From time to time, I have taken an informal mental inventory of the kinds of publications that regularly cross my desk or insinuate themselves into my e-mail. It does not take sophisticated exegesis to discover that there is an underlying consistency in many of the titles, reflecting, in microcosm, the kinds of issues we are facing in higher education today. Let me cite just a few of those titles to illustrate my point:

• Millennials Rising by William Strauss and Neil Howe (2002)
• “Generation Now” by Susan Fitzgerald in Currents (January 2003)
• “Taking Student Learning Seriously: Rethinking the University of the Future” in Pullias Lecture Series on the "Future of Higher Education" by Vincent Tinto (2003)
• Reinventing Ourselves: Interdisciplinary Education, Collaborative Learning, and Experimentation in Higher Education ed. by Barbara Leigh Smith and John McCann (2001)
• Liberal Education for the 21st Century published by the American Association of Colleges and Universities (Spring 2003)
• Change published monthly by the American Association for Higher Education

The recurrent theme in this brief sampling is, of course, change: change in the students whom we serve, change in curriculum and faculty roles, change in required support services, change in virtually every aspect of what we do. To this list of changes I would add changing views about how public higher education should be defined and supported, a topic which I shall address briefly later in my remarks this afternoon.

Let’s begin by reminding ourselves of how the students enrolled in our institution—and in institutions across the country—have changed and are changing. One author (Fizgerald) characterizes them as “a generation that’s eclectic and still evolving” (p.20). Depending upon how far back we would like to go, most of us can recall what seemed to be the dominant characteristics of other generations of students. The Baby Boomers, for example, may have started out as dissidents in the sixties, but today many of them are associated with the very establishments against which they rebelled as students. The curricula of their college years reflected the general turbulence of the times, during which many “traditional” subjects gave way to those that were perceived to be more “relevant” to student needs and interests. In light of these changes, critics like Alan Bloom lamented the passing of a rigorous curriculum grounded in Western culture and called for a return to that curriculum and to those halcyon days when students were “serious” about learning. Some even called for a return to greater “control” of student behavior by universities and colleges, to a role of serving “in loco parentis” with strict codes of conduct and serious sanctions for “unacceptable” behavior. Lest we not understand what kinds of regulations that might entail, we need only peruse the Student Handbook for Frostburg State Teachers College in 1942-43, in which standards such as the following appear:

• Permission for riding in automobiles (except with parents) must be sent by parents to the social director.
• Students are not allowed to leave Frostburg during an intermission at a dance without permission from home.
• Clean your room and dust your furniture daily.
• Have room ready for inspection at 9:00 a.m. on school days; 11:00 a.m. on other days.

I think we can agree that things have changed dramatically within the past sixty years!

Now, what about our students today? They have been given numerous names: Generation Now, Generation Y, Millenials, Echo Boomers, the Digital Generation, Mosaics. One observer notes that their “interests range from skateboarding to the stock market.” (Fitzgerald, p. 20) They have been compared to the students of the ‘60s because of their social awareness and desire for community involvement, their commitment to making a difference. But, unlike the students of the ‘60s, they are not as politically involved, and it is a challenge for us as adults to urge them to exercise their voting rights. This generation of students is obviously “wired,” as we observe them wending their way across our campus with cell phones held to their ears, prefiguring yet another generation of students who are already “blogging” on a daily basis in elementary schools.

Each year, Beloit College in Wisconsin publishes what they have termed a “mindset list” describing incoming freshmen students. This year, that list reminds us, among other things, that

• Most students entering college this fall were born in 1986.
• Desi Arnaz, Orson Welles, Roy Orbison, Ted Bundy, Ayatollah Khomeini, and Cary Grant have always been dead.
• Baby Jessica could be a classmate.
• Harry has always known Sally.
• Robert Downey, Jr. has always been in trouble.
• Bill and Ted have always been on an excellent adventure.
• Rogaine has always been available for the follicularly challenged.
• Bethlehem has never been a place of peace at Christmas.
• Castro has always been an aging politician in a suit.
• They have done most of their search for the right college online.

  (Source: "Beloit College Mindset List for the Class of 2008," prepared by Professor of Classics Art Robson and Public Affairs Director Ron Nief, August 30, 2004)

One of the authors of this year’s list observes that “these first-year students were born in the year that Chernobyl melted down and the Challenger exploded. Clint Eastwood was elected mayor of Carmel, Calif., and the Soviets had been bogged down for the seventh year of frustration in Afghanistan. Domestically we were preoccupied by the Iran Contra scandal, and internationally the Iran-Iraq war continued to reveal a disturbing list of atrocities. (Ibid.)

