Learning for a New Culture
Changing Course at URI

(Archive | Logan | COM Department)
(Bulleted Text Version)

URL: http://www.uri.edu/artsci/com/Logan/archive/miscellaneous/new_culture.htm
(The web version of this page includes links to several additional documents and references.)

"In our quest for knowledge, the University of Rhode Island is building a new culture for learning. We will share in the power of discovery through collaborative teaching, learning and research, and through independent inquiry and free speech. This culture generates a spirited public life for our students, who will become engaged and productive leaders. Our research, scholarship, critical analysis and creative expression serve Rhode Island, the nation and the world. In this evolving future, our commitment to continuous improvement and high quality will guide our decisions."

—URI vision statement

Abstract: I suggest that the University's vision statement be revised. The old statement is uninspiring, indistinct, and overly introspective. A new vision should be future-focused and engaged in complex scientific and socio-political issues of this century, requiring an interdisciplinary and global outlook. Vision would shift from inward focus (internal social reform), symbolized by "a new culture for learning," to outward (serving society's needs), represented as "learning for a new culture." The new culture is defined as a transition away from an unconstrained 20th century world view of planetary limits into a new awareness of the finite nature of global resources and the environmental consequences from excessive anthropogenic wastes. General changes in the purposes and approaches to education at URI are proposed. URI should re-create itself as a socially responsible leader for cultural transformation.

At the heart of URI's vision statement are words meant to captivate and inspire the University, the phrase "building a new culture for learning." The words were written fifteen years ago as a stimulant to reform the country's leading party school. With the school returned to sobriety, the phrase lingers as a mantra, prominently displayed in official documents (see, for example, the URI home page). With age, "building a new culture" has become familiar and frequently used: A URI google for "new culture" produces 119 hits. Over time, the vibrancy of the phrase has waned, however, as often happens with mantras and slogans. The phrase and the sentiments that surround it have run their course. The University needs a new vision.

Origins and Exuberance

The "new culture" originated in the early 1990's as a reaction to URI's 3-year run as the Nation's #1 party school, as listed in the Princeton Review. The new culture meant no-tolerance for booze or violence, and the phrase was at the heart of the University's campaign to clean up the Kingston campus. (For more, see "URI President Carothers receives national award for alcohol abuse policies and programs" from the URI News Bureau, March 11, 2004—here.) The reform included specific actions and policy changes. Coincidentally, fraternities were cleared from Upper College Road and replaced with the URI Foundation and Advancement offices, the Newman and Women's Centers, and the dual homes of the International Engineering Program. This altered the landscape and the image, driving drugs and booze "down the line," a public relations problem in neighboring communities but at least out of the Princeton Review. The phrase "new culture" remains, however, symbolic of URI's in loco parentis policy of being a dry, and not high, campus.

Somewhere along the way, the University began to embrace the comfortable phrase, holding on to it past its prohibitionist utility and using it more often and in more places. With each new recitation, the phrase seemed to grow, taking on new meanings and ever greater scope, the gushing overflowing into the entire vision statement. For example, "The University of Rhode Island Three-Year Strategic Plan 'Measuring Progress' July 1, 2003 to June 30, 2006"—here, gushes with "literally every word of this statement of vision ... has significance." But it is hard not to view the vision statement as anything but empty hyperbole, exuberant but not terribly useful as a vision.

Exuberance has gone too far. Even those who believe that there is significance in the statement's old saws must recognize the thinness of "new culture," which renders the whole of URI's vision statement banal. There is simply nothing "new" in the concept of integrating teaching, research, and outreach—the post-party-school spin on the phrase: This was the philosophy upon which URI was created, as a School of Agriculture and the Mechanical Arts and an Agricultural Experiment Station, in 1888! A brief outline of these early days is available at "History of the RI AES," which Sam Peterson and I compiled in 1999—here. The University's engagement in the world outside its walls was firmly established a century ago when President Butterfield created an extension service within his Agricultural Experiment Station, in 1904 (10 years before the national Cooperative Extension Service).

Few at URI any longer are familiar with or value the University's historical and philosophical foundations. At least one Dean has dismissed the past and traditions as being before his time and therefore irrelevant. Even the Provost occasionally jokes about an out-dated "cow-college" mentality (actually a misnomer, as "chicken-" or "turkey-college" would more accurately capture the emphasis of the State College's animal science department, with its once proud contributions to the New England poultry industry). Still, general ignorance or denial of URI's land grant roots does not render as "new" the century-old concept of integrated practical scholarship for the public good.

The Other Side of the New Culture

Humor and hubris aside, how would one truly characterize the academic "new culture" of URI? The crumbling Fine Arts Center denigrates the culture of the arts. The severely under funded library tears at the culture of the humanities and sciences alike. Two decades of flat support for research has undermined the culture of research (Rhode Island is last in the nation in per capita state and institutional support for university research—see "Research Benchmarks," 2001, and update, 2006). Campus-wide, the physical plant is badly eroded, the victim of 35 years of constant decline in URI's state support. The percentage of the University's budget for asset protection is well below normal (1%, compared to a normal 4%, according to V.P. Weygand in a 2005 report to the faculty senate); there is a huge backlog of basic maintenance in every academic building on campus (the backlog was $55,000,000 15 years ago and is probably double today). Numbers of janitors (a third as many as the 1970's), clerical, and other support staff are well below what is needed. These things all attack the culture for learning at URI, depressing morale and motivation among students, staff, and faculty. This side of the culture for learning at URI is devastating.

There is simply too great of a gap between the high-sounding phrase and the reality of the academic culture at URI. Public use of the phrase is always in a context of building and changing for the better, implying we are moving forward; but within the walls, there are too few real signs of this. Wouldn't it be more valuable if we could halt use of "new culture" as a hollow branding tool and return it to its former role as a goal (albeit a goal quite beyond the goal of party-school reform), admitting publicly that we still have a long way to move? A vision statement, after all, is a statement about where you want to be next. It isn't an advertising tool telling the world "This is Oz;" The value of a vision statement should be directed as much behind the curtain (for the citizens of the Emerald City) as it is for show (for Dorothy and her entourage who look from afar or pass briefly through). Vision reveals what the community expects of itself. Our statement, however, masks our need for new directions and higher hopes with a set of glib platitudes. We need to stop the hyperbole and return to a serious conversation about who we are and where we want to go. Our vision needs to arise from a more honest dialog about realities, needs, and aspirations.

