Change, Reflection

The Sacred and the Profane

As I write this final post for 2021, the many holidays that we observe at this time of year urge me to think about the meanings we attach to our celebratory practices. For me our December rituals help mark endings, prepare for new beginnings, foster connection to family, friends, and community, and most of all, pierce the seasonal darkness with our festivals of lights. These activities, regardless of particular religious affiliations, set this time of year apart from others, imbuing it with sacredness, even in the face of the commerce that we have woven through it in the United States.

It is in this context of that I am thinking about the lines between sacred and profane in higher education. The sacred part is that part that is characterized as a social good that can help weave together our society; the profane is a regular business that lives or dies by its ability to generate sufficient income to survive. As we complete the final tasks of the year, I find myself pondering the impact of ordinary commercial considerations on the more exalted goals of higher education. (Apologies to Emile Durkheim and Mircea Eliade. Read them if you haven’t already).

You see, I just returned from the annual conference of the New England Commission of Higher Education (NECHE), and if I’m honest, the news was not good. Despite several lovely panels reporting on new strategies for supporting transfer students, improving our efforts to improve diversity, equity and inclusion on our campuses, and even innovative new degree structures, the final session focused on the realities of demographics in the United States and it was sobering. Nathan Grawe’s review of the projections nationwide through 2037 tell the story. What we have been experiencing in New England for the last 8-10 years is now a national trend toward a shrinking population of young people. Here in Connecticut the projections are an 18% drop in potential students by 2037. Something is going to have to change.

But adaptation is complicated. Our potential students are changing, and we should attend to their needs and expectations. But, if we focus on the career development opportunities that so many students and families are looking for, we end up in conversations about the value of the liberal arts. No longer an assumed good (a once sacred component of what we do), we are faced with defending liberal arts education. If we decide to explore some of the new academic models being tested right now – the NEXUS degree (an employer/experiential learning focused two year degree) or the three year BA (90 credit equivalent) that looks a lot like the European model of a BA – we find ourselves having to make a case for the four-year degree. If we focus on new disciplines, we are faced with questions about how many majors/degrees we can effectively support, and inevitably what we might cut. Cutting things that are unpopular is the opposite of what many of us thought education should do. In all of this is a sense that we’ve abandoned the sacred world of education for the profane world of commerce.

In the 20th century, higher education took liberal arts and the four-year bachelor’s degree on faith. We believed in their ability to transform, without necessarily articulating how it did so. We believed the BA experience was enough to prepare students to navigate the world post-graduation and that opportunities would emerge. We also believed in the power of higher education, particularly public higher education, to create the opportunity for social mobility, supporting our faith in access to the American Dream.

Over the last two decades, this faith has been reshaped with questions focused on outcomes instead of experiences. We have found ourselves defining course outcomes, major outcomes, and degree outcomes as part of our routine practice. This is spurred on by the growing cost of education. It is also spurred on by the need to meet the needs of a broader group of students, who are seeking the opportunities that higher education provides, but would like some evidence that the investment is worth it. These explanations have led to a clear tension between our faith in the transformation that occurs as we ponder great ideas or conduct research or engage in interesting conversations and the seemingly necessary world of recruiting pitches that make us a means to an employment end.

My mind is juggling these tensions as I consider the realities of the projected population changes in CT, New England, and the nation over the next 15 years. It is clear that we must change to survive. Faith in our value has been shaken, so has our own faith in past-practices that we now recognize as exclusionary. We are worried that if we change too much we will create a new kind of exclusion: the kind that sends some students to places to explore ideas and other students to places that prepare for careers. If we are honest, that has been happening in higher education forever, so, I am not writing off new approaches, though I can hear the concerns about access to a traditional liberal arts degree, even before the conversation begins. We must explore them to be more inclusive. We must explore them to survive.

But will all of this adaptation eliminate the sacred part of education? I don’t think so. We must remember that the sacredness is not really in the structures we have built so far. Those have evolved over time to meet changing expectations and to include more people. No, changing how we organize education will not take away its place as a sacred institution, which at its core reflects faith in the betterment of both the individual and society.

We will always argue over the how of education because we should. Those arguments reflect our commitment to learning about learning. We will always argue over the cost, because as a society we have made this a cost we share, even if not as I would have it shared. We will always argue about purpose, because we have a healthy habit of questioning our assumptions about all institutions, even churches. This is the only way for us to uncover our good and bad ideas. It is the only way for us to grow.

No, the sacred part of education is not in the structure, it is in our faith in its power to transform, not just the individual, but all of us. It is a wish for better and a belief that better can be achieved. That is a powerful belief indeed. It gives me hope and brings a little light into the darkness of all the gloomy forecasts.

