November 14, 2008
Six months after taking office as Provost of the University of Rhode Island, Donald DeHayes has posted "Defining the Future of the University of Rhode Island: An Academic Vision" (here) as a means to stimulate a campus dialog.
The creation and nurturing of institutional vision is a primary function for the new leader of Academic Affairs. The crafting of a draft personal vision statement is remarkable at this time, given the enormous demands on the Provost facing a dreadful cut in state funds; no state reduced support for higher education as much as Rhode Island (more). While tending to myriad fiscal and managerial crises, the Provost still managed to offer fresh perspective on URI's future. Significantly, he also publically sought the counsel of the entire academy. In a time of intra- and extramural fiscal chaos, this example of engaged and forward-looking leadership is encouraging.
Faculty need to respond to this draft, and the Provost needs to continue listening to the community. Both are critical to successful shared governance. The following remarks are offered in that spirit.
Critique of The Draft
Initial Read and Impression. The Draft reflects a substantive effort by an experienced Land Grant scholar and administrator to assimilate both the stark fiscal and bleak infrastructural realities of his new institution, as well as its parochialisms and significant, albeit untapped, potentials. The Provost has studied the institution; his perceptions are not dominated by the sometimes self-serving Council of Deans. The influence of President Carothers, the Faculty Senate Executive Council, and the Joint Strategic Planning Committee are detectable as well. DeHayes appears to be an eager, embracing, and passionate Provost, although some still fear a reputed proclivity toward the imperious (the royal "we" welcomes our input (above)?). Thus far, this Provost seems to approach problem solving as a matter best done through the open style that is a prerequisite to successful leadership in academic institutions. This is all refreshing.
The learning curve and early assimilation of an institution's culture and inertia is difficult. URI is complex and undoubtedly daunting to administer. It has myriad structural units; multiple administrative agendas (some overt, others covert); budgetary and management inadequacies, inefficiencies, and inconsistencies galore; and a divergent array of current trajectories. There seem to be almost as many trajectories as there are administrators and faculty. The Provost's job is like herding cats in a wind storm; currently, it is made infinitely more difficult in the high winds of an encompassing economic hurricane. If anything, the brief document captures too much of that complexity, weaving it together is a series of complicated sentence structures and a steady stream of lists of nouns (often abstract, albeit familiar) and modifiers. As an exercise in writing style and readability, it is a challenge to unravel. Despite the many dimensions which the Provost seeks to encompass in his survey and vision, the final draft need not be so complex or stylistically formidable.
Content Review and Analysis of Ideas. Simple criticism of style and readability would be off the mark and overly pedantic were stylistic flaws not a sign of a need for much deeper thought, as is the clear intent of the Provost and his stated purpose in posting this draft. That is, the draft deserves to be read and thought about deeply enough so that it can evolve into a simpler language and clearer set of constructs, a sign that we are advancing in our understanding of the concepts, issues, and actions that lead from initial conceptualizations of institutional vision, to a focused mission statement, and a clarifying strategic plan. This is the apparent path the Provost hopes to pursue, thoughtfully and collegially steering the institution to a new heading. Still, we need to simplify what is being said and how it is being said, to be sure that we understand what we are talking about here.
For example, deeper reading requires a highly critical analysis and further introspection on the notion of terms such as globalization, already the subject of a Provost-promoted faculty forum earlier this fall. We should also be circumspect with sustainability (see here). With both terms, which set dominant themes in DeHaye's Vision Draft, there is a tendency to too quickly assume we understand something, when in reality the meaning of both globalization and sustainability are highly ephemeral and widely misunderstood. DeHayes uses Thomas Friedman and his flat world perspective to introduce a notion of planetary "interconnections." There is much to be said for international coming together, particularly in light of a need to green the planet in response to global climate change and peak oil; these are useful concepts from the Friedman mantra (see, for example, "The Power of Green (2007)," or Al Gore's recent friedmanesque "The Climate for Change"). But much of what Friedman has to say about economics in a resource-constrained world is poorly thought out; global corporatization—for that is the essence of Friedman's flat world—has yet to show its ultimate utility as a vehicle for planetary economic, social, or environmental unification. While Friedman has much to contribute to the conversation, we need to also temper his name-dropping enthusiasm for technophilia and transnationals with more sober appraisals such as those offered by Nobel winner Joseph Stiglitz (e.g., Making Globalization Work) or the eminent Georgescu-Roegen-aware Herman Daly; we should read and as a community discuss Daly and Farley's Ecological Economics. Before we embrace an unbridled enthusiasm for globalization, we should be made mindful that the unchallenged notions of Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of Economics, for example—captured in the easily digested and seemingly highly intuitive phrase free trade—are now giving way to serious reservations upon deeper inspection (witness Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine, or simply read the daily news as the nation reconsiders the effects of a long era of deregulation of financial institutions). We should even be more circumspect about our axiomatic national faith in the concept of american freedom; that is, the abstract concept of freedom needs to be critically examined in light of what americans actually do with their freedom (see, for example, Andrew Bacevich's enormously thought provoking critique of profligate american consumerism translated into global military dominance in The Limits of Power). So too should we be wary (skeptical, short of cynical) of the purported magic of globalization or sustainability, particularly as organizing concepts for an academic institution.
