Graduating, Not Retiring

Victoria Swigert never expected to spend more than one year at Holy Cross, let alone plan to retire from the College after spending more than three decades as a professor and 18 years as a class dean.

After earning her Ph.D. from the University of New York at Albany “this was going to be a stop along the way,” Swigert recalls, sitting comfortably on a couch in her Smith Hall office. When she first started as an assistant professor, she taught classes in the sociology department and was finishing up two book projects that she had started as a doctoral student at SUNY.

“I have always felt that I was part of a very important project at Holy Cross,” she says. “Even before we had a formal statement of mission, I have believed that we were about the business of teaching students that they might make a difference after Holy Cross. I thought I was going to work in research universities, but after spending a year here I wanted to be a part of this.”

Swigert will address her devotion to the mission-driven, liberal arts curriculum at Holy Cross and what criminology, her area of study, has to teach us about that mission, when she gives a “Last Lecture” on April 17 at 4 p.m. in Rehm Library. She will deliver the talk in her final year as a class dean. Next year she will return to teaching, and tend to several administrative responsibilities before retiring — or shall we say graduating?

“I don’t feel like I’m retiring; I feel like I’m graduating. I’ve been a student at this place as much as I have been a professor and class dean,” she says.

At Holy Cross, students’ academic programs of study are guided by a strong faculty advising system that has been supported by an effective “Class Dean” system, where deans stay with an incoming class from matriculation through graduation. Students are eager for that type of guidance, she says.

“On a daily basis, I field hundreds of e-mails, I answer questions about what courses students should take, if I think a minor is better than a second major, what I think about this concentration, if a student should study abroad or go on the Washington Semester program. They’re very hungry for someone to reflect off of. As far as I know, we’re unique in this regard. Some colleges have a class dean for first-year students. But, quite frankly, I can’t imagine being a freshman dean and not hearing the end of the story. We’ve had a lot of inquiries from colleges looking to set up a system like ours.”

Watching students mature through their four-years has kept Swigert’s passion alive. Above her desk hang four framed copies of the Commencement programs for “her” four classes — 1994, 1998, 2000, and 2004. She’ll add one more after this year’s class graduates, and responds immediately when asked about what she has enjoyed most about her position as class dean for the last 18 years.

“Without question, working with the thousands of students who have been in the five classes that I’ve had,” she says, one of many times she’ll slide forward to the edge of the couch. “I’ve always seen my role as working in the space between these really high standards that the college has, and the individual needs of the student. My joy has been watching all of these students grow from that first day in their first-year until graduation day. It has been a gift to participate in that.”

A key innovation that Swigert helped develop is Montserrat, a universal first-year program that the College will launch with next year’s incoming class. She has been a champion for the program based on her experiences teaching in a first-year program that has, until now, been an option for students. She will teach one Montserrat course each semester next year.

“I’m so excited about this,” she says, again leaning forward. “This is my capstone teaching experience. It’s what’s best about Holy Cross. It is sound pedagogically because it’s taught in small classes by regular faculty members at the College. It encourages sustained interaction between faculty members and students. Beyond that, though, the program merges disciplines across the College for a true multidisciplinary learning experience. We have sociologists, and philosophers, and historians, and visual arts professors, and political science professors addressing their own theme through common readings, common events, and more.”

Swigert has taught courses in her areas of specialization — criminology, social deviance and sociology of law — since arriving to Holy Cross in 1975. Her attraction to this area was “total happenstance” and serves as another lesson she has imparted to her students.

“I tell this to students all the time: 90 percent of life is just answering the knock on the door. I was in undergraduate school as a political science major because I was interested in it and then I took some sociology courses, which I enjoyed. And someone asked me how would you like to get a Ph.D. in sociology, and then someone asked how would you like to be my teaching assistant, and then someone asked me how would you like to work on a book with me. I discovered that I loved this area — deviance and criminology.”

More importantly, however, Swigert has impressed on students that they must live socially responsible lives as they make these decisions.

“This will be part of my talk — the importance of a value-centered education. Criminology is a way of talking to students about their responsibility after they graduate from Holy Cross. The subject matter is a vehicle for a way bigger conversation. That much bigger conversation is encapsulated in our statement of mission. I believe in those things. And I believe that one way I reach the commands of our mission is in the way I teach criminology.”

To Swigert all of these accomplishments are part of a greater whole.

“I see my years here as a single cloth — a class I’ve taught or a report I’ve written or been a part of a class dean system, I see as having contributed to this most important project. I’m proud of that, to say the least, but mostly I am grateful.”

Read an essay on the liberal arts that Dean Swigert delivered at Senior Convocation on Jan. 15, 2008 (PDF).

Related Information:

• Read Dean Swigert's "Last Lecture" • Montserrat • Mission Statement