Letter from Elizabeth Szatkowski '86

Elizabeth Szatkowski
83 Kent Street
Portland, ME 04102

May 11, 2011
Professor William Wagner
Dean of the Faculty
Williams College
Williamstown, Massachusetts

Dear Professor Wagner and Members of the Art Department

I met Sheafe not through a class but through a job. I spent a lot of my time while at Williams working. I would often leave meals early because I had to go to work. My fellow diners would say that they too had a lot of work to do that day and might mention a paper or reading or a test. Usually I would not correct them but nod and smile and move on to one of several jobs that paid for part of my tuition, my living expenses, books, supplies, telephone and travel home. On occasion I would let people know I was going to work at a job where I got paid money. The usual reaction was one of quizzical amusement. “How interesting!” “How did you arrange that?” “Is it some kind of internship?” I would become the focus of their curiosity but not part of their common experience.

A friend of mine had worked for Sheafe and thought I would be well suited for his employment. I worked in his office filing letters, organizing papers and shelving books. Often students would come in asking for guidance, extensions on papers, ideas for the project they had not yet started. Rarely did he give direct answers but would encourage these students to think outside their comfortable boxes. He asked me about my own background, what it was like growing up in rural poverty, what it was like for me being at Williams with the blue bloods. I found Sheafe to be refreshing and honest. In a place where people made a lot of assumptions about each other’s affluence and privilege I often felt like I was passing. Rather than helping me to fit into the dominant culture of Williams he was interested in who I already was and how I had gotten there. It wasn’t until I went to graduate school at the University of Pennsylvania, School of Social Work, where the mission was social change and the elimination of racism, that I found that same caliber of conversation about race and class in an academic setting. In graduate school we were expected to look at and openly discuss oppression and how our own biases affected others. I know that many college students are not ready for that kind of self examination or level of inquiry but I was glad that I had someone to discuss these issues with as I tried to make sense of the elite culture and privilege at Williams.

Sheafe arranged conversations and meetings between his students and people he knew in the world. These were people doing interesting things and he wanted to expose his current students to a wide range of ideas and experiences. Many years after I graduated, while working at a center for homeless and low-income people, I got a call from one of Sheafe’s students asking if I could talk to him about the architecture of homeless shelters. The student had an interesting idea and many assumptions to support it. Sheafe did not send this student to me because I am an architect but because I know a lot about what goes on inside homeless shelters. I know what some of the architectural considerations are to create safety, movement, quiet and respect. Our conversation was not what the student expected. But that was often the case when you took Sheafe’s suggestions or followed up on one of his leads.

About a year after I graduated from Williams I was teaching at a small alternative school in Washington, DC. Someone started calling me asking me to set up an interview for a job I had never applied for. It seemed odd and I ignored the messages until the persistent woman got me on the phone. I was relieved to finally let her know that she had been calling the wrong person. She assured me that she was calling the right person. She was a Williams alum about 10 years older than I. She had asked Sheafe if there was anyone he knew from Williams that could join her team in a rural part of West Virginia assisting high school students getting to and staying in college. Sheafe told this woman that he only knew of one person who would be suited for that kind of work and gave her my name. I decided to follow up on Sheafe’s suggestion and drove to West Virginia for the three-day interview. I accepted the job when the Williams alum offered it to me and we began a working relationship that turned into a deep friendship. We have been on countless adventures, created programs, built, sewn, and painted useful things, shared child rearing, cooked enormous meals, helped people in distress, experimented with a wide variety of cheesecake flavors, helped each other through tough job situations and celebrated significant life events. None of this would have taken place if we had not trusted Sheafe’s nudge.

One of the top attributes of Williams College is its excellent student to teacher ratio. There is much emphasis placed on students having access to professors who are outstanding scholars. The metaphor of the log is held up as the epitome of the educational experience at Williams. What I found was that teachers were very willing to discuss theories, research and philosophy but few were willing to talk about the practical experience and knowledge that they and their students possessed. It was hard to get real at Williams. I hope that Sheafe will be recognized and honored for how he challenged students to look beyond academic knowledge. He was able to take the resources of an elite intellectual community and open the door to real life. By asking peculiar questions and focusing on offbeat topics he helped people move into new and unique spaces and experiences. To be successful in this journey students had to use inner resources that were not often engaged or praised in the traditional classroom. Being provocative and unpredictable may knock someone off the log but what one learns from that tumble and scramble to regain balance is invaluable.

It is important to recognize the contributions that Sheafe has made to the Williams College community over his long and illustrious career. He has focused his intellect, curiosity, creativity and enthusiasm on this institution and its students. So many people are grateful that their paths have crossed his. I hope the College is able to acknowledge Sheafe’s deep connection to so many students at Williams and the profound influence he has had on their lives. I am sure the College will find a fitting way to honor his unwavering commitment and boundless contributions.

Sincerely,


Elizabeth Szatkowski
Class of 1986

Letter from David Plater '58

425 Easy Street

Thibodaux, LA 70301

February 5, 2011

Adam F. Falk, President

Williams College

Williamstown

Massachusetts 01267

Dear President Falk,

            I am writing today about Sheafe Satterthwaite, whose teaching career at Williams College is being terminated this coming June.