In short, we need to remember that our students, like students who preceded them, have been shaped by their own personal experiences and that they are products of the defining events and the culture and values of their time. For those of us in higher education, the ultimate challenge is to provide for them an educational experience that will serve them well, both now and in the future.

Curriculum planning has traditionally been the prerogative of the faculty in our universities and colleges. Today, it largely remains so, although we are aware of one institution that created a school of engineering because a donor predicated his $100 million gift on the establishment of such a school, and there are other examples to which we might point. Here at Frostburg, the faculty have recently undertaken the challenge of reviewing the undergraduate curriculum thoroughly in light of current student needs, reading vast amounts of literature on the subject, examining best practices, and developing a program of studies that is both substantive and innovative. Those who would resist any modification in what we do now need only remember that the classic curriculum in higher education included only the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music) and the trivium (grammar, logic, and rhetoric). Academic disciplines as we now know them evolved slowly during the nineteenth century and throughout the twentieth century, with some major changes developing in the latter part of the twentieth century.

Beginning in the 1960s and 1970s, as one scholar has noted, “The intellectual landscape changed with the rise of black studies, women’s studies, ethnic studies, environmental studies, urban studies, and other interdisciplinary field studies. . . . The rise of new hybrid disciplines, such as social psychology and molecular biology, further complicated the academy and the definition of interdisciplinarity. . . . Interdisciplinary fields have developed or expanded dramatically in areas as varied as cognitive science, neuroscience, leadership studies, bioengineering” and these “blurred genres” are “changing the character of modern disciplines.” (Julie Thompson Klein in Reinventing Ourselves, pp. 394-5)

Added to the complexities inherent in redefining disciplines is, as we have noted, the availability of technologies that are also redefining the ways in which students are taught. In addition to the basic skills that we have traditionally emphasized and continue to emphasize in our curricula—quantitative reasoning, scientific reasoning, critical thinking, oral and written communication—is yet another skill that our Board of Regents has added as a graduation requirement: technological fluency. And that requirement—which will no doubt soon be met by students even at the elementary school level—is changing not only curriculum, but also pedagogy. CHANGE. The winds of change are, indeed, upon us. Those who would hunker down until they pass are doomed, like the inhabitants of Plato’s Cave, to remain prisoners of darkness. Those who are courageous enough to seek the light may feel the discomforts of temporary blindness or disorientation, but they will be able eventually to understand, and, hence, influence the world about them.

I do not mean to sugar coat or minimize the challenges that we face in developing curricula that will respond to changes in the ways in which our students learn. But we do have enough empirical information to know that most of them learn best in some sort of learning community, whether that be at the freshman level or as members of a group of students pursuing similar interests within their chosen fields of study. We know that the intellectual world of which they will be a part as graduates is not likely to be narrowly defined by academic discipline, whether they enter the world of work or continue their studies beyond the baccalaureate degree. Increasingly, in business, in medicine and science, in technology and design, and in the so-called “helping professions” like education and social work, “teams” of collaborators from various disciplines work together to address some of the most challenging problems and issues facing us today. Little wonder, then, that a prestigious institution like the University of Southern California was recently advised to begin the reform of its undergraduate curriculum “by making interdisciplinary learning communities and the collaborative and/or problem-based pedagogy that underlies them the hallmark of the student educational experience, especially during the critical first year of college.” (Tinto, p. 32) One scholar has characterized collaborative, intercultural, and community-based learning as “the new frontier” in higher education. (Carol G. Schneider in Liberal Education Spring 2004, p. 9) We are fortunate that here at Frostburg a number of forward-looking faculty initiated cross-disciplinary learning communities for freshmen nearly a decade ago, and the number of those courses has increased dramatically since then. The University of Maryland at College Park has just announced its intentions to engage every entering freshman next year in one sort of learning community or anther.

Another initiative here at Frostburg has been the highly successful introduction of on-line courses during the past two summer sessions and intersession, heralding an initiative that is now being strongly urged by the Regents for all of our institutions. On-line learning, as we have often said, cannot ever be a total substitute for a residential learning experience, especially for traditional college-age students, but it can be a tool that, when used well, can expand both the breadth and the quality of what students learn. The downside, of course, is that the same resource can be abused. An advertisement in Harper’s magazine three years ago read: “Term Papers: 19,278 papers available! Free catalog. Quality guaranteed.” (Change, March/April 2004, p.8) One can only guess at what that number might be today. Plagiarism has always been a threat to the integrity of student learning; the challenge posed by this sort of ad requires that our faculty also be sufficiently proficient in technology to be able to ferret out these “rogue” resources.

