Today, it is no secret that our colleges and universities are beset by an array of problems, new to most of us: chronic shortages of funds, coupled with soaring fees and public resistance to higher taxes; new skepticism from members of the "attentive public" about our productivity, accompanied by hard questions about research and tenure; an academic culture that appears to measure excellence by scholarly citations and the number of doctoral candidates, not minds opened or the needs of undergraduates; vigorous new competitors in the academic market, ready and eager to provide services we have ignored; and sharp conflict among faculty, administrators, and other leaders about which of these problems need immediate attention and how to address them. To add to our difficulties, one of the nation's great strengths, its cultural, racial, and ethnic diversity, has been unscrupulously used to open old wounds in our national life, encourage hostility to immigrants, and create new divisions on our campuses - in the process placing many new burdens on our institutions and the people in them. All of those challenges will be difficult to address and solve. Some may prove intractable, no matter how good our intentions. Nonetheless, university presidents and their allies - trustees, faculty leaders, the business community, and others - must point people in the right direction and make a start down the road. We have no crystal ball and we do not know what the future holds. But among the many issues deserving attention it seems to us that five lie at the heart of the task before us. 1. The Student Experience. With the value system favoring research and graduate studies firmly entrenched in American universities, undergraduates too often become at best a responsibility, at worse an afterthought. We find that observation too close to the truth for comfort. Just as we can help reinvigorate undergraduate preparation at research universities, both public and private, we can make a useful contribution by again placing the centrality of the student experience - graduate and undergraduate, full­time and part­time, traditional and non­traditional - at the top of our institutions' agendas. Polls indicate the American people place a high value on our research. They appreciate our outreach and service. But they support us because we have historically provided unprecedented access to high quality, affordable education. We cannot disappoint them in this expectation and depend on their continued goodwill. 2. Access. This public expectation points us to the second major issue we must address, access. Access has been the hallmark of our institutions in the past; despite the financial pressures all of us face, maintaining access must be our major priority in the future. Source: https://ebookschoice.com/the-imperative-to-re-energize-the-university-in-service-to-society/

1. The Imperative To Re-energize The University
In Service To Society
Today, it is no secret that our colleges and universities are beset by an array of
problems, new to most of us: chronic shortages of funds, coupled with soaring
fees and public resistance to higher taxes; new skepticism from members of the
"attentive public" about our productivity, accompanied by hard questions about
research and tenure; an academic culture that appears to measure excellence by
scholarly citations and the number of doctoral candidates, not minds opened or
the needs of undergraduates; vigorous new competitors in the academic market,
ready and eager to provide services we have ignored; and sharp conflict among
faculty, administrators, and other leaders about which of these problems need
immediate attention and how to address them.
To add to our difficulties, one of the nation's great strengths, its cultural, racial,
and ethnic diversity, has been unscrupulously used to open old wounds in our
national life, encourage hostility to immigrants, and create new divisions on our

2. campuses - in the process placing many new burdens on our institutions and the
people in them.
All of those challenges will be difficult to address and solve. Some may prove
intractable, no matter how good our intentions. Nonetheless, university
presidents and their allies - trustees, faculty leaders, the business community, and
others - must point people in the right direction and make a start down the road.
We have no crystal ball and we do not know what the future holds. But among
the many issues deserving attention it seems to us that five lie at the heart of the
task before us.
1. The Student Experience.
With the value system favoring research and graduate studies firmly entrenched
in American universities, undergraduates too often become at best a
responsibility, at worse an afterthought. We find that observation too close to the
truth for comfort. Just as we can help reinvigorate undergraduate preparation at
research universities, both public and private, we can make a useful contribution
by again placing the centrality of the student experience - graduate and
undergraduate, full-time and part-time, traditional and non-traditional - at the
top of our institutions' agendas. Polls indicate the American people place a high
value on our research. They appreciate our outreach and service. But they
support us because we have historically provided unprecedented access to high
quality, affordable education. We cannot disappoint them in this expectation and
depend on their continued goodwill.
2. Access.
This public expectation points us to the second major issue we must address,
access. Access has been the hallmark of our institutions in the past; despite the
financial pressures all of us face, maintaining access must be our major priority in
the future. Yet as budgets tighten, our first reaction is often to think about
limiting enrollment. We need to ask ourselves some hard questions. In the face of
the challenges overwhelming our campuses, how do we maintain our
commitment to access for all qualified students? If fees must increase, how can
we protect those least able to bear the burden?
Above all, in the multi-racial, multi-ethnic America of the 21st Century, how can
we remain true to the vision of a practical college education for all? What are the
implications for our recruitment, admissions, and counseling policies? And for our

