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ANAC
Member Presidents Welcome New Students
On campuses everywhere presidents welcome new students and seek
to impart a provocative thought or two that they hope will cause
students to reflect, especially entering freshmen as they embark
on their college learning experiences. The following are excerpts
from the opening convocation remarks of three ANAC member presidents:
Peggy Williams, president of Ithaca
College, measures the quality of her institution by the kind
of graduates entering students will become as Ithaca alums after
four years. Urging new students to "reach out to as many of
your classmates as possible," she associated the wide variety
of accomplishments of Ithaca alumni to their engagement with the
diversity of the Ithaca College community and all it offers, as
well as to their classroom learning: "While we are proud of
the alumnus who received his degree in chemistry and is now a respected
research scientist with the National Institute of Standards and
Technology, we are equally proud of the alumnus who majored in sociology,
but was so upset by his father's bad experience with a dialysis
treatment that he opened his own treatment center. There's a planned
studies major who now runs an opera house in Berlin and conducts
Disney musicals throughout Europe. . . .Finally, there's a recent
graduate who is interning at Sloan-Kettering Hospital in New York
City. Instead of applying her degree in occupational therapy in
a traditional way, she has combined her love of dance and occupational
therapy to help breast cancer survivors recover after they have
been discharged."
President Bobby Fong of Butler University urged entering
students to use a Butler education "as a precious opportunity
to find your own best self." He described the world where students
would spend their lives as an Earth village of 100 people to illustrate
the needs and diversity of this global community. Using current
population ratios, the Earth village would have: 57 Asians, 21 Europeans,
14 from the Western Hemisphere, 8 Africans, 52 females, 48 males,
70 non-whites, 30 whites, 70 non-Christians, 30 Christians, 89 heterosexuals,
and 11 homosexuals. Other characteristics of the village population:
80 live in substandard housing, 70 are unable to read, 50 suffer
from malnutrition, 1 would be newborn, 1 would be near death, 6
would possess 59% of the world's wealth (all from the United States),
and 1 would have a college education. (Statistics from a Stanford
University School of Medicine study)
President Allan Harre spoke of the Valparaiso University
honor code, a timely focus in the aftermath of highly publicized
ethical lapses and their damaging consequences: "The most important
insight almost all (Valpo) alumni verbalize is how living by the
Honor Code during their student years comes to mind when they face
difficult ethical and moral decisions. They admit freely that the
Honor Code has ingrained into their very being the importance of
integrity. While on campus, they learned that one either does or
does not have integrity. Integrity cannot be given to us nor taken
away from us by the actions of others. Only we, as individuals,
can give away our integrity. Once we have relinquished our integrity,
we are the only individuals who can reclaim it by acknowledging
what we have done and making amends for our lapse in behavior. .
. . .People too often become active participants in a conspiracy
of silence to protect their less-ethical cohorts. An alarming number
of adults admit to lying and cheating, and in accepting those behaviors
in others. . . .As a result, reasonably decent and outwardly moral
lawyers, accountants, police, military personnel, doctors, professors,
students, fraternity and sorority members, administrators, prison
guards. . .neither confront nor blow the whistle on those in their
work groups that do not do their work ethically."
Review
of John Bennett's New Book, Academic Life: Hospitality, Ethics,
and Spirituality (Anker Press, 2003)
John Bennett is provost emeritus of Quinnipiac
University. Since retiring as provost several years ago, he has
served as University Scholar at Quinnipiac, using his discipline as
a philosopher to research and write about values in higher education
and his concerns about the destructive impacts that competitive pressures
among scholars, a phenomenon he has labeled "Insistent Individualism,"
are having on the integrity and well being of the scholarly community.
His solution: the nourishment of "Hospitality," what he
calls "an essential virtue" for an intellectually vital
and referential community of scholars.
John Bennett is a founding member of the Associated New American
Colleges. His thoughtfulness, respect for colleagues, and commitment
to the ideal of ANAC members as institutions blending the virtues
of liberal arts colleges and research universities have been an
intellectual rudder in ANAC's development over the past decade.