State of Lowered Expectations

URI is significantly underfunded. The annual letter to the Providence Journal from the Chairman of the University's Board of Governors predictably claims that things have never been better and the State (and Board-appointing Governor) never more generous, especially in light of the perpetual State budget disaster. But to the contrary, based on hard comparisons with other states and on the abundant evidence of the daily experience of all of us at URI, we must ask how is it possible that the people or their government tolerate the embarrassment of such distinctively low support of public higher education? Our last place ranking in per capita state funding for university research is not a secret, and the need to do something about it has been touted by the Rhode Island Economic Policy Council ("The Pipeline", 2001) and by the Governor in his State of the State speeches (quoted in "Research Benchmarks: 2006 Update"). Our position has been widely recognized for several years, yet nothing comes of it! Still, in 2007 the hard questions that must be asked are these: "How can it be that at the historical heart of Yankee inventiveness, we are now funding research at a lower per capita rate than any other state? How has such a pervasive negative truism—that this is the way it has always been, and this is the way it will always be—become so profoundly entrenched in the institution's psyche? How did the lie that the State can do no better than its miserable showing in higher education become mistaken for fact?
One must ask whether a system so instilled with this degree of hubristic delusion (at the Board and statehouse) and morbid resignation (on the campus) is capable of sustaining public higher education. But delusion and resignation among those who have a say in University governance (faculty, all levels of internal administration, the Board, the legislature, and all governors going back to Garrahy) are deeply engrained. URI is deeply instilled with cynicism and a sense of aimlessness; it is in a severely compromised state, weak in spirit and will. Rhode Island—John Casey calls Rhode Island a "State of lowered expectations" in his locally-set novel Spartina—is not helping. In the final analysis, we are at the bottom because the State has decided that we are to be at the bottom, and the University has decided that it can not act to make it otherwise; we will remain in our predicament until we raise expectations.

What Matters

There are at least three additional reasons that the statement means so little and must be replaced:

The Vision Statement is not distinctive: The University's vision statement makes us look like everyone else. It fails to distinguish URI from the State's other 12 institutions of higher education. It gives the public and the legislature no particular reason to see URI as more than just another undergraduate diploma mill; much less does it argue that URI stands out on the national playing field where we compete for students, grant dollars, and private beneficence. It is simply inadequate for the University's historical role as the State's public research University. I have argued this before in "Confluence: Returning to Roots at URI" (2005). I suppose it is true that nebulous pomposity is a widely shared characteristic of these statements, but URI needs much more than that. (For an excellent analysis of the importance of such matters, see former URI President Frank Newman et al., "The Future of Higher Education: Rhetoric, Reality, and the Risks of the Market".)

The Vision Statement is not forward-looking: The trend over the past two decades has been away from the research university of the 1970's and 1980's and increasingly into the realm of disengaged small liberal arts school—something indistinct, common, and arguably unneeded in Rhode Island—a core mission that echoes from our humbler past. (Rhode Island's colleges and universities create approximately twice as many graduates as the economy can absorb in a typical year; in this sense, URI's graduates might be viewed as superfluous, or unnecessary, except for fields or degrees exclusively the province of the University.) Certainly, URI's inflation-adjusted budget is closer to those of the mid 1960s than of the 1980s, so that fiscally we are heading backwards as well. We need to make a better case to our future relevance to the State, if we expect Rhode Island to once again embrace URI and to return the University to its former significantly greater place in State funding priorities.

URI needs to publicly reinvent and recast itself as the most important center in the state for addressing the great challenges facing the State for the rest of this century. We need to reassert our unique role as the center where new knowledge and technology originates; more than that, we need to reestablish our research function as one dedicated to returning public good for public investment, something quite different from the research agenda of the private sector. Guided by its classic land grant philosophy, in our unique role as the public research university, we need to reassert our exceptional capacities to meet major scientific, technical, and cultural needs of the future state, as I have argued before (1999) in "Reinventing the Research University: A Blueprint for the University of Rhode Island." URI needs to make this reform and rededication clear in its vision and mission statements, and to translate this into its plans and programs, and into its internal funding. Rhode Island needs to see that its University has a new vision which warrants renewal of the social contract between the State and URI.

The Vision Statement is not compelling to the public: Rhode Island needs to examine its current trajectories and long-term prospects and to examine critically the role of higher education in the State's future. When it turns to URI, the State needs to see a vital and unique asset that is indispensable. Our current vision statement symbolizes how we are neither critical nor different from anyone else, and each year's declining funding says the State has found us ever more readily dispensable. Being indispensable means that the State must recognize a need for specific kinds of knowledge and expertise (both within our faculty and our graduates) that it simply cannot find within normal government, the private sector, or elsewhere in higher education. What needs are recognized by the State that we are uniquely qualified to meet?

The problems of global climate change, the end of the fossil fuel era, global limits to human population growth (limits stemming from both resources and sinks, as outlined below), and myriad problems relating to social order and the need for a more humanistic culture provide a wide agenda for the University to address. We bring to the table the concentrated and diverse intellect traditionally assembled in a public research university. Addressing these problems in the surrounding community provides the critical distinction between URI and the rest of RI higher education; and by that I mean that we need to become engaged problem-solvers, taking ourselves and our students far beyond the walls of the institution and into the lives of communities and the people around us. We need to make the case that it is insanity for the State to proceed in light of the challenges facing mankind in this century without a vigorous public University, well endowed and supported by the State in direct proportion to the seriousness of our many engagements and contributions.

In our current context, it is very difficult to comprehend what is really meant by URI's "new culture" or what is so significant about it. Beyond this, the rest of the vision statement is mere cliché. There is nothing about the statement that warrants effusive enthusiasm; no one really thinks every word is significant. There is nothing that inspires. There is nothing worth saving.

Starting Over

In The Future of Higher Education, the late Frank Newman proposed criteria for a vision statement, suggesting that it should be "clear and specific enough that it can be implemented and visionary enough that it will matter if it is implemented." We need both inspiration and a practical blueprint for the future if ours is to be an effective vision statement, capable as the soul of our strategic planning. We simply have to do better. A new beginning is called for, a replacement for the trite and worn. But as we begin anew, what are the core principles from which to build a new vision; where do we start?

Focus on the future: The essence of a vision statement is its focus on the future. URI's vision alludes to students who "will become" future leaders but begs the questions "how?", "leaders of what?", and "leaders for what purposes?" This is not a vision; it is only a vague mission. The statement's other reference to "this evolving future" is totally nebulous. Once again, there is nothing new or worth holding on to here.

The nation's research and land grant universities traditionally turn out the bulk of undergraduate and advanced degree holders—creating the body of degree holders from which most leaders eventually emerge. (For more on the relative contribution of this group of universities, see "Reinventing the Research University: A Blueprint for the University of Rhode Island" (1999), available as a PDF.) Saying that our students will become future leaders says nothing useful to distinguish or advance the University. (Equally important, does it ring true? That is, how many of our graduates truly become "leaders?" Were there a significant number, why isn't this widely publicized?) There is no clue from the University's vision statement that we hold special relevance either for leadership or for the future; there is nothing vital that could possibly enhance our strategic position for within-state recognition and support, nothing to secure respect and distinction on a national stage. In fact, the future is fundamentally missing from the vision statement. Refocusing on the future is, therefore, our most important first step.

Grow from the past: As we begin anew, we must draw from the cultural wealth of our origins, because even in the unprecedented context of our times we still must be an agent for shaping the future through traditional land grant approaches. We should not regress to see our historical roots as our future; We will not revert to being the State's college of agriculture, although a resurgence of agricultural studies will be needed and widely appreciated in the near future. Neither should we be reverting to become once again a small and sleepy liberal arts school. We should, however, honor our philosophical roots and grow from them. We should recall that URI was not founded to advance the income-earning potentials of its students; neither was its purpose to harbor the curiosities and idiosyncratic proclivities of its faculty scholars; nor was the primary purpose of the State's University to become a quasi public business, sustaining itself through student tuitions. But are not these the primary concerns of today's URI students, faculty, and administrators? What have we forgotten?

