10/25/96
If you have a RealAudioPlayer (version 2.0 or later) installed and at least a 14.4 kbps modem connection, you can listen to President Glidden's address on the Internet. Access http://www.tcom.ohiou.edu/rgaddress.ram.
American higher education is experiencing an intriguing but in some respects troubling time. We are generally found in high favor by the American public. A recent study by the American Council on Education showed that "higher education enjoys a huge reservoir of public good will. The public believes higher education is good for the economy, good for society, and good for its students." In rating factors that influence Ohio's business climate, 359 senior business leaders in our state rank colleges and universities near the top of the list, ahead of business trade associations, the State Senate and House of Representatives, banking, and transportation. There is, however, great concern about cost about increases in tuition when students are enrolled and significant debt when they have graduated. I am sensitive to the concern about cost, as I think all of us in Ohio are, because tuition in Ohio public universities is higher than the national average by 29% the tenth highest in the U.S., in fact. The reason? Ohio's educational appropriation per student ranks 44th in the nation!
Although we cannot deny that college tuition has risen faster than the rate of inflation over the past 15 years, we should also recognize that public perception of college costs may be more pessimistic than factual. Recently several higher education associations took a poll to determine what the public knows about college costs, specifically, what people think it costs to pay tuition and fees and what they think would be a fair price. In a recent article in Trusteeship, the journal of the Association of Governing Boards, Terry Hartle points out some telling results: people believed annual tuition and fees at a public university (not including room & board and other expenses) to be $6,130 per year. They thought a "fair price" would be $3,767. The actual cost? $2,982, as a national average. The actual cost of tuition and fees at a public university is less than 50% of what people perceive it to be, and less than 80% of what they considered a fair price. At our Athens campus the actual cost for resident students is slightly more than what people nationally believe to be a fair price; at the regional campuses it is slightly more than the national average but significantly below the perceived "fair price." Ohio University ranks fifth among the state's thirteen public universities in charges for tuition and fees, a position we have held since 1988.
This, of course, should not cause us to rest easy about the cost of tuition. We recognize that when a corporation in the manufacturing business increases wages and salaries, it expects that the extra cost will be accounted for by increased productivity. Unfortunately, we in education cannot have the same expectation. By its very nature education is a labor-intensive endeavor, and quality matters. Over the same period that tuition has been increasing, we have also increased class sizes and used such labor-saving devices as machine-scored examinations, all in attempts to contain costs. Unfortunately, quality has probably suffered to some extent, and while we would like to make higher education more accessible and more affordable to all students, we do a greater disservice to students and their parents, and indeed the future of the society, if we reduce costs too drastically and thereby reduce the quality of learning opportunities as well.
Ohio University can take pride in the fact that U.S. News and World Report ranked us number 18 in the nation as a best buy according to our "sticker price," that is, our tuition and fees undiscounted by scholarships and other financial aid. That is a significant accomplishment considering the level of state support in Ohio, which is substantially less than most other states. Ohio is 36th among the states in higher education appropriation as a percent of total tax revenue, and, as I've said, we are 44th among the 50 states in education appropriations per student. On the positive side, however, Ohio's philosophy of autonomous governance for its public colleges and universities has allowed us to build quality and determine our "sticker price" according to the marketplace. That is a tremendous advantage over states where tuition and fees are established centrally, often without regard for the quality of experience students are afforded. Nevertheless, we have concern about the level of tuition in Ohio generally and at Ohio University specifically. It is incumbent upon us to plan carefully, to scrutinize our expenditures carefully, and to make sure that we remain a best buy. The calculation of a "best buy," by U.S. News or anyone else for that matter, is a combination of quality and cost, so our scrutiny will be equally directed to cost factors and to quality factors meaning primarily educational opportunities and student outcomes.