Yet another challenge we face because of our students’ propensity to spend both leisure time and time devoted to course work on line is the growing number of what has been termed “aliterates” among both adult and student populations. These are individuals who do not read, not because they cannot, but because they choose not to. To those of us wedded to books, as most of us in this profession tend to be, this poses yet another challenge—one which has been around for years (the term "aliteracy" was coined in the 1970's), but one which is exacerbated by the rise of technology. Mark Twain once observed that “The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read them.” (Cited in Change January/February 2002, p. 52). We are inundated with information 24/7 through television and have access around the clock to the internet, but I firmly believe that it is through reading—the more leisurely absorption of fact and the imaginative response to words and ideas—that our minds are truly exercised and challenged. Let us do what we can to make “aliteracy” an obsolete concept for our students.

One academician has summed up in these words the impact of these multiple, complex changes sweeping across our institutions: “ . . . new technologies are extending the missions of universities and the work of academic researchers. In response to digital libraries, hypermedia, and new communication technologies, universities are struggling to re-conceptualize literacy, disciplinary knowledge, research methodologies, interdisciplinarity, and the faculty reward system.” (Joseph Moxley in Change November/December 2001, p. 37) In the midst of these changes, however, we need to remember that, ultimately, it is not subject matter or pedagogy that is at the heart of the educational enterprise. It is the students whom we teach, and it is their needs that should be paramount in any decisions that we make or actions that we take.

Although I usually reserve for the Spring Convocation my comments on the “State of the University,” I would like to include in my remarks today a brief description of some of the other forces of change to which we must be increasingly resourceful in responding. Foremost among them is a change in the way in which public higher education is being defined. At one time, institutions like ours were legitimately described as state supported because at least fifty percent of the institutional budget came from state appropriations. Gradually that percentage has dropped over the years, so that pundits have described the evolution as moving from state supported to state assisted to state related to state “located.” The fact is that last year, for the first time in our history, the percentage of our budget derived from student tuition and fees exceeded the percentage derived from state appropriations. The public policy issue reflected in this change is a fundamental one: namely, what makes a public institution “public”? If access and affordability are key elements, are we drifting toward a quasi-public status more like that of institutions categorized as “state assisted”? At what point can we no longer serve adequately the growing number of high school graduates who seek admission to our universities but who cannot afford to enter?

Students interested in Frostburg face a twofold challenge: over eighty percent of our students do not live within commuting distance, and for them the double cost of tuition and room and board can be prohibitive. The combined costs for a full-time in-state undergraduate student living on campus next year will be over $12,000 – an amount that may well be beyond the reach of middle class families ineligible for need-based financial aid, many of whom may have more than one student in college at the same time. All of us are striving hard to raise private funds for scholarships for students, but the resources available are far outstripped by the demand. Many articles have been written about these changes, and many predictions have been made that, at best, public institutions across the country will never again enjoy the level of support they once enjoyed. Efficiency and effectiveness will be demanded of all of our institutions – a not unreasonable demand, but there is a breaking point beyond which quality and access diminish significantly as a function of diminished resources.

I do not, Pollyana-ish as I am, want to conclude this address with a negative message, but I do want us all to understand that the changes I have noted are virtually inevitable and that we can ill afford either to ignore them or simply to rail against them. Our response must be to understand them and to be creative and resourceful in shaping the kind of institution that continues to reflect our deepest values, even as it, too, undergoes change.

Finally, I would like to urge us all, in the midst of what will undoubtedly be lively and heated discussions and differences of opinion about a variety of issues, to do what Professor P. M. Forni of the Johns Hopkins University faculty in a recent publication urges us to do, and that is to “choose civility.” (P.M. Forni, Choosing Civility 2002). During this academic year, many opportunities for varied perspectives, and perhaps heated debate, will doubtless arise on our campus as decisions are made regarding the Undergraduate Education Initiative, the Middle States self-study, policy matters, budget decisions and priorities, and efficiency initiatives. As one faculty member said to me recently when we clearly had differing views on an issue about which she felt very strongly, we can agree to disagree. We can hopefully do so without having lost respect for the person of good will on either side of an issue who happens not to share our views. I have found that one of the hallmarks of this institution is the passion with which many members of our faculty and staff respond to a given issue – and that passion reflects a deep commitment to making us as good as we can be. I have no doubt that impassioned discussions will continue here, and it is my sincere hope that in each of those instances we will remember to choose civility and to heed the words of George Washington, who advised many years ago when our fledgling country was in turmoil, that “Every action done in company, ought to be with some sign of respect for those that are present.” (Cited in Forni, p. 41). One wonders what Washington would have thought of the vicious attack ads being launched on both sides of the political spectrum this year. But that is a topic for another day.

Thank you for attending this afternoon. And let us resolve together to respond intelligently, responsibly, and with civility to the forces of change that inevitably will shape the future of our institution and our students.

CRG/mg
10/13/04