I first started there were no computers. One of the things that we have embraced in the College for Professional Studies is that while we are at a distance, we know the importance of getting together to meet and to plan and be creative together. The change between 1982 and now has been monumental in terms of the connectedness of a large group of people– 45 staff and faculty – who make up the College for Professional Studies.”

What was your first reaction when you learned Siena Heights was beginning online education?

“Towards the end of the 90s, (then SHU President) Rick Artman came to me and said, ‘We have a Higher Learning Commission comprehensive visit coming up, and I want you to write a change request to do a completely online degree program.’ I said, ‘No, no. You need to pick somebody else, because that’s not how I teach. I teach in the classroom and I get a lot satisfaction from face-to-face and seeing people nod as your talking. … So I don’t think I can do that.’ He essentially said, ‘You will do this.’ So I said, ‘OK.’ That change in delivery was huge. That was huge for the University and it was huge for (CPS). But we also realized from the very beginning … that we were going to be talking about doing online in the Dominican tradition, which meant a real emphasis on community-building. If we couldn’t do it that way, we probably shouldn’t do it.”

What has been the biggest challenge for the College for Professional Studies?
Of the adult degree completion student?

“The challenge (of adult degree completion students) has always been the balancing of competing needs of their time and energy. That is a challenge. Adult students frequently, not all, can rise to that occasion because there’s significant motivation at the point to which they return to school. That whole notion of ‘I need to do this. I know that I’m going to have to put some things aside until this is finished.’ The challenge of prioritizing, making sure that they can meet all of the many needs pulls on your time. The big difference in terms of higher education is, we have a lot more traditional students who are living like adult students now. They are almost working full-time. Sometimes they are involved in a sport. They are certainly involved in an academic program. That need to spread yourself very thinly is probably is more challenging for traditional-age students that it used to be. That challenge that our college needs to constantly be looking at is the fact that our students come to us and take courses and they finish fairly quickly. … Well, that’s wonderful because we have a lot of students who are successful, but 600 students a year from the College for Professional Studies is a lot of students to replace every year. … It’s a huge challenge for us to recruit the number of students we need to replace (and also) increase in terms of numbers and enrollment.”

What people at Siena Heights have influenced you the most and why?

“I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for Norm Bukwaz. I have a different style than Norm, but so much of what I learned about degree completion, the Bachelor of Applied Science, which is our most prevalent in the College for Professional Studies – I have learned (from Norm). He is at the top of the list in terms of people who have influenced my own career here. … He took a chance on a teacher of hearing-impaired children. To say one Adrian Dominican Sister would be difficult, so I would say the group of Adrian Dominican Sisters, with whom I had the distinct honor and pleasure of getting to know personally and working with and just that huge aspect of what it means to be in a Dominican university. … I would say that the friendships that I have developed with the full-time faculty who are part of this grand adventure that we’re on together. They have deeply influenced me, their devotion, their creativity.”

What is your proudest moment/accomplishment at Siena Heights?

“It’s wonderful to look back on this 33-year run and know that I had a part in the very first partnership that we had with a community college. I learned a few things about that and we just spread that to a variety of other partnerships. To Battle Creek and Monroe, to Jackson and Lansing, and now Henry Ford. The real understanding on the part of everybody who is involved in the College for Professional Studies that relationships are everything. That establishing relationships with your students, your faculty, with your partner people, being good tenants, being good guests. I’m very proud of the fact that we have been able to build a model for degree completion that is solid. I have to say I’m really proud of the staff and faculty we have been able to assemble. I’m very proud of that. The good-hearted, hard-working, student-centered compassionate people who are every day working on behalf of students and faculty, it’s just really gratifying.”

Do you have any regrets?

“I love to teach. In the past I taught LAS 301 yearly, but I needed to give that up in 2004 due to the demands of my dean’s position.”

What is one thing most people don’t know about you?

“That’s a tough question to answer because I’m not exactly a shy, retiring person. A lot of people maybe don’t realize that I am a preacher’s kid. My dad was a minister. My very early memories when I was a kid were potlucks at funerals. I thought everybody ate that way. I thought the green bean casserole was something that everybody ate.”

Tell us the origins of the Roseanne Roseannadanna shtick.

“Roseanne Roseannadanna was a character that (Saturday Night Live comedian) Gilda Radner created. I have always had an ear for accents and mimicry. I can remember, even when I was teaching hearing-impaired kids, that we would have staff meetings and I would just kind of launch into her voice on occasion. When I came to Siena, same thing. Then Sister Eileen Rice became quite ill, and died in January of 1994. It was a loss to our community that was stunning and traumatic. … Sister Pat Schnapp decided a couple of months later that what we needed was a faculty/staff talent show to have a community-kind of get-together and just have fun. She came to me and she said, ‘You really should do the Roseanne character, but only get a costume and do a script.’ I said, ‘I don’t feel funny. I don’t feel it.’ Well, she convinced me that maybe I should think about it. I can’t even remember where the wig came from, but honest to God I’m still using the same wig 20 years later and a crazy outfit with big-shouldered suit that Gilda Radner wore. … That was sort of how I started with that.”

What do you want to be remembered for at Siena Heights?

“I’ll tell you what I don’t want to be remembered for. I don’t want to be remembered for the times when I lost my temper. I would ask my colleagues past and present to forgive me for that. I would like to be remembered for maybe making a difference in the lives of students and staff and faculty who I have had the pleasure of walking with over these years.”