It is my strong belief that our future success hinges on continuing improvement in quality of service to students, enhanced research productivity, and heightened awareness and service to our state and region. To achieve and sustain those goals, we have to rely on thoughtful planning now. Why especially now? Because we will experience actually, already are experiencing unprecedented turnover in our faculty over the next five years. Those of us who began our careers during the baby boom years of the late 1960s are now reaching the 30-year mark and a disproportionate number of retirements are taking place or being planned for the next few years. Over the next five years nearly one in six faculty members at Ohio University will reach the 30-year mark. Thus, we will encounter much "new blood," which is always good for the academy, to be sure, but to be viewed with a certain care and caution when turnover occurs at this extreme. The decisions we make now about our future about our focus in academic programs, in research thrust, and in service mission, department by department will direct our hiring of new faculty, and those faculty, more than any other factor, will influence the quality of the university during the next generation.
That brings me to the theme of this 1996 State of the University address, which is the development of a shared vision for Ohio University. It may be folly to suggest that the intellectually lively participants in a university community might think and speak with one mind we do say, with some pride, that directing faculty is somewhat akin to herding cats! but in my view it is critical that we develop a sense of community as we plan our future. That means developing an attitude of trust, of full participation, of real sharing. It also means observing and believing in the principles of teamwork, that is, the understanding that we each have our roles to play, that we all have different responsibilities, that each member of the team is important, and that no individual can have his or her own way at the expense of the group.
Provost Sharon Brehm and I have begun a process for planning and priority setting that will involve as many members of the community as we can reach. Such a process can be time-consuming and it runs the risk of developing artificially high levels of expectation, but it is important to us that our entire community view Ohio University with the high aspirations we know to be possible. Ours is a great university with a long and distinguished tradition, but every one of us here today can cite areas in which we can improve, and we each probably have ideas about how that improvement might be accomplished. The task is to establish what we can be. Those priorities will become our points of focus for improvement, and we hope that that collection of foci will represent our shared vision as an institution.
We were pleased this year that Ohio University has been invited to participate in the Pew Higher Education Roundtables. The theme for that project, like the theme of this address, is "Our Shared Vision." The Pew Roundtable discussions will involve 30 people, half faculty and the remainder a combination of trustees, students, staff, and administration. Roundtables are scheduled for February 18-19 and April 6-7, but in a sense the preparation for them began in January of 1995 when we appointed eight all-university committees to discuss and make recommendations about topics of common interest to all in the institution. The reports from those committees, completed last spring, have informed the discussion this fall about priority setting. In addition, we have tried to note areas of particular strength at Ohio University that we want to be sure to preserve. In many respects an institution is best served by consistently investing in its strengths, and at Ohio University those strengths include a number of features that have to do with the quality of campus life. Thus, some of our emphases are extra-academic, but all contribute to the high quality of experience that students receive here.
Let me present a few ideas or areas of endeavor that I hope we will discuss as we work toward a shared vision. Some of these issues emanated from the committee reports that I have mentioned, some are personal beliefs and observations about the responsibilities of higher education in current American society, and some came from groups that have already met this fall to discuss university priorities the University Planning Advisory Council, the deans, and the vice presidents. Provost Brehm conducted the planning sessions with UPAC and the deans, and I am appreciative of her work in summarizing the results of those discussions. One specific challenge was to identify five unique goals for Ohio University in preparation for the Ohio Board of Regents' performance funding model. The following list of goals has been submitted to the Regents these goals are certainly not all that we will focus on during the coming biennium, but they represent areas of current strength and potential improvement:
Teaching-Learning and Technology. We have only begun to use technology to increase faculty interaction with individual students, but that is a challenge we should take seriously. This is an area in which several faculty members are doing exciting things from which others might learn; moreover, in this regard, students of the very near future will expect us to be up-to-date and creative in our use of technology. We can explore several methods right now, including the use of electronic mail for communication between faculty and students or among students themselves, or the assignment of collaborative learning projects that can be so greatly enhanced through technology. Make no mistake: the use of electronic technology in the teaching-learning process is important for our students not just as an instructional aid, but also as a practical one; upon graduation they will be required to be conversant with these modes of working and communicating. Colleges and universities cannot lag behind in meeting this challenge, and I believe Ohio University has an opportunity to be a leader.
