January 21, 2026
Three years ago, I served on an external review committee for the English department at Montclair State University, in New Jersey. Drawing on enrollment and outcomes data, a departmental self-study, and interviews with personnel, we wrote up an assessment of the faculty’s vision and programming.
The process was a happy one. Like most other English departments, Montclair State’s had seen the major shrink a bit over the previous decade, but we found a program that had, in our words, “stabilized and developed a more unified, cohesive culture” after a period of fragmentation. Through a combination of intellectual seriousness, curricular coherence, and collective purpose, it was “thriving in difficult times.”
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