I would like to thank our president
and provost for inviting two students to speak today. The invitation
reflects their determination to more fully involve students in
CGU’s mission. It also reflects the orientation toward student
I have found typical of my experience here. Perhaps Karen and
I, as two Harvey Mudd staff members, also function metonomycally
to represent the potential for creative partnership between the
sibling Claremont Colleges. At a minimum, I can testify that I
am a more effective Harvey Mudd Upward Bound director because
of what I have learned at CGU. I also wish to thank Dr. Lapidus
for his thoughtful and thought provoking comments on graduate
education. His words prod me to think through my own views about
the future of graduate education in general and, more specifically,
here at CGU.
I have observed that leaders in almost
any field tend to address the future by canvassing the world of
experts for what appears a coherent set of trends, categories,
and codes. From this often anxious assessment, organizations attempt
to carve out their place in that future. In what I consider its
most troubling form, this approach can take on the air of a marketing
scheme as colleges and universities look to define their “niche”
and “target” student populations.
Allowing even well-intended analysis
of current and predicted trends to define its mission diminishes
any educational institution for at least two reasons: First, prognosticators
rarely successfully anticipate all of the developments crucial
to education. I do not recall too many university presidents talking
about the internet in 1984 when I completed my undergraduate work.
Second, most analysis of the future depends upon categories and
code words that set fictitious and ultimately untenable boundaries.
These categories and terms may be necessary and sometimes inescapable
fictions but they are fictions nonetheless. As my peers and I
who have explored the relationship between jazz and American migration
and literature with Wendy Martin, or aesthetics and 19th century
novels with Marc Redfield, or politics and the plays of Shakespeare
with Constance Jordan have learned, literary and cultural categories
may provide a framework for stimulating discussion but they rarely
survive extended scrutiny unsullied by vexing or exhilarating
(depending on your perspective) contestation. As I hear reference
to accepted oppositionals like “scholarship vs. research,”
and “education vs. training” as well as concepts such
as workforces, markets, “educational systems” and
“smes,” I find myself reluctant to base a vision for
the future on such debatable binaries and constructs. While these
terms and ideas may stimulate our discussion today, grounding
our action plan for advancing graduate education to a higher level
on these notions seems akin to building a house on landfill --
you never know when the ground might shift or some new toxic pollutant
might be discovered under your foundation.
Rather than worrying about what the
house we build will look like in twenty years, I propose that
we commit ourselves to some basic principles of construction that
will allow us to creatively employ whatever materials and technology
become available to us in an uncertain future. Here at CGU, I
believe this shift to a focus to educational principles over anticipated
trends, markets, and niches requires three commitments.
- a more transparent and participatory decision-making
process involving students, staff, faculty, alumni, and our
sibling undergraduate institutions of the Claremont Colleges
in a creative partnership to explore the exciting potentials
of our unique university. Our new president and provost have
moved decisively in this direction and I hope that my fellow
students and our faculty will capitalize on this new opportunity;
- a commitment to question static categories of
identity, culture, and academic disciplines -- to open opportunities
and blur artificially constructed intellectual and social boundaries
rather than fortify them; and
- a renewed and explicit commitment to serve our
local and national communities and work toward a more just and
compassionate society. Like most U.S. universities, CGU has
many individuals and programs invested in community service
and justice issues, but we should move to integrate these ideals
more fundamentally in our institutional “ethos”.
A university that embraces these principles
will emerge a relevant and valued academic community in which
talented scholars -- students and faculty pursue or -- better
still -- invent diverse lines and shapes of inquiry. Because such
a university will espouse and live out principles, not merely
reflect current or anticipated trends, it will attract intellectually
courageous and socially engaged scholars and practitioners. They,
in turn, will perceive a future of changing technologies, cultures,
and ideas not as a threat to their identity but as an opportunity
for creativity -- and a cause for hope.