            Although we knew of Sheafe Satterthwaite from our son, Christopher Plater ’89, who had joined him on a student trip to Dominica in 1989, my wife Sheela and I personally have been a friend of Sheafe since the early 1990s. Considering us an anchor in an unfamiliar, maybe turbulent Cajun sea, he arranged with us a visit to the bayou country of his winter study group. We housed him and several of the students and came to know Sheafe as contemporaries as well as parents of a Williams graduate.

            Over the years we have occasionally seen and shared meals with Sheafe Satterthwaite, sat before his hearth, read his students’ essays, and kept in close touch. When I informed him last fall of a planned trip to Williamstown, he invited me to speak to his class, which was studying tree groves in the American landscape. It was fun and educational for us all, and I was happy to share with his enthusiastic students some views and information which for many were unfamiliar, if not completely foreign.

            What impresses me about Sheafe’s courses is the extra learning dimension that he  gives to students at Williams. Their visions are much expanded in ways that other disciplines do not so accomplish. He teaches “art,” in a real sense, by leading his students to see and know their physical and cultural surroundings in depth. The experience, Sheela and I believe, is something that gives the liberal arts education at Williams a special and desirable tone and character.

            Sheela and I of course are concerned that Sheafe will no longer be invited to teach. It will be a loss to the College and to his students. We ask that the decision be reconsidered.    

            Thank you.

                                                            Sincerely,

                                                            David D. Plater, Class of 1958

Letter from Field Horne '73

From: Field Horne <fhorne@nycap.rr.com>

Date: February 3, 2011 11:46:44 AM EST

To: Adam.F.Falk@williams.edu

Cc: William.G.Wagner@williams.edu

Subject: Satterthwaite

Dear President Falk:

I am very disturbed by the recent decision to cut Satterthwaite loose.

The College must marshal its resources and, while I do not believe in retirement -- given that my path since Williams will not, perhaps, allow it -- I understand that it may be in the best interests of the Art Department to release a full-time non-tenured position to a new hire who can provide courses now in demand.

Here is my concern: I came to Williams in the fall of 1969 with many of the interests that still motivate me. The draw, aside from the location, was the American Civilization major. In practice, I found it was rather dry, consisting largely of conventional American history courses unleavened by the New Social History that was then transforming the discipline, and English courses on the usual, mostly nineteenth-century American writers. A course in American music with Ken Roberts and a course in American architecture with Bill Pierson were the leavening. And everything was taught by the lecture method.

Then Sheafe arrived. Not only did he bring an innovative and exciting approach to understanding our environment, but he taught by the inductive process.

At the same time, Gaudino launched Williams-at-Home, possibly the most revolutionary approach to learning the College ever embraced. (Of course, it DIDN'T embrace it, since the faculty mistrusted it; and as soon as Gaudino's health failed further, it was terminated. My greatest regret about my college years is that I didn't do that program, and I am still astonished that the College let it die.)

You have an intellectual treasure in Satterthwaite. A TREASURE.  While I regret the College's  need to take this step, I am writing to make only one request: that the committee, in the three semesters it has to deliberate, look into offering Art 201 and perhaps one second-semester course by means of a very limited, continuing arrangement with Satterthwaite as an adjunct instructor.

Field Horne '73

Letter from Milton Grenfell '73

Dear President Falk:

I was shocked and troubled to hear of the intended abrupt dismissal of Professor Satterthwaite.  Of all my professors at Williams, he was unquestionably one of the finest.  His knowledge and love for his subject were deep and contagious.  His intellectual insights and the quality of his lectures were excellent and memorable even to this day.  What's more, he had about him a becoming humility and graciousness that engendered  particularly close and helpful relationships with his students.  Finally, and most importantly, Professor Satterthwaite was the very model of a gentleman, a model which to young people coming of age in an increasingly coarse culture, was desperately needed and much appreciated.

I would respectfully urge you to find some way of continuing Professor Satterthwaite's altogether salutary contribution to the life of Williams College.

Yours very truly,

Milton W. Grenfell, architect,  NCARB, CNU

Letter from Derek Stroup '92

From: Derek Stroup <derekstroup@earthlink.net>

Date: February 1, 2011 4:08:50 PM EST

To: william.g.wagner@williams.edu

Subject: Sheafe Satterthwaite

Dear Dean Wagner, 

I am a former student of Sheafe Satterthwaite's at the college and I was saddened to learn recently that his contract has not been renewed for next year, particularly in light of his interest in continuing to teach at the school.  Considering his long service to the school and his unique position in the curriculum, I respectfully ask that you consider a more collaborative approach to the terms of Sheafe's future relationship with the school.

Sheafe's subject matter will be difficult to replace, but even more so, it will be hard to replace the mode of enquiry that is the true subject of his classes.  Sheafe's approach is elliptical.  In his classes, digressions unfold within digressions until the student is caused to understand that this sideways motion simply IS the task at hand.   He teaches lateral thinking.  He taught me to take the long way around the block.  Students get frustrated at times because he refuses to present a bland hierarchy of bullet points.  It isn't always immediately clear what you should be writing down in a Satterthwaite class.  Good.  WIlliams students (and perhaps some faculty?) are a linear, goal-oriented group.  Sheafe's teaching stands as a powerful antidote to the "do-I-need-to-know-this-for-the-test" thinking that can pervade some classes at Williams.  Like Cervantes or Borges, associations and links cascade and recombine in Sheafe's courses with the goal a kind of play between and among a range of plateaus, rather than the simple summit attempt presented in other courses.  