DeHaye's point in citing Friedman is to introduce awareness of a rapidly changing world. The popular press is littered with the catch-phrases of contemporary change, and DeHayes manages to harvest a fair crop of the latest buzz. This bee hive of a paragraph is typical:
We need to think more about the two messages—one message on change and another on role—in this lively paragraph. That is, given that the world is changing in complex and threatening ways ("...poverty, injustice, disease and war are driving forces..." (Wow!)), the critical issue is not how, or even how fast, the world is changing, but rather what we want it to look like when change is all done. Also, given that there is a competitive educational marketplace embedded in a rapidly changing governing society, the critical issue for URI is not how we are going to fit into a marketplace, but rather how we are going to decide our unique role despite the marketplace. After all, we are stuck with that silly "Think big; we do" product of modern corporate branding genius, and we only look more laughable if we fail to live up to our braggadocio. If we are going to see our way to a brighter future (perhaps running on sheer bravado), we will need a major change of perspective; we must move our outlook from one of passive adaptation to a changing world and fitting in, to a new perspective of active shaping and leadership of that world. We don't have a choice here. If we fail to take on the more daring profile of courage, we might as well change the school motto to "Think little; it's, like, a whole lot easier, dude" and close up shop.
There is a long tradition within the land grant system of viewing the world as one of change that challenges campuses. For instance, compare the draft's language (above) to the introduction to the Kellogg Commission report from 1996: "Unprecedented problems confront our campuses. We face seismic shifts in public attitudes. We are challenged by new demographics and exploding technologies. We are beset by demands to act "accountably" toward students, parents, communities, and taxpayers. An increasingly skeptical press questions our priorities.... We must take charge of change. That is what the Kellogg Commission on the Future of State and Land-Grant Universities is all about." This is to say that the problem statements developed in the Provost's Draft have a solid pedigree. (more)
Having established that the world is changing and URI should too, the draft then posits a Vision statement for consideration:
Here is where the Provost first suggests three areas of emphasis for the future of URI: health, engineering, and ecology (springing from a politically obligatory liberal arts base). Concise vision statements are hard to write (e.g., my own failure), and there has been only a sparce and largely unsuccessful effort to do so at URI. The claim that URI has a unique vision is strengthened by the addition of a paragraph on URI's "Distinctive Niche" in the higher education market; this assertion is essential to separate URI from everyone else, an essential function of vision statements, according to Newman.
The notion of "institution of choice for students and faculty," and the concept of distinctive niche are both mindful of the advice of Frank Newman's book, "The Future of Higher Education: Rhetoric, Reality, and the Risks of the Market") (see also). However, there is nothing inherent in the draft that makes it clear to me what goes into achieving whatever set of characteristics mark "institution of choice," as appealing as it sounds. The Provost implies that special niche is not achieved by declaration, but rather by actual achievements. That is, distinctive niche is achieved through actions, not words. If URI were to translate the Provost's words into a coordinated set of institutional management practices and cross-disciplinary academic programs, we would be moving in the right direction. Until then, the words point in a useful direction, but they are not particularly distinctive in themselves: how many institutions would not claim to be "learning-centered," committed to "student development," and addressing "compelling challenges" of local through planetary scope, etc. No institution would advance an ethic of un-sustainability or economic morbidity, so what special niche is carved by claiming to be inspired by sustainability or the advancement of economic vitality? The task is not to make URI bland through undistinguishing sets of principles, but rather to clarify our unique actions and clear foci within those vague concepts.
Again, the Provost's vision is congruent with other land grant thinkers. From the Kellogg Commission's first report (1997), "Returning to Our Roots: the Student Experience," for example, "Our institutions must become genuine learning communities, supporting and inspiring faculty, staff, and learners of all kinds. Our learning communities should be student centered, committed to excellence in teaching and to meeting the legitimate needs of learners, wherever they are, whatever they need, whenever they need it. Our learning communities should emphasize the importance of a healthy learning environment that provides students, faculty, and staff with the facilities, support, and resources they need to make this vision a reality."
