I have been thinking about this tension as I consider what changes a budget cut may require.  There may be areas where the ideal that we have hoped for actually is getting in the way of our doing something very good, yet different.  And perhaps in other places we should have pushed the envelope further and have settled for “good enough.”  As we decide where limited resources should be invested, surely we want to hit as many of those sweet spots as we can.

Aiming for perfect probably leads to us trying too few things, while settling for good likely encourages us to spread ourselves too thin.  I tell students that my goal is for them to surprise themselves by what they are able to accomplish in my class.  That isn’t just code for “You may think my expectations are unrealistic,” though it is that, too.  It is a time-worn observation that students are capable of more than they think they are, and it is my job to push them out beyond the boundaries they can see.  That’s somewhere between “perfect” and “good enough.”

As we look at our academic programs and attempt to put resources where they are best used, we should ask, Where are the areas where we surprise ourselves?  Where do the possible and the improbable meet?  Not where are we flawless, nor where are we good enough to get by, but where are we truly making a difference?

Let the perfect and the good duke it out among themselves.  It’s usually dangerous to stick your nose into someone else’s fight.  And if you must quote Voltaire, here’s a line I like better, anyway: “What we find in books is like the fire in our hearths. We fetch it from our neighbors, we kindle it at home, we communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.”

This emerging reality surely has countless implications for those of us in the information and knowledge “business,” but lately I have been thinking of one, in particular.  In an age when learning can happen anytime, anywhere, one distinguishing feature of a university must be the context we create for learning.  We do more than teach music, or Spanish, or biology; we help students develop an education.  More than that, we want them to develop a liberal education, which the Association of American Colleges & Universities defines as, “an approach to learning that empowers individuals and prepares them to deal with complexity, diversity, and change. It provides students with broad knowledge of the wider world (e.g. science, culture, and society) as well as in-depth study in a specific area of interest.”

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This is not something that we can accomplish individually or singly in any of our specific disciplines.  Nor can it be imparted at the abstract level of a mission statement or motto.  It is a task that we undertake together, and we must do so purposefully, thoughtfully, diligently.  It is something that we must talk about.

I am excited that at this moment we have several initiatives developing in the College of Arts and Letters that are evidence of our desire and ability to do just that.

• 13 faculty representing all seven departments are working to develop an innovative version of GEP 101 that will draw upon all our disciplines in introducing freshmen to the values of a liberal education.
• Seven faculty members are taking part in the Arts & Letters Leadership Year development program, looking to gain a broader perspective on higher education and exploring the connections among our various disciplines.
• We are preparing to launch the new College Advising Office, which will be staffed by outstanding advisors from all our departments and will establish a network of faculty who are familiar with programs across the college and will help us focus together on issues affecting student success.
• In mid-October I will begin meeting with the new college Student Advisory Team, consisting of three students (undergraduate and graduate) from each of the seven departments.  I know I will learn from them, but I also hope they will learn from each other as they encounter students from different disciplines.

These are just a few of the many ways we can make room for conversations about what we are doing together.  Beyond the passions we have for our own fields, we must be just as passionate about the quality of our students’ whole education.  Let’s face it, most of the information we teach in our disciplines can be learned lots of places, whether online, in libraries, on the job, or at a competing university.  What cannot be duplicated elsewhere is the environment that we establish for learning and creating.  That environment is what will make students move beyond thinking, “I want to study _______________,” to “I want to study _______________ at Missouri State.”

Every once in a while we all need a “You Are Here” orientation.  We must ask ourselves, Where am I?  Where is it I’m trying to go? and Can I get there from here?  Helping students find their way in an unfamiliar building reminds me that they are asking the same questions about their lives, in general, as are the rest of us.

This year I am asking faculty and staff to imagine Arts and Letters as a college of destination.  By “destination” I mean that students come to and stay at Missouri State because of us.  Some students will come to Missouri State specifically to study graphic design or musical theatre, for example.  Other students will come here for a variety of reasons and then find us once they arrive, perhaps discovering a passion for creative writing, communication, or languages.  In either case, if we are a college of destination, then our programs draw students to Missouri State and keep them here.