I am now an artist living in New York CIty.  My career depends on the lateral, associative thinking I encountered in Sheafe's classes.  I know that current students (who may eventually be employed in finance, medicine, the law, or other careers) can benefit from an encounter with this way of thinking.  It runs against much of what they've been raised to do, and therein lies much of the value.  

Sheafe's subject matter is also unusual at Williams.  His subject is the everyday:   ordinary buildings, working landscapes, and the stories these settings can tell.  He makes a very forceful case for the importance of understanding these elements of the American vernacular.   He introduced me to the early books of Ed Ruscha, the photographs of Berndt and Hilla Becher, Lee Friedlander, and others.  These artists remain key reference points in my work.    Sheafe requires his students to be adults and to take responsibility for their education:  he makes an extraordinary range of experiences (unusual field trips and conversations with an extremely broad range of people) available to his students, and then he expects his students to assemble those experiences into a narrative.  For me, the conversations that started in his class have continued to inspire me in my life and work.

I loved my time at WIlliams, and Sheafe was a key part of that experience.  If Sheafe is willing to continue to teach, I believe the college will continue to benefit from his unusual voice.

Respectfully,

Derek Stroup, '92

www.derekstroup.com

derekstroup@earthlink.net

917-579-5418

Letter from Mark Livingston '72

Mark Livingston . 1637 Posen Avenue . Berkeley, California .  94707

           

                                                                                                                                                    28January 2011.

Prof.  William Wagner, Dean of Faculty

Hopkins Hall

Williams College

Williamstown, MA 01267 

 william.g.wagner@williams.edu

Good day, Professor Wagner and esteemed colleagues on the Committee.

A word of introduction first. I’m pleased to ‘bookend’ these letters, chronologically, alongside the comments of some of Sheafe Satterthwaite’s recent and current students. Graduated (s.c.l.) in 1972, in English and secondarily Classics, I enlisted as one of Sheafe’s first 50-odd deckhands on the maiden voyage of Art 201. It was to prove a lengthy and a rewarding journey.

I’d been introduced to Sheafe by Bill Carney (’70), a gifted poet and naturalist who, under Sheafe’s aegis, published a handsome little book, Man, Land,  through the College’s pioneering Center for Environmental Studies. Bill drafted the Great Barrington Town Plan soon after graduating, and went on to lay out many urban parks and public spaces as landscape architect for the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency.

Over the rest of my own time at Williams I hobnobbed with Sheafe informally a good deal, frequently stowing away on field trips; and spent one summer in Williamstown under his tutelage, multifariously researching a local history/land use project that resulted in the Center’s issuance of an oversize, composite interpretive wall map, nicknamed the Stone Hill Map, during my senior year.

Throughout that project Sheafe—quite characteristically—figured hugely: as its originator (based on personal acquaintance and an Art 201 term project), funding coordinator, general factotum to the floundering intern, multidisciplinary librarian extraordinaire, professional/official/local resources & contacts broker—and in that connection, field expedition guide as well; historical, scientific, cartographic and typographic design and production advisor, general editor, publishing agent—down to enlisting a childhood employer-mentor of his own, the distinguished typographer Bert Clarke, as our scholar- printer.

Although the Stone Hill Map may’ve been more elaborate than most student projects (Art 201 projects did however tend to be multi-media and cumbersome—probably still do), it actually incorporates a fraction of what I learned making it. More to the point: my experience typified the sense of a blank check drawn on his time, the painstaking, ever thoughtful attention, and the polymathic wealth of knowledge that I’ve watched Sheafe lavish on his students one after another over the years: a whorl of learning synergy.

i

Now as I read through testimonial letters eddying in the gust that bears us news of Sheafe‘s employment termination, my thoughts fork. On the one hand I’m moved by the powerful, thematic witness borne throughout these accounts—showing as many persuasive turns and nuances as there are witnesses—to the actually transmutative effect of his teaching on the tenor and course of his students’ lives, four decades going now.

On the other hand I marvel that Williams, to its great credit, would have so long preserved the presence of mind, tolerance of difference—the intellectual and professional liberality—to accommodate (if never quite come to terms with) the works and ways of someone so brazenly unconventional, bordering at times on the eccentric. Institutions, we understand, thrive on regularity: consensus, consistency, balance, tradition—on the steadying hand of system and authority—in both their materia and processes.

For its longtime harborage of Sheafe’s outrigger we have Williams to thank, not merely as a community of scholars but as a concourse of worldviews, value systems, methodologies—a banquet of mutually illuminating differences.

ii

Enter Sheafe: anachronistically the gentleman, who seems however to relish the role of  maverick. Fortified with an insatiable curiosity, he prefers to catch his subjects, especially his students—perhaps his colleagues, too—just off-guard: to hold up our preconceptions, prejudices, even our self-images against realities we may scarcely have been aware of; to pursue those realities tirelessly into dimensions where ‘plain facts,’ winnowed for their whys and wherefores, types and patterns, become immeasurably enriched and enlivened: leavened, one might say. ‘Let us never underestimate the value of a fact:’ as Thoreau cautions. ‘It may one day flower in a truth.’