In the continual and iterative process that marks effective strategic planning, it is axiomatic that each evolving vision springs from preceding historical mission. URI's historical mission reminds us that we were founded, as were all of the land grant institutions, to advance understanding of practical science, technology, and culture, and to better the State. We exist not for parochial benefits to the individual graduates, nor as a haven for faulty, nor as an increasingly insular form of educational business, but rather we came to exist as an act of forebears who were intent on the greater good of the State and Nation. The leading public land grant universities continue to be America's primary source of public knowledge and advanced education, continuing a mission that is even more critical in this century than in the post-civil war era in which they were conceived. Among most of our peer institutions, this mission continues to be well understood, practiced, and well supported within the states. Why is this not so in Rhode Island?

Engage in a larger world: What is our understanding of a vision of "a spirited public life for our students"? What does it refer to beyond vague allusions to the compulsory volunteer experience of URI101? Turning students (and faculty) into engaged citizens and into citizen leaders is a far greater enterprise than anything that is being attempted by the University today. Can we honestly say that our students graduate with any real sense of owning the future or of having a personal responsibility to shape it? Have we instilled an ethos of being Earth's stewards or of reaching out to people in other places and times? This was the nature of our founding, but has this sentiment since diminished with each new year for URI graduates? In Rhode Island, have we lost all notion of traditional purposes behind land grant education, research, and extension? Do we no longer see ourselves as prime movers in shaping the future of the State, Nation, or the world? Do we not see that this very shaping, if anything, is our greatest contemporary calling? From our traditional fundamental purpose and reason to exist, we must engage in the new context of our times.

Turning to the Future

In considering its vision, the University needs to begin by asking "what is it about the future that should concern us presently, compelling us to rethink what we do and how we do it?" What is it that can inspire, motivating a demoralized faculty, energizing a listless student body, exciting the body politic and their elected representatives, attracting all to a newer and loftier perspective? This is a critical essence for vision, that it should become the wellspring of hope for the future; we must instill this essence to replace the blandness of "new culture" and its visionless wrappings if we are to recover soul and meaning at URI.

Broaden the vision: We must also consider our vision in the national and planetary context of higher education. Do we aspire to be an institution that would stand shoulder-to-shoulder with other great American and international institutions, addressing unprecedented regional and global challenges to humanity and the Earth, over which we have stewardship? Does Rhode Island want such an institution? Or do we continue toward obscurity, a college of lesser import on Kingston Hill? The greatest overall calling in higher education today is to lead a nation-wide and global transition through the rest of this century. We require a rededication of higher education to the building of capacities critical to the future. At the core of this must lie a conviction that higher education is a prime mover for society, an imperative instrument for effecting vital social change. And in Rhode Island, this means that we must reposition URI, taking our place as a vital link in the national and global higher education network.

Embrace a new day: Very little reflection is needed to see that the private sector (Friedman's benevolent enlightened transnationals) and government (both State and National) have thus far proven to be incapable of leading, or even of significantly contributing to, the necessary cultural transitions that must occur in this century. The changes needed are more than can be done by collective government and private enterprise; social changes needed in this century are on an unprecedented and almost unimaginable scale, made more difficult because change must ultimately derive from ubiquitous changes in individuals. Major cultural change is thus more likely when there exists an educated populace. Considering the magnitude of changes that must occur and the shortness of time in which they must occur (we are facing a crisis in our times), social change will not occur without disaster unless it is rooted first in pervasive individual change. Thus far, we have not prepared the people for the broad and deep cultural changes that must occur in this century. Culturally, we live in a near vacuum of leadership, making it even more vital for public higher education to resume its historical importance and to emerge in a new and vigorous leadership role.

We at URI simply can not afford to maintain our detached air as scholars of privilege. Society can not tolerate a disengaged public higher education flagship. We cannot allow ourselves to be ivory-tower elitists, disdainful of the affairs of the world, dismissive with a haughty "We do... what we do." In this critical age of planetary limits, higher education must engage in the business of culture building. It is not the University's culture that should continue to be our primary focus; this is an exercise in studying our own belly button. Rather, the proper object of our study needs to become the culture that must emerge in the society that surrounds and sustains us, a culture that so critically needs us. This is what must now become the central focus of our vision. In a century of dawning awareness—the Century of Limits—the primary educational function of URI is to become a center of learning for a new culture. This must be the starting point for our new vision.

The Core Questions

In examining and promulgating a new vision, a few of the many critical questions for URI thus become

Defining a New Culture and Engaging in its Creation

We tend to view the recent past, which is to say the times when we personally lived and experienced the world around us, as "ordinary." In ordinary times, there would still be reasons to examine the University's missions and vision and to suggest changes for many of the reasons considered above. But there are other, far more compelling reasons for change, which are prompted by the quite extraordinary times which we are entering. The near (next 5-20 years) and far (50-100) future (taken from the perspective of the limited span of our individual lives) are going to be unique in human history, and the demands they will place on higher education are unprecedented in degree and complexity. Although the cause (and to a large extent to root of the cure, which is to say, over population and over consumption) is relatively simple, ramifications are complex and difficult beyond our experience. This is the essence of what is new and why we must think differently about URI's vision.

What is there to suggest that a new culture will emerge? We are currently witnessing a spreading awareness that will eventually drive us to form the new culture. We are increasingly conscious of scale of the activities of nearly seven billion humans—projected to reach at least 8-9 billion in mid century—and how the sheer size of the demands from our population harms our planet. The degree of awareness and alarm exceeds even that experienced during the resurgence of the environmental movement in the 1960's—with its Silent Spring and Population Bomb, first Earth Day, and the Environmental Protection Agency. A wider segment of the population understands the detrimental environmental effects of our prolific domestic settlements, industries, recreation, agriculture, extractions—of geologic deposits of ores, minerals, and the fossil fuels—and our impact on the habitats of other species.

The University needs to pay more attention to emerging elements of change within our culture, and to take specific steps to embrace and nurture the most useful of these elements. It has been suggested, for example, that there exists an amorphous yet significant segment of the population (perhaps 1/4 to 1/3 of the US population), identified as "cultural creatives" in a book of that title by Ray and Anderson (Three Rivers Press, 2000). A characteristic of this group is thus far its inability to form its own major political movement; most of the cultural creatives are unaware that such a large like-minded segment of contemporary society exists. Cultural creatives are characterized as being well aware of the environment, social justice, and the future, and in turn this awareness leads to calls for action. Particularly among the cultural creatives, this is expressed as personal engagement in action.

Similarly, we should consider the meaning of the 1-2 million world organizations for justice and sustainability, and their long-term influence on local and national political movements. Will their impact achieve a scale with global impact? Universities need to provide a reinvigorated platform for new voices of reform: Herman Daly, for example, seeks greater recognition of the meaning of the scale of human impacts on critical planetary life support systems; this is a crucial issue for contemporary global macro-economics, yet one must wonder why Daly's text, Ecological Economics, written with Joshua Farley, not been adopted for any course at URI?