An article in The New York Times "Education" section on October 9 described the changes in curriculum and teaching methodology that have been instituted at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. I will quote from that article:
This is an example of transformation in the teaching-learning process that I think we must investigate and try at Ohio University.
In addition to exploring with scheduling and teaching methodology, I am convinced that, aided by technology, we can do much more to "customize" curricula for individual students. One of the great advantages of American higher education, after all, is the wide range of opportunities we provide to individuals, but we rely too much on one-size-fits-all curricular designs. The Ohio University Honors-Tutorial College is a wonderful example of an exception to one-size-fits-all, and I think we can learn from HTC's procedures and apply them to a greater number of students. We should take more time and perhaps devote more resource to assessing what students have studied and what they know before they begin their studies with us; then, based on that, we should counsel students on how they can best achieve their goals. In short, we must make certain that we optimize the "value added" for each individual student, to the extent of our practical capability.
Student involvement in the full mission of the University. We can take steps to involve students more in the full range of the university's mission. Actually, I believe Ohio University does this as well as any university I've encountered. For instance, many of our units take pride in providing undergraduate students with research opportunities, and I think that is wonderful. Across the university, however, we can still do more. We also are proud of the record of our students as community volunteers. While I am not closely familiar with models in other institutions, I should think that our Center for Community Service, which offers students volunteer opportunities within the community and which helps faculty discover how to incorporate service learning in their courses, is an exemplar of such activity. Across the university, we can do more in this area as well. In teaching, we all know that one of the best ways to learn is to teach, and I believe that we could provide many additional opportunities, both formal and informal, for students to tutor or mentor other students to everyone's benefit. I suspect that if we were to make "students coaching students" a part of our shared vision, we could increase this activity significantly.
Internationalizing the curriculum. Ohio University has long been proud of its international student body and of its connections and affiliations with higher education institutions in other nations. We will continue those alliances. But to serve our students better, we need to give attention to internationalizing our curriculum. It comes as no revelation that our society is increasingly a global one and that no matter how powerful or influential we may believe we are as a nation, we are increasingly interdependent with the rest of the world. What does it mean to internationalize the curriculum? It means introducing global concepts throughout the curriculum; and it means using our imagination about where that can be done most effectively. It means being more sensitive to and more respectful of cultural differences that can separate us from people in other parts of the world, and finding ways to enhance intercultural and international learning. Perhaps most important, it means developing in our students a sense of curiosity about cultural diversity and what that really means.
Expanding educational opportunities in the region and state. I am very proud of Ohio University's regional campuses and their effectiveness in accomplishing their mission. They are responsive to their communities in their program emphases and the courses they offer, and they are certainly responsive to the needs of their communities through their various public service activities. We are in the process of upgrading our communication among the six campuses of the University through better networking. We are also updating the long-respected and well-used microwave system by adding compressed video. We hope and expect that this upgrading will enable us as a university to serve the people of our region even better. Our responsibility, however, is also to the people of the state of Ohio as a whole. We know that there are hundreds of thousands of Ohioans who have done some work toward a baccalaureate degree but who have never completed that degree. It is our intent to offer more opportunities to such citizens through our distance learning initiative. I hope that over time and with the cooperation and participation of faculty from other state universities we can increase the percentage of Ohioans who hold the bachelor's degree. The other important application for distance education is professional programs, and I am very proud of the College of Business's development of an "MBA Without Boundaries" a course of study that will be delivered largely through electronics. The pedagogical approach of this program has been carefully developed and refined over an 11-year period, so that we know this offering will be of the highest quality. It is critical that we establish an image of quality and integrity as we enter the world of the virtual university.
