A Small Token of Gratitude: Or, How Giovanni Helped His Junior Colleague Through the Tenure Process Without Knowing It

by Stefanie DeLuca

As is probably the case for many of us, losing Giovanni put me back to the time I first met him. I came to interview for my faculty position at JHU in 2001, a 26 yr old doctoral student eager to start my first academic job. Given my area of specialization, I was not overly familiar with Giovanni's work. Therefore, when I sat down for my interview meeting with him, I was really nervous. Here was this sociological giant, and unlike the meetings I had with my other senior colleagues, I couldn't even put together really nice or creative things to say about his work because I hadn't read it (I am kidding. Sort of. Just for the record, I didn't really make up things to say to Karl and Andy either. :-)  What Giovanni did during that interview meeting, and would do for me for the following seven years, was to listen to me, take my ridiculously uninformed questions seriously, and spend time answering them magnanimously. Giovanni always me feel like my contributions were relevant, and that my professional development was significant. He did this with the kind of warmth and unassuming humanity that comes through in all of these stories posted here. I can recall many faculty meetings when Giovanni was Chair. I remember laughing. I know I am not alone. I also remember the meeting where we argued for almost half an hour about the pronunciation of our department's AKD chapter name. I recall that Giovanni had it right, even before Doris had to get a statistics book and look at the Greek alphabet appendix.  I also recall a time when Giovanni and Beverly took me to tapas and a movie at the Charles Theater my first year. I had no social life to speak of, and they asked me to tag along. I don't remember what the movie was, but for some reason, I recall a strangely drawn out conversation about tomatoes…and of course the laughing.

I am also particularly grateful for the care and attention Giovanni took to help me work out a junior sabbatical and additional leave to protect my writing time before I went up for tenure. While a logistical thing, it meant more to me than he probably ever knew. To me, it meant that my department respected my time and wanted to see me succeed. Looking back, I realize that there were a number of difficult choices he had to make to arrange teaching that year so I could be on leave. He never let on. At the end of one of my pre-tenure review meetings with him, I remember being nervous and thinking he would say something about me needing more publications. Instead, he said, "well, ok then, you're fine. The only thing I would suggest is that you try to do LESS of these other things that you're doing, so I am taking this student off your advising list, and you should stop doing some of these committees." Anyone who has gone through the tenure process can appreciate how comedic this comment seemed to me at the time.

I also watched Giovanni and Beverly as they worked with their graduate students and knew almost no limits when it came to mentoring, meeting, reading and talking with them. I try to take a lesson from their example with my own students in the department, and only hope I am doing so with half of their commitment and devoted energy.

I got tenure this spring, and thankfully I get to stay in this department a while longer. In my attempts to get my head around being 'tenured', I am also trying to get my head around our department without Giovanni. For what it's worth, I just wanted to share my appreciation for the way that Giovanni helped to make this department a place I felt like I could be and grow as a scholar, and a place I felt proud to be committed to. Thank you, Giovanni.