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November 24, 2025

News

LTC Director Transition

Dear Colleagues,

I am pleased to announce that Annette Nierobisz, Professor of Sociology, has agreed to become the next Director of the Perlman Learning and Teaching Center. She will take up this role at the beginning of July 2026, but will also begin participating in LTC events during the current academic year to learn into this new role.

In addition to a strong scholarly record that most recently included a newly published book, American Idle: Late-Career Job Loss in a Neoliberal Era (Rutgers University Press, 2025), co-authored with Dana Sawchuk of Wilfrid Laurier University, Professor Nierobisz is committed to community-engaged scholarship and teaching. This commitment was recognized in her appointment as Broom Faculty Fellow (2017-2019).

Throughout her career at Carleton, Professor Nierobisz has been an active participant in the events hosted by the Perlman Learning and Teaching Center. Her teaching aligns closely with the emphasis at Carleton on interdisciplinary collaborative teaching. Most recently, she has participated in a three-year collaborative teaching experiment with Julie Neiworth (Psychology/Neuroscience); students from their respective classes meet throughout the fall term for in-depth discussions about the sociology and neuropsychology of aging, and a joint poster session at the end of term. In her anticipated work as LTC Director, Prof. Nierobisz hopes to expand mid- to late-career faculty development opportunities while also honing in on the current strengths of the LTC.

In addition to thanking Professor Nierobisz for stepping into this important faculty leadership role at Carleton, I would also like to express my sincere gratitude to Jennifer Ross-Wolff (Biology), who has served as LTC Director for over three years. Her engagement, energy, creativity, and collaborative spirit have had a far-reaching impact on our learning community. I would particularly like to emphasize her ongoing contributions to helping us navigate the evolution of artificial intelligence and its integration into so many of the tools that we use in our daily lives and in our educational practices. Professor Ross-Wolff’s term as LTC Director will end on June 30, 2026. 

Adam Loy Named Next STEM Director

I am also pleased to announce that Adam Loy, Associate Professor of Statistics, has agreed to serve as the next Director of the STEM Board. Adam’s three-year term as STEM Director will begin in July.

Adam has been a member of the Carleton faculty since 2017 and has served on the STEM Board several times since its inception in 2018. Adam has also served Carleton in a variety of other roles, including as a member of the Institutional Review Board (IRB), a member of the Admissions and Financial Aid Committee, and a regular Writing Portfolio reader. Adam is currently a member of the Student Fellowships Committee.

Adam is an applied statistician and data scientist who is passionate about communicating the beauty and power of modern statistical methods to his students. His research focuses on incorporating realistic computation and visualization in the classroom, exploring the potential of visual inference, developing better visualizations to explore complex models, and developing useful and usable R packages. Since joining the Carleton faculty, Adam has supervised eight different student research projects involving 19 different students. He has also advised several teams of students competing in data science contests such as MinneMUDAC, the Midwest Undergraduate Data Analytics Competition, and the American Statistical Association’s Data Expo Challenge.

In addition to congratulating Adam and thanking him for taking on this important role, I hope you will also join me in thanking Matt Whited (Chemistry) for serving in this role since January of 2023. Under Matt’s leadership, the STEM Board made a variety of changes and improvements in its work to build community and support undergraduate research in STEM. Most notably, Matt led the Board in a highly successful review of its mission and guiding principles, which resulted in a dynamic vision for the Board that will guide its work well into the future.

Moodle Update on December 4

Moodle will be updated to version 4.5 in December 4th, 2025 and will not be available during that time. Improvements include:

  • Enhanced category management for Quiz questions
  • An option for unconditional automatic attempts on Assignments
  • Easier ways to view All Submissions in Assignments
  • Notification improvements to help students stay organized
  • Enhanced integration of External Tools (e.g., Google Meet and Slack)

Get a jump on your winter and Spring course setup and join the Moodle workshop exploring these new features during the LTC Winter Conference.

Read Moodle Update December 4 for more information.

Winter Weather Reminders

As a residential campus, Carleton very rarely closes or cancels classes completely because of weather. But even if the college is open, winter weather can still make staff and faculty travel to campus challenging, particularly for those who live farther from Northfield.

Faculty unable to travel safely to campus on a weather-impacted class day will need to teach in ways other than the usual. (We’d all hope that these disruptions won’t occur frequently, but circumstances are different, and the individual decision about when it’s appropriate to stay off the roads is left to the best judgement of individual faculty.)

Many instructors will be able to use hard-earned experience of the last several years to substitute remote instruction during their normal class meeting time. For some types of courses, though, remote instruction may not be possible or appropriate; these instructors can arrange for a colleague to cover their class, make their own arrangements for make-up class sessions after the weather improves, or offer alternative asynchronous instructional activities. In any case, the amount of work asked of students in these alternatives should be similar to that of the original class session. (The LTC’s information on resilient pedagogy is particularly helpful in planning.) See the policy on Class Attendance for the limitations on remote class sessions.

Advising

Fall Grade Submission Deadline

The deadline for submitting Fall 2025 grades in Workday is Wednesday, December 3 at 8:30 a.m. Timely submission is necessary for grade processing, student access to view grades, and for the Registrar’s Office to prepare for Academic Review. More information about grading is available online.

  • Student-Opted S/Cr/NC Grades: You will submit the letter-grade equivalent, and the system will convert the grade to S*, Cr*, or NC*. Courses offered on a mandatory S/Cr/NC basis (“scrunch-only”) will only show S, Cr, or NC as possible grades.
  • Low Grades (D+, D, D-, F, Cr, NC, Cr*, NC*) require a form submission in Workday using the Create Student Low Grade Form task (formerly known as the D/F Form). You can submit the form after you have submitted your grades in Workday.

Winter 2026 Manual Waitlist Processing

Manual waitlist processing for Winter 2026 began Monday, November 17, and will continue until the last day of exams before pausing for Winter Break. You can email your waitlist requests to waitlist@carleton.edu. For more information, please see our Waitlists webpage.

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