Vital Undergraduate Studies: What's the Right Climate?

Item

Identifier
1976-16_COG_7E66_04_File4
Title
Vital Undergraduate Studies: What's the Right Climate?
Date
28 August 1969
Creator
Charles J. McCann
extracted text
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VITAL UNDERGRADUATE STUDIES:

WHAT'S THE RIGHT CLIMATE?

Presented to the WICHE Institute
on Departmental and Institutional Development
Lake Arrowhead, California
August 28, 1969 by Charles J. McCann, President
The Evergreen State College
The Evergreen State College goals are well enough defined to suggest a
requisite climate. We think that vital undergraduate studies will spring
from these goals and this climate; we'd very much appreciate your reaction
to both. Such presentation tends to the abstract; of the specifics which
underlie, we have some in mind, of many, we yet do not. Perhaps our discussion will reveal more. In any case, these matters must be deciden by
faculty, staff, and prospective students in the next two years.
I shall be talking principally about the inner climate, that which the
Evergreen community has within its purview. But, not enough appreciated
by academic communities, the outer climate has critical effect on the
inner. Before I go further, I shall briefly and oversimply, but not distortingly,describe Evergreen's outer climate.

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After the Washington legislature authorized a new college, the first in
seventy-one years, legislators and others requested the college's founders
to avoid creating a carbon copy of existing institutions. rne request arose
from a sophistication which refrains from stratifying in the face of custom
and example, which refrains from centralizing control for quick cookbook
answers to complex needs and which recognizes the need for options in the
complex society that Washington has become. Such sophistication, needless
to say, comes only from distinction already present in the existing universities and colleges .
The constraints put on Evergreen were that the charter did not authorize the
Ph.D. degree (which we do not consider a hindrance so long as undergraduate
studies need full attention), that Evergreen should grow fairly rapidly in
order to accommodate expected large enrollments at the southern end of
Pugetopolis, and that Evergreen would make a special effort to serve the
needs of state government and, of course, that it would operate within
common levels of state funding. On the outer climate that we prefer, we
all agree: It should support unlimited desires with no stringpattached.
The Washington climate is far from that, but having as it does a remarkable
facility in getting Eerformances (the plural must be emphasized) without
recourse to central bureaucracy, it represents to my knowledge one of the
few encouraging civic climates for developing new options in public higher
education. How long the outer climate stays propitious is a question; one
certain influence--which academics neglect also--will be the effect of the
inner on the outer climate. I ':U return to this briefly in closing, but now
to Evergreen's goals and climate.

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-2VITAL, that word from my title which will sneak into my text with synonyms
like "alive" and "lively," serves the same nefarious uses that embracing
words like "nature" and "natural" always have. To use the word can put one
in the arational position of a vitalist, one who believes that phenomena
are produced by vital principles distinct from chemical or physical forces,
and using the word can also put one squarely in that regrettable, today
epidemic, condition of thereby banishing all one's opponents from the world
one constructs.
To both charges I certainly have to admit that I'm using the word "vital"
as an antonym for dead; but to the charge of sweeping the world clean
through rhetoric, I plead innocent. We think of Evergreen not as the
answer to all but simply as a new option for many undergraduates and faculty,
in numbers large enough to make Evergreen viable as a state institution.
For undergraduate studies to be vital for them and for faculty, they need
more available, live, genuine choices, not simply additional service , stations.
Taking up the charge, the Evergreen board of trustees, an advisory committee
and I (David G. Barry, The Evergreen State College; John Bevan, University
of the Pacific; Ernest Boyer, State University of New York at Albany; .
Stanley Idzerda, College of St. Benedict; Roger Malek, Arthur D. Little, Inc.;
Warren Martin, University of California; John Stewart, John Muir College;
John Silber, University of Texas; William Warren, Antioch College; Robert
Jenks, student - University of California; Tim Dugan, student - University
of Washington; Carl Mills, student - Central Washington State College;
and J. Maarten Ultee, student- Reed College) wrestled with a statement of
goals. We discussed goals in view of the plight of undergraduate studies,
the life of which has been squeezed out by the pressure of vocationalism on
the one hand and of the liberal arts-general education pressures on the other.
Vocationalism has pretended that an undergraduate could be "trained" to enter .
professional or semi-professional work, but the undergraduate found that,
after he had the Bachelor's degree (in some highly specific occupation),
what he found on the job had little to do with vlhat he did in college; the
general educationalists or liberal artists , on the other hand, have claimed
that no one is educated unless he has this and that, according to the myth
which someone has put beautifully, that no one comes from high school knowing anything and everyone must know everything by the time he graduates,
which of course must be no more or less than four years later.
American college catalog statements of goals vary from the noble elegantly
put to the impossible patently stated. All, however, commonly tend to promise
placing the graduate within a millimeter of his proper position on the
Chain of Being. We didn't say that these colleges aren't in touch with many
realities and some ideals. We agreed, however, that there's room for another
simplified choice rearing on other realities and perhaps reachable ideals
consistently pursued. On realities, for example, that undergraduates change
their intentions more than once between the time they think about a major
for the first time and when they graduate, and that it's a rare person ~vho
ten years later is in the career he envisioned as a senior in college. As
the ideal consonant with these two realities, I'd like to emphasize simply



