By Katie Goss ’23
Staff Writer
When the Mount Holyoke College Italian department learned that Martino Lovato, visiting lecturer in Italian and classics, would not have his contract renewed for the upcoming academic year, his fellow faculty members were distraught.
“It is heartbreaking to imagine the future without Prof. Lovato,” Morena Svaldi, lecturer in Italian and faculty director of the Language Assistant program, said.
Italian students and faculty will not only miss Lovato’s scholarship and teaching but his departure, if finalized, may very well mean the end of the Italian major and minor programs at the College.
“Not renewing [Lovato]’s contract means simply and sadly not having an Italian major,” Svaldi said.
The Italian department was notified by the dean of faculty’s office that Lovato’s contract would not be renewed at the end of March.
“There was no email from the school to [Lovato],” Ombretta Frau, chair of romance languages and cultures and professor of Italian, said. “The email in question was sent to the chair of the [Italian] department [Geoffrey Sumi]. … The email did not mention [Lovato]’s name, and I thought that was very insulting, to be honest. He has been at the College for five years, and I believe any employee deserves to be let go with something more than that.”
Currently, the Italian department consists of three faculty members: Lovato, Frau and Svaldi. According to both Svaldi and Frau, the department needs at least three full-time professors to sustain the Italian program — any fewer, and they will be forced to close their major and minor programs.
The loss of the Italian major and minor programs would have a significant impact on the Mount Holyoke community. “The Italian program and its academic rigor and creativity at Mount Holyoke College [are] respected and taken as an example not only in our campus but also in North America and beyond,” Svaldi said.
Currently, the department is in discussion with the dean of faculty to advocate for a renewal of Lovato’s contract so that he may continue teaching and the Italian major and minor programs will remain. The department hopes to allow Lovato to teach under a “wider umbrella” of subjects at the College while also keeping him in the Italian department. In addition to Italian, Lovato speaks English, French and Arabic. He is also a comparatist expert of the Mediterranean and a film studies scholar, according to Frau.
“He is a very eclectic scholar. He is the global scholar that we are always talking about at this college,” Frau said. “We will not give up so easily, but obviously, there is only so much that we can do.”
“[Lovato] taught very creative interdisciplinary courses at different levels and all with great success. He has been very active with the Five Colleges and beyond, publishing and working at the international level,” Svaldi said.
The decision not to renew Lovato’s contract, according to Frau, was brought about by budgeting decisions made by the President of the College Sonya Stephens, along with the Board of Trustees. Dean of Faculty Dorothy Mosby is responsible for making decisions about visiting lecturers and faculty based on the given budget.
“If you look around at universities that have to downsize because of financial reasons, the language programs are always the first to be cut,” Frau said. “This is really a trend, and we are considered disposable and … less important. I think part of it is because administrators do not understand what we do.”
“What I find particularly painful in this case … is that both our president and our current dean of faculty are so-called ‘language people,’” Frau continued. “Sonya Stephens was a French professor before becoming the president. Dorothy Mosby was a Spanish professor. So that this is coming from colleagues is even more painful and even more discouraging.”
Svaldi also reflected on the impact of this decision. “Not renewing [Lovato]’s contract means taking away so many academic opportunities for our students that I have a hard time comprehending it. When you accomplish so much, you see your students flourish and accomplish wonderful things in their lives, at many levels, you start thinking that all the sacrifices you have made were worthwhile,” she said. “Everyone has the desire to be recognized and valued for their hard work, so the news we received of not renewing Prof. Lovato’s position was heartbreaking and left us hopeless.”
Although Svaldi and Frau are attempting to keep Lovato on staff for as long as possible, they have both recognized that the College has taken no further action. There has been no plan to replace Lovato and no plan for current Italian majors and minors. Frau believes the College will try to “phase out” the program, a process in which she and Svaldi would continue teaching current students in the program to allow them to graduate, but no new students would be accepted into the major and minor programs.
“The school has not … touched upon [the question of] ‘What is going to happen to the students who are already committed to Italian?’” Frau said. “That is something else that I find very discouraging because this has not come up yet.”
Still, Frau made it clear that she and Svaldi would “never abandon the students who are committed” to the department.
Though the Italian department is small, it has provided an inclusive community for both students and faculty at the College. All students can take classes in the department regardless of their major or minor. For some students, like Sandra Popadic ’22, it was the reason to stay at Mount Holyoke.
“There is something special about the Italian department in the way that they care about [and remember] the students they had in one elective course five years ago,” she said.
Popadic’s older sister was a Romance language major at Mount Holyoke. During her sister’s Commencement Weekend, she experienced the Italian department community for the first time and already felt connected to them before enrolling as a student.
In her first year, she had originally wanted to transfer out of Mount Holyoke but ultimately decided to stay because of the Italian department. She was able to engage with Italian students and staff and attend events every week, and that alone made her want to remain at the College.
“I felt so connected to them, even though I could not take classes [with them] yet,” Popadic said. “I started to love the department even more when I started to study with [Lovato] last fall.”
Frau mentioned that many students consider the Italian department a space for discussing issues beyond classroom questions, including personal challenges and, as in Popadic’s case, debates about transferring. She said the department is able to provide this kind of communication and community.
“Pre-pandemic, we would take walks and go for coffee and talk [to] try to find solutions,” Frau said. “We offer this one-on-one service to our students that many other large departments cannot, or will not, offer.”
Carolena Galvin ’24 said she was even more excited to attend Mount Holyoke because it offers an Italian program. She started learning Italian before college and has already taken two Italian courses at Mount Holyoke since matriculating in the fall.
“I understand that the College has to make difficult choices, … but I do think the Italian department is not something that can be taken for granted just because it is very specific, and it definitely attracts students who have a specific interest in Italian,” Galvin said.
She said that if the Italian major and minor were phased out, it could affect future students’ decision to attend Mount Holyoke.
In response to a Mount Holyoke News inquiry, the College’s Director of News and Media Relations Christian Feuerstein said, “The College does not comment about personnel matters.”
Students and faculty have sent the administration letters of support for Lovato over the last few weeks, outlining the professor’s importance to the program as well as the Italian department’s value to the school.
“It comes without doubt that the College is facing budgetary challenges, but we in the Italian program have a vision. What we ask is the opportunity to pursue it,” Svaldi said. “We owe it to the millions of Italians that left Italy more than a century ago to find a better life in the U.S. We have the moral responsibility to promote and protect our language and culture.”