I do not understand why the draft includes sections for "Principles to Guide Our Future," "Institutional Values and Academic Priorities," and "A Core Set of Values is Fundamental to Our University." The principles (listed and briefly annotated—:value, self-sufficiency, entrepreneurial spirit, innovation, and pride—are quite general, and I can't see that they would add anything to the question of vision. The section Institutional Values and Academic Priorities provides a place to park an awkward illustration, followed by a brief explanatory text. To me, the diagram looks like an old fashioned dial telephone; to others, it conveys messages of priorities (liberal education is lumped into a non-distinct base that is not clearly enough central to the instrument/institution). It is probably pointless to engage in speculation about meaning or priorities from the bare outlines put forward in the Draft. There is not enough clarity about any of the two categories of future academic priorities. That is, the category of cross-cutting themes lists four:
- Interdisciplinary Learning and Discovery—collaborative work encouraging synergistic thinking that extends across departments and colleges;
- Global Awareness and Global Change—a global perspective fundamental to the student experience and our understanding of human-induced global changes, including ecological, economic, and human well-being dimensions;
- Sustaining Vibrant Coastal Communities and Ecosystems—reflects our comprehensive commitment to serving the distinctive social, economic and ecological elements of the Ocean State that can serve as a model for the world;
- Partnerships—creating synergies with businesses, non-profits, and agencies that leverage and expand our capacity and impact.
The second category of priorities is "broad disciplinary and interdisciplinary arenas tied directly to our strengths, the need for expertise and literacy in the STEM [sic—Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics] fields, and emerging priorities for economic development in Rhode Island and throughout the world." Four thematic areas are listed:
- Contemporary Liberal Education Foundation
- Integrated Health Systems/Science
- Engineering/Physical Sciences
- Sustainability/Climate Change/Life Sciences
The priorities also include emphasis on business/Enterprise and Human Development and Education, and Institutes for Math and Science Learning and Innovation and Technology. The full nature and scope of these is not clear, despite claims that they would serve the myriad needs of a new generation in a new global economy.
What to do with this Vision
The draft is weakened by not being sufficiently attentive to the real challenges of the future. URI is more than a passive vessel bobbing on a swirling sea of circumstance. It is a flagship, not only as the usual academic metaphor, but as a broader societal metaphor, providing leadership to set a course through rough waters. To do more than respond to the world that surrounds the academy, and to seek more than mere survival in an academic marketplace, URI has to escape its backward-focused current agendas (we are preparing students for life in the 1990s), and to do more than to simply recast ourselves in the platitudes of global this and entrepreneurial that (we should not be preparing students for life in the 2000s). We need to stop, at least in our thinking, focusing on where we are today, and to work from a new mindset that truly lets us contemplate life in the future. The following is a personal illustration:
A Systems Perspective on the Future
Shortly after finishing my bachelor's degree (in English Literature) at Michigan State, I took a summer job that in part involved drafting a proposal for an NSF "student-originated, student-run" grants program. Given absolute leeway, I decided to draft a proposal for a light rail system to augment or eventually replace the extensive automobile and bus dependent MSU transportation network, imagining how a Disney-style monorail would reduce fossil fuel consumption, atmospheric pollution, etc., making East Lansing a nicer place to live. Formulating some initial ideas, I was then encouraged to talk to Dr. Herman Koenig, chair of the Electrical Engineering and Systems Science Department. We met, and I began to outline my thoughts, when Herman interrupted and posed a simple question, "Where do you want the people to be?" Puzzled, I tried to explain that the proposal would tie Lansing to the west and towns to the east to the campus, putting overhead rail down the middle of Grand River Avenue, feeding a depot that would link to a series of loops to serve the campus. "No," insisted Koenig, "I want to know where do you want the people to be?" That was my introduction to a systems perspective, from one of MSU's great thinkers.
What Koenig wanted me to understand was this: In planning for any major system, it is important to first think about what the system should do. My thinking began with the way things were, with people living where they lived, and needing to travel to where they already traveled. Koenig wanted me to suspend my blinding notions of the way things were at present, and to leap ahead to the way things could be in the future. Aware that a significant problem had already arisen in the patterns of human settlements developing across the United States, Koenig was keenly aware that the future of the nation would require development of clustered domestic settlements in proximity to industry, with much of the landscape left open for natural systems and agriculture. One way to accomplish this would be to develop transportation systems that would serve as locational kernels about which population would redistribute itself, effecting the clustered patterns needed in the future. The key was to escape the confines of things as they are in the present system, and to think creatively and innovatively about a separate future state. With goals for the future clearly understood, design could begin.