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the goal of development of mind long cherished by all colleges but confused
too often with, and depressed or deflected by, pressures to acquire either
the occupational skills of scholarship or of the professions.
Our statement of goals will go something like this:
This college has collected scholars and experts who, insofar as
they inquire in their fields of interest, will by their presence
here together form a living link between our present society and
the past, a source of power with which to help us all meet the
future. Students will work as colleagues with faculty and others,
and together these people will !!Y_ (that word is emphasized because
it involves all of the college's people in continual change) to
create a place whose graduates can as adults be undogmatic citizens
and uncomplacently confident individuals in a changing world .
We assume that toward this end the most valuable service Evergreen
can offer is to initiate a process of continuing learning by pr~­
paring a student with the methods of learning and experimentation,
by encouraging independence in pursuit of inquiries that interest
and motiva t e him, and by providing him with counsel and resources
to test this knowledge and ability. Put negatively, we do not
intend to stamp a "product" ·with the brand of a particular academic
elite nor of a narrowly conceived vocation.

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- The only college requirement for the B.A. degree may be 36 units (each
roughly equivalent to the level of reading and writing required for a stringent five quarter credits) with relatively few of these units, we hope, accumulated by sitting be f ore an instructor five days a week. A student would
progress on his own terms in view of his own objectives, motivations, learning style and ability . The mode of instruction would slant toward seminars
in the first two years, with gradual but nonetheless rapid weaning toward
programmed self-study, tutorials, and increasing independent work with
admixtures of regular classes and large lectures (the lectures would not be
"classes"). We would like to avoid lower division and upper division
"courses," making the level of sophistication and independence expected of
each student commensurate with his ability. We hope that subjects of study
would be student initiated, student-faculty and faculty initiated with
rather less emphasis on the last. In areas of inquiry generally found under
the headings of natural sciences, social sciences and humanities, particular
emphasis would be given, we expect, to those areas which can take best advantage of the college ' s location at the seat of state government.
Units could also be generated by work-study. In the absence of vocational
curricula, we must provide for young people direct access into the working
world. Job experience wouldn't be required but would be highly recommended,
especially for those with proclivities to certain jobs or professions where
we or the studen t could arrange appropriate experience accompanied by reading.
A program like this on the scale and quality required will be tremendously
difficult to build but well worth the effort.

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-4The extremes of student progress to the degree would be highly specialized
on the one hand and definitely exploratory on the other, with the great
majority probably, since they would have some vocational ends in mind or
requirements set by graduate schools, etc., following more traditionally
structured patterns. We intend, however, that the structures be ad hoc,
arranged for short-term purposes and subject to change by students and
faculty with a minimum of red tape.
What happens in a place and its climate are mutually determining. For
example, climate both produces and results from the kind of faculty we have
and the kind of arrangements they set up between themselves and students:
A schematic of student interests balanced against faculty competences would
have at its zero end a situation where students expecting undergraduate
agriculture, for example, wouldn't come to Evergreen, where there is no
agriculture faculty. Off the scale at the other end is the ideal situation
where every student interested in the most esoteric subdivision of one of
the fields we nominally offer will find as much faculty talent as he wishes
to exploit. Less ideally, but minimally, mathematics interests, for example,
should reasonably match the strength of mathematics faculty, and so on in
each of the fields represented at Evergreen. To- approximate this state of
affairs which is always assumed, but really found only in the breach,
students ought to progress through individually arranged programs (some
satisfying curiosity, some anticipating professional or graduate school,
some careers in commerce and industry) ought to be matched with contiguous
· interests of other students and with the sometimes-stretched talents of the
faculty on scene at the moment. By stretched talents, I'm talking about a
competent man stretched because he is interested both in the subject and
in students curious about it. (What gets "taught" in this situation is how
competence increases itself.) I'm not talking -about incompetence claiming
omnipotence or about weak people being told to teach whatever there is to
be taught.
We think a vigorous climate results from an organic relationship between
faculty-student competence and student-faculty questions. The problem we
face can be put another, less abstract, way by the question, How vital will
the climate be for those people who come to Evergreen the year the first
class graduates--the class finishing in our seventh year, say. If faculty
and students that year are going through the same motions as those in our
first year or two or three, then we're a failure. Our option, if successful,
will be characterized by a catalog announcing the year before, not necessarily
the year after. The seventh year would have a student with the same set of
interests that a person in the first class might have had. But he ought to
be pursuing that interest through a different set of instructional modes
because the numbers of contiguous interests weren't the same, because
strengths of the faculty that year were a bit different, and because society
itself had moved forward a bit.
I'm not talking here about change for change's sake, but rather about keeping
minds--older minds, young minds--in that equilibrium (or creative tension)

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-5that's also governed by what's happening in society and in the disciplines .
We must find a way of keeping this kind of equilibrium and quit answering
the problem by static curricula changed only with great pain every ten years
(with luck), then only because stresses and strains have become unendurable.
Our climate needs loose organizational structure and instructional modes
which in turn permit great flexibility in faculty effort; all this achieving
equilibrium at the point of student needs and faculty competence.
To maintain a wide range of fluidly assigned instructional modes, aggregations of people and budget must be kept loose. A sampling of potential clots:
Administrators who work comfortably only in rigid line arrangements;
unresponsive, even incompetent bureaucracies build up and get
"protected" from dissolution.
Student organizational control of funds; where the myth of separate
"student affairs" is supported by law, what began as a fillip to,
offset too rigid administration has already become a monstrous clot.
Tenure, when it goes beyond protection of academic freedom to job
security come hell or high water .