A college of destination is built on programs of destination.  This summer I asked our department heads to describe the characteristics of a destination program and they suggested the following.  Destination programs have:

• Quality faculty who are enthusiastic about their work and their students.
• Unique qualities that distinguish them from other similar programs.
• Established reputations.
• A commitment to mentoring students and providing individual attention.
• Highly talented students who compete for opportunities.
• A “cycle of success” where new students see graduates doing well and expect to do well themselves.
• Involved alumni who give back to students and spread the programs’ reputations.
• Traditions that celebrate their heritages and honor those upon whose work the programs’ successes are built.

Being a college of destination does not mean that we are the end of the road.  Far from it.  Although arriving at college certainly is a milestone, many students already are fixed on the next goal — a career, graduate school, a life as far from Springfield, Missouri as they can get.  One of the most important questions we can help students ask is, “Where do you want to go?”  And our response to their answers should be, “You can get there from here.”

At our all-college meeting last week I shared just a small representative list of where our recent alumni have gone.  I would wager that many of them never dreamed of these places when they first came to campus, while some of them may have wondered if they could realize their ambitions with an education from an in-state public university.  So to our new students I pose the following questions, and they all have the same answer: Yes, you can get there from here.

Do you want to …

• Own your own design firm?
• Be president of a major advertising agency?
• Work on special effects for major network television series?
• Be the lead environment artist for internationally distributed video games?
• Win an Emmy?
• Be a university professor at institutions like Stanford, California State University, Ohio University, University of Illinois, or Harvard?
• Live and work internationally?
• Work in management positions for Fortune 500 companies like IBM, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, e-Bay, or Wal-Mart?
• Publish novels or have your writing appear in The New Yorker?
• Edit a major motion picture or a hit TV series?
• Manage a German company just because you are fluent in the appropriate language?
• Perform on Broadway and in national touring companies?
• Act on network television?
• Own a multi-million dollar company?
• Be a highly successful trial attorney?
• Be accepted into the country’s top PhD, MFA and MA programs?
• Win national awards for your creative work?
• Be a fabulous high school teacher?
• Be nominated for a Grammy?
• Sing with a major opera company?
• Work in the White House?

The map says, “You Are Here.”  And that’s an excellent place to start.

The other morning I pulled up to the drive-thru at McDonald’s to grab a soda. As I rolled down my window a friendly female voice asked me very sweetly whether I’d like to add a McCafe Mocha to my order, to which I replied, “No thanks, I just need a large Diet Coke.” The next moment I was jarred by a gruff, male voice informing me, “That’ll be $1.07 at the first window.”

Wait a minute, what happened to that charming lady I was just talking to?

We all have become accustomed to the obligatory “upsell” greetings suggesting that whatever we thought we wanted to order wasn’t quite enough. If you are like me, you have learned to have the words, “No, thanks. I just need …” at the ready. Perhaps the folks at McDonald’s corporate have figured that out and decided that if we are going to have automated conversations with the drive-thru operator, then the operator may as well be automated, as well.

But back to that nice lady.

Wasn’t it impolite of her to start a conversation with me that she had no intention of finishing? I wondered afterward what would have happened if I had said, “Yes, I’d love a McCafe Mocha!” Would the nice lady have kept talking to me, or would she have passed me off to the pimply-faced guy still? I suspect the latter. What a tease.

Of course, we all start conversations that we don’t intend to finish. We greet people with “How are you?” when we really don’t mean to have a discussion about their well-being. We tell each other, “We should get together sometime,” knowing how unlikely it is that we’ll follow through. The exchanges we have at the drive-thru window are no less social rituals than these, and they all are useful for our mutual purposes.

I wonder, though, are there bigger, more substantive conversations that we invite others into without moving past that first turn? President Obama this week said he was trying to open a dialogue with the Muslim world with his speech in Cairo, and many people in the Middle East have said, “Nice speech, but we’ll wait to see what happens next.”

Are we willing to continue pursuing the conversation even when the other person’s first response is, “No thanks”? When we invite our students into conversations with perspectives that challenge their own, do we respect their discomfort and continue to hold space open for dialogue? Are we willing to ask the same questions more than once, realizing that they may not be heard the same way each time they are posed? Do we view teaching and learning as more than a set of pre-formulated questions and prescribed responses?