Economic and community development. If a university is to be of service to its region, it must attend to economic and community development. Obviously, this is not our primary mission, but as a state-assisted institution it is certainly an important one. Ohio University can take great pride in many achievements in this area. Our Innovation Center has been a leader in helping make university research commercially viability and in supporting the growth and development of new businesses. Our Small Business Development Center gives critical assistance to struggling small and new businesses in our region, and we house the office of the National Business Incubation Association on our campus. The Institute for Local Government Administration and Rural Development is an exemplar of a program through which university students and faculty aid their community with research and service. ILGARD is one of the most effective programs I have seen for providing valuable and practical research opportunities to undergraduate and master's level students. I know they benefit greatly from it, as do the communities they serve.
How do we draw the line about what is appropriate service to the community, using university resources? My decisions about that are made with a constant eye toward our total mission. If service activities also provide teaching-learning or research opportunities, they usually can be justified, and one of the things we can do to improve our performance in this area is to seek projects that are of mutual benefit to the community, to faculty and staff, and to students.
The ad hoc Economic and Community Development Committee has recommended a plan for communication and coordination that will bring recognition to Ohio University as an institution that responds effectively to community needs and regional economic development opportunities. The Committee's plan will create strategic partnership networks that connect campus units with community organizations to address goals established by needs assessments and market studies. For example, networks might be created to address enterprise development or the transition to managed health care in Southeast Ohio. We are making good progress in these endeavors. To be more successful, outreach efforts and community service activities must be integrated with the teaching and research missions of the university and of course, in this effort we must also rely on the resources of the regional campuses. Last year the university trustees approved the creation of the new Center for Public and Environmental Affairs, an interdisciplinary unit that will provide an institutional mechanism for linking research and service to undergraduate teaching.
In addition to the above I would like to mention several additional areas that should command our immediate attention. One is graduate student recruiting and one is writing. I would also like to say something about our responsibility to influence the ethical thinking and behavior of our students, and about research, scholarship, and creative activity at Ohio University.
Graduate Recruiting. The recently received report from the ad hoc Enrollment Management Policy Committee suggests that we as a university should examine and discuss the balance of our enrollment, i.e., the balance between undergraduate and graduate enrollment. Among public universities in our state, Ohio University currently enrolls fewer graduate students as a percentage of total student population than all but Miami and Youngstown State Universities. We are "closed out" by Regents' policy regarding doctoral enrollment, but I believe we can expand our masters level enrollment to the overall benefit of the institution. We can undoubtedly make more efficient use of faculty expertise and space with a slightly increased master's enrollment, and I believe that in most departments additional master's students will enhance the teaching-learning environment for undergraduate students. In most disciplines there is, after all, a healthy mix between undergraduates and master's students, a more natural interaction than between undergrads and doctoral students.
Furthermore, I am convinced that there are areas of endeavor in which greater production of master's graduates in certain specializations will be of significant benefit to society. As examples, we are in the process of developing two new master's degrees, one in social work and one in library and information studies. For the most part , those are both degrees for which we already have the faculty expertise and the facilities. The social work degree will focus on the peculiarities of rural social work, a subspecialization that we believe is unattended to by other institutions certainly none in Ohio or nearby states. It will be offered largely through our regional campuses. The library and information studies degree will focus on modern technology and modern information management techniques. An interdisciplinary effort, this is a program that we believe to be much needed and much desired.
I would suggest that there are other such opportunities niches in which we are already well equipped and can better serve our clientele and the society in general. Most such areas are likely to be interdisciplinary and we should seek them out. If they remain undiscovered, they will fall between departmental lines and escape our attention.
Writing. You have heard me speak before about my passion for writing, for insisting that every one of our graduates achieve the writing skills necessary to be successful in the 21st century. This is indeed an all-university effort; it cannot be done by the English Department alone. Furthermore, when we make reference to writing skills, we are not talking just about basic writing, but effective writing in one's discipline. Those skills must come from the faculty in the disciplines. We will be working at ways to accomplish this goal within current resources as much as possible, although we know there will be costs involved. As is commonly known, the writing process sharpens the thinking process; they feed off and nurture each other and symbolize, in a tangible way, the learning process at Ohio University. The point is, I believe that with universal faculty involvement we can help our students to become better writers an important component in our shared vision.
