 t
is startling and nearly unbelievable to remind ourselves
that we are only a few weeks into this semester. Even
if nothing else had happened, it has been difficult
to absorb two great losses suffered by the AU community
during this brief period. Stefan Pitts, a popular freshman,
died tragically while jogging; and Professor Nina Roscher,
a pillar of this institution for nearly three decades,
recognized in a White House ceremony as a national leader
in educating women and minorities in science, died of
cancer. Embedded deeply somewhere between the bright
hopes of a freshman pursuing his dreams and a woman
whose life helped so many to realize their dreams is
the whole meaning of American University. Anything else
I will say today is mere gloss on that remarkable and
irreducible fact.
But, as we know, something else
did happen. In the whirlwind of events unleashed by
the tragedies of September 11, the AU community—as
if by some prearranged but unspoken agreement—tapped
into a rich, inexhaustible reservoir of shared humanity.
Spontaneously, everyone found some way to help; to
console; to share the burdens of anxiety, fear, uncertainty,
and grief; to interpret perplexing, colliding ideologies;
to convey expertise; and in a thousand different ways
to affirm the triumph of tolerance over prejudice,
understanding over ignorance, compassion over pain,
and faith over despair.
Just before classes began, at
the concluding event for the Freshman Service Experience,
assistant vice president and dean of students Faith
Leonard leaned over to me and whispered, “You
know, at college campuses all over America pep rallies
are being held for the start of football season. I’ll
bet AU is the only one that’s holding a pep
rally for service!” I want to thank all of you
for what you have done in the past few weeks since
the pep rally. There is reason to celebrate the spirit
of American University. And I might add, if anyone
anywhere on this campus ever again utters the words,
“There’s no spirit at AU,” they
will be publicly flogged with a hundred balloons!
Another example of the remarkable
AU spirit has been expressed over the past year in
our campus conversations on the future of our university.
Responding to rapid changes within and outside higher
education since the development of our Statement of
Common Purpose and Strategic Plan a few years ago,
the conversations centered on a single, overarching
question: “Which priorities will enable us to
build a distinctive, high-quality academic community
for the long term?” That question must now be
answered against the background of September 11, which
cannot be viewed only as an isolated phenomenon. The
world is now a very different place, with serious
repercussions for how we prepare our students to understand
and inhabit it.
From the rich mix of ideas and
perspectives generated by the conversations, there
was general consensus that it is time for AU to develop
a stronger, clearer, more purposeful direction. The
question is, should we keep things essentially as
they are, with minimal change, or should we make significant
changes that will set us apart as a distinctive university?
After the process of consultation
in which we have been engaged, I am now convinced
that AU must make significant changes. Trying to maintain
the operation of the university in its present form
will, over time, diminish our vitality, our quality,
and our prospects for the future. Already we are stretched
dangerously thin in such vital areas as facilities
and services for student housing, health care, and
activities; professional support for faculty; fellowships
for graduate students; technology requirements; and
an unhealthy reliance on a staff willing to work long
hours.
Not surprisingly, we have developed
a tendency to focus more on financial affairs than
academic priorities and to use growth as the measure
of our success. Because our revenues are heavily dependent
upon tuition, we must then grow enrollments to increase
revenue. As enrollments grow, we must add more space,
staff, programs, and faculty, which then must be paid
for by growing enrollments to increase revenue. Over
time, this cycle has become an operating assumption
that has made us vulnerable to the lure of misplaced
priorities.
t
is time now to pursue a different course, one that
will mobilize our strengths and transform American
University into an academically distinctive, intensely
engaged community. Our primary obligation will always
be to prepare a generation of leaders who are broadly
educated, spiritually deep, passionately engaged,
and capable of translating in a complex and dangerous
environment the lasting values of truth, beauty, and
goodness, which are the hallmarks of a humane and
civilized world. Clarifying and extending the paradigm
of the university in new ways will enable us to meet
this obligation more effectively.
The paradigm
for American University is expressed in the Statement
of Common Purpose: “its [AU’s] distinctive
feature, unique in higher education, is its capacity
as a national and international university to turn
ideas into action and action into service.”
Our challenge now is to fulfill the meaning of this
paradigm in new and specific ways. We will do this
by implementing three integrated priorities:
-
the
quality of academic inquiry
-
the
quality of student experience
-
the
quality of extensive engagement with Washington
and global affairs
Instead of being one of several very good universities
in our nation’s capital, AU will stand out because
of our distinctive capacity and single-minded commitment
to connect people in creative and challenging ways
to a superb, interactive faculty and to a caring campus
community that is ethically motivated and intensely
engaged with this city and with global issues.