One sign of the potential of such emerging elements is the enormous discussion precipitated by Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth. Gore has been asked about the lack of specifics in his movie (and book), where things people can do are packed into lists at the end, almost as an afterthought. The mission of the current missive, Gore responds, is to build still greater awareness, because in his view a still insufficient social (and representative political) mass exists to cause change. If we are approaching, we have not yet reached the tipping point (in the sense of Malcolm Gladwell) where awareness is sufficient so that widespread change actually begins, at least not in the United States. As a physicist or chemist might explain it, we have yet to achieve the minimal energy of activation necessary to precipitate national and global change. This is undoubtedly because the extent of changes needed is so unimaginably deep and extensive, and the physical and spiritual energy needed for essential transitions— exercised through our social, political, and economic regulatory systems— is currently incomprehensible or emotionally unacceptable to most. Nevertheless, we can see from the response to Gore, which has moved the dialog on global warming onto the center stage of national politics at last, that there is already in place a preanalytic vision (to use Schumacher's phrase, quoted by Daly) which predisposes a significant segment of contemporary US society to rally around major socioeconomic policy change. It should, at the very least, be a phenomenon of immense contemporary interest in the social sciences and schools of communication. This is only one illustration of the exciting potentials of focusing on (and engaging in) the emergence of a new culture as a unifying concept of our vision.

What is so compelling that we should pay attention to a new culture? We are approaching a critical mass of people who comprehend the meanings of "sustainable," "social justice," and the other new mantras of global consciousness. We begin to see that we are using—and won't be able to replace or find alternatives to—a number of strategic materials upon which we depend greatly. An increasing number of people are starting to comprehend that rising costs of obtaining these materials and their eventual scarcity will lead in this century to a decline in vital life support systems (that is, those which are truly life sustaining, not merely lusted after as part of a lavish life style). Even many biotic resources, commonly perceived as perpetually renewable—forests and fisheries, surface waters and aquifers, agriculture and aquiculture, all providing materials critical for food and shelter—are being seen as so taxed by the scale of human demands that they, too, are beginning to decline as demands exceed natural capacities to renew. But our comprehension is only beginning and it is not yet adequately pervasive. There aren't yet enough people with enough awareness to persuade the rest of society to accept change. Most who are aware of the need for significant change see it as something "we" must do, but are at a loss to answer "what must I do?" We begin to comprehend that something must yield, and indeed many things. Among our priorities:

Moving Away From the Culture of the Past

Faced with unprecedented challenges to an entrenched and consuming life style, American society is responding much as any pampered and privileged individual would respond to a dawning awareness of life-altering changes. That is, we react by displaying classic signs of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance), which apply to the various manifestations of this awareness. This is evident, for example, in the public response to An Inconvenient Truth. Reinforced by the International Panel on Climate Control (IPCC 2007), Gore's campaign is predictably being met with denial (led by economic interest groups), anger (at international corporations, government, scientists, politicians, our fellow human beings, whatever "them" we've previously decided to hate and blame for everything, etc.), bargaining (carbon credits, Kyoto, current versus future "rights"), and signs of depression (withdrawal from the debate, lack of interest and motivation to change) and, fortunately, dawning acceptance (even by the Republican Governor of California!). We must, as the Buddhists would urge, "run at the dog," and face the impermanence of our state, welcoming the pains and fears of change, seeing these as vital nutrients for the culture that is even now beginning its birth. Will higher education be able to help the next generation to overcome its depressions and fears, to become unstuck from the predictable paralysis of grief and self pity, and to find joy in the accomplishments and unification that must surely come from a global society accepting and pulling together to do what must be done?

To a large extent, moving toward the future means moving away from the past. Dealing with global warming means undoing dependency on carbon-emitting industry, transportation, and domestic settlements. Coping with the end of fossil fuels means major change in lifestyle, a reversal of suburban sprawl and its automobile dependency. Underlying all of this is the need to reverse human population growth by non-catastrophic means—and without totalitarian control. This is the most difficult challenge of all. Beyond addressing the immediate crisis of population, resources, and sinks, there is also the difficult matter of developing a cultural standard that lifts human beings from the focus on mere existence. As we rescue societies from poverty and despair (and keep our own from sinking into same), we also need to create new geographies of somewhere, with new meanings to family and community. There is plenty of need for university involvement here.

Perhaps the most immediate task for URI is to not only teach our students to come to grips with the true nature of the need for cultural transitions, but also to understand that both the transition and the world after transition are desirable. We may need to work more at feeding ourselves, and accept a loss of individual freedom to move around independently with personal automobiles. But we need to see a future with less crowding, less pollution, a slower pace, and a more gentle and refined manner of living; and to realize that this improved state is not only necessary, but it is also far superior to today's frantic, often meaningless frenzy.

Students Take on Tom Friedman

In The Power of Green (New York Times, April 15, 2007)(here) Friedman proclaims he wants "to rename 'green.' I want to rename it geostrategic, geoeconomic, capitalistic and patriotic. I want to do that because I think that living, working, designing, manufacturing and projecting America in a green way can be the basis of a new unifying political movement for the 21st century. A redefined, broader and more muscular green ideology is not meant to trump the traditional Republican and Democratic agendas but rather to bridge them when it comes to addressing the three major issues facing every American today: jobs, temperature and terrorism." Two of my students respond, here in part:

"Friedman...considers the 'three major issues facing every American today: jobs, temperature and terrorism.' It is interesting how he...denies mentioning the three other tremendously pressing issues facing every human being today: overpopulation, the approaching peak of global oil production, and the moral obligation of individuals to reduce consumption by changing their behaviors and rewiring their mental schema.
"The truth of the matter is simple: 'The ecological footprint of global society has overshot the earth's capacity to provide' (Meadows et al., 2004). More energy, even if it's green energy, is not going to solve this problem."
—Stephanie Saint

"His contradictions are numerous and his message scrambled. For instance, [Friedman claims] that he is '...not proposing that we radically alter our lifestyles,' yet just a few sentences later he declares that 'We have not even begun to be serious about the costs, the effort and the scale of change that will be required to shift our country, and eventually the world....' His incessant use of cheesy taglines such as 'Green is the new red, white, and blue'... only serve to trivialize the authentic global crises that lie ahead.
"Friedman writes 'In the world of ideas, to name something is to own it.' The truth of the matter is that no encouraging euphemisms, no catch-phrases, and no marketable buzz words will do anything other than give our gullible nation a false sense of achievement... There will be no substitute for sacrifice, commitment, and earnest work towards a new way of living."
—Dan Fishtein

These students have begun to cope with the complexity of the world they have inherited from their parents. They have begun to internalize the personal responsibilities and individual changes that they must make, and are prepared to do their part as society makes collective changes to the world they will pass to their children. They are part of the wellspring of a new culture.

How do Universities Lead and What is URI's Niche in Cultural Transformation?