Standards of Ethical Behavior. I regret that when I made the appointment of a Special Assistant to the President for Standards at the beginning of this academic year, the move was interpreted by many as a reaction to several recent, unfortunate glitches in our university ethical profile. The assistant was not appointed to deal specifically or directly with a faculty code of conduct. Rather, he was appointed because we are in a university environment in which we have enormous opportunities to have positive influence on students' thinking about ethics and values, and I am not confident that we are doing all we can to exert that positive influence.
This appointment of a special assistant for standards was not a public relations ploy; it is an attempt to address a situation forthrightly. I am reminded of a medieval king, a very benevolent fellow who ruled his kingdom in a pleasant corner of Europe and was loved by his community. One day an army came and overran his castle, making off with half the treasury. The king decided to tell the people he had to increase taxes to compensate for the loss. He called in one of his wise men. "How can I break the news without inciting a revolt?" the king asked. The wise man pondered and came up with a gentle way of explaining the theft as a tragedy for the entire kingdom. The king implored the people for their support, and his explanation went over very well.
Time passed, and once again the neighboring army raided the castle, this time carting off much of the food stored for the winter. Once again the king called upon his wise man, now the Director of Wisdom, and presented the facts. "What can I tell my subjects this time?" the king asked. "They will lose confidence in me if I can't defend the kingdom's food and money." Again the wise man pondered, then advised the king to say the food had gone to a neighboring community that needed it badly. The king addressed the people and asked them to work even harder on the next year's harvest. The people loved the king; they did what he asked and all was well.
By this time the neighboring army was getting good at raids. They struck again, this time hauling away horses, hay, other foodstock, and most of the royal jewels. Once again the king summoned his advisor, now the National Advisor of Wisdom and Sagely Advice. This time the king was despondent. "They raid the treasury. They take our food, they steal our livestock. And the queen's going to kill me over those jewels," he wailed. "You are my most trusted advisor, oh wise one. What shall I do?" The wise man hesitated. "I think," he said slowly, "that the time has come for your highness to put the water back in the moat."
We don't have a moat to fill, but we do have opportunities to influence our students' thinking about standards and values. Our commitment to address the matter of ethical thinking and behavior has to do with several factors, especially the rate in which knowledge is expanding in many of our disciplines. New technologies abound, and we keep pace with them in the classroom; but increasingly there is only so much time to convey that information to students. If we do not emphasize basic values in an era of transition, we will not be living up to our legacy of excellence in education at Ohio University. I am also concerned about the amount and type of interaction between and among students and faculty. I want to encourage open and civil discussion about a wide range of important issues relating to standards: standards of conduct, not only at Ohio University, but in society. We do offer courses, and of course we have The Institute of Applied and Professional Ethics, shared at this time by Journalism, Business, and Philosophy. The special assistant's duties differ from and augment those being performed at the Institute. In a word, I believe we can do much more to engage our students in discussions about ethical standards if we focus on it. We will promote such discussion and provide visibility for the effort. It is not our intent to preach or to interfere. It is our intent to promote the notion that it is perfectly appropriate to discuss one's values and to use values to solve problems within an ethical framework.
Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity. We are proud of several recent achievements that point to our research capabilities at Ohio University. In 1994 we achieved Research University II status in the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching Classification, one of only 85 public universities in the nation so classified and one of five universities in Ohio with research classification. Ohio University Libraries were voted into membership in the elite Association of Research Libraries, and the Libraries added their two millionth volume during the past year. In a time when federal government support for research is declining, Ohio University increased its federal grant income by 18% over the past year. Our faculty prepared 17 intellectual property disclosures and the university submitted two new patent applications and received six new patents during 1995. We have successfully licensed our technology to 25 companies and participated in the development of one new company in southeastern Ohio during the past year. Those are all indicators of a healthy research environment and points of genuine pride!