3. curricula and faculty reward structures? Asking these questions is easy. Answering
them may be the hardest work for us.
3. Engaged Institutions.
The great genius of the land-grant movement was its emphasis on responsible
engagement with the community, particularly through university extension and
outreach education. The great current need of our institutions is to define what
responsible engagement means in today's world.
In our judgment, we are talking about a university that is a partner and a servant.
We are struggling with how to define a new kind of university - an institution that
is intimately connected to its community and responsive to the many demands
made on it nationally and internationally, while also providing the broadest
possible access in ways that respond to student needs. What does this mean for
our campuses? For our teaching function? Our research mission? Our service
goals? We hope that we can redefine the entire issue of responsible engagement
and outreach for the 21st century.
4. A Learning Society.
A major unrealized opportunity lies before our institutions - becoming fully
engaged with the ongoing national effort to reform American public schools. At
least three aspects of this opportunity merit our attention. First, we can act as
partners and mentors, putting our institutions' research and expertise at the
disposal of school change. Then, we can acknowledge that our graduates are at
the heart of the schooling enterprise, and we can significantly improve teacher
preparation programs. Finally, we need to encourage learning from kindergarten
on, harnessing together school reform, college and university renewal, and new
technologies for distance learning. In brief, we need to think through how to
create a learning society for the 21st century, one that encourages learning
throughout life.
5. The Culture of the Campus.
Finally, the very culture of the campus itself needs attention. With their
commitment to education, research, and public service, our institutions have
helped create a national system of higher education that everyone acknowledges
to be second-to-none in the world. But few of us quibble seriously with the
criticism that excellence in research is a far more important consideration within
the faculty culture than excellence in teaching or service. We may wish that were

4. not true. Most of us can point to exceptions that prove the rule. But, for the most
part, that critical arrow finds its mark.
Social trends, institutional changes, technological advances and intellectual
developments are making a new world for higher education. Viewed in terms of
the future they are propitious currents of opportunity. We face two issues: one of
productivity and one of public perception. Those issues are problems or openings,
depending on our viewpoint.
Take the issue of productivity. Our national survival requires more and better
educated citizens. Work and citizenship are more knowledge-intensive and
continuously changing. What was once the luxury of a college education has
become necessary for personal and community survival. Our graduates need to
leave not just with knowledge but with the ability to apply knowledge, and create
new knowledge. Public funding for higher education is weak. In response to these
new educational needs and falling government funding, tuition continues to rise
faster than the rate of inflation. Increased demand for a different kind of
education, at a time of fewer resources, creates a need for greater productivity.
Thus, the question: how can we deliver knowledge-users and makers to society
with fewer resources? We can view this as a potential destroyer of past traditions
or an opportunity to revolutionize education to achieve many cherished academic
goals that once seemed utopian. We have the opportunity to redesign higher
education in the light of our new knowledge about how the brain works, people
learn, and information gets processed. We have a chance to think as if we were
the first educators free of the habits and dogmas of the past. Consider these
possibilities: studios, workshops, seminars and laboratories without lectures;
ideas to be created, problems to be solved, policies to be crafted without rote
memorization and regurgitation; and students driven by curiosity, excited by
mastery and rewarded by the pride of accomplishment.
Consider the mismatch between what our stakeholders say they want - better,
different and more undergraduate education - versus the way they believe we
spend our energies - on research publications and graduate education.
Stakeholders outside the academy want to help us establish new priorities and
standards of performance. They want higher quality education at lower costs,
interdisciplinary research and education focused on real problems, a reward
system that recognizes the importance of undergraduate teaching, and a change
in pedagogy from the focus on teacher performance to learning achievement.

