Challenges to the Faculty

September 20, 2001

(Excerpted from the State of the University Message)

I issue five challenges to you, as a group and as individuals, that I believe will  make a difference in the Western Experience for our students:

I challenge you to have those interactions with students that you hoped for as you entered academia -- interactions that create an intellectual environment that will enable our students to think, analyze, compare and contrast, and communicate effectively -- to have a life-changing experience.  Particularly as we enter a period of global uncertainty, it seems all the more important to have that life changing experience in a supportive learning environment.

I challenge you to interact with each other as a community of scholars.   We have much to learn from each other.

I challenge you to give back to the larger community.  Many of you do this -- it enhances you and makes this a better place to live.

I challenge you to participate in curricular reform and to consider your reactions to change, to provide constructive criticism, whether you agree or disagree, and offer solutions. Curricular reform is not unlike the noise and disruption of construction that will produce more academic space on campus……Necessary, messy, but ultimately satisfying.

 Finally, I challenge you to respond in a way that remembers the events of last week.

 If last week's events teach us anything, it is that we should commit to making this a more just and peaceful world through the magnificent organization of minds known as the university.  And our anger and grief must not be about ethnicity or religious fervor.  Our anger should be directed at an act by individuals who lost a sense of human perspective or any belief in the possibility of peaceful long-lasting solutions.

As an institution of higher education, the work that each of us does is more crucial now than ever.  Teaching and learning and critical thinking are powerful contributions to the evolution of a world in which acts of terrorism are inconceivable and where peace and freedom are valued by everyone.

With students returning soon -- with even more reasons to be apprehensive about beginning a new journey and about their own future, we all have a tremendous responsibility to go forth sharing a new resolve for life, as we understand anew its brevity and uncertainty.  And we must not forget that our country and our community face crucial challenges that can divide