The university's future:
How alumni can lead the way and further a vision for Ohio
Ohio Today: What do each of you personally want for Ohio University? What do you want for the future of this institution?
ALDEN: I am pleased with the program that President Roderick McDavis has now. He talks about the "vision" for Ohio. We aspire to be one of the really top-quality public universities in America, and I think we ought to keep that in the forefront. Academically, we want to be first class; we want our alumni to succeed; and we want them to have promise in building a better country.
PING: I think what I dream of most is the quality of the undergraduate experience. That means that we have a national prominence that reflects what we are and the difference we make in the lives of the young people who come here. And in the graduate programs, I hope that we are well focused and selective and can in fact achieve, through external recognition, the kind of quality of program and research that deserves national prominence.
ALDEN: You're going to think I'm crazy for bringing this up, but I got so tired of when I first came here of having people refer to us as "OU," OK? This is a thing about me. My wife used to tap me on the shoulder and say, "Get off it!" But you don't call Michigan "MU," you don't call Illinois "IU," you don't call Harvard "HU," and certainly, you don't call Princeton "PU." [Laughter from the group] And I was delighted, for example, that Rod McDavis' annual report had "Ohio" all the way through: O-H-I-O in big letters. Now, I want us to be referred to as Ohio, and so I used to call Sports Illustrated and The New York Times saying, "Are we the only university that has 'U' after its name? Aren't the rest of them universities?" So now Sports Illustrated and The New York Times almost (always) have Ohio, Kent, Bowling Green and so on. I think that it's a little thing, but it is important that we be recognized as the preeminent institution. We were chartered as The Ohio University, but somewhere along the lines Ohio State picked up the name "The" Ohio State University. So I think that OU means nothing. Oregon, Osh Kosh, Occidental -- OU is nothing. Keep this in mind in the Ohio magazine. [More laughter]
Ohio Today: [Jokingly] We just quote them.
ALDEN: That's right. If you are going to quote someone, you have to quote him. But, in the rest of the publications, we are Ohio, like Michigan, like Illinois, like Iowa, like California and so on, OK?
PING: This whole business about the use of the definite article -- when we were celebrating our 175th anniversary, we had a series of dinners around the state under the theme 'Ohio's First University.' And the then-president of Ohio State University, whose name escapes me, was just absolutely incensed by this, and that's when he began the insistence, much like yours, that now it is "The."
GLIDDEN: That was Ed Jennings.
PING: Ed Jennings, yes, thank you. I went through four of them, so I lose track. [Laughter from the group] At national meetings, we both served on several boards together, and he would introduce himself as the president of The Ohio State University, and I made quite a point of saying the law stipulates we are The Ohio University.
ALDEN: [Laughing] Yes, right.
GLIDDEN: It really has to do with the president’s vision of national prominence because, if you think about it, "OU" is a very local, parochial perspective. I mean, I was at Oklahoma, the University of Oklahoma, which is an OU there, and there's an Oregon, so that's an OU there. So the issue of national recognition and so forth, that really makes the "Ohio," Vern's theme, all the more important.
Let me mention a couple of other things about what we want for the university. I certainly would agree with both Vern and Charlie, but you know, there are a couple of programs at Ohio University that -- sometimes we forget -- but they are prominent nationally because we were first. We were one of the very first to be organized as a College of Communication, to take those disciplines out of arts and aciences and make them special with their own collegiate home.
ALDEN: Right.
GLIDDEN: Somebody in the '50s had the vision of sports being big business, and started the sports administration program, and we have been the leader -- certainly one of the leaders -- in that particular field. And with very prominent alumni -- people in prominent places. During Charlie's era, the Contemporary History Institute -- which is a marvelous kind of idea, and makes people think about history a little bit differently, with a kind of application and perspective -- became a hallmark for the university. The Honors Tutorial College is still, as far as I know, one of the only degree-granting honors colleges in the country. We’re more nimble than a lot of other institutions in terms of conceiving and adopting new ideas and new kinds of programs, so I hope that will always continue.
ALDEN: That's true.
GLIDDEN: There is a certain willingness to take some risk and do that sort of thing that the bureaucracy in many larger places would not allow. And then the other thing -- I would like to echo Charlie's point -- is that the really excellent undergraduate liberal education is the most important thing we can continue to contribute. If you stop and think about what could be the most important vision for Ohio University, in my opinion, it would be a really outstanding liberal education that looks to the future and is based on the past.
I think that the university, its prominence in the future, is going to be based on real academic excellence. I've always said that I would rather have a university full of B+ students who want to learn than A or A+ students who want to get good scores. And so to have a liberal studies program that engages students and intrigues them is just extremely important. That is how your alumni will be successful in the future -- if they have that kind of background.
Ohio Today: If you had one wish as it relates to alumni in particular, what would it be?
PING: Get involved would be my reaction.
ALDEN: Yes, right.
GLIDDEN: I think that what I learned in the Bicentennial Campaign (is that sometimes) we had successful alums and we were just not able to engage (them), because they are so busy. But they never turn us down if we invite them to come talk to students. And we never had an experience, that I knew about, that was unsuccessful in that regard. First of all, the students were really wowed, and also, the alum felt very gratified or rewarded by the experience. And I would love to see a kind of program in which we just do a lot more of that. That takes the cooperation of the faculty, of course, to afford the room for it, but one of the things that we’ve done really well in the College of Communication, for example -- there are lots of others too -- is the hands-on aspect of education. People getting real hands-on experience. Bringing these people in to relate their stories and how they found success and so forth, is closely related (to hands-on experience).
Continue to Section 6: Presidential legacies
Return to the introduction
Posted 09-12-06 |