The modern university's central role has always been to sustain the Enlightenment, promoting a scientific approach to solving problems of all stripes. In this regard, our contemporary natural sciences have vastly outperformed the social sciences and the humanities. The natural sciences have done a good job of advancing understanding of how our planet works. We know a good deal about how our ecosystems maintain balances and how these balances are being toppled by the residual excesses of human activities. We comprehend that our atmosphere has tendencies and that these tendencies are now being altered. Our earth sciences tell us where our resources lie and how to get at them, and that we are going to encounter limits to many of them within this century. Natural historians tell us in precise detail how the growth of human populations is colliding with the capacities of the global biosphere. To too great an extent, however, we have not been listening to these sciences.

In contrast, we have relatively poor understanding of how societies work, or how we can regulate human activities to keep them from permanent and irrecoverable damage to the planet; our social, economic, philosophical, and political understandings are too primitive, even in our sophisticated age. Our instruments of social policy formation, communication, and implementation remain too vulnerable to perversion and derailment, as we are witnessing in the US Presidency today. We live a current nightmare, dimly aware of our trajectory, properly fearful of where that trajectory leads, yet unable to raise our consciousness sufficiently or to act on our awareness. Yet we must awaken, and that is where universities must lead. Where else in society is there greater responsibility for the enlightenment and for awakening and awareness than at our universities? If not in higher education, then where?

As stark as are the challenges of the not very distant future, nevertheless it is difficult to find a focus on these critical issues on URI's campus today. Outside of a handful of natural and social scientists and a few isolated reflective and philosophical faculty, there is little discussion or awareness among the student body or their mentors, and even less among administration at any level. Many will be tempted to argue that focus on such matters would pervert the nature of the university, hem in its intellectual diversity, bound up its scholarly freedoms, inhibit the institution's soul, or otherwise disturb the essential tranquility of Kingston Hill's haven for contemplative academics. But there is still more to contemplate, much more important than maintaining a nostalgic refuge for an academic yesteryear. The University must embrace a new moment in a new age. URI needs to refocus.

Some of what it will take to lead the cultural transition: Our students, and eventually the entire public, must be not only concerned with global warming and its local effects (coastal sea rise, northward migration of warm-climate insects and diseases, coastal storms or changes in precipitation patterns, or perhaps the stoppage of the mitigating effects of the Gulf Stream flow, as some predict). They must learn to deal with more than inconveniences and costs from the post-peak-oil economy. Before mid-century, we must begin to solve locally the problem of feeding ourselves, of securing safe drinking water supplies, and of managing our myriad waste streams. We must learn how to cultivate a sense of community sufficient to maintain order and to nurture the human soul, adding spirit and purpose to life as well as means to live. What will a college campus have to contribute to this sense of local security and serenity; can school spirit morph into the far greater oversoul of community and regional harmony? What do we have to give back to the society which spawned us, expecting to be taken care of in its later days, which have now arrived?

I was approached by one unusually prescient local land trust and asked how much agricultural land might be necessary for local food production in a post-peak world with limited fuel for food production or transportation; the answer, readily estimable from elementary agronomy texts, was that the current local population was about six times larger than could be fed from local resources (even after assuming a lot of people laboring on the land and eating grains), suggesting a coming concern of significant proportion. As the economy contorts itself to live within new energy constraints, we must learn to contend with local disruptions, spilling over into (initially) unemployment (and later, re-employment) and aggravating local social disparities, with special hardships and consequences for the poor, who are always hardest hit. It is not clear whether the "flattism" of Friedman's world economy, or even of his more recent promotion of a new global green (above), will exacerbate or help to solve the problem. Skeptics wonder whether international economic or political chaos, or the possibility of disruptions due to economics of trans-ocean shipping, might one day break the back of international (or even intra national) trading, leaving us more dependent on local production of food and industrial goods than we are able to cope with at present. Certainly, one must heed the conclusions to the 1986 study from UNH's Complex Systems Research Center (published as Beyond Oil):

" Are current trends sustainable? Of course, the answer depends on what one defines as "current trends." To the average person, the most important trends are a large diet that includes a lot of animal products; a large export capacity to help the nation's trade balance; and stability in the size of the cropland base, in the portion of the nation's fuel used in agriculture, and in the organization of the off-farm sector. The analysis described in this chapter indicates that all these trends can be sustained simultaneously only under very special and unlikely circumstances. The United States can maintain these trends through 2025 only if it can both achieve a high rate of growth in technologically based improvements in on-farm efficiency and also avoid most of the negative effects of land degradation. Both of these circumstances involve the reversal of significant agricultural trends. When one thinks about the probabilities of such good luck, the most reasonable judgment is that current trends are not sustainable and that either the agricultural system or the rest of the economy will, starting soon, enter a painful period of adjustment to resource scarcities. Indeed, the United States will have to work hard just to avoid becoming a net food importer over the next forty years. As suggested ... the loss of a U.S. food export capacity would be a global as well as a national catastrophe."
—J. Gever, R. Kaufmann, D. Skole, and C. Vörösmarty. 1986. Beyond Oil: The Threat to Food and Fuel in the Coming Decades. Ballinger Pub. 306 p.)

As a Nation, I believe we will be increasingly politically and economically isolated by mid-century (regardless of the residuals of today's misguided foreign policy), well within the lifetimes of our current student body. We will find human labor a substitute for machinery, and many of us will find it profitable—for many a necessary alternative to destitution—to return to the business of producing food through our own physical exertion. Other opportunities for labor will return, as we attempt to retrofit our houses, businesses, and public edifices against the costs of heating or cooling, for example. It is unclear whether a centralized federal government will be able to ameliorate regional or local difficulties (witness current inability to cope with post-Katrina New Orleans), or whether we will become increasingly regionalized, localized, and on our own as we transition the "period of adjustment to resource scarcities." Does any State want to risk venturing into the future without a nexus of creative intellect capable of meeting needs for complex problem solving, a resident fount of skill and creativity able to respond to the most difficult challenges with the steady methodology and dedication of a community of scholars ready and able to engage? In its treatment of public higher education, Rhode Island is perilously near to conducting that deadly experiment; is this wise State policy, and is it what we want?

There are myriad other physical and social challenges looming on the near horizon. It is unclear, for example, whether public health will be a greater concern in the near future. As biotechnology advances, will we find ourselves able to respond more quickly to global epidemics, such as those threatened today by avian bird flu, or will the sheer pressure of human numbers and the possibilities for planetary outbreaks periodically tip the balance, subjecting us to planetary plagues? That seems difficult to predict. Prudence suggests that factors promoting widespread outbreaks and the disruptive (perhaps devastating) consequences of widespread epidemics should not be minimalized as we plan for the future. Again, we should ponder the question of the scale of human impact on the environment, and the likelihood of successfully coping with, for example, the demands for water treatment facilities, water purification plants, etc. The problem of keeping water clean is now inseparable from the problem of keeping clean water from disappearing altogether: The West already acknowledges the severe threat to human survival posed by drawdowns of natural water supplies and the now emerging decline of critical winter snow packs previously feeding municipal water reserves. Have Rhode Island's relative natural advantages of a diverse local flora and fauna and abundant groundwaters and woods made us blind to the need to conserve and protect our native natural resources? What role has the University to play in stewardship and conservation? What will a University that has tossed overboard its capacities for community planning, in favor of biotechnology pipedreams, have to say about designing our future cities and landscapes? Are we that blind to the coming needs?