More habitually than anyone else I’ve known—unless perhaps Robert Gaudino, his late colleague—Sheafe not merely practices but embodies the Socratic method: persistently querying and coaxing, raveling the skein of dialog that nominally binds the canon of the humanities and liberal arts. ‘The unexamined life is not worth living’ might be engraved on his calling card as aptly as over the doors of the College library. No less so Montaigne’s humble yet mischievous corollary, ‘What do I know?’—armed with which he cheerfully takes on the Socratic role of personal and institutional gadfly.

We fondly recognize these qualities and attitudes that, far flung and unalike as we are, we came to cherish in common during our own privileged days at the College—regardless what focus our studies took otherwise, or what bent our lives since. They leavened all our studies then, like a second nature, as they have done our perceptions, our values, and our undertakings all these many years.

iii 

All which makes the decision to cut his service off summarily, at this late stage of his career, at once both unsurprising and puzzling. Yet we must wonder now if, among the unusual circumstances of his apparently unsecured 40-odd-year teaching history at the College, Sheafe has benefited from the consideration enjoyed by other teachers of such long standing?

iv

Dialectical learning, Sheafe’s natural element, depends above all on engagement, starting with the student actively engaging him or herself:  with the subject matter, be it exalted or commonplace; with those whose works and days are laid open before us; with the instructor himself, who may offer a wealth of information, guidelines, and prompts, but few pat answers or simple definitions. Such a teaching style invites—for its success, enjoins—the student’s commitment.

Small wonder that not all students find Sheafe instructive. His eccentricities may amuse some, his ‘factoids’ seem absurdly overabundant to others: he makes no effort either to disguise or to entertain with either. He broadcasts all these facts, names, dates, places, it’s true, like seed—by myriads: but not to be individually recorded and memorized. (If Sheafe were an artist might he be a cubist? composing multiple viewpoints of his subject at once, sizing things up differently from each angle?)

On the face of it he may seem to tread (even sink in) a vast drift of inert, factual knowledge, more or less of which may appear little better than randomly related. His instant associative command of all those increments and iotas truly, is little short of miraculous—a byword among all who know him. But it’s actually a distraction from the main event.

His (evidently long lingering) efficacy as a teacher distils from those vast banks of data; condenses in a ‘cloud’ of constant reconsideration or reperception; thence runs along every channel it finds, first tracing, then carving out provocative cross-references, revealing analogies—relationships, real and perceived, of all kinds, however gross or subliminal, and whether well established or freshly detected. Public and private, people, nature, products, places, processes: his subjects know few bounds.

He takes particular pleasure in connecting people. From distant walks, down diverse paths he brings them together, lumberjack and luminary, who may never have known they had something important in common, or who perhaps unexpectedly find that there’s something valuable to be shared between them. This approach itself is the Other Subject in the room—always standing just behind or to the side of the nominal one.

Some students, every year, every class—among them those avowedly enrolled in hope of a hayride in the back row—unwilling to focus and to stay alert, bringing little initiative of their own to the discourse, balk before what appears to them a blank wall of loosely mortared detail: while at their elbows others, awakened to the codes and formulas before them, venture on new perspectives entirely through subtly drawn gates.

iv.

In the same spirit, to their mutual enrichment, even, as we would nowadays say, their repurposement,Sheafe is forever infusing the methods of the social sciences—particularly field investigation and candid interview—with the spirit and lore of the humanities, and vice versa: academic disciplines seldom so at ease with each other.

He faithfully models that humanism himself, not merely in greeting each novelty with goodwill and cheer: but in showing respect if not admiration for the real other in persons, customs, sentiments, values, occupations; keeping bracingly fairminded in his approach to class, trade or profession, age, gender, or cultural distinction.

Sheafe presses his students to engage themselves hands-on, minds outstretched, with a world every inch and aspect of which presents itself, on scrutiny, like Darwin’s “tangled bank:” a hieroglyph—palimpsest—oracle of life evolving in a complex webwork of shifting form and function. And so we set off on the Long Field Trip: a perennial search to understand the shaping forces, drives and constraints, that define us.

So, in the matter of Sheafe Satterthwaite's past and present fitness for duty on the faculty, may I add my testimony to the record. I’ve taxed your time unduly: my thanks for your patient hearing. I know that in this matter as otherwise we  share a common interest in the welfare of the College.

Yours very truly,

Mark Livingston, class of 1972

cc:  President Adam Falk

           B. Zars, et al. 

Letter from Frank Davis '75

Dear Dean Wagner,

I am taking this opportunity to provide personal testimony on Sheafe Satterthwaite's contribution to Williams Collage. I graduated in 1975 and have been a professor at UC Santa Barbara since 1982.

Sheafe inspired, encouraged, and befriended me during my years at Williams. He profoundly affected my world view and was one of my most influential teachers. After all these years, he remains an intellectual touchstone.

I am in no position to judge the College's decision not to renew Sheafe's contract. I only ask that you take full and fair measure of Sheafe’s value to the institution. He has been an extraordinary teacher and adviser. His unique scholarly perspective on the American landscape has added an important dimension to the environmental studies program. How many students have seen the world through a radically different lens and have enjoyed a richer experience thanks to his teaching?