I know it was a very brief encounter, but I really thought that nice lady and I had made a connection. I don’t drink coffee, but she might have been able to talk me into a hash brown …

In the interest of science and self-discovery, I have subjected myself to dozens of these quizzes.  I now know what color I am (green), what breed of dog I am (Siberian husky), and what Disney character I most resemble (Peter Pan).  Register a Facebook account and you, too, can learn what philosopher you are (Me? Jean Paul Sartres), what Biblical character shares your tendencies (Apparently Elijah and I both have a tendency to voice our opinions and then become depressed when people don’t listen to us), or what world leader you are (For the life of me I cannot figure why my results came up with Mao Zedong).

Do you see yourself depicted in the arts?  What painting are you?  I am Margritte’s Son of Man.  My opera is Der Rosenkavalier, and the Beatles song I am most like is Let It Be.  I kind of like that I have Spiderman’s personality, and apparently I would get along with Chicago Cubs infielder Ryan Theriot.  I even know what biologist I am, about which I have always wondered (Gregor Mendel).  Those all sound much more impressive than what car I am, a Toyota Corolla.  Even my classic car alter ego is a bit of a disappointment, the 1965 Ford F100.  And the revelation that my M&M color is pink may send me back into real therapy.

I didn’t really want to know what serial killer I am or what fictional murderer I might identify with (and I must say the questions on the latter quiz were a bit disturbing).  My inner Smurf is Papa Smurf, begging the question, Which serial killer would Papa Smurf be? 

There are plenty of food and drink quizzes, too.  I am milk chocolate, which I have to admit sounds pretty tame.  At least my alcoholic drink is the margarita and not something with an umbrella, though I can think of many more manly beverages with which to be associated.

What interests me about these faux personality tests is what they reveal about the attraction and power of metaphor.  Each test result really just provides a colorful, unusual way of describing one’s self.  In fact, every quiz gives you the option of posting the result to your “profile” so that all your friends can see that your mythical creature is a unicorn or that your Crayola color is burnt sienna.  The point is not reflective introspection, but to share a description of yourself with others.

The quizzes are fun and silly and entertaining, and that’s all that anyone thinks of them or is supposed to think of them.  But I wonder if their popularity doesn’t say something about our desire to find ways of expressing who we think we are to others.  I wonder what it suggests about our desire to identify with ideas or personalities and to have others see us in those same ways. 

It is also interesting to note that these quizzes are themselves created by other Facebook users.  Some are more sophisticated than others – it seems like everyone who takes the What 80’s Rock Band Are You? Quiz ends up being Journey – but they all involve creating metaphors by translating the qualities of a thing or person into specific questions and then back again.  These people are not playing amateur psychologist as much as they are interpreting and authoring characters.

I have saved the best Facebook quiz for last.  There are multiple variations of What Facebook Quiz Are You?  Would we call that a meta-metaphor?

Saturday evening about 30 alumni gathered at the Rock Bottom Restaurant & Brewery in downtown Chicago.  I told this group that one of my responsibilities was to increase the value of their Missouri State University degrees by working continually to improve the university and its reputation.  Lately the university understandably has devoted much attention to recruiting new students; it can be easy to lose sight of the tens of thousands of alumni who continue to watch us carefully, as well.  We have made investments in one another, and it is gratifying for all of us to witness growth and success.

Everywhere I go, alumni speak fondly of their years here at Missouri State, and it doesn’t matter if they graduated two years ago or twenty or fifty years ago.  Hal McAninch (’57), for example, spoke of how important the individual attention and mentoring he received was to his success; but I heard similar sentiments from Mark Thorne (’00) and Traci Stanton (’92), as I have from many others.  And every graduate I meet asks about specific professors and shares stories of memorable experiences they had with those individuals.  Teachers sometimes forget how remembered they are.

Last week I spoke with several alumni who hope to see their children or grandchildren attend Missouri State.  That probably is the highest compliment we could receive from our graduates.  What’s more, these were people who don’t live in Missouri, much less in our corner of the state.

This has been a stressful year at the university — uncertain budgets, hiring frosts and thaws, pressures to maintain enrollments and reduce costs — but the encouragement of alumni this past week has reminded me again that our work has great meaning, and that we do it very well.  It is, indeed, a privilege to be a Bear.

Part of what we do in education is to teach students to be fluent in languages that most people do not speak.  That may mean French conversation or French existentialism, Stanislavski or Stravinski.  At first they may seem like nonsense languages that no one can really understand, but we hope that eventually students recognize them as languages that they simply did not yet know.