However, it concerns me that in our own perception we are not totally comfortable with our role as a research university. Too many among us still think of research as being antipathetic to teaching. For that reason, my definition of the "research" function includes scholarship and creative activity, because few would characterize either scholarship or creative work as being anti-teaching. Let me be clear in the remarks that follow that I am in complete and wholehearted agreement with the late Ernie Boyer in defining scholarship as:
Using that definition of scholarship, it seems to me that a university must require research, scholarship, and/or creative activity of its faculty--all of its faculty; otherwise, the institution serves only average students who are not very intellectually curious or whose aspirations are limited. The best and brightest students leaders of the future--like our students at Ohio University--need the intellectual stimulation that is generated by a faculty of scholars, researchers and creative people. They need experience with scholars whose new ideas are tested by their peers in other institutions and in the professions. They need to learn by close observation that the search for new ideas, for new knowledge, is an important part of the behavior of a learned person. Especially in an era of personal home pages, students need to see that truth comes only from thorough research, that an idea cannot be offered as truth until it has been published or produced or shared in some way with one's professional peers, who will then proceed to scrutinize it. Good students at the university level need to work with professors who are willing to expose their work to such scrutiny, and whose penchant for finding new and better ways is a model for scholarship and the search for truth.
The following points need to be made about research and teaching in a
university setting:
The discovery of new knowledge (sometimes trendsetting and
cutting-edge, sometimes arcane or esoteric) is a major function of
a research institution. Much, if not most, of the basic research in
the United States is conducted in universities. Research,
scholarship, and creative activity are important contributions by
which universities help the society to prepare for a better future,
whether in the search for a cure for cancer, in the development of
more enlightened public policy, or through composing poetry or a
symphony.
Involvement in research/scholarship/creative activity the attempt to find new knowledge is critical to a faculty member's staying up-to-date in his or her discipline. The involved professor not only shares information from such activities with students but also is perceived as a doer, mentor, and role model.
The research function in a university, in addition to its importance for the discovery of new knowledge, is a most effective teaching-learning process. A student working closely with a professor on a research project not only benefits from the mentoring process but also experiences the persistence of scholarship and the thrill of discovery.
Research activities by faculty, both in methodology and result, provide a vital model of scholarly inquiry that students and future leaders must come to understand. Especially in an age of tabloids and talkshows, of quick but not always reliable Web data, undergraduates must understand the distinction between truth and hypothesis and between fact and opinion. That is, we hope, a major outcome of a university education in any era, but perhaps even more important in the one awaiting us in the next century.
As we prepare to work toward a shared vision for Ohio University, I hope we will become more comfortable as a community with our research mission and raise our aspirations regarding our research productivity. We can achieve greater heights without sacrificing our dedication to teaching.
An interesting article in Change magazine a year ago identified 13
distinguishing practices of institutions that achieve highly positive
affective and cognitive outcomes in students. I found the list
engaging because it so closely resembles my own notions about the
direction we should be taking as we develop our shared vision. Listen
to these items and make your own judgments about Ohio University:
- frequent student-faculty interaction
- frequent student-student interaction
- generous expenditures in student services
- strong humanities orientation
- strong faculty emphasis on diversity
- independent research
- student involvement in professors' research
- written evaluations
- interdisciplinary courses
- history courses
- foreign language courses
- courses that emphasize writing
- infrequent use of multiple-choice examinations
I think you will agree that for the most part Ohio University matches pretty well with that list of characteristics. By my assessment, Ohio University scores highly on any such list of criteria for overall excellence. We have done a lot of things--most--things right. Can we do better? Of course. Can we do much better if we work together with a shared vision for our future? The answer again is, of course, yes. We have much in common--a continuing thirst for knowledge, a deepening desire to serve students, an abiding love for this university--on which we can build toward that future. I look forward to working with all of you to develop a shared vision and to working toward its realization with the pride and tradition of excellence that we have come to expect at Ohio University.