I have struggled with what to say about Still Here.  At its most fundamental, this is a living collection of poems written from within higher education during a period of sustained institutional change. I have spent my entire academic career inside small, mission-driven colleges, and I carry a deep love for and sincere belief in their ability to provide real, relevant, life-changing education for students.

Over the past thirty years, I have also witnessed how decisions intended to ensure the survival of these colleges reshaped lives and communities without ever fully living into that promise. As much as I would like to believe that forces outside higher education alone explain this moment, I cannot.  From the inside, it is also clear that much of the damage has come from leadership that is unprepared for the scale and complexity of the change, and for the discernment required to know what must evolve and what must be defended. Too often, we promoted leaders into positions of authority without considering whether they had the experience, imagination, or grounding needed to lead institutions built on trust, shared labor, and care.

Still Here bears witness to the uncertainty faculty and staff were asked to carry, to the increasing weight absorbed quietly and without sufficient resources, and to the painful decisions framed as necessary. It also bears witness to the language that made those decisions sound inevitable, to the labor that disappeared into silence that followed, and to the losses sustained when these small, glorious institutions forgot they exist only through the goodwill of those who support them and began measuring success in ways that left those people behind.

I write from grief, not distance. I am not trained as a poet. I write because I am angry, sad, and frustrated. I write because I miss the possibilities that once were real. I write because I can no longer recommend a career in higher education to bright young students. I write to process the end of a long career in a beloved industry. And I write because I have no other way to record what remains when the official language of institutions fails to account for labor, loyalty, and loss.

Still Here is my attempt to remember what was loved, to name what was lost, to honor the people who created and carried it, and to hold open the hope that something worth returning to might still be saved. 

Note: I used AI selectively as a revision aid, mainly to listen for cadence and tone. The work, its voice, and its claims remain my own.