Sincerely,
Frank W. Davis, Class of '75

Letter from Jerry Tone '77

From: Jerry Tone <jerrytone@mac.com>

 Date: January 25, 2011 11:07:10 AM PST

To: Adam.F.Falk@williams.edu

Cc: William.G.Wagner@williams.edu, Peter.D.Low@Williams.edu, John.M.Malcolm@Williams.edu, giglio@alumni.williams.edu

Subject: Sheafe Satterthwaite

 Dear President Falk:

 I was initially saddened to hear of the College's decision regarding Sheafe's teaching contract, and then I realized that the feeling quickly turned to anger.  How could my beloved college (from which my father graduated in 1951, I  graduated in 1977, my daughter graduated in 2007, and my son graduated in 2010) make such a cold (and ill-advised) decision about probably my favorite, and most effective teacher?

 I would acknowledge that Sheafe's style and approach has long been unconventional, but my goodness, what a boring place the College would be if all styles were conventional and monochromatic!

 More importantly however, for me, Sheafe's teaching abilities were rivaled only by Fred Rudolph's in their effectiveness in helping us learn how to learn, learn how to think, analyze from different points of view, etc.  I can truly say that I was taught life-long skills by Sheafe in the classes I took from him, the meals we shared, the trips we took, etc.  He was amazing.

 I truly hope you will use your position to intervene in this decision promptly, and quickly make it right.

Regards,

Jerry Tone,  '77

Letter from Ned Brown '82

January 23, 2011

Dear President Falk,

Though I am a class of 1982 graduate of Williams, I have not stayed actively involved with the college for many years.  I have not submitted updates to the alumni review, and the sole occasion I contributed financially to the college (since my rather substantial contribution during enrollment) was to a memorial fund upon the death of former Moo-Cow Marching Band Director Francis Cardillo, many years ago now.  On the one hand, my lack of involvement with the college for so long gives me little credibility as a source of input on its administration.  On the other, the fact that I choose to speak out now will perhaps emphasize with what importance I consider the issue at hand.

I have recently learned from fellow Williams alums that Sheafe Sattertwaite is not to be offered a continuing contract at Williams.  This disappoints me greatly, and hence this missive.

I was not an exceptional student at Williams.  I did not come from a preparatory background, nor even an especially good public schooling background. I did not have strong study habits and my B-level grades reflected that.  I grew up in Colorado, and had never seen a pair of khaki pants or Topsider shoes prior to arriving at Williams.  My only officially sanctioned extra-curricular activity at Williams was participation in the Marching Band, of which I was a Student Director my senior year.  In brief, I was not an especially typical Williams student, either academically or socially.  I did not fit in.

In my four years at Williams, there was only one Professor with whom I "connected" and who took the time to connect with me:  Sheafe Sattertwaite.  More important than the two of Sheafe's courses which I took was the personal, individual interest Sheafe took in me.  Sheafe appreciated my differences and encouraged me to continue on an individualistic path.  The support and advice Sheafe provided, the unique perspectives he encouraged all of us in his courses to investigate, helped me gain the confidence to pursue a career path which has varied widely from the Williams norm. 

In the years since leaving Williams, I have done everything from ditch digging to executive hotel management to helping build and run a resort in Independent Samoa.  I have traveled extensively and currently run a scientific research station on a remote Pacific Atoll. My varied and wide ranging career has allowed me to build a network of friends and colleagues around the world and, if there's one thing they all would say of me, it is that I think independently.  Sheafe Satterthwaite's unique and personalized approach had a great deal to do with the course I've taken through life, a course I've found extremely rewarding, interesting and, not least of all, entertaining.  With the hope that others might benefit from Sheafe's attention as I did, I add my small voice to the chorus of those requesting reconsideration of the decision not to renew Sheafe's contract at the college.

Thank you for time and consideration.

Best regards,

Ned Brown, '82

Letter from Shamus Brady '04

Dear Dean Wagner,

I am writing in support of Professor Sheafe Satterthwaite.  He is in
my humble opinion the greatest professor at Williams that I
encountered.

He is a teacher in every sense of the word.  And as the principal of a
middle school and an educator myself I like to think I have a decent
knowledge of what it is to be a teacher.

I will not waste your time with all the reasons that letting Sheafe go
is a mistake.  I know in your heart you know them and they have been
voiced in numerous letters to you.  My personal experience is that
when I return to campus Sheafe is one of the few professors that makes
time to meet with me.

He is the only professor who would host alumni and their families at
his house on a Sunday.  You may not be aware of all the ways he goes
above and beyond.  This is because for him it is not above and beyond.
 It is what a teacher should be and what he is.

I must say that in letting Sheafe go you make Williams not a better
place but a worse one.  There are things that make Williams an
unparalleled experience and this is one of the most important.

As an administrator myself I am aware that what you and all
administrators typically do in this situation, in fact what I am
almost certain that you will do, is dig in your heels and ignore the
hundreds of letters students send you.  You do this perhaps because
you are afraid to admit you have made a mistake.

However, I want to let you know that admitting a mistake is often the
greatest thing an educator can do.  Sheafe taught me that.