We live in highly competitive times where
opportunities for quick wealth and media fame drive talented people
to reach for their moment in the sun, bending the rules and slighting
the contributions of others on the altar of individual success.
Whether our ideologically divisive and contentious politics, our
substance-tainted big money athletics, or corruption at the very
top of our corporate economy, we seem to be a media-driven culture
that is "all about me." These are exaggerations, of course,
but the effects are straining the "ties that bind" in
our community life and raising questions about the fate of bedrock
democratic and egalitarian values.
John Bennett's book, Academic Life, explores the effects
of what he calls "Insistent Individualism" in the academic
community. His book comes at a time when we are asking ourselves
what academic quality means, what responsibility higher education
has for imparting fundamental ethical and civic values, and how
higher education is called upon to be accountable to the needs of
society. Ultimately, the focus is on the nature of scholarship itself
and how scholars behave in a scholarly community whose very lifeblood
is determined through open inquiry and honest conversation about
the authenticity and interpretation of scholarly findings. The community
of scholars is truly referential in that present understandings
are built on findings and insights that are our legacy from the
past. The time-honored expression, "We stand on the shoulders
of giants," is an acknowledgement of the vital contributions
of past scholars, however we construct our present reality.
John Bennett is concerned that self-centered and corrupting influences
are eroding the values of interdependence and cooperation in the
academy, threatening the very integrity of scholarly work, the functioning
of collegial academic communities, and higher education's awesome
responsibilities to students and to our understandings of truth.
His solution is in many ways a call for a return to bedrock community
values in the academy—a concern for self in the context of
others, our institutions, and the common good. This sense of self
in community, Bennett argues, must be driven by an abiding hospitality,
what he calls "an essential virtue."
"Conversation," he argues, is what makes the scholarly
business of the academy go 'round-essential to sharing of findings,
gaining feedback and criticism from other scholars, and engaging
students in learning. Hospitable behavior makes conversation safe
and the discovery of truth as we know it a communal achievement,
rather than an individual exploit. In the sense that the academic
community reflects humane and democratic values, its fosters a larger
human potential that Bennett equates with spirituality. In a society
where many are hungering for a meaningful spirituality, Bennett's
message resonates.
The bonus in Bennett's book is its commentary on leadership in
higher education and the covenant that binds the constituents of
institutional community. He calls for "engaged" rather
than "heroic" leadership, essential if institutions are
to avoid modeling the very insistent individualism Bennett critiques.
In this his thesis is akin to that of the book that resulted from
the ANAC Faculty Work Project (McMillin and Berberet, A New Academic
Compact: Revisioning the Relatinship between Faculty and Their Institutions,
Anker 2002). Both contend that the principles of reciprocity and
mutual benefit must animate the academy, that in their interdependent
relationships with each other and their institutions faculty and
administrators (re scholars) will actualize the purposes to which
academic community is called.
Simmons
Addresses "Crazy Myths About Women's Colleges"
Simmons College, one of two
ANAC women's college members (the other being Russell Sage College),
offers "solid facts" and debunks six myths about women's
colleges on the Simmons' website. The "crazy myths":
- Women's colleges are elite finishing schools.
- Women's colleges protect young women from the real world.
- Women's colleges are academically grueling and only for serious
scholars.
- There are many gay women at women's colleges.
- Women's colleges are boring, male-free places.
- A women's college education is the same as a co-ed education,
so it's no big deal.
The leading solid fact: "One third of students come to Simmons
because it is a women's college. One third don't care either way.
And one third come to Simmons despite that fact that it is a women's
college. But by sophomore year, virtually ALL Simmons students swear
it was the best decision they ever made." A Simmons' freshman
to sophomore student retention rate well over 80 percent would seem
to substantiate this fact. Go to the ANAC website (http://www.anac.org)
and click on the Simmons College link to read how Simmons College
debunks "Crazy Myths About Women's Colleges."
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