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General and Integrative Studies Mini-Retreat

April 15, 2005, Owens Banquet Hall

Comments made by Dr. Diane Bell, Special Assistant to the Provost, Virginia Tech, and Professor of Anthropology and Women's Studies, George Washington University

First let me start with the congratulations: Congratulations on establishing a forum on undergraduate education. I hope this will be an annual event and that I may get an invite, as an international visitor, to return from Australia to see the progress, because I am sure there will be progress.

You have wisely built on a sound base and not tried to reinvent the wheel. Attention to undergraduate education has a history at Virginia Tech that bodes well for the future—both in terms of ideas and involvement of various sectors of the university.

Take a look at the documentary trail of where you’ve been. Note the questions that persist. I think it’s important that university-wide committees have continued to struggle with what it means to educate the whole person in the 80s, 90s, and now the 21st century. Key moments include:

  • 1981 Interim Report of the University Committee on Liberal Education and the Professions (Collins Committee Report)
  • 1992 University Forum on Liberal Education
  • 2002 Reviewing General and Integrative Education at Virginia Tech (the Summer 2002 Working Group)
  • 2004 University Council votes to transition Writing Intensive requirement out of the core curriculum and back to the departments; Retreat April 30
  • 2005 Retreat April 15, Report of the Ad Hoc Committee on Integrating Virginia Tech’s General Education Program into the Undergraduate Curriculum.

These moments reflect the hard work of a number of individuals and groups within Tech. So congratulations to CEUT—Terry Wildman, Monique Dufour, and your able team of workers and consultants. Thanks for offering workshops and expertise, for reminding us that good teaching is an act of deliberation, not accident, that it is born out of scholarship; thanks for engaging the community in conceptual as well as practical issues. My only counsel—draw more into the fold, you have such riches to share.

I congratulate the UCCC, particularly over the last two years for making ViEWS a reality and for crafting it as an educational experience. Beth Waggenspack, Nan Seamans, Clarresa Morton, Marlene Preston, and the team from last year, thanks for the groundwork and, this year, special thanks to Terry Clements, and her team who had the unenviable task of taking the resolution passed at University Council last year and making it work. The UCCC is a critically important university committee, so my counsel here—as you reshape this group make sure it is understood that those who serve will be rewarded, that their work is part of making Virginia Tech a top tier university. This will require a culture shift. I think it is change that can be driven by the administration. Recruit the best—like Terry—support and promote them.

Congratulations to all concerned—and it is many—for the curricular innovations, in particular the “Living in the 21st Century-Earth Sustainability” interdisciplinary sequence about which we heard this afternoon. It is a success story par excellence but there were many obstacles placed in the way and it ain’t over yet. Let’s learn from the lessons. There needs to be dedicated funding for projects such as these. A clear path needs to be cleared through the bureaucratic jungle so that ideas can lead innovation, not accounting procedures.

Barbara Bekken deserves special thanks; without her vision and perseverance we would not have this fine interdisciplinary pilot. Here I think it is interesting to note that the innovations have come from the margins—from untenured part-time faculty, mainly women. I not making an argument against tenure but rather asking who has the time to dream? Who can still imagine education without strict boundaries? Who dares cross them? The way in which this sequence is being managed is important because there are more proposals in the pipeline. How do we nurture our dreamers?

Congratulations to the Office of the Provost for the express commitment to high quality undergraduate education and for addressing these issues in a resource starved environment. It is clear that you are not idea starved. I know of no other provost who would devote an entire day to meet with those who have been and are key players in matters concerning the undergraduate curriculum. Mark McNamee, David Ford, Ron Daniel, congratulations. My counsel to faculty—the door is open. Make sure your ideas and energy are shared with those in Burruss Hall.

Today we have had a chance to read and consider the report of the ad hoc committee, and what a remarkable undertaking. Thanks all who worked on it and especially to Bob Jones. He is an incredibly smart, hard and efficient worker. He listens, consults, builds, consensus and moves into action.

There is much that is praiseworthy in the ad hoc report. I’ll underscore five points:

  • It builds on what we know to be the strengths of Virginia Tech, builds bridges between faculty and administration, BUT,
  • It is a faculty driven—both in process and recommended structures.
  • It seeks to put funding of the LIS (“Liberal and Integrative Studies”—my suggestion to replace “General Education”) on a rational basis. Much as we have enjoyed the Ford Foundation, it is time to move on.
  • It is flexible with room for innovation.
  • It focuses attention on undergraduate education as central to the mission of Virginia Tech.

Where would I be putting the emphasis?