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The "course," a piece like granite (and sometimes as digestible) to
be added, never subtracted, almost always implying a block of time
and space to be "manned"; expensive collections of them, that is
to say those with few students, often too few, are balanced off by
cheap collections, those with many, often too many.
Much of the above can be rationalized or defended, but once you start with
different premises, new choices open up. Once faculty, students and
administrators are equally represented in gove.rnance, different policy and
feedback systems may make it possible to shorten decision-making routes,
avoid line bottlenecks. Funds become college funds, not shop preserves.
Once the "course" cracks, much red tape will fall. Once permanent accretions of courses are abolished, it is definitely possible to have every
freshman in seminars, and this within the usual student-faculty ratio for
the public colleges and universities of Washington.
Our climate would require some change in the up-to-now commonly held
expectations in certain disciplines, but no more change than many in those
disciplines now are working for--as, for example, efforts in the sciences
to reach to the non-major, or in the social sciences to question needless
serialization. Extreme demands on the faculty member's time--in preparation, tutorials and advising--will be offset by great flexibility in the
ways he arranges his time, so that blocks can be reserved for his furthering study and research. Further, the level of vitality, the living change
and consequently the total level of productiveness will be increased if
we can encourage relationships which will further faculty respect for
"para-faculty"--librarians , counselors, work-study advisors--all of whom
in this environment will be as helpful to its goals as the "faculty" proper.

-6This ambience requires clear air, no murky corners where colleagues and
outsiders wonder what's going on. I refer not only to those faculty contra
faculty· and faculty contra administration hassles resulting from simple
lack of communication, but also to those areas where people would prefer
not to know what's going on; as an example, what the community is doing
for rurl to the students who come, spend time and leave.
We must develop meticulous patterns for evaluation of faculty and administrators, as well as of students. We'll need new, clearer, more demanding
understandings about tenure; perhaps, rather, enforcement of current understandings. We must guarantee working-life incomes to only those who can
stay l ively and shifty enough to keep their own intellectual goals out ahead .
of themselves and ahead of this year's students, not some imaginary ones
of the time just after the faculty member left graduate school.
Such controlled chaos is not for every administrator nor for every faculty
member, much less for every student, for the freedoms implied by ouF plan
call for substantial, but we think reasonable, amounts of self-discipline.
If faculty and administration do not fall into the easily assumed roles
that rigid systems allow, neither will students. But in affairs of the
mind and spirit, one man's benzedrine is another's morphine, so we do. not
present ours as the answer to all problems, rather as a choice that must
be good in order to take its place among the several already in Washington.
- I mentioned self-discipline to return us briefly to the outer climate.

While an alternative such as ours has become nearly impossible in many
states so could it too in the rest including Washington if we are 'not
scrupuously responsible for the ways we spend our resources. The society
which controls the outer climate will not continue support of an institution
which talks in terms of teaching hours and money and not of responsibilities
and which becomes ever more rigid in the face of growing inconsistencies.
Conversely, if we exhibit honestly what happens and how we progress toward
our goals, and if our progress is maintained within commonly agreed upon
levels of economy, we should not be timid in reminding powers in the outer
climate that their rigidities are as death-dealing as ours.
I must mention one further link between the inner and outer climate, this
applying to a large segment of the academic world, but one to which a tender
new beginner like Evergreen, more than casually concerned with government
and public affairs, must be particularly sensitive. I refer to a vocal
cadre of academics who call for the college to politicize itself, to commit
itself actively in political causes. That we must be individually committed
politically and free to express those commitments, is of cours~ but to
allow the college, as an institution, to become a political battleground
and tool will soon render it impotent.
The society controlling the outer climate simply will not stand for an
academic community which in addition to being rigid, becomes a political
force expecting immunity. I hope we'll be able to convince some otherwise
very desirable faculty and students of this; if we cannot, the hedging

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-7by bureaucratic restrictions will be so great that vitality will stirely ebb.
Even if we still have "academic freedom," life will have moved elsewhere.
Many agree that new selections must be created before public higher education
calcifies into chains of dispensaries. Evergreen has aroused some interest
as a sensible and possible option. But it is only possible; making Evergreen
a fact will demand much from all who join it, all interested parties who
surround it. The work--and I mean pulling and tugging work--will be worthwhile if Evergreen opens up other ways in which American public undergraduate
studies might operate.

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