Professors Want Intellectual Community. If Only They Had the Time.

The Board of Trustees at Occidental College used to command a grand room spanning the second floor of the administration building. But last fall, the conference tables and swivel chairs made way for a wide bookshelf and modular couch. One evening late in the semester, here in the very center of campus, professors mingled and drank where the trustees once met. They were celebrating the room’s transformation: It was now the faculty lounge.

That recognition mattered, especially after rifts with the administration, but the faculty was seeking something deeper — something it felt like they had lost, or once hoped for but never quite found. Maybe the lounge could deliver the sense of intellectual community that was, more or less, why they were all here in the first place.

In the old days, in a quaint house on the campus, Oxy’s faculty club accommodated visiting scholars, served lunch, and beheld the witty revelry of many Thirsty Thursdays. Professors finished the semester with new ideas and strong bonds — or so it seemed to old-timers who reminisced, or junior colleagues who listened with vicarious nostalgia.

In the 1990s, however, under pressure from a president trying to raise the college’s profile, the faculty ceded its charming little home to the admissions office. The Tuscan columns and wisteria-covered arbor, once a retreat for professors, became an attraction for prospective tuition payers. Faculty activities resumed briefly in the president’s house, until the next prez chose to live there. The college allotted a series of rooms, the story goes, each “lounge” or “commons” less appealing than the last, and the tradition of spontaneous scholarly communion waned.

Of course broader forces were at work. Today’s hyperspecialization and connectivity can mean conferring more with remote co-authors or Twitter followers than with colleagues one department over. “There’s plenty to talk about,” says Daniel Fineman, a longtime professor of English, but not necessarily enough shared vocabulary.

Somewhere along the way the grind got harder, too — the pressure to publish, family obligations, an unrelenting schedule. To attempt a balance, professors may spend less time on campus, teach only two or three days a week. Never mind adjunct faculty members. Academic life can be a series of beelines between your office and your car, says Saul Traiger, a professor of cognitive science and philosophy. “You can go for days without really seeing anybody.”

It’s an academic version of the political scientist Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone. Professors are increasingly disconnected, and yearn to reconnect.

Despite the faculty’s dispersion, one constant remained: coffee and cookies. They were set out each morning wherever the faculty commons was at the time: a dull room off the dining hall, a recess in a basement. Professors lobbied for fruit (organic). They were almost embarrassed, but they still popped by. The oatmeal cookies were especially good.

A Gathering Place

From 2013 to 2015, one crisis layered on top of another at Occidental. Sexual assault. Race relations. Students protested, divisions roiled the campus, and tensions between the faculty and administration flared. They traded accusations of spin and of plots to publicly shame the college. Professors voted no confidence in the general counsel and the dean of students. Depending on your perspective, when the college copied data from employees’ laptops and cellphones, it was either spying or preserving evidence.

After a while, the polarization eased, with new trust that the college was working hard to fix its problems. But the faculty still felt displaced. Its latest space, the cramped annex of a bigger suite, seemed to some a breezeway, or maybe an airport lounge. People had been grousing about the lack of a gathering place, and some resolved to push for one.

Campaigning for president of the Faculty Council, Anthony Tirado Chase, a professor of diplomacy and world affairs, cited the collective discontent. After winning, he and others eyed a room in the library (very “East Coasty, Ivy Leaguey,” he says) for a reinstatement of sorts. Of course space here, as on many — maybe all — campuses, is coveted, and competition is vigorous. But Chase saw an opening and brought it up with the president, Jonathan Veitch, who floated the boardroom instead.

It took up a whole floor of the administration building, a stark concrete and glass-paneled monolith designed by the modernist William Pereira and dedicated in 1968 on this Mediterranean Revival campus. Atop a dominant rise, 34 steps up from the quad, the building was dubbed the Panopticon, a symbol of disciplinary power through surveillance.

Veitch was looking to break down barriers, to lessen the impression, he says, that the building was “hermetically sealed for administrative functions.” The career center was reopening on the lower level. Maybe the faculty would move in, too. The board, of about 50 including officers and emeriti, had outgrown its long but narrow room. If the donor whose name was on it could be persuaded, there was potential for the move to solve a few problems.

The president expected faculty members to resist. But after a visit, they were apparently swayed, whether by the symbolism or the view. On a survey, the boardroom was the clear winner. Discussions of look and color scheme ensued, and meetings in which professors placed stickers on their favorite designs. One person described the process as egalitarian almost to a fault.

‘This Is Our Space. Let’s Use It.’

By the reopening day, sapphire-blue carpet tiles checkered the floor, and a 14-foot-wide perforated metal bookshelf stretched, still empty, along one wall. The room’s 12-foot wooden doors had come down, replaced with glass. Straight out beyond the quad, the sun sank over the sprawling city.

As people trickled in, Chase concerned himself with the harsh overhead light. “There’s a little too much of a conference-room feel,” he said. But despite flipping several switches, he couldn’t find the right one.

Jovial greetings floated up to the 16-foot ceilings, as professors sampled wine and prosciutto-wrapped asparagus and joked about having such food and beverage service all the time. Some looked around, marveling at their curious triumph.

“This is the end of a long process and hopefully the beginning of something new,” John McCormack, an associate professor of biology, said standing before the crowd. He chairs the Committee on Intellectual Community, which took up that cause after the Committee on Intellectual Life fizzled. McCormack gave gracious thanks where they were due and issued a call to make good on the opportunity: “Faculty, this is our space. Let’s use it.”

Mary Beth Heffernan, a professor of art and art history, presented her work hanging on the wall: two eight-foot cyanotype prints of a suit and a dress, fossil-like, almost dancing. She could have used her own discipline’s vocabulary, but instead was relatable and intimate, discussing the widower who inspired the project, love, and loss.

People crept in as some asked questions about her creative process and its pitfalls. A music professor chatted with one of two new deans. After several minutes he asked, Does an assistant triage your emails? Is that what happens if I email you? No, she said, she reads her email herself.

On a quest to control the light level, Chase finally achieved a soft glow. At last call, nearly 20 people lingered. Nine books sat neatly on the ample shelf.

A few months after that hopeful opening, professors say, the space still feels a little raw. More books by faculty authors have appeared — American Hookup, Reducing Toxics — and hummingbirds hover in gilt-trimmed glass cases, replicas of an English ornithologist’s Victorian-era displays. The coffee and cookies are now there in the mornings, but visitors are sparse.

McCormack sometimes finds a stray colleague with a laptop, using the lounge as a refuge from his or her office. One afternoon in February, the Committee on Intellectual Community held a tea and discussion on quantitative reasoning with a visiting professor. This month several faculty members shared stories from their sabbaticals, and a reception for a distinguished speaker is planned for this week. But the serendipitous exchanges people imagined require a habit of hanging out that has yet to develop.

Cultivating intellectual life demands not just space, but time. It’s time that many people don’t have, or make. The reality of the professoriate today is not sitting around after class and waxing poetic before strolling home, where dinner is on the table. If you carve out an evening to get together with colleagues, McCormack says, you’re glad you did. But day to day there’s often a good reason not to.

Maybe a faculty lounge matters nonetheless. “People want to have one of these spaces even if we won’t use it,” says Fineman, the veteran English professor. People might not go, at least not very often. But they mean to. And they like to know they could.

Sara Lipka edits coverage of campus life and other topics. Follow her on Twitter @chronsara, or email her at sara.lipka@chronicle.com.