If URI is to achieve the intriguing goal of becoming an "institution of choice," its vision needs to be focused on a separate future state. That is, we need to concentrate on envisioning the future, and then to build backwards to the present. We have not done that yet.
There are three forces that are of paramount importance to the fate of the human race and the planet earth, at least through the rest of the 21st century; these are 1)global climate change, 2)the end of the liquid fossil fuel era, and 3)the management of the human population. The current trajectory for humans and their planet, for purposes of discussion, looks something like this:
- 2008-2025: Times will be dominated by awareness building. By 2025 we will have made significant progress toward the decarbonization of electrical generation in the U.S. (joining Europe), and in persuading the world community toward like progress. We will have experienced globalization primarily through the ill effects of international mal distributions of capital, and this will likely work to the detriment of the U.S., the world's largest debtor nation. Global decline in production of oil and natural gas will have brought us to policy decisions that will mark the end of the age of private automobile transportation, and hence the end of suburbia as we have known it since WWII. We will begin allocating fuels to give priority to the production of food and industrial goods. The need for public mass transit will be broadly recognized, but restrictions on fuels and capital will threaten our ability to respond.
- 2025-2050: We will experience a period of dislocation and unrest, marked by signs of redistribution of people out of suburbs, increasingly abandoned, and into more crowded urban areas and the countryside. A steadily increasing proportion of the population will begin to be primarily engaged in the production of food and fibre. In America, per capita energy consumption will fall to half of current consumption by 2030, and to half of that by mid-century, in part augmented by technical innovation and conservation.
- 2050-2075: Global transport of food and industrial goods will steadily decline. Growth in the globalization of industry (primarily the flow of goods from Asia to America) will be reversed while regional and local production of food and fibre crops and manufactured goods make up part of the shortfall. Americans will resume making their own clothes, appliances, and toys. Global climate change will threaten crops, make significant parts of the U.S. and EurAsia too hot and dry for continued habitation (the Southeast will resemble todays Southwest, and both will see significant declines in population due to water shortages), while sea rise and an increase in duration and intensity of tropical storms drive people back from the coasts. Maintaining domestic and international civil order will occupy a significant part of the government's dwindling resources.
- 2075-2100: Continued deterioration in global climate, inability to provide food, water, or industrial goods, and a breakdown in global health care will lead to significant declines in human population. From a mid-century peak of 8-9 billion, global population will drop due to disease, starvation, or war to somewhere between 1 and 4 billion, or by some estimates to perhaps 500 million by 2100. Remaining northern hemisphere populations will be redistributed far to the north of where they are now, and the material standards of living for most of the world's people will more closely resemble life in the pre-industrial age than anything we are familiar with today.
These projections come from thoughtful people like Daly, Kunstler, Dennis and Donnella Meadows, Heinberg, Hubbert, the IPCC, and others. URI and the other 4000 american universities have enough expertise to weigh the likelihood of future scenarios. The URI Blue Ribbon Commission on the Future of URI, for example, might do some of this, because it is highly relevant.
Regardless of whether you find these sketches of the future likely or not, the point is that we should define the future of URI by first directing attention to the future itself, from a broad perspective. We need to examine our contemporary concepts in a different light. Globalization might then be seen as less of a get-rich-quick international trade concept and more of an awareness that dwindling planetary resources and over-polluted ecological sinks may shrink the globe or constrain long-distance commerce. Sustainability might be revisited with a different focus, less concerned with alternative ways to keep doing what we are doing (replacing the gasoline motor with the electric motor) and aware of the needs to constrain profligate consumption and unrestrained reproduction. Entrepreneurship as the application of technology for societal survival might replace a notion of innovation as a means to create fabulous personal wealth. The focus of our technologies and sciences could change from pharmacy for the benefit of the rich and impotent to creation of an arsenal against planetary plagues and child mortality among the impoverished.
If we design the university of the future by beginning with awareness of how the future might look back to the present, our design perspective must change. At the end of the century, our focus will be on feeding ourselves, adjusting to catastrophic planetary deterioration in the climate, and maintaining order among sick, hungry, and thirsty peoples who have experienced the trauma of global famine and plague. Current URI graduates may one day need to move away from their coastal birthplaces, seeking land to farm in the interior or to the north. During their most productive career years, our students will see the end of the automobile age, the end of suburbia, and an increase in urban disorder; they will witness a national conversion of all energy, food, and manufacturing production systems. Do current university programs address these needs, and if not, when will we plant the necessary seeds?