There is
no such thing as a generic university, despite the
fact that many universities try to reflect what they
imagine one might be. In truth, there is only one
compelling, unrelenting challenge that every university
must meet, and do so with its own unique resources.
It is the challenge to transform lives through insight
and understanding, to embolden individuals not just
to discover but to enact knowledge, and to free them
to claim the full measure of themselves as intellectually
curious, spiritually enlivened, morally responsible,
compassionate human beings. Every student has the
right to expect the university to provide sufficient
resources to answer the question, “What is the
meaning of my life and how can I fulfill the promise
of that meaning in the modern world?”
To meet
this challenge, our campus environment must take on
the character of what Henry Glassie found in the artistic
tradition of Turkish potters:
.
. . they do not speak of passing things along, but
of breathing in the air. You live in a cultural
environment, and the air you breathe circulates
through you to emerge in actions that are yours
alone but can be called traditional because you
created them out of the general experience of life
in some place . . . . The tradition that binds you
is like the air around you, sustaining you . . .
. [Henry Glassie, Turkish Traditional Art Today
(Indiana U. Press, 1993), 528-30]
We must
create our own special “tradition that binds
us” to this place—a place with experiences
so profound and exciting that when students leave,
they will miss it as much as the air they breathe;
a place where the power and relevance of values embedded
in the whole range of human history and experience
will shape the unfolding of the rest of their lives.
 ulfilling
the meaning of the AU paradigm under these priorities
will require fundamental changes. Most of the changes
were suggested in the conversations; faculty, staff,
students, alumni, and trustees will identify others
in the coming weeks and months.
First,
we will undertake and complete
the largest and most successful fund-raising campaign
in AU’s history. In fact, the “quiet
phase” of the campaign is already underway.
I am acutely aware of the times—the economy
is bad, the aftermath of the recent national tragedy
has yet to run its course, and we have a very long
list of needs. Nevertheless, not only must we press
ahead with the campaign, we must do it with gusto
and supreme confidence in the kind of university we
are creating. Those who join us will find it inspiring
and personally ennobling to build such a university.
Alumni, staff, trustees, faculty, parents, students,
and friends must catch the spirit of our new commitment
to turn AU into a distinctly different and much higher-quality
institution. Then, individual by individual, group
by group, they must step forward and contribute the
financial resources needed to realize our dream. This
campaign will be the indispensable underpinning of
our ability “to turn ideas into action and action
into service.”
Second,
we will become
a smaller university. The future growth of
American University will be a growth in quality. We
will invest more resources in fewer areas in order
to raise quality dramatically and become an intensely
engaged, student-centered community. This will result
in much higher-quality students, faculty, staff, and
programs, as well as higher standards, rewards, and
accountability. Smaller, more selective enrollment
targets will anticipate the changing demographics
that, within a few years, will present a smaller pool
of potential applicants. Our freshmen enrollments
will likely stay in the low 1200s over the next three
years as we become more selective. After that, we
will reduce the size of the freshman class and the
acceptance rate, and maintain smaller entering classes
permanently.
Third,
the undergraduate experience
will become the central focus of the university.
Our primary institutional reputation will be anchored
in a new, very selective, high-quality, interdisciplinary
undergraduate program for freshmen and sophomores,
known as University College. Special programs and
services will be developed to ensure that all AU undergraduates
are grounded in a distinctive campus culture of high-quality
academic inquiry, ethical awareness, and intense engagement
in Washington and abroad. The provost will convene
a project team to begin the work of creating the college.
Fourth,
there will be significantly
fewer master's and doctoral programs but with much
higher academic quality and support. The standards
for retaining doctoral programs in particular will
be, first, whether they contribute significantly,
with high quality and high demand, to AU’s distinctive
identity; and second, whether they are or will likely
become a truly prestigious national program within
five years. This standard will allow some programs
to expand slightly, while others will consolidate
or disappear.
Fifth,
as a
smaller university, we will reduce costs and increase
operational efficiency. We will systematically
eliminate bureaucracy and red tape, consolidate services,
eliminate overlapping positions, outsource appropriate
services, and increase our use of management technology.
The net effect will be a significant reduction in
our operating costs over the next three years. By
then, there will also be fewer but more highly paid
staff.
Sixth,
we will add to our reputation
as a Washington-based, global university. We
will expand our academic, experiential learning opportunities
in Washington and reward faculty who supervise these
for-credit activities. Also, the provost will work
with the faculty to develop a new requirement of 12
hours of experiential education for all AU students.
