Date: February 21, 2022
Normally, the Dean’s Commentary is not published when the Seminary is closed. However, Presidents’ Day is a little ambiguous. It is a day that originally was created to honor the birthday of George Washington, and was then extended to include all presidents both past and present. Part of the reason for the holiday was to create more three-day weekends for the nation’s workforce. So, for our employees, we are pleased to create this window near the end of February. We close our offices, but classes continue.
For the students (who also would love a three-day weekend), the problem is simple. We have an accreditation requirement to make sure that we get the appropriate number of classes in for each credit hour. We cannot simply grant extra time away from the class schedule. The calendar, as you can imagine, is tricky — with Holy Week, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. So as the Registrar and Director of Enrollment Management and Vice President for Academic Affairs have agonized over the hard decisions of scheduling, they have determined that Presidents’ Day need to be a class day.
Meanwhile, as you can see, I have written the Commentary — so you might surmise that for me, it is not a day off. And you would be right.
The Very Rev. Ian S. Markham, Ph.D.
Dean and President