There is nothing inherently at odds between this back-from-the-future perspective and the general view of the Provost's draft vision; however, we should clarify that the draft is not built on a vision of the future. It is built on general perceptions of the challenges of the present, yet already that present is beginning to morph and evanesce. Global oil production peaked three years ago. Both energy and productivity are poised to begin a long period of decline; we are going to experience vastly different levels of personal consumption for vastly fewer people. We can only begin to contemplate some of the differences in perspective:
- Will URI engineers focus on technologies to build new products for global consumer markets and more efficient machines for personal transportation? Or will they be more concerned with nuclear power, large-scale and micro-scale wind and solar power, building insulation, mass transit, replacement of sprawled suburban infrastructure with clustered settlements; irrigation and food production, or the other technical challenges of feeding, housing, and occupying humans in unimaginably changed settings?
- Will the health specialists focus on enrichment through biopharmaceuticals to overcome genetic limits, sexual potency compounds to hold back old age, and surgery to forgive miscreant life styles? Or will the focus of health in the future be on lowering reproductive rates, rapid response to epidemics, prevention of disease among poverty-stricken hoards, or on simple behavioral changes that obviate the need for expensive intervention by physicians?
- Will the ecologists and natural historians continue to record the deterioration of global ecosystems, the altering of the world's climate, and the changing community dynamics of the oceans? Or will they turn more of their attention to changing human behaviors, engaging society outside of the walls of the academy, as agents of societal change?
- Will the Institute for Innovation and Enterprise focus on new products for international markets, or on local needs for energy conservation, mass transit, or the means to meet basic community needs?
- Will the Math and Science Learning Institute be dedicated to elevating skills needed to compete in a global commercial bizarre, or will it grow human awareness of our Gaian surroundings and planetary limits? Will our focus be on understanding natural and physical systems through science, or on the human regulatory sciences (economics, psychology, sociology, political science, communications sciences)?
Were URI at present being driven by an deep awareness of the future (that is, the future that will be experienced by today's students), would it be configured as it currently is? Would community planning, a discipline essential to rebuilding suburban and urban infrastructure, have been eliminated? Would we have a global geography program? Would we be steadily depleting our agricultural sciences, bordering on the elimination of both plant and animal science departments? Would URI be building programs to teach students to grow their own food, or to understand planetary limits and the need for individual and community-level conservation? Wouldn't we be far more proactive (more aggressively seeking state and federal funds) and visible in retrofitting infrastructure to make all buildings energy efficient, to automate shut-off of lights in empty rooms, etc? Couldn't we be making a stronger case to the State for using the University as a model of physical plant efficiency for all to emulate? Wouldn't we also insist that all new construction be built for the real world of the entire 21st century, and all to LEEDS platinum ratings?
Were URI to develop a vision built on awareness of the future, it would be focusing as much on human regulatory sciences as on natural and physical sciences. The future will depend on technology and technological innovation, but the fate of the planet will be determined by human behavior and our ability to function in and as part of communities. With slight reorientation, the work of departments of sociology, psychology, and political sciences could become the most vibrant and important focal point within the University for change in core human values and behaviors, far surpassing in importance the societal contributions of engineers and technologists. It is not clear that this is well understood in the Provost's draft. Where is the Institute for Societal Change?
Lastly (the place reserved for the most important matters), if URI is to build a vision of the future, it must also consider that it will not be enough to focus on programs that teach students to merely compete in the near term, nor to begin building so that this generation will have skills and knowledge enough to survive through the rigors of late in the century. What is also needed are near and long term reasons to compete and to survive. These reasons are not going to be found in academic programs that focus on the material or the technically innovative. They are not going to arise from a perspective that sees the University purely in terms of raw economic development. They are going to be found in places where students learn to build communities and to work to maintain them. They will be found in places where the next generation learns what it means to come together with strangers because those strangers are all part of a greater social us, part of a human community. The arts—visual, performance, written, spoken—in all their forms, need to also be championed in the University's vision. They need to be more than acknowledged, listed in some mandatory underpinning like any other university trapping (the ivy-covered buildings, the grassy quad, the gleaming athletic complexes). Equally, the humanities—English, the languages, classics, history, and most of all philosophy—need stewardship and cultivation within the walls of the institution, for without these, civilization has no distinctly human meaning. Where are the Institutes for the Arts and the Humanities? What is the vision for our future soul?
I am pleased that the new Provost has taken a lead and that he is directing campus attention to the need to reflect on vision. Believing that there is room for deeper reflection about meaning and about the future direction of the institution is critical if URI is truly to evolve into the institution of choice that is the essence of the Provost's vision. I do hope that we will continue on this path, and that we will think still harder and focus still further into the future, and that ultimately we will begin to live up to our promise to Think Big.