Our best predictive models suggest that we will face great difficulties after the middle of the century in our efforts to meet basic needs for food, shelter, and health. The possibility is great, later in the century, for major declines in global human population—caused by combinations of industrial and agricultural system failures, epidemics, and pollution—a substantial drop from over 8,500,000,000 to perhaps half or less than half in a few decades or less. The public, of course, hears and understands none of this, and the degree of uncertainty and political unpalatability of such forecasts makes this nearly impossible to broach in the political arena, let alone to air such ideas as a viable subject for a policy discussion. We do, of course, suffer the illusion of the young and naive, "that will never happen to me," but there is little basis for such smugness.

Ignoring the insane logic of pro-growth delusionals ("twice the population means twice the number of Einsteins to solve problems..."), how does one begin to engineer an unprecedented change of American attitudes, including a current entitlement mentality which makes us nearly blind to the moral implications of what we are doing to people in other places and future times. How does human society, and in particular our American public, persuade itself to alter historical views of individual reproductive freedom and rights, leading to a social consciousness which promotes smaller families, or indeed a proliferation of childless lifelong relations? Currently, I encounter an almost universal fear or aversion to treading on this ground, an attitude of "you can't go there in this State," yet "there" is precisely where society must go, of its own eventual accord. We either lower population—and its scale-related impacts—through willing societal change, or population will most certainly drop through the grim reality of birth-death demographics; the meaning of limits eventually translates into "the size of the human population has a limit."

URI must become prepared to be the principal public forum for discussion of social change of unprecedented magnitude, particularly given the certainty that such change must take place and become permanent within the next two generations. We need to develop into an institution bold and wise enough to become the State's leading center for issues of the most difficult moral and ethical transgenerational consequence. We need to join and at times to lead the national and international discussion of global population and to participate in the decisive conversations and policy developments that will lead us to rational immigration practices. We need to engage, at the same time, in developing an international perspective, instilling deep respect for social justice for all. Such boldness may well go against the grain of somber academics with a penchant for disengagement from the world or be too much for diffident administrators wary of being politically over exposed; nevertheless, we must engage. Even the most timorous must eventually discover that the impossible is only impossible until you have attempted it and succeeded. Only leaders dare to lead. URI must dare because history is waiting to write our page. The world wants us to establish a new vision on the most challenging issues, to assume our place in the most extraordinary century. We need to shape our State's vision for coming generations, a vision to meet challenges deep into the future.

Critical Needs and Opportunities in the New Culture

The business of ferreting out the myriad opportunities that open for a university with true vision is greater than the imagination of one individual, and it would be presumptive for me to attempt that here. The point is that we are more likely to undertake such exploration if we realize that our vision can take us there, establishing a new mission for our enterprise. There is a danger in weakening the argument for change in a university by loose speculation of what may come to be in the future (not to be confused with the more solid understanding of global climate change, fossil fuel futures, etc.). There are two reasons for this. One is that those who would resist change (regardless of motive) too easily dwell on the inherent uncertainty of predicting the future, easily pointing to errant past attempts and deriding all such attempts in a frenzy of negativism. The other is that there is a strong tendency to think simplistically about what are extraordinarily complex phenomena; here the danger is to assume, for example, a set of technological fixes (unlimited supplies of energy from massive solar systems or fusion reactors, magic from biotechnology, etc.) that will overcome limited resources, allow the population to continue to grow, etc. (Daly's suggests that we remember that if we are building a house and run out of wood, buying a better power saw isn't the solution). I trust that we are wise enough not to fall into this game, and if so, it can be useful to begin contemplating some new and possibly optimistic aspects of a new culture. Caveat issued, let's try a few guesses.

Daydreaming of the Future

There are so many exciting possibilities for universities that set their minds on the future. Certainly, there is the excitement of once again unleashing native Yankee ingenuity in tackling the technical and engineering challenges that are almost obvious.

Within the lifetime of current graduates, we will begin to redirect and rebuild most of our current urban and suburban landscapes to adjust to the new realities of a post-automobile age. We will, most likely, struggle to hold on to the delightful freedom afforded by individual ownership and operation of a personal automobile. We can reasonably predict that fuel prices will double each decade through the first half of the century (based on the decline of energy returned on energy invested, which translates into increased real costs to draw down the deeper and more difficult to extract tailings of global fossil fuels). We might also project that mileage per gallon will double at least once, perhaps twice (average 50-100 mpg), but ultimately not keep pace with doublings of fuel expense. By mid century, the need for major development of light rail and other forms of mass transit will be consuming increasing percentages of personal income, as the public gradually yields to the wisdom of collective reconstruction efforts. We will be traveling less, and it will become more of a luxury that fewer and fewer can afford. At $60 / barrel, parts of the third world have already experienced what it means when fuel becomes too expensive and all parts of local and then national economies begin to dim; the consequences are unpleasant, often dire, of entering the post-fossil fuel era unprepared, as these poor souls have already done. Gradually, more and more of us may come to understand.

At the same time, we will divert increasing proportions of our fuels from transportation into basic food production and core manufacturing, substituting human labor for machines to an unknown but probably significant extent, especially in the production of food. A steadily increasing proportion of the population will find primary employment in food production, and the family garden plot will proliferate. For much of the world, there will be little else, but we can be optimistic that our existing technology base and accumulated wealth will significantly insulate us from dire effects; we can only hope for a smooth transition.

We will use less electricity. Power generation will grow more expensive as alternatives to oil and gas come on line; even coal, used through cleaner (and therefore reduced efficiency) technologies, will cost. The myth of bio fuels will have evaporated by mid century, as land for food takes precedence and the realities of subsidized energy crops yield to the true energy costs of producing and processing crops; that is, there is unlikely to ever be sufficient return of energy to warrant the energy spent in the first place. We can anticipate improved technologies, perhaps close to astonishing, as, for example, we see currently with the rapid replacement of older light bulbs for more efficient alternatives. We will, however, also have to deal with the real costs of maintaining and to a significant extent replacing much of the national electrical grid, including most generating capacities. It will be lucky if we can maintain steady power sources (information technologies will have difficulty should we fail in this), but whatever comes, we will get used to it and use less.

We will import less. Success in international manufacturing and trade may somewhat level global wage differentials, and transportation costs may do further leveling. Information, of course, assuming a technology that affords steady current, will continue to flow relatively cheaply. But we will also have less to spend after dealing with increased costs of food and shelter. We will consume less, and try to hold onto what we have longer, either by buying better, more durable technology products, or by expanding the amount of recycling and repairing that we do.