In your career I do not doubt you have made and will be forced to make
countless impossible decisions.  I simply ask you to do the right
thing.

Please consider that some day you may find yourself in Sheafe’s place
and you might be judged based on how you treat him now.

Thanks for your time.

I greatly appreciate your service to the college.  I know Sheafe has a
great deal of respect for you and only hope that you will afford him
the same.

Sincerely,

Shamus Brady 04’

Letter from Ross Cheit '77

Professor William Wagner

Dean of the Faculty

Williams College

Williamstown, MA                                                                            January 9, 2011

Dear Dean Wagner,

I graduated from Williams in 1977 with a first-rate education that prepared and inspired me to become an academic. I have been teaching at Brown University since 1986, where I am a tenured member of the Political Science department. I was the first professor to receive a junior endowed chair at Brown—the Ittleson Chair in Environmental Studies. I am proud of my accomplishments in research and writing, but I have been most successful at Brown as a teacher. I was the youngest faculty member ever to receive the Hazeltine Citation for Excellence in Teaching; I am the only member of the Brown faculty who has received that award (voted by the students) and the McLoughlin Award for Teaching (awarded by the administration). Last year, I was one of two professors (out of more than 500) to receive the Karen Romer Prize for Advising and Mentoring.  I know that what I do makes a tremendous difference in the lives of my students, and it is no exaggeration to say that Sheafe Satterthwaite has been a primary influence in my success.

I was a coordinate major in Environmental Studies at Williams. I took three courses from Sheafe and I did a Winter Study project under his supervision. Sheafe is the only professor at Williams with whom I have stayed in contact over all these years. His intellectual friendship has been extremely important to me. He has followed my career with great interest and he has consistently suggested useful readings when I talk to him about my teaching. More importantly, he had a major influence on how I view the world. I know that he was never a comfortable fit in Environmental Studies, but his unusual perspective on the world helped open my eyes in various ways. Sheafe was willing to challenge the orthodoxy of environmentalists and he had a special way of appreciating things that others might overlook. I still make connections and observations with Sheafe in mind.

His personal connection with students is extraordinary and, in my experience, quite rare in the academic world. The people I stay in closest touch with from my years at Williams all have one thing in common: we were students of Sheafe Satterthwaite.  Indeed, Sheafe has referred students to me over the years who are working on projects at Williams that have some connection to my areas of expertise. While I generally beg off any requests from students at other institutions, I always make time for students who have studied with Sheafe. One reason is that this is a small way in which I can acknowledge and try to repay my intellectual debt to Williams and to Sheafe. Another reason is that his students are invariably interesting. Indeed, I am taking a current Williams student to dinner tomorrow night because she contacted me about a Rhode Island-based project that she is doing for Sheafe.

I am writing, then, because I have just heard through another former student of Sheafe’s that his contract for next year has not been renewed. I hasten to add two things. First, Sheafe did not contact me and he does not know that I am writing this letter.  Second, I know that it is highly unusual to write an unsolicited letter to the Dean of the Faculty of any other institution in connection with any kind of hiring or contract issue. I certainly have not written a letter like this in my twenty-four years in academia.

But Sheafe Satterthwaite has been so important to my intellectual development and my teaching career that I could not resist writing this letter. I know that institutions like Williams and Brown care deeply about their students and their alumni. I do not know whether you fully appreciate how much goodwill Sheafe has created for Williams and how many of us love the institution in large part because of our experience with him.  How could you know? I have never really had an occasion to express what I have put in this letter. And I suspect there are hundreds, maybe thousands, of alums who could write something similar.

Sheafe Satterthwaite is an extraordinary resource and he is part of what made Williams special from my point of view. He is the kind of professor who inspires students and alumni in ways that are difficult to measure. I always assumed that we would have the chance to explain this and to honor him and the institution on the grand occasion of his retirement. That seems unlikely to happen if his career ends with an abrupt non-renewal.

With all of this in mind, I hope that you can find a way to retain Sheafe for another year or two so that he can retire in a fashion that preserves the reservoir of goodwill that he has created towards Williams and that honors the remarkable number of ways in which he has inspired students over forty years. You can count on me to assist in that effort in any way possible. I greatly appreciate your consideration in this matter.

Sincerely,

Ross E. Cheit 

Associate Professor

Political Science & Public Policy

Letter from Richard Remmer '77

President Falk, 


I find  it quite ironic that I should learn of Sheafe's abrupt termination at the end of a month during which I have spent virtually every professorial minute working on two matters which are otherwise unrelated except for threads that wind back to Sheafe. Both matters have been long term labors, both involve Federal Court cases and my involvement in both is based on a foundation , the cornerstones of which were set in classes with Sheafe, including a mantra to look at things from every possible angle. Sheafe was one of the three Williams professors who most influenced my education and career paths. It is unlikely that I would have attended law school or pursued projects and cases involving land use planning and management or environmental issues had it not been for Sheafe. More importantly there is no doubt in my mind that I and many other alums have enjoyed every day of our lives a little bit more because we have never looked at the world  in the same way since interfacing with Sheafe. Hopefully Williams will take the time to look at Sheafe's contract and future in a different way. 


