November 25, 2003

Comments for Faculty Council (Agenda Item)

Dr. Marcellette G. Williams
Past Chancellor and Senior Vice President for International Relations
Professor of English and Comparative Literature
University of Massachusetts – Amherst
And Secretary of the Board of Trustees and English Department Emeritus - MSU

I am pleased to be able to respond to Provost Simon’s request to facilitate a set of invited conversations designed to elicit the perspectives and insights of our faculty, staff, students, and administrators on what the Provost has called the Vision of the Liberal Arts and Sciences at MSU. The question is compelling: What kind of university would society create today if it were designing the premier land-grant university for this next period or phase? And what would constitute the liberal education that undergirded the whole of the academic enterprise?

In the Vision for the Liberal Arts and Sciences at MSU, the Provost has identified some of the questions for focus group consideration. I believe they bear repeating here for this record:

How do we maintain—perhaps even increase—our capacity to provide a sound liberal education to all our students?

What should be done to foster the intellectual vitality of the liberal arts and sciences?

What assets and collaborations do you [we] now have across collegiate lines and how can/should these be strengthened and invigorated?

What new linkages will be required to meet future needs?

What innovations must occur to change the cultural climate so that we can strengthen the liberal arts, effectively integrate liberal arts across disciplines, and allocate resources that will nurture and sustain nationally visible programs?

What concrete steps must be taken in order to achieve short-term goals that will result in long-term change?

How can we reduce or eliminate organizational or operational redundancy while sustaining and enhancing academic quality?

These are the questions contained in the Vision memo. I urge our holding these questions before us we continue with this process.

We are not, however, creating a liberal arts and sciences infrastructure entirely anew. There is already in place an array of programs addressing earlier needs. The task will be to reconceive and, then as may be appropriate, to reconstruct an intellectual infrastructure of liberal education to ensure the ongoing vitality of the institution and its graduates.

I might observe, however, that as energetic, creative, and rigorous in our scholarship as we are, these tasks of reconceiving and reconstruction don’t necessarily come easily to us. For most of (if not all) our academic lives, as I have observed, our approach to program enhancement has been largely additive. What we have added over these many years has been good—very good. If it weren’t, we would not have added it. What we have been not as good at is asking the tougher question of the effect on whatever is already in place of anything we add, as there is always an effect to what we add. It is my observation that we very quickly become attached to and feel entitled to have those additions supported in faculty lines and services as an ongoing institutional reaffirmation of the value of whatever good things we have added. Perhaps, this is how we have become, in some ways over time, if not all things to all people, then at least some things to all people.

The task and process immediately ahead of us are ones that must be eased and guided by mission, purpose, and institutional goals, and such other things as regulatory, compliance, and accreditation concerns as we look at programs and courses and see what we can do differently and what we can do without. The focus groups will cross-cut disciplines and emphasize themes or topics.

• What do we do?
• Why do we do it?
• What do we do well?
• What do we do not as well?
• How do we know?
• What can we do differently?
• What can we do without?

The overarching question is, however, this one: How shall we know ourselves? It has been said, and I tend to agree, that we grow toward the questions we ask ourselves. If we only ask what is wrong, deficient, or problematic, then I think we risk falling deeper into a sense of deficiency. If we ask what greater calamity lurks then we fall into paralysis and dread.

But when we ask what we continue to do right, then we grow toward our excellences. A preoccupation with negativities can drain our collective energies at a time when we can least afford such a costly distraction.

Those invited to participate in these discussions have been asked because they are academics, of course, but primarily because they are intellectuals. I draw on the distinction made by Jack Miles (in a CrossCurrents article of a couple of years ago). Whereas the academic disciplines his or her curiosity to remain within narrow bounds and seeks an audience of professional colleagues, the intellectual is concerned with questions that cross disciplinary boundaries and seeks conversation with other interested citizens in a rich and accessible idiom.

These times call for us to be public intellectuals in the best sense…scholars who seek to connect our work in the library and laboratory with public dialogue on matters of shared concern. As the faculty of a land-grant research university, we have the special responsibility to raise questions and to provide insights that move us beyond simple dichotomies. The public has entrusted us—not to do their thinking for them—but to think out loud, to enrich public conversation and to enable a larger more diverse set of voices to join the dialogue. We do well, I believe, when our ideas enable others to speak; we do well, when we listen and allow ourselves to be changed by the conversation.

These are the kinds of conversations I expect to facilitate on the topic of the liberal arts and sciences at MSU. As Frank Rhodes has said as only he can: we believe the creation of new knowledge and research to be a public trust; we believe that the dissemination of that new knowledge and research to our students to be a moral vocation; and we believe the application of that research and new knowledge beyond the boundaries of this campus to the community…to the State…to the nation… and to the world—we believe this to be a social responsibility.

Thus, the information from the facilitated conversations, the many emailed ideas (some already received), and the information from the other two separate discussions the Provost has described in her November 5, 2003 statement on the Vision for the Liberal Arts and Sciences at MSU will form the basis for the proposed recommendations the Provost will be formulating early in the next semester.

I do look forward to working with all of you, the deans, the chairs, and focus group participants in this unique and critical exercise of bringing to bear our most creative selves in the service of a distinctive and clear vision of the liberal arts and sciences at MSU.