Learning a language is more than simply learning different names for things we already know.  The language itself opens up new means of experiencing, knowing, and sharing.  In medicine, doctors don’t simply learn fancy Latin names to say the same things I know how to say about my body; and if I memorized the vocabulary that alone would not qualify me to remove your gall bladder.  Why is it important for people to learn the languages of the arts and humanities?

These languages, these ways of knowing, create infinite possibilities for interpreting and shaping experience.  They remind us that at best we wrestle with what is much too large and complex to be adequately viewed from one vantage point or lens.  And they teach us that the world is not set, reality is not fixed, waiting for us to find just the right labels to correctly identify all the pieces once and for all.

A few weeks ago I attended a gallery lecture featuring two guest photographers and their exhibit at the Art & Design Gallery.  I appreciate photography, but my level of appreciation is analogous to my liking the way Portuguese sounds: Recognizing the beauty of something and understanding its meanings are not the same things.  As I listened to the artists discuss the inspirations for their work and the techniques they employed I started to appreciate a whole world of meanings that just minutes before had been hidden to me.  I began to develop a sensibility for interacting with the work itself as well as for appreciating the sophistication of the artistic process.

Some people say that the world needs more communication.  If by that they mean more listening rather than just more talking, I might agree.  But if we see communication essentially as labeling experiences so that we and others use the same names to identify them, we are missing the importance of the arts and humanities.  We do not need more communication, or even more precise communication; we need more languages.  And if we need more languages, then we need more people who are multilingual.

The neighbor kids were unimpressed by the nonsense language Brian and I invented because it did not add in any way to the conversation, as it were.  In fact, our purpose was to exclude others, not to include them.  And, frankly, they all knew Brian and I were full of it.  I hope my students have a different impression of the different languages I try to speak with them now.

The general appeal for public support is education = jobs.  We are accustomed to helping people make this connection, especially parents of prospective students, though it sometimes seems a tougher sell for the liberal and fine arts.  For an eighteen year old seeking a secure economic future, a liberal arts degree may not seem the shortest distance between two points.

This is not a new situation, of course.  As a college student I listened to professors extolling the virtues and practical benefits of a liberal arts background over professional education — learning how to learn, adapting to change, transferable skills, etc.  In the mid-1950s Forbes editor William H. Whyte, Jr. lamented the rise of pre-professional training and the trend away from liberal arts education.

The stewards of the liberal arts are to blame for its low estate in another respect.  If people swing away from them on the grounds that they are not useful enough, this cannot be explained entirely as a worship of false gods.  There is nothing wrong with usefulness as a criterion; from the beginning, after all, the liberal arts were intended as a highly functional training.  That they no longer seem so to the majority of people is rather strong evidence  that something more is at fault than people’s judgment. — The Organization Man, 1956,  p. 108.

Whyte’s book was a bestseller, but the liberal arts have not gained much ground in 50 years.  Despite perennial surveys reporting employers value the characteristics and abilities we claim to foster, the belief that to be successful you have to study something “practical” persists.

Several years ago the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AACU) launched its LEAP initiative  — Liberal Education and America’s Promise — to “champion the value of a liberal education—for individual students and for a nation dependent on economic creativity and democratic vitality.”   The LEAP initiative seeks to advocate nationally for the value of liberal education, to work with institutions to strengthen liberal education, and to provide evidence of educational outcomes. 

LEAP identifies four broad “essential learning outcomes” that education must address for the 21st century: knowledge of human cultures and the physical and natural world; intellectual and practical skills; personal and social responsibility; and integrative learning.  (For a concise elaboration of these learning outcomes and data supporting employers’ need for them, see College Learning for the New Global Century.)

As society puts hope in higher education as an engine of economic and intellectual development, we also face increasing scrutiny of whether our outcomes measure up to those expectations.  As families increasingly view university education as critical to individuals’ success, more than ever they question whether they can afford it (see one recent survey).  And as people need, more than ever, broad understanding of culture, history, and human expression,  they are more worried than ever about having the skills that will insure them immediate employment.  In the midst of these paradoxes we must articulate and deliver upon the promises of liberal education.