5. Vociferous expressions of these concerns seem to imply that the public does not
think we work hard enough, when what they are telling us is that we are working
on the wrong things.
The public perception issue is an opportunity to engage our stakeholders - alumni,
business leaders, public officials, taxpayers and parents - in the rethinking and
remodeling of education. We have an opening to bring the public into our
conversations about how to design and deliver the education of the 21st Century.
We can ask our stakeholders to share with us their ideas, their opportunities, and
their problems. Employers can explain the new requirements of using and making
knowledge in a turbulent world. Leaders can present public policies as
hypothetical solutions that scholars can test and improve. The growing desire to
learn about aspects of the world from art to zoology throughout our lifespan can
be translated to new kinds of textbooks available anytime and any place. The
new, almost universal, student body of lifetime learners can become partners
with the university in exploring new subjects and new ways to learn. We can
rethink and redesign education to exceed the demands of the 21st Century.
The new mission, values, vision, and strategic goals statement recognizes
academic quality as our highest priority and calls for a vigorous program of
continuous improvements in teaching. Its strategic goals include innovative
approaches in teaching and learning, rigorous self-evaluation of undergraduate
programs, and building excellence in active learning that integrates current
scholarship and research. It also calls for the expansion and improvement of
information technology to enhance teaching.
Surprisingly, current budget cuts can create a fertile atmosphere to focus thought
and actions on innovations. Since we supply and leverage resources in the form of
ideas, funds, training, expert advice, and sounding boards, we can work as an ally
in coping with reductions. More departments are willing to talk abut curriculum
innovations and the recasting of large introductory courses. We are presented
with openings to aid faculty members in experimentation and enhance our ability
to promote a Darwinian range of innovations, some of which may become
harbingers of the future classroom and many of which will be sources for new
ideas and approaches even if they fail.
We can begin to see the outlines of the college classrooms of the future. We
know the focus will be on learning and on outcomes and not the expense or
reputation of teaching inputs. We can conceive of knowledge content available

6. electronically in texts, video lectures, demonstrations, simulations and virtual
problems. Learning will be active. Students will start with things to do - lifelike
problems to solve, new knowledge patterns to create, and ideas to test - and will
seek the necessary information, principles, intellectual tools and knowledge base
under the tutelage of the faculty. Instructors will roam the new learning spaces
like coaches waiting for the failures that signal the teachable moment when they
can intercede with the example, the story, or the principle that galvanizes the
students' desire to excel. Students will work in high performance teams gaining
knowledge and communicating it to others - now a learner, then a learner
teaching others - but always practicing the cognitive skills of gathering and
presenting evidence, and creating arguments as they learn when to change their
minds and when to change the minds of colleagues.
That vision is still blurred in many details. It conflicts with the current
arrangements of classrooms, curricula, teaching assignments and scheduling. We
do not know how to achieve it in practical terms. That is our challenge. We do
know how to create new practices by means of intelligent fast failure. We know
how to try many things, to be open to new and tradition-busting ideas, and to
encourage new approaches that make obsolete our old problems. We know how
to learn from the failures, ruthlessly discard what doesn't work or costs too much,
while keeping the kinds of records and maintaining the accountability that allows
improvement. That way the devilish details get worked out, the ways open, and
the future becomes clear and compelling.
The innovation business is not simple or easy. We would be foolish to ignore the
barriers to change. Parts of the university lack any sense of urgency in changing
the way we conduct undergraduate education. Many faculty members see change
as a threat to traditions and high standards. Some see efforts to improve
education as an add-on to already busy schedules. The most successful faculty
have thrived on the old ways of emphasizing teaching performance over learning
outcomes. They are adept at organizing and presenting knowledge, enforcing the
memorization of facts and principles, and sorting out students who test best. In
this view student failure, poor motivation, and lack of creativity is someone else's
problem. These attitudes and views could keep the efforts at the margins of
university activities, unless we recognize them and work to change them.
We have developed working procedures for soliciting, selecting, coordinating and
monitoring innovation projects and we are improving them. With success comes
an increasing administrative workload. The more projects and programs that we