We will say closer to home. Long vacation trips will be available to a smaller and smaller proportion of the population. We'll learn to do more in our own backyards. We may even discover why tourists come to visit our neighborhoods, the same desirable places we once fled in perpetual efforts to get away from home; we may like where we live more, or may make a greater effort to create reasons to like where we are. Local fine arts may have an opportunity to flower, as craftspeople and artisans return to the business of making fine goods, artists return to sing and perform in the neighborhood, and the pace of life slows enough for even the industrial classes to afford time to return to civic gathering places.

Who Plays and Who Wins?

It needs to be said that there is no aspect of the University that would not benefit from a more forward-looking, engaged vision. Certainly, the engineering and natural sciences have huge opportunities, but no greater than those open to the social sciences and humanities, education, or business, for example. Addressing the future does not mean that URI should pay more attention to its sciences or engineering, nor that the future demands a polytechnic institute in Kingston. Indeed, many of our contemporary inclinations may well have to be rethought. The current emphasis on biotechnology, for example, in an age of saturation in both the private sector and higher education, may have to be tempered with balance in the traditional art and science of agriculture; having a new transgenic plant means little if there is no farmer left to cultivate it. Developing an international depth for our students is much more difficult if we loose our language capacities, not to mention the ignorance that can not be mended without a resurgence of such core capacities as geography and demography, which have been tossed aside in our momentary infatuation with the dollar signs of biomedical and biopharmaceutical patent potentials.

Indeed, we need to see that there may well be a renaissance in the humanities emerging as a vital capacity for the University. Rhode Island has no state supported public museum or gallery capacity, for example. Surely, in a time when conservation and stewardship of regional works of art will be very important, we need to begin thinking of developing such capacities. It is enormously short-sighted to be so niggardly toward the physical plant needed to support the fine arts today; as the economy tightens in a post-peak world, it will be increasingly difficult to muster support for the very soul of our humanistic culture. Learning for a new culture needs to include protection of histories and traditions, including the artifacts which carry the past forward. In the future, there is tremendous opportunity to balance the University's cultural portfolio by significantly increasing the support for the arts and humanities.

Preparing the Next Generation for a New Culture

The University to a great extent sees its role as one of preparing each class of students by instilling the fundamental knowledge base and skill sets of its many disciplines, much as they were instilled into the present faculty by their previous mentors. There is great inertia in higher education. At the same time, the half life of many of the most advanced technological fields is remarkably short, meaning that the number of scientific journal articles doubles in as little as 2 to 5 years. This can be daunting as students realize the meaning and absolute necessity of being a life-long learner, just to keep up. For faculty, buried in the institutional demands for accountability and a full load of teaching responsibilities, and discouraged by the huge competition for steadily dwindling federal (and often non-existent state) research funds, there are dishearteningly few hours left to keep up with the field, little time left for research, writing, or even simple reading. What is most amazing about URI is how doggedly persistent its faculty has been over the years, a sign that love of scholarship goes deep and that dedication endures, in so many members of this community. As a colleague once observed, the University often triumphs, in spite of itself, because there are so many good and competent people working so hard against so many real odds.

There is a need to preserve a haven for unfettered inquiry, a sanctuary for fundamental research in the sciences, or the "scholarship, critical analysis and creative expression" of the humanities and professional schools, as intellectual freedom is the root of discovery, and discovery is the soul of learning. In the public research university, and particularly in the university of the 21st century, there is an equal or perhaps even greater responsibility to assure that the intellect of the resident scholars—faculty and student alike—remains mindful of the public good, returning on public investment. Scholars need time and an environment where deep thinking and reflection are cultivated without impairment, and this has always been the greatest cultural value of the great academies. This much needs to be championed and preserved.

But the next generation also needs to see change. We need to build better pedagogic approaches for the diverse students and diverse needs of the future. Certainly, there has to be better provision made for cross-disciplinary fertilization, allowing greater flexibility in learning and teaching. We need to, for example, create a wealth of multidisciplinary hybrid educational opportunities, as these are the keys to growth not only of individual job opportunity, but also of regional economic growth. The historian with database competence, the accountant who can build web applications, the journalist with multimedia competency, and the computer scientist with engineering training and fluency in German, all realize significant opportunities for initial productive employment and job security. We need to imagine more expedient pathways through the institution for these students, ways to learn what needs to be learned in a fast and affordable track. A proliferation of InterDisciplinary Course (IDC) codes needs to be facilitated and encouraged at all levels, in this regard, and recognized and rewarded as components of individual student degree paths.

If we are to respond to the global problems of transition that are the primary challenges facing us the rest of the century, then we certainly need to enhance our own awareness of the scientific, socioeconomic, and moral dimensions of that transition, and to instill this new awareness into all corners of the institution. We need to do a much better job of creating environmentally conscious graduates who assume a uniform individual responsibility as an earth steward, instilling a new global ethos; this awareness needs to extend not only to understanding of planetary ecosystems, resources, sinks, and limits, but also to the moral obligations that we all bear toward humans elsewhere on the planet and to future generations. There is no discipline in the institution to which this does not apply.

We also need to begin practicing what we preach. If we erect one wind generator to produce 5% of our daily power, why do we not then erect the other 19? How are our communities going to come to value the site and meaning of wind and solar generators if we do not take a lead to demonstrate our own values and understandings? We need to set an example of green technologies. Why, for example, have we settled for the minimal "silver" LEEDS certification (a measure of "greenness," ranked as "certified," "silver," "gold," and "platinum;" "silver" is hardly a mark of environmental distinction as it takes very little to obtain this minimal score) in the new biotechnology building design, particularly when this was the administrative doing of the College of the Environment? (See also, Concerns with the Biotechnology Building.) Why do we not do more to insist that the State upgrade the century-old and badly leaking windows and often insulation-less structures that are the most dominant feature of our physical plant? Where are our light-timers and efficient contemporary technologies? What are our recycling goals and why isn't everyone more enthusiastically engaged? We are modeling behavior for our students, and in the process have yet to turn away from the outmoded and unsustainable last century. And what have we been able to do to reduce the automobile dependency of our students, beyond the self-serving but highly commendable increase in on-campus housing. We have significant room for improvement if we are to lead by example and practice what we must preach.

Finally, we need to explore, develop, and transmit to the next generation a greater sense of the value of an examined and engaged life, and the meaning of the individual as part of multi-level communities. We need to challenge the suburban and auto-dependent model of the last century and help our students realize the potentials of alternative designs and new urbanism. We need to instill a sense of personal balance, creating an enduring appreciation for physical and mental health and the discipline required to maintain these throughout our lives. We also need to assist the next generation in contemplating the global implications of individual decisions on family size and consumerism, and to create an expanded, socially responsive, moral perspective for a new generation. This does not mean a proliferation of courses, and certainly I am not suggesting a simplistic LIFE 101 for incoming freshman. I don't presume to be able to define what the URI community will create along these lines, but I do believe that a new culture needs to become an artifact of the way each of us lives and practices life, a balance that becomes characteristic of the institution and all it stands for. In the end, we have to take the time to contemplate and talk about the meanings of life with our students, and to practice what we preach. Perhaps the best way to do that is to begin to value and reward meaningful engagement in the real world as a critical attribute by which we come to judge ourselves.