Our commitment
to become the premier global university in the United
States remains firm. Several activities and services
will be consolidated under an Office of Global Affairs
and some World Capital Program sites abroad will be
developed as multipurpose branches of AU to extend
our presence and operations abroad. We will develop
new academic offerings and service-learning initiatives
and pursue academic diplomacy and conflict resolution
opportunities in global contexts. As recommended by
a recent faculty report, a new Global Studies track
will be developed for the General Education Program,
which should include a requirement for all freshmen
to take at least two Global Studies courses, including
an interdisciplinary course on Global Studies. I am
also asking the faculty to develop a new Global Studies
curriculum as a major.
Seventh,
faculty
teaching, research, and service will have added meaning
and resources. We will raise the bar of performance
and broaden the base of support that makes exceptional
performance possible in these areas.
-
Teaching.
It is the faculty—not the library, not students,
not the endowment—that is the rich, irreplaceable
resource of the university, sine qua non. It is
their passionate search for truth and understanding,
with and for students, that is the central focus
of university life, whether students are eager young
learners or seasoned academic colleagues. Therefore,
excellent teaching must be the paramount intellectual
activity at AU. If we are to enhance the total experience
of our students, we will need to enlarge the scope
and impact of teaching both within and outside classroom
settings. Therefore, we will increase support for
new modes of teaching and more extensive pedagogical
relations between faculty in different disciplines,
departments, and schools. Faculty will be rewarded
for inspired, effective teaching in all its forms.
The provost will lead an effort to develop new ways
to encourage, identify, and reward such teaching.
-
Research.
Just as there are different modes of teaching, there
are different modes of research. Although the conventional
notion of research is tied only to publications,
our model of research will be broadened to include
scholarly initiatives that integrate the fruits
of research more directly and creatively into the
life of the campus. All faculty must fulfill a professional
obligation to be widely read, conversant with a
broad scope of current knowledge from different
sources, and able to demonstrate the outcome of
that knowledge among their peers, whether in significant
publications or in other high-quality forms. Our
faculty reward system should take account of both
kinds of research and their demonstrated impact
on enhanced student learning. A key component of
this effort will be the continued upgrading of the
quality of the University Library. The hard work
of establishing a consistent standard of evidence
for new forms of research will need to be developed
by the faculty, and the provost will work with a
special project team to develop such standards.
At the same time, we will increase support for gifted
researchers whose research consistently conveys
truly significant new insights and appears in influential
publications. In order to spur the development of
both kinds of research, I am committing $500,000
to establish a fund for Presidential Research Fellowships
for individual faculty to increase their scholarly
activities. Three fellows will be selected competitively
each year to receive significant support to complete
high-level research in published form, and three
will be selected to receive support to complete
research that will be presented in other forms.
This fund will be targeted for growth in our capital
campaign.
-
Service.
The requirement of faculty service cannot be allowed
to languish as an ill-defined and seemingly inconsequential
component of the teaching-research-service triad.
The ideal of service within and on behalf of the
university will now be defined primarily as service
to students, which must be demonstrated through
sustained, formal and informal contacts that go
beyond and augment the classroom experience. By
“contacts” I mean personal relationships
in which students are educated not only by the discipline
of a field of study but also by the intangible benefits
of apprenticeship and support that come only through
direct relations with academic mentors in a variety
of settings. The task of creating, coordinating,
and evaluating such settings must be developed collectively,
and I am asking the provost and the vice president
of student services to convene a project team to
address this issue.
Eighth,
the number
of adjunct faculty will be reduced sharply, with no
more than 10 percent of undergraduate courses taught
by adjuncts. We will increase the number of full-time
tenured and tenure-track faculty; reduce the number
of extraneous course sections and special topic offerings;
and consolidate or terminate some graduate programs
and redeploy faculty to teach undergraduate courses.
Adjunct teaching in doctoral programs will be eliminated
and will not exceed 5 percent of courses offered at
the master’s level. All adjunct faculty must qualify
for our “in-residence” status that requires
involvement in the university beyond teaching one or
two courses. The total size of the regular faculty will
be adjusted to fit the size of the student body, the
replacement of adjunct faculty, and the reduction of
some graduate programs and expansion of others.
Ninth,
we will establish a system
of differential teaching and research loads for faculty.
The provost will be charged to work with the faculty
to develop such a system. One model for consideration
could be that each year, faculty members select either
a “Normal Load” of five courses, and demonstrate
teaching and research excellence in and outside the
classroom; a “Teaching Load” of four courses,
and demonstrate superior teaching and the development
of new teaching strategies that can benefit other
faculty; or a “Research Publication Load”
of three courses demonstrating high-level scholarship
that is likely to become a truly significant publication
with a major impact on the direction of a field.