7. solicit, support, organize and evaluate, the greater the details of communication
and coordination. How to continue to grow, to encourage participation and to
keep management spare is the challenge.
The second problem is a lack of consistent and widespread student participation.
Despite various attempts to generate enough student interest to start an
organization focused on improving learning, we have not attracted many
students. We have learned must from our failures, including the realization that
students still see their role in learning as passive. The future job of the student as
an active learner has yet to be described. We must find a way to make the
connection between students as innovators in the classroom, with success in
careers and lives after graduation. A major challenge will be to find means to
foster student participation in learning innovations.
We know that trying to change every aspect of a traditional course produces
frustration and consumes too much time and energy. We know that public forums
for presentations and reviews of attempted improvements energize the faculty.
New ideas breed even more new ideas. Faculties are eager to master the theories
and principles of learning and to apply them to the design of their courses.
Professors want to know how to create, implement and manage collaborative
learning environments involving peer review of writing, supplemental peer
instruction and group dynamics. Instructors seek expert advice in developing
methods for assessing learning outcomes. Finally, more and more faculty want
the advice, instruction and support of information technology specialists in order
to find ways to improve access, speed feedback and eliminate drudgery.
Dissatisfied students want to move from being almost passive recipients of
instruction concerned with grades and credentials to learners responsible for
their own education. Like all of us, they get comfortable with traditional ways
even if they are bored with them. They seek training in how to achieve high
performance in teamwork and they desire opportunities to practice. We know
they can quickly learn to deal with the conflicts and frustrations of humans
working together. We sense that they, too, need forums in which to reflect on
their practices of learning instead of reviews of how to cram to maintain high
cumulative averages. We begin to see students participating in the design of their
assignments and the evaluation of their learning. This is the right moment to find
ways to meet their needs for challenges, high expectations, and opportunities to
become autonomous learners.

8. We have learned about needs and about how to meet them. What we have
learned best are some methods or approaches that produce exciting results.
These include:
- focus on learners, learning activities and learning outcomes
- foster change at the level of individuals instructors, students and courses
- foster collaboration across the university of students, faculty, offices, and
academic units working to improve education
- employ intelligent fast failure techniques, evaluating ideas by trying several at
once
- involve students, faculty and staff in the planning, operations and assessment
- foster and sponsor students as partners in innovation and agents of change
- listen to and respect criticism of our ideas and resistance to change
In refocusing American higher education, how can we reform what needs to be
changed while preserving what is best about our institutions? In our judgment,
we need to pay particular attention to the traditional reward structure with its
emphasis on individual faculty entrepreneurialism, pursued within the walls of
departments devoted to the interests of individual disciplines. At the same time, a
reformed and revitalized state university and land-grant system must honestly
face long-standing internal obstacles to change in the form of faculty and
administrative dynamics. While administrators sometimes paint a picture of the
faculty with its face turned firmly to the past, faculty leaders often point to
administrators with their heads planted firmly in the sand. These issues and
dynamics need to be faced squarely, with suggestions about how to reform the
culture so that the reward system reflects our commitment to community
engagement and student needs, in reality as well as in rhetoric.
Looking Ahead
Will addressing these five issues solve all of the problems facing our institutions
and society? Perhaps not, but our larger reform agenda cannot possibly be
attained without serious and sustained attention to each of them. Each of you will
bring your own set of concerns to the table - international education, support for
graduate education, global competition, concerns about agriculture and food
systems, extension education, outreach, and the like.
We welcome this discussion, but remain convinced that what our charge is really
all about is the imperative to re-energize the university in service to society so
that our institutions engage their communities, reflect the needs of students, and

9. extend to teaching and service the same respect and rewards now reserved for
exceptional scholarship and creativity.
Our preliminary thoughts are that we should take up each of the topics above, in
order, issuing a report summarizing where we stand. Each of these reports should
define the problem as we understand it, point to promising targets for reform,
identify and describe key reform models already underway on our campuses, and
issue whatever recommendations we think appropriate.
There is obviously much for us to do, all of it in a great cause. From the very
beginning, the people of the United States have put their faith in education,
confident that it led to better tomorrows. That faith has been repaid many times
over as our schools and colleges, in nourishing our values and culture, have
immeasurably enriched our society.
Now a new imperative is before us - to re-define the function, role, and mission of
public and land-grant colleges and universities to meet the challenges of this new
century. Americans can meet this new imperative as they have met others in the
past.
Jeff C. Palmer is a teacher, success coach, trainer, Certified Master of Web
Copywriting and founder of https://Ebookschoice.com. Jeff is a prolific writer,
Senior Research Associate and Infopreneur having written many eBooks, articles
and special reports.
Source: https://ebookschoice.com/the-imperative-to-re-energize-the-
university-in-service-to-society/