Happy holidays, happy new year, happy rest to all.

Hope, Reflection, Resilience

Don’t Forget the Joy

Higher education (all education) is a lot of hard work. Faculty are writing curriculum, grading papers, advising students, and doing research. Tutors, advisors, mentors, and counselors of all kinds are not just meeting with students, but they are actively evaluating their impact and striving to do more. The folks in admissions, registrar’s office, and financial aid are equally engaged in the question, how do we do more to meet the needs of our students? They evaluate processes, looking for the points where they might reach one more student and meet one more need. Student Affairs is endlessly reaching out to meet the changing expectations of our students, trying to find ways to bridge the gap between classroom and life beyond the university, supporting recreation, career development, and access to interest groups that represent the students we serve. Even those of us in administration are obsessed with improvement, digging into our outcomes and looking for new opportunities to thrive. We are positively obsessed with doing better.

All of this hard work can be taxing and sometimes we get lost in the details of the immediate questions on our plates. This can keep us from looking up and seeing all of the wonderful things going on around us. As we head into final exams, this is a good time to reflect on those wonderful things and remind ourselves that even the hard work is rooted in joy.

Joy, you say! How can this final slog through papers, exams, registration rates, and analysis of data be truly joyful? Well, I boldly claim that it can be. Why? Because those of us who choose higher education as a career are dedicated to learning as a way of life. Every activity that I have listed is all about learning. We are the original life-long learners. We are the ultimate data wonks. We are the very definition of a learning organization. And learning brings us joy.

The key to recognizing the joy in the myriad lists of problems we hope to solve, and the goals we have not yet met, is not to neglect the small triumphs and breakthroughs that occur while we’re striving for more. Let’s face it, when we are focused on doing things better, we will always fall short. There is always one more thing to implement. There is always another percentage point to reach in improved outcomes. There are always pieces that we miss as we lay out our plans to do good things. If that’s all we see, joy will be elusive.

Duh! Right? How simplistic can this provost be? Don’t we all know that already? Yes, but we have a habit of short-changing ourselves in those small wins. We have a way of focusing on what we missed, not what we accomplished. Let’s take this moment to shift that focus and celebrate what we did, not what we have left to do. To get us started, I’ll mention just a few things that I’ve seen on our campus this fall that are filling me with joy.

Our Computer Science program applied for ABET accreditation. We will see how it turns out, but here is what was joy inspiring. The department fully engaged in questions of what they do well, how they might do better, and what they’d like to do next. They had intense pride in their work– and, deservedly so. The visiting team saw that spirit of collaboration and the hard work. This gives me such joy. I am proud of their efforts and their commitment to growth.

We launched our new peer mentoring program, using the data on the students we are losing and acting on that information. Even as we complete the first iteration of this program we can see places for improvement for next year. Nevertheless, getting this started involved collaboration between library faculty, our tutoring centers, the first-year program director, academic advising, orientation leaders, and the director of education access programs. They shared knowledge and resources to get this off the ground. This effort brought together constituencies that often operate separately. They left those silos, focused on student success, and built something together. When I see that collaboration, I can practically walk on air from the joy it brings me.

Building on the momentum from our abrupt move to online last year, several programs have identified online as the best modality for their students moving forward. This means tons of work in the move from emergency online courses to fully developed online programs, yet faculty in these programs are willing to do that work. Their commitment to meeting the students where they will thrive has driven them forward in this effort. I am proud of their ability to learn from this crazy pandemic and build new things. I am excited by the thinking and effort that this represents and feel inspired to imagine new educational models and opportunities that these dedicated faculty might explore. That student-centered innovative spirit always brings me joy.

I feel immense joy every single time I hear from faculty and staff about the great experiences they are having with students now that we are back on campus. Those stories include tales of experiments in teaching, reports of honest conversations about tough subjects, strategic group projects that inspired students to cheer for each other, and the relieved smiles of people happy to just be in the room with other people again. Stories also flow from people reflecting on the good things that happened as a result of the pandemic — like remote access to career services or advising or counseling — and how these things have expanded the opportunity to connect with students. I love when these tales are shared with me because it allows me to share in the happiness that my colleagues are feeling.

There is so much more because there are so many people doing things large and small every single day. There is so much more because we are always looking for the opportunity to do things better. There is so much more because we work hard. As I think about all of these wonderful and inspiring accomplishments, I think it is safe to say that the hard work of higher education is the joy. Let’s just remember to notice it.