Changing How we Think, Teach, and Practice at URI

We also need to see that the next generation's needs are unlikely to be traditional, and we must stop running our programs for the benefit of ourselves or our departments if we are to meet those needs. We must ask why it is that all degrees at URI require 120-130 credit hours. We must ask whether we are not charging individuals (and society) an unacceptable cost by failing to tailor our offerings to the student who may, for example, be seeking opportunity in a known technical arena for which perhaps a 2 or 3 years bachelors experience is all that is needed. No, this is not a sacrilegious knifing of a sacred tenet of the University, but it is a challenge to something that has been patently self-serving and self-justifying, but not always in the best interests of students, the state, or the nation. And yes, we must also dare ask whether the individual and societal cost of enforcing our liberal arts bias is in that individual's or that society's best interests, or whether we are merely keeping students here an extra year or two, in an outmoded model, to maintain tuition dollar flows. At the same time, for the student with time and a proclivity to wander as a scholar, we need to create an opportunity to explore as deeply and widely as the institution has opportunities. We must recognize the changing demographics of our population and open our doors and extend our hours (in Kingston as well as in Providence) to allow a proliferation of instructional offerings in critical skill-building and career-renovating curricula and in enriching cultural offerings for older citizens with the time and maturity to ponder more deeply the potentials of the University and to pursue the life of the mind.

We have allowed the decline in State support for the University to go much too far. The State has used the University to save on its budget, and this has gone well beyond the capacity of the University to absorb horrendous cuts lasting decades. From 7.7% of the State budget, URI on its current trajectory will be only 2% by 2011. The University administration and the Board need to draw the line, and to refuse to continue attempting to enforce budgets that are patently absurd. The public is served very poorly by government which uses the politics of tax breaks to assure that there are insufficient funds to build and maintain the public works and institutions that are needed for a viable contemporary society, and we need government leaders who have the courage to call for the kinds of sacrifice and investments that keep our communities worth living in. We have passed the point where we should be engaged in widespread vigorous protest, yet where are those public voices being heard on behalf of the University? Faculty and lecturers have yielded so much to the pressure to teach more. As the institution has withdrawn its funds for research (institutional research funds for operations declined 87% during the 1990's and have never rebounded), depth and relevance of teaching, and state-of-the-art practice have all been held back, reducing the quality of what we do throughout URI. We must make it clear that this is no longer acceptable, and that it is in fact a very foolish course for the State to continue to follow. We must end two decades of silence and begin to speak out forcefully and honestly for substantial improvements in operating funds, personnel, and infrastructure.

We also need to do a wiser job of listening to the voices within. Forceful advocacy and misrepresentation of the economic potentials for economic development in the sciences have run roughshod over the voices of the social sciences and humanities. The "science quad" is all lined up for bond requests (nursing and chemistry next), yet where does a new School of Communications find the physical facilities to catch up to contemporary technologies in convergent media and film. Certainly, the leading edge of technology is not be be found in 100 year old Davis Hall or 97 year old Ranger, or whatever other derelict (albeit charming in a Victorian sense) building is assigned to them. The future of a journalism program focused on print media has got to be questioned in the age of convergent media; where are the television, radio, or multi-media production facilities that mark state-of-the-art education? Where are the page-layout and web-technology laboratories for the emerging College Writing Program as it expands into the graduate arena. Certainly, the economic development potentials of a state which sees itself as an information-focused service economy (with its Fidelity and banking interests, GTech, and other information sector establishments, for example) and the constant presence and obviously bright future for film production in Rhode Island all suggest that an investment in infrastructure for communications laboratories and studios (i.e., a new building to house state-of-the-art teaching and production facilities) should at least be placed on par with biotechnology (which is deeply rooted in many places, but barely in Rhode Island) as a target for state economic development investment at URI.

If the new culture is ultimately also about building a deeper and more meaningful sense of place, then the University and the State need to think deeply about the University's place as a center for the arts. The current facilities for the arts—painting, photography, sculture, print—and for music and performance arts are out of date and largely dilapidated. The ancient poured cement fine arts center is literally crumbling, pieces of cement falling off the building, wooden shingles rotting in the sun, ceilings scarred with electric conduit, interiors moldy and worn, and maintenance shabby inside and out. Worse, the University has virtually no real gallery or museum space; what little there is lacks climate control, and current budgets have forced closures for lack of clerical staff and funds for minimum-wage gallery guards (you don't have a gallery without someone present to protect the installations). How does a campus become a center of culture without an investment in the arts? How does a State claim to be serving the needs for community culture if its higher education institutions disengage from museum studies or the practices and habits of contemporary cultural centers? It is time for the reconstruction of the fine arts center, and for separate creation of a State Museum and an Art Gallery, with at least two principal buildings constructed on the State University campus. These projects need to be championed by the institution, recognized as economic and cultural necessities, and given priority for new construction within the near future. In the meantime, the University needs to revisit its poor funding for the galleries and performance arts, which are too low to assure even their short-term continuation. Securing patrons for the arts at URI needs to be a much higher priority for University fund raisers at all levels.

Positioning for Leadership

As Mr. Gore has suggested, at the beginning there is a need to increase awareness. We are at such a beginning at URI. All parts of the community can pitch in on this task, doing what we do best through self-education, and through the mutual educational enrichment that takes place in our classrooms. We have in place already the foundations for interdisciplinary exchange (The Coastal Institute IGERT—Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship—Project, The Honors Program, The Center for Humanities, The International Engineering Program, etc.), although our mechanisms and rewards for interdisciplinary courses are overly cumbersome and discouraging. We can not claim to be advanced in our ability to step out of disciplinary structures or to work well across college lines (our departments are too often parochial and self-protective and our colleges feudal), regardless of the efforts of individual faculty to work together in spite of it all.

We have failed for a decade or more to expand the notion of engaged scholarship traditionally enhanced by a well-supported Cooperative Extension Service, in large part for failure to draw anywhere near the proportional state support found everywhere else, and in part for failure to overcome an administrative model that subverts Extension to one narrowly focused academic dean. An engaged institution means exactly that, and our internal culture needs to significantly grow to encourage extracurricular involvements in service to the State and local communities. There are extraordinary benefits to this, a model that has become standard for much of USDA's higher educational funding because of the payoffs. An engaged institution touches the lives of constituents, who then become advocates within the legislature. Stakeholder-based programming has this potential, and should be practiced in Rhode Island, were that championed within the institution.

In the end, all of us—the governor, legislators, citizens, the Board, URI administration, faculty, students, and alumni— have a critical stake in revitalizing the University, bringing its classrooms and laboratories to bear on the critical scientific, social, and humanistic challenges facing us for the rest of the century. We will not go forward unless we start believing we can. We will not aspire unless we allow ourselves to expect more. We will not engage unless we decide to.

It is, in the end, the community which must create its own vision, and consensus is the only process that creates community cohesion needed to attain that vision. The essential ingredients come from forward thinking, mindfulness of tradition and a distinctive self, a willingness to be big in heart and spirit, and a determination to matter. I have no doubts that we have those ingredients at URI, and no doubts that it is time to bake a new cake.

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