Best Regards Richard Remmer 77'

Letter from Matthew Jeffers '98

From: Matthew Jeffers ‪<mjeffers98@gmail.com>‬

Date: Wed, Jan 12, 2011 at 12:42 PM

Subject: Sheafe Satterthwaite's contract decision

To: william.g.wagner@williams.edu

Dear Dean Wagner:

As an alumnus of Williams, I recently received the sad news that Sheafe Satterthwaite's contract has not been renewed for the 2011-12 academic year, and I am writing to you because I feel that this decision - for whatever reason it was made - shows great disrespect for the impact that Sheafe's teaching has had on multiple generations of students over the past four decades.  It is no exaggeration to say that this is the worst news I have heard from the Purple Valley since I graduated in 1998.

As anyone who has taken a course from Sheafe will tell you, he is full of quirks, unusual interests, and non-traditional teaching methods -- and it is exactly these points that have made Sheafe such an asset to the Williams community.  Perhaps the thinking now is that the college has out-grown its need for an instructor who truly challenges his students, takes them out of their comfort zones, and helps them encounter knowledge outside of the classroom.  Perhaps a number of students have given him poor evaluations because they want to sit in a huge lecture without interacting with their instructor.  Perhaps Sheafe's courses have seen a decline in enrollment, although I would find this very hard to believe.  It's difficult to speculate on the reasons behind the contract decision, but I am fairly confident that it was a change in the college, and not in Sheafe, that was the driving factor here.  To my knowledge, Sheafe's teaching has been unwavering.  Assuming I am right on this -- the question then becomes what kind of evolution (devolution?) the college and the Art Department have gone through that doesn't leave room for Sheafe's courses -- which have been a constant for the previous four decades?  This constant was, for me and hundreds of other students, one of the defining aspects of the Liberal Arts Experience at Williams.

This brings me to another reason that Sheafe was such an asset to the Williams Community -- namely, the detail, effort, and care that he put into his commentary on student papers.  Students come to Williams, rather than a larger college, because they want to receive personal attention from their instructors, not their teaching assistants.  This has always been part of the "Williams Brand" ... and when it comes to the professors who embody this "brand", Sheafe is in a class by himself.  He put so much effort into his feedback on class assignments that I sometimes wondered how he was able to do it with only 24 hours in a day, and yet from all reports I have heard, he did this consistently, for every student, on every assignment, across every course, every year.  No other instructors I have ever had, at Williams or elsewhere, ever came close to providing such insightful and in-depth feedback.  Sheafe took his relationship with his students seriously -- he remembered everything they had written, followed their improvements across multiple assignments, and helped them address their development areas and emerge successfully at the end of each course.  Has the student body changed so much in recent years that they no longer see value in this? 

As you can tell, the paragraphs above are my own counter-argument to a decision that has already been made.  But this decision can be changed, and it is not too late.  Out of pure respect for Sheafe's many years of service -- I would hope that in your role as Dean of the Faculty, you can step in, strike a compromise, and allow Sheafe to leave on his own terms -- perhaps within a window of 3 years instead of six months.  At 71, he cannot be far from retirement, and for this reason, the decision around Sheafe's contract strikes me as political more than anything else.  If you have read this far in my letter, I would hope that you are also reading the other letters that you have been receiving -- and that you can at least understand the impact this decision has had on the broader Williams community, not to mention Sheafe himself.  When multiple letters are being sent, all personally written, by alumni across several decades -- even a biased observer could tell you that something is amiss.

If you have a few minutes to reply and help me understand a bit more about why and how the college came to this decision, I would be very grateful -- because as you can tell from the feelings I have expressed here, I see no reason, objective or subjective, why Sheafe cannot be given the chance to close out his career at Williams on his own terms.

Sincerely,

Matthew S. Jeffers '98

Boston, Massachusetts

Letter from Dave Livermore '77

David P. Livermore

1960 Hubbard Avenue

Salt Lake City, UT 84108

January 15, 2011

President Adam F. Falk

Williams College, Office of the President

880 Main Street, Hopkins Hall 3rd floor

P.O. Box 687

Williamstown, MA 01267

RE: Decision Regarding Sheafe Satterthwaite

Dear President Falk:

Recently I have become aware that Dean William Wagner and members of the Committee on Appointments and Promotions (CAP) have chosen not to renew Sheafe Satterthwaite’s contract as a member of the Art Department. I find this news astonishing and an embarrassment to the College. I would like to add my voice to the chorus of other alumni you will likely hear from asking you to overturn this decision and work to develop an acceptable compromise.

As a former student of Sheafe’s (I graduated from Williams in American Studies in 1977, was awarded a Loeb Fellowship in Environmental Studies at Harvard in 1994 and have worked as a senior executive for The Nature Conservancy for over 30 years), my time at Williams was critical to preparing me for a life in public service – and my career in conservation. Central to this preparation was the time I spent learning from Sheafe. Always probing and asking the most from his students, always connecting the dots between people, place and historical trends, always challenging orthodoxy and conventional ways of looking at landscapes and environmental issues, Sheafe taught us to think beyond academic silos and solve problems by working across disciplines. These are still lessons I apply in my environmental work today.