Tenth,
the academic advising system
will be restructured significantly and will become
the single most important administrative service to
students. As part of the restructuring, deans
will designate at least six faculty per school or
college to participate in a significant way in the
advising process related to their schools and colleges.
This can be one means for faculty to meet their service
obligations to students. The provost and vice presidents
of enrollment services and student services will lead
a project team that will recommend a restructured
system with a significant training component.
Eleventh,
we will
enhance our profile as a values-based institution,
emphasizing long-held university commitments
to such values as human rights and dignity, social
justice, environmental protection, diversity, and
individual freedom. We will promote
linkages of academic inquiry to service opportunities
locally and around the world for faculty, staff, and
students. I am urging the faculty to expand academic
offerings to include more specific ethical issues
in connection with all fields of inquiry. Diversity
will continue to be a hallmark of the institution
in its makeup and its concerns.
Twelfth,
a new Office of Campus Life
will be created, headed by the current vice president
of student services. It will oversee most of
the activities of the current office of student services,
plus a range of consolidated campus services designed
to enhance campus life generally for students, faculty,
and staff. It will provide more effective and efficient
services to students in particular.
Thirteenth,
a new model of governance
will be created to provide a more flexible, consultative,
and efficient system of decision making. The
provost will work with a special project team to continue
the recent emphasis of Senate chairs to develop a
smaller, more efficient body. I propose that the current
University Senate be replaced by a new and smaller
Faculty Council, comprised of faculty only, and focused
exclusively on academic and faculty issues, especially
as they relate to the implementation of university
priorities. The role of the provost, designated by
the University Bylaws as chair of the university faculty,
should be commensurate with that responsibility. Short-term,
issue-based project teams could be appointed to research
issues and make recommendations within three to six
months. At the same time, I will establish a new University
Council comprised of faculty, staff, and students
to advise the president on university issues. The
President’s Council (comprised of the President’s
Cabinet and the Provost’s Council) will meet
regularly, and will hold two open forums each year
for discussions with the community at large.
Fourteenth,
a new
University Enterprise Center will be established
under the direction of the vice president
of finance and treasurer to pursue institutional development
through financial opportunities. The
center will initiate and coordinate opportunities
in connection with deans, faculty, staff, and trustees
to enhance the financial health and growth of the
university.
Fifteenth,
and finally, we
should take seriously our responsibility to encourage
physical fitness throughout our community.
I am certainly aware of the difficulty of adding requirements,
of the challenges of space and schedules, and of the
presumed status of fitness activities as a purely
private matter. Nevertheless, the value of physical
fitness is hardly peripheral to our best understanding
of living a meaningful, healthy life. I propose that
we find new ways to validate this truth and to include
in the educational experience of our students habits
of fitness that integrate a sound mind with a sound
body. I will appoint a new project team jointly led
by the vice president of development and the vice
president of student services to explore this issue.
 hese
are the major changes that will enable us to fulfill
the promise of our distinctive university paradigm
that turns ideas into action and action into service.
To meet
this challenge, we will begin immediately to establish
the three institutional priorities and implement the
changes I have cited, even as we work out specific
details and consider other changes. I urge all of
you, as we did in the campus conversations, to take
responsibility for infusing these priorities with
creative energy over the coming weeks and months.
Alfred
North Whitehead, commenting on the dangers of orthodoxy
in the university, once wrote:
.
. . our danger is exactly the same as that of the
older system [the scholasticism of the late medieval
period]. Unless we are careful, we shall conventionalize
knowledge. Our literary criticism will suppress
initiative. Our historical criticism will conventionalize
our ideas of the springs of human conduct. Our scientific
systems will suppress all understanding of the ways
of the universe which fall outside their abstractions.
Our ways of testing will exclude all the youth whose
ways of thought lie outside our conventions of learning.
In such ways the universities, with their scheme
of orthodoxies, will stifle the progress of the
race, unless in some fortunate stirrings of humanity
they are in time remodeled or swept away. [Essays
in Science and Philosophy]
We
are about to undertake a “remodeling”
of American University to reflect the “stirrings
of humanity” that connect the AU community to
the deepest springs of human thought, emotion, understanding,
and action. “There is only one subject-matter
for education,” Whitehead concluded, “and
that is Life in all its manifestations.” For
an entire university to enact that kind of education
is full of risk; but, in the end, it is the only task
large enough and important enough to demand the investment
of our lives in this place.
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