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She found Rome brick and left it marble." With this adaptation of a Latin adage, George Leonard, professor of humanities, pays tribute to Dean Nancy McDermid in the 29th and final edition of the College of Humanities Magazine.
The Magazine is ending because so is the administration of Dean McDermid, who has been its publisher, copy editor and main proponent for the past 15 years. After 22 years in the position, she will retire as dean this fall-three and a half decades after she first joined the University.
Those who know Dean McDermid agree that the adage fits.
"Nancy McDermid embodies a style of leadership that is rare and wonderful. I don't think there is a humanities faculty member whom she couldn't greet by name, or an issue of concern to her faculty of which she isn't aware," President Robert A. Corrigan says.
"She's an engaged, hands-on leader with a deep understanding of this University and our students. She's terribly serious about her work, but full of playfulness as well - as anyone who has seen her imaginative send-offs of her new faculty emeriti each year can attest. She has graced this campus with her warmth, integrity and wisdom, and we will miss her greatly."
One of McDermid's lasting legacies is clearly visible on campus - the Humanities Building. Opened in 1994, the building assured that the various departments of the College would have classrooms and offices, museum and gallery space, computer labs and conference rooms.
The Poetry Center and The American Poetry Archives have benefited in particular from the move to the new building.
"As former Poetry Center Director Frances Phillips points out, Dean McDermid deserves special credit for inviting the Poetry Center to design its home as the new humanities building was constructed. For years in the old building the Archives were in a basement (that leaked at one point) and the Center was two floors away in a faculty office," relates Steve Dickison, director of the Center. "Our current library reading room, the Archives temperature-control area for storing audio and videotapes safely, the more spacious offices are all amenities the Poetry Center enjoys because she invited the Poetry Center staff to design an ideal space, and then backed up that design as the building was created."
But McDermid has provided more than physical space. She has worked hard to create a space where faculty and staff could freely exchange ideas.
"I have encouraged everyone in the College to have respect for each other and genuine respect for the many ways in which other colleagues contribute to the accomplishment of our work at the University," she says.
"I know that if we cannot value the ways and the works of others, then our University is weakened by fragmentation and fractiousness."
Pamela Vaughn, chair of the Academic Senate and Classics/World and Comparative Literature, believes that McDermid's efforts in this area have been a success.
"She truly cares about the College, its faculty, staff and students," says Vaughn. "She knows our interests and strengths and supports each of us accordingly; she does not try to make us all in each other's image, but finds ways to allow each of us to grow and contribute in the best possible way to the College. That is why the College has such diversity, such academic excellence, and such a mission of service to the University and the community."
Part of her success in this area comes because of her deep respect for the freedom of expression. McDermid, who joined SFSU in 1965 as a professor of speech and communications, earned a law degree from the University of Chicago and has acted as a consulting attorney for many years in the field of civil liberties, plagiarism and academic freedom. Many of her early published works dealt with the First Amendment.
"I have spread to others my deep commitment to the 45 words of the First Amendment, and I have struggled to protect those enumerated rights and freedoms," she says.
"Those of us in the humanities have a special responsibility to resist censorship because our primary activities-reading, writing, thinking, analyzing, teaching, learning-all depend on First Amendment freedoms," McDermid adds.
"She has an uncanny ability to allow difference,'" Vaughn says, "whether it is in the profile of the department or program, individual faculty or students. As long as we contribute to the health and excellence of the College, we as faculty and as departments are allowed to find our own peaks of excellence and build on them."
Along with helping existing departments flourish, McDermid has aided in the creation of new programs. The Women Studies Department developed a degree program with her direction. She also helped form the Jewish Studies Program.
"Dean McDermid was instrumental in the creation of the Jewish Studies Program," says Laurie Zoloth, director of the program. "Her vision for Jewish Studies has always included an appreciation of the central role that the study of religion plays in the study of humanities. She understands the value of the study of both sacred and secular texts, and of the importance of core, classical Jewish texts in the study of literature, history, philosophy and language."
It is a role that McDermid delights in. "My greatest joy as dean has been working with faculty in the College of Humanities to plan, to design, to create, to adapt, to attain, to consider, to change, to dream, to develop, to jawbone, to justify, to protect, to strengthen," she says.
Journalism Chair John Burks offers another example of how McDermid has helped the College excel. As a new chair, Burks was struggling last year with a major curriculum change in the department. The faculty had decided to integrate the various components of the program so that online, print and magazine journalism all merged into one news operation. (The Golden Gate [X]press, which publishes both in print and online, is the most visible result of this change.) But to do so would require a large amount of new equipment.
Naïvely, Burks decided to request the full amount. Soon he found himself in the dean's office trying to justify the request. He explained the new curriculum. The result: "We got everything I had asked of her," says Burks, "a triumph combining dumb luck (mine) and graciousness and vision (hers)."
Today, the Journalism Department is one of the few programs in the country to have successfully pulled off the integrated newsroom approach. After a recent visit to the department, an editor from the Tampa Tribune declared it one of the best in the country in preparing journalism majors for the 21st century newsroom.
"To my knowledge, our extremely self-effacing dean has never claimed credit for the department's digital bonanza, and, much as I'm sure she's pleased by the result, never will," Burks says.
The list, of course, goes on-each program and department evolving in its own way, but with the support and insight of Dean McDermid.
One project that McDermid has taken direct responsibility for is the Humanities Club for Elders. The club brings elders from the community on campus for meetings and symposia. Often, faculty members from the College are invited to share their research and teaching interests. With her help, the club also publishes the Humanities Club Journal.
She has also recently become involved in Socrates in the City, a program in which four faculty members from the English Department teach a class on philosophy and literature to once-homeless veterans who now live at the Presidio. McDermid made sure that those who participate receive college credit for their work, if they so desire.
The dean reaches out to the elders, to veterans and even more so to the students, faculty and staff of the College because she believes firmly in the College's mission.
"I have fought my hardest battles during these 22 years to protect and strengthen the humanities," she says. "I became a teacher in 1950 because I believed that a liberal arts education makes us free. We in the humanities must continue to teach what must be learned by those who would be free: communication skills, philosophy, literature, critical thinking, languages."
What Dean McDermid has built will last and continue to flourish. What will be missed is the grace and style style and tireless dedication she brought to the effort..
-William Morris
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