To give you an idea of what a valuable asset Sheafe has been to the Williams community, I am enclosing outstanding letters written on Sheafe’s behalf (though, like this letter, not at his request) from Ross Cheit ’77, Professor of Political Science & Public Policy at Brown, Belle Zars ’79, Harvard  Ph.D in the history of education, Aaron Helfand ’05 currently studying at Cambridge and Milo Beach, former Williams Art Department Chair recently retired from the Smithsonian. If you read nothing more on this issue, please read these. As Ross has stated in his letter to Dean Wagner, “I am not sure you fully appreciate how much goodwill Sheafe has created for Williams and how many of us love the institution in large part because of our experiences with him.”  For 40 years, Sheafe has been a tremendous asset to the college. A small number of current faculty may not appreciate this, but hundreds if not thousands of alumni do.

For these reasons, it is inexplicable to think that Sheafe Satterthwaite’s time at Williams would end in this way. At 71, just as he approaches the end of his career, rather than thanking him for his service, awarding him a new contract, and allowing him to plan and celebrate his retirement on his own terms, Williams is asking Sheafe to go quietly into the night. This is unfair, uncalled for and reflects very poorly on the College.

I respect the fact that all CAP deliberations are confidential, but I wonder what sort of criteria are used to evaluate a faculty member like Sheafe? Whatever faculty politics and/or internal schisms have arisen recently should be weighed against positive influence Sheafe has had on countless students over 40 years. (You may not be aware that scores of these students have already written to Dean Wagner. See sheafesatterthwaitewilliams.blogspot.com.) Is it clear that Dean Wagner’s and the CAP’s decision reflects the majority view of the Art Department faculty and its Chair? Perhaps not.  For these reasons, and others, Dean Wagner’s pronouncement should serve as the basis for beginning a discussion about Sheafe’s future, rather than as the final word. The opinions of a limited number of faculty should not keep you, as President, from forming an independent opinion on this important matter of your own.

Is there a clear path forward; a way out of this impasse? Fortunately, I think there is.  Specifically, while the type of perfunctory dismissal which has occurred is unacceptable, a compromise can surely be reached if you are willing to intervene.  Alternatives for Sheafe could include a contract renewal for less than five years, affiliation with a different academic department, long-term involvement with Winter Study programs, continued service combined with a mutually acceptable retirement plan and/or other options you could help develop which honor Sheafe’s many contributions to the Williams community.  As President, you are in a unique position to facilitate an acceptable settlement and avoid the discord which will only build in the coming months if nothing is done.  

In sum, as alumni, we are simply asking you to ensure fair-minded treatment of a remarkable faculty member who a.) has inspired many Williams graduates like me to go into public service, b.) has “awakened the inquiring minds” of countless Williams students in the words of Belle Zars, c.) has “a personal connection with students which is extraordinary in the academic world,” as described by Ross Cheit, and d.) whose departure, per Milo Beach, “would be a great loss for Williams and would not bring acclaim to the institution.”  Once you weigh these attributes against the findings of the review process, we hope you will take action to see that an acceptable compromise is reached and Sheafe Satterthwaite is retained.

Thank you for your review of this important matter and considering this request. Good luck during this critical first year of your Presidency. We wish you the very best.

Sincerely,

Dave Livermore

dlivermore@tnc.org

Letter from Newlin Hastings '74

From the desk of

T. Newlin Hastings

Thursday, January 20, 2011

Professor William Wagner

Dean of Faculty

Williams College

By email

 william.g.wagner@williams.edu

Dear Professor Wagner

I write to you concerning what I hear may be a termination of Sheafe Satterthwaite’s teaching contract at Williams. 

I can plainly state that I am shocked if this is in fact the case, especially if it comes from “low student evaluations”. 

I have always known and been bothered by the fact that Sheafe has taught all these years absent any form of mutual agreement.

As a double major in economics and art from the class of 1974, I can state without reservation that Sheafe was in fact my finest teacher.  As we all know, every once in a lifetime, a teacher reaches out as a mentor and challenges you to become the best you can be, especially if that best is somewhat outside of the box. Although I was greatly appreciative of many teachers at Williams, no single faculty member had the influence on my life, my career of choice, and the values I learned from the Williams experience. As I know you are aware, Sheafe has been a great influence to his students, not only through his classroom but through the immense amount of interest he has taken in his students outside of the classroom.

My impressions about Sheafe are not limited to my years at Williams. In fact, I have visited and been visited by Sheafe over all these years and have even sat in on class last year while visiting Williams. He left no doubt in my mind that he remains a sharp and inspiring teacher fully motivated to “make a difference in students’ lives”.  His message remains expansive and I trust students are still getting much of what I experienced when I was at Williams.

If Sheafe is to end his term at Williams without his agreement, I would find it quite a dishonor to both him and those of us who so greatly benefited from his teaching.

I hope that you will sincerely consider extending his contract in such a manner that Sheafe’s retirement might be one of celebration with him fully engaged in the timing of such. To that retirement, I will gladly travel from California and celebrate a teaching career especially well played!

Respectfully yours

T. Newlin Hastings

Class of 1974

P.S. My life and career, much of which would never have happened absent Sheafe’s influence,  is with work in historic redevelopment, farming (wine grapes and cattle), and aviation, along with the raising on our ranch two successful children (one as a teacher and the other both working with cattle over the years and currently deployed in the air force training as an F15 fighter pilot)

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