At least twenty years ago we began complaining about the consumerfication of higher education.  We lamented that education was being driven by the demands of individual consumer/students rather than our own ideals.  Today this perceived power struggle misses the point.  Higher education is a public resource and a public good, and we will play a large role in shaping the economies and cultures of the future.  We should be asking ourselves, in the words of one AACU publication, “what contemporary college graduates need to know and be able to do.”  Answering that question requires that we enter into conversation with students, employers, and the broader society to determine together what an education adequate to the demands of this century looks like.

The LEAP initiative is a good step in this direction.  I encourage you to learn more about it and carry on the conversation in your own corner of the world.

I did my own share of rote memorization and memory dumping in college, particularly in subjects for which I did not see the immediate relevance.  Worst were those classes that seemed crammed full of facts without context, where I just could not see “the point.”  I hate thinking of students reacting the same way to my classes.  Once a student asked me, as she was handing in her mid-term exam, whether the final exam would be comprehensive.  I replied that I had not decided yet and asked why she was wanting to know then.  She replied, “I’m organizing my files and want to know if I need to keep my notes from the first half of the semester.”  Talk about information having a short shelf life.

The truth is that the more I focus on teaching information the less impact I am likely to have.  What captures students’ imaginations, and what gives information relevance, are the big ideas.  Beyond the information, what is our teaching about?  What are the important questions, problems, and insights that give rise to our search for knowledge?  Pick up any textbook and you can find more than enough data to fill a few lectures and exams, but learning depends on engaging our students in the big ideas.

Big ideas are sustaining.  They feed our questioning and development for years.  Big ideas are what drew each of us into our disciplines and into lives of teaching and scholarship.  The big ideas I encountered as a student continue to drive my curiosity today, and I am indebted to those teachers who helped me to see and think beyond what was on the tests.

For me, one of the big ideas is that communication is constitutive of our realities, not merely a vehicle for transmission.  This is not a straightforward declaration of fact, though I can easily enough phrase it as a true/false quiz item.  It is a big idea that implies a hundred other big ideas and makes every act of communication interesting and consequential.  It reminds me that what I teach is important, even on days when I manage to make it uninteresting to my students or forget myself.

The typical public speaking course includes topics like delivery, organization, supporting materials, tests of reasoning, and I aim for students to improve their skills in these areas.  But the big idea is that each time they speak they are building the world around them.

The world is full of big ideas (how’s that for a big idea?), and by “big” I don’t mean necessarily True.  I mean big, encompassing, generative, inspiring, explanatory.  We are educators because we feel compelled to play with ideas, to hold them up to the light, turn them over, imagine what they can do.  I know sometimes I lose sight of that.

I wonder what would happen if I put in big letters at the top of each syllabus, THE BIG IDEA OF THIS CLASS, before the course objectives, list of assignments, and grading scale.  Maybe that would be ham-handed, but it might help me remember that there is a big idea behind all the work.  Or it might make me rethink what the big ideas are.

If our students are to engage in a truly liberal education, they must be willing and able to engage big ideas as well as technical knowledge and skills.  These days we talk a lot about learning outcomes and assessment and we worry about documenting what our students know, but we don’t talk nearly enough about whether they are captivated by big ideas.  I’d like to invite you into a college conversation about the big ideas that inspire the classes you teach.  On the COALESCENCE web site you will find a new forum titled “Big Ideas” with space for you to write, and I’ve already asked a few individuals to help get things started.  I hope you will read their contributions and then add your own.

• “The person who is waiting for something to turn up might start with their shirt sleeves.” – Garth Henrichs

• “The universe is full of magical things, patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.” – Eden Phillpotts

• “You can’t stay in your corner of the Forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes.” – Winnie the Pooh

• “To stay ahead, you must have your next idea waiting in the wings.” – Rosabeth Moss Kanter

• “Everything comes to him who hustles while he waits.” – Thomas Alva Edison

• “Things may come to those who wait…but only the things left by those who hustle.” – Abraham Lincoln

• “Nothing would be done at all if one waited until one could do it so well that no one could find fault with it.” – John Henry Newman

• “He who waits to do a great deal of good at once, will never do anything.” – Samuel Johnson

• “My kids always perceived the bathroom as a place where you wait it out until all the groceries are unloaded from the car.” – Erma Bombeck

• “Let us not be content to wait and see what will happen, but give us the determination to make the right things happen.” – Horace Mann