  • Communication: There are so many parties with an interest in undergraduate education at Virginia Tech and they are not all talking to each other in as constructive ways as they might be. I think the language of “stakeholders” makes us too like a commercial enterprise and we are potentially pitted against each other. The restructuring of the UCCC is critical and I like the ideas being proposed by the ad hoc committee. There needs to be a forum wherein the associate deans, faculty who teach in LIS, the Provost’s Office, CEUT, IR, Assessment, Admissions, the Libraries, Student Affairs, and Registrar are drawn as part of a common enterprise with the UCCC.
  • Administrative Structures: LIS needs an infrastructure to support her. Whatever comes to pass, the structure needs to be faculty “owned” and for that reason I heartily endorse the ad hoc committee’s descriptions of how an office for the what we are currently calling General Education would be staffed. At present innovators confront a bureaucratic jungle—or maybe I’ll think of it as a complex eco-system where certain plants have come to dominate and are threatening to strangle the life out of the less robust. Should it be pruned? Cleared? Is it ripe for an IPM? It certainly is time to stand back and decide what should be flourishing and I like the way the report balances the interests of administration and faculty as a partnership in a shared enterprise.
  • Assessment: Both SCHEV and SACS loom as driving forces but what if you set out to make Virginia Tech a leader in this field? The curricular innovation in interdisciplinary sequences offer possibilities for grants. The work on capstones could be another rich field to plough. ePortfolios are yet another venue. I urge you to draw together the existing expertise in IR, Education, CEUT, the Provost’s Office and move forward boldly. Figure out how to assess learning outcomes. Be a leader.
  • Integration: As participants in the retreat noted, self-reflection needs to be modeled for students and faculty may need assistance also. The report suggests faculty development and summer workshops. A cluster hire would send an important message to faculty in terms of the centrality of their work in undergraduate education and be a force for integration.
  • Leadership: There are a number of people with oversight of various aspects of the current core curriculum, but who wakes up every day and says “Ah, the core curriculum, what shall I do today to keep the conversations going, to move the agenda along, to implement the strategic plans that impinge on this aspect of Virginia Tech’s mission?” The report proposes that there be such a person and an office to support their work be.
  • Global Perspectives: We need to be educating students to be citizens of a rapidly globalizing world. They need forum where perspectives, critical perspectives for the 21st century, can emerge. Here is an opportunity to be grasped, one that will require communication and leadership. The “International Strategic Plan 2004-2011,” the product of a year of hard work by a number of members of the Virginia Tech community, should to be read in conjunction with the report of the ad hoc committee. How might you integrate these reports and work together to create the citizens of the 21st century, citizens who need to be able to cross borders intellectually, as well as geographically? These global citizens need to be able to pose critical questions for themselves, ones the media is increasingly reluctant to ask. Our students need the grounding a liberal arts education offers.

    I like the notion of regional centers driven by the interests of a lead college, but not owned by that college. John Dooley was telling me this morning about the newest idea coming from the sciences for a center in Africa. Excellent. I hope the social scientists will enter into the dialogue just as I hope the scientists will seek out the social scientists on the matter of bio-ethics. Virginia Tech is positioned to have such cross-disciplinary, cross-college conversations. Already at the graduate level you have pioneered a number of exciting cross-cutting initiatives, now be a leader in undergraduate education.

    The International Strategic Plan speaks of “critical reflection that seeks alternative perspectives to illuminate and challenge our own.” I remember when we drafted that sentence. It was not uncontentious. The conversation we had then alerted me to the fact that C. P. Snow’s “two cultures” live on. We are very much creatures of our disciplines and upbringing. I urge those of you who have a stake in the development of the international strategic plan to work closely with the new emerging structures within which the undergraduate curriculum will be reshaped.
  • Open Governance: There is a shift underway. Tech is moving from a hierarchical institution with a strong male-oriented culture to a more democratic, open place—one that celebrates diversity. Such changes take time and hard work. There will be missteps along the way but the spirit of open governance that now pervades the Office of the Provost is an enormously valuable asset for undergraduate education.

    To become the Virginia Tech of the 21st century will entail change and I know people are weary. I like the underlying philosophy of the ad hoc report in terms of generating change and getting buy-in through incentives not administrative fiat, of looking to the pilot projects as examples of best practices.

    Virginia Tech has been living in an environment of radical change for some years now, much of it driven by resources, or rather lack thereof. I find the Virginia Tech approach admirable. Virginia Tech has refused to be crippled by the lack of resources. Instead they have restructured and pursued a strategy that assumes they will emerge stronger and more focused. There are opportunities in such an environment and I’m suggesting this moment is one of opportunity for the undergraduate education. There are a number of initiatives: building research capacity, growing the graduate program, the capital campaign, the master plan, the classroom study and the branding exercise. Forging connections across constituencies, disciplines and schools, while making connections between innovation and tradition, teaching and research, people and ideas is what Virginia Tech does best. The current commitment to the revitalizing the undergraduate core curriculum is central to Virginia Tech becoming a 21st century university.

    One opportunity has to do with the “Restructured Higher Education Financial and Administrative Operation Act" (formerly the Chartered University Initiative). This initiative won’t work unless Virginia Tech can attract and retain a solid undergraduate population. The rhetoric for graduate education has been developed—the PowerPoint presentation of the president is cast in forthright language. That of the undergraduate is less forthright, much more moderate. I suggest this is the moment to push the agenda of those dedicated to undergraduate teaching.

    So with enormous respect for the administration and because, although I like being special consultant to the provost at Virginia Tech and if I were staying in the U.S., there is no place I would rather be than at Virginia Tech working to make the ad hoc report a reality, I am going to speak as faculty, as one who cares about teaching, research, writing and the students we are education for the 21st century. We are living in uncivil times, civil liberties are being eroded in the name of our safety, and at times such as these the role of a liberal education will be under threat and for good reason. Those well schooled in the liberal arts know how to ask the difficult questions. They make people feel uncomfortable. We can’t afford to flinch. Our students need the best we can offer in terms of a liberal education.

    So I am suggesting—as I said with respect—that the PowerPoint presentation be recast in much bolder language. In the “Update to the University Strategic Plan,” we will see that we are not just going to maintain and strengthen undergraduate education, but rather that we are going to transform undergraduate education. Graduate Dean Karen DePauw has done an excellent job of articulating the concept of transformation in terms of graduate education. You have the language in her presentations. Take it and make it work at the undergraduate level. With a Dean of Undergraduate Studies, or whatever the point person will be called, this will be possible.

    Here are the briefing notes for the president for his rewritten PowerPoint. Go back to the mission of Virginia Tech, be true to the mission of the land-grant university.

    Text for the day: “The land-grant university is a uniquely American idea, defined by a commitment to the land-grant values of access and opportunity, combining practical and liberal education, conducting basic and applied research, and reaching out to extend the university to serve the people of the state.” ISU President Martin Jischke. 1997.

    My rhetoric here uses the royal “we,” because I want the president and Board of Visitors to own the words. Here they are: With its ambitious research agenda, Virginia Tech aims to be positioned among the elite research universities at the national level and an important catalyst of intellectual and economic progress at the global level. When we review the original vision of the land-grant university, we see that moving to be to an entrepreneurial, diverse, technologically savvy, internationally recognized 21st century research university is quite consistent with the land-grant mission. At its core, this mission is transformative. It offers the opportunity for distinction and success to the “common man”—now understood as reflecting the richly textured weave of gender, race, ethnicity, class, region, and religion. It demonstrates how application and research fuel each other.

    We need to build bridges between the graduate and undergraduate programs. There is a widely held view amongst faculty and students that graduate issues and sponsored research are leaching resources at the undergraduate level, and that research and graduate work is valued above teaching and undergraduate. This places some disciplines in a second class status. But, the core values of a land-grant university for the 21st century are made manifest in the undergraduate curriculum.

    How can we nurture the strengths? We will start by acknowledging that the burden of teaching in the core falls on two colleges; the contribution of those teaching in the core is part of being a top tier university; the criteria for excellence varies with disciplines; the culture of liberal arts, humanities, and social sciences is different from that of the sciences. We will promote the innovative connections being made within the core curriculum through ePortfolios, the common book(s), common question, residential learning communities, undergraduate research, interdisciplinary sequences, and capstone courses. We are TECH: we are wired, we have ePortfolios, a super computer, IDDL courses, WITS project. We should be promoting the benefits for undergraduates and graduates in this technologically saturated environment, one that is uniquely tailored for life in the 21st century.

    So I am urging that branding be connected to undergraduate learning. The three key words—quality, innovation, results—are illustrated by the undergraduate curriculum. Here are my five points for the branding exercise.

    Undergraduate education at Virginia Tech sets the standard for the 21st century:
  • educates the whole person (the land-grant mission for global citizens)
  • is innovative (technologically, pedagogy, research, assessment)
  • is interdisciplinary, problem-based, countenances new knowledges
  • builds community (first year experience, becoming a loyal hokie)
  • integrates graduate and undergraduate education (top tier research in the classroom, preparing the future professoriate)

Undergraduate education at Virginia Tech is on the agenda. I urge you to seize the moment while the planets are aligned.

Thank you for the opportunity of being part of the transformation over the past two years and I wish you well as you move forward.