Magazine

As an English professor, Tarshia Stanley often provided her students with a simple instruction: “Take me back to the text.”

In other words: make sure your work is grounded in the lessons and meaning found within the written piece in front of you.

In her professional life, she’s followed that very same advice.

“I’m a very mission statement–oriented, mission-driven person,” she says. “I choose institutions that are dedicated to students, that have a sense of what it means to be a global citizen, and that are interested in turning out not just a person who can get a job, but a person who can make a difference in the world.”

That, she says, is what drew her to St. Olaf. This summer she became the college’s new provost and vice president for academic affairs. In this role, she oversees all faculty, staff, and programming within the Academic Affairs Division, directly shaping the liberal arts education that each St. Olaf student receives.

“It’s really important to have the multi-directional thinking that a liberal arts education can deliver. We’re not going to be able to move in the directions that we need to and become who we need to be as human beings unless we give more attention to that kind of thinking.”
— Tarshia Stanley, Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs

Stanley brings deep expertise to this work. She comes to St. Olaf from Wagner College, where she served as the special assistant to the president for academic affairs and previously served as provost and vice president for academic affairs. Prior to that, she served as dean of the School of Humanities, Arts, and Sciences at St. Catherine University, where she launched an integrated learning series and a Career Readiness in Undergraduate Majors program, and co-founded a BIPOC Women’s Professional Leadership Cohort.

All of this leadership work, Stanley notes, is built on the foundation that she developed while beginning her career at Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia. There she was tenured in the English Department and built the film and visual culture program. She served as coordinator for the Spelman Walmart Initiative for First-Generation College Student Scholars and as a Career Pathways Initiative advisor, mentoring faculty developing new career-preparation courses. She was also appointed by the Spelman provost to implement a new advising and retention model, before being appointed director of the honors program.

“It’s where I like to say I cut my teeth, because you had to do absolutely everything,” Stanley says. “I learned from folks who were so deeply committed to students and always putting students first, and I’ve carried that with me throughout my career.”

As her work at St. Olaf gets underway, Stanley sat down to discuss the future of the liberal arts, how Ole alumni can support academic programs on campus, and why Star Trek might just show us how to be the best versions of ourselves.

What do you believe is the biggest strength of a liberal arts education in today’s world?
When I think of what a liberal arts institution offers, I like to use the analogy of weaving. In weaving you have the warp, which are the lengthwise threads that provide the foundation. And then you have the weft, which is the yarn that is woven over and under the warp horizontally to create the weave. The liberal arts does that with disciplines — it’s about science, it’s about math, it’s about examining what artificial intelligence brings us. But it’s also layered with the humanities, the social sciences, fine arts. It’s all of those things woven together. It’s both the horizontal and the vertical. It’s about the depth and it’s about the breadth. It creates a kind of thinking that we need in today’s world: people who have a 360-degree ability to problem solve. And that is what a liberal arts education delivers: people who are multidimensional thinkers.

Part of the problem that we see today is that we have people who can only deliver one way of thinking, and they flatten out problems to make things either black or white. They cannot see what is in between — which is where the true kinds of problems that we have to solve in the 21st century are. And so it’s really important to have that multi-directional thinking that a liberal arts education can deliver. We’re not going to be able to move in the directions that we need to and become who we need to be as human beings unless we give more attention to that kind of thinking.

How do you balance tradition and innovation at a 150-year-old institution like St. Olaf?
In the South we say ‘You eat the fish and you leave the bones.’ So you figure out those things that continue to have meaning, that continue to move you forward, and you keep doing those things. There will always be traditions, there will always be ways of doing things that continue to enrich us and bring us together. But there’ll also be things that no longer work for us — and we have to be willing to let those things go. We have to be willing to move things off the plate and bring new things on, because those things keep us alive and moving forward. It’s a balancing act. We can’t do everything. We can’t keep everything. That can be painful, but it also can be rewarding, because it enables us to continue to grow and thrive. I think that there’s just as much honor in letting go of a thing as there was in creating it.

What role do you see Ole alumni playing in the evolution of the college’s academic programs?
We really need to have our students in close proximity to alumni and other folks in a wide range of career roles so that our students in the classroom are practicing the kinds of skills and challenges that they will actually face on the job. We already have a tradition of doing that here at St. Olaf — we just need more of it. So I would invite folks who are in hospital settings and corporate settings and nonprofits — whatever your business is, whatever you do for a living — to host Oles in your workspace and give our students hands-on practice.

What’s a book, film, or piece of art that’s made a lasting impact on you?
When I was in graduate school, I had just finished my master’s degree in literature and I saw a film called Daughters of the Dust. I remember watching this film and thinking ‘These images are transformative, and I really need to know why.’ Literature has always been that for me — I would travel while reading, be in another world — and this one film made me understand that images do this, too. It had such an effect on me that I ended up doing the rest of my Ph.D. work in film. It was the first time I realized the impact that visual images could have. I realized I needed to be able to read not just a literary text, but I needed to be able to read a visual text as well — and that I needed to be in the business of teaching people how to read anything. That served me well, and my first job at Spelman was to develop the film and media studies minor in the English Department.

Many people on campus already know that you’re a huge Star Trek and science fiction fan. Why should science fiction matter to the liberal arts?
As a professor of English, I never concentrated on speculative fiction or science fiction in my career until recently, because I was so busy building other things that were needed. Science fiction was something I read and watched for pleasure, where I went to escape. I didn’t want to think about work when I was watching Star Trek— but then one day I realized that my love of science fiction had given me the ability to practice reality. I would read science fiction or watch Star Trek, and I would see that we did not blow ourselves up. We did figure out a way to get along. We didn’t have to start all over again. We figured a way out of it, even though there were difficult times. We figured out the best of who we were, and we went forward — and exploration became the thing that was so important to us learning. That’s why it resonated so much with me. And I started developing courses for students in speculative fiction and science fiction because I wanted them to understand that this kind of reading and watching allows us to imagine the absolute best of what we can be, not just the worst. You get to practice your very best in those spaces — and once you get good at it, you can’t help but bring it into reality.

You have a keen interest in AI in the academy, and you’ve invited faculty and staff to join you in reading a book called AI Snake Oil. What do you see as the challenges and opportunities of AI in higher education?
As educators, we have to take the lead with AI. Right now corporations are taking the lead, and that is okay, but there has to be a balance that comes from higher education. I hear lots of conversations about all of the difficulties and challenges around AI, which are perfectly true — but that’s also perfectly true about every new system. This is the opportunity for us now to get involved at the ground level of this system and try to bring it into a place in which we can get the benefits from it without it turning into something that depletes us. I’m interested in how we teach this to students because it will affect how they enter into the world, which is going to expect them to be proficient at using generative AI. We have to get there before their bosses do, and the corporations do, and say, ‘You have to have an ethical understanding of what it is that you’re doing, and you have to move forward with excellence. And how do you do that? How do you use that? You cannot let it substitute for your own thinking. You can’t let it do for you what you would do for yourself.’

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve received?
To leave the place better than I found it. Whatever place that is, wherever you go, make sure it’s better when you leave.

Who gave you that advice?
My grandma.

Speaking of places, what’s your favorite spot on campus (so far)?
I like to go down to the green space where you can see the Big Ole wind turbine. I like that space because when I look at the wind turbine, I feel really small — and that sensation is both reassuring and frightening.

Interested in further insight from Tarshia Stanley? Director of Creative Services Fernando Sevilla joins her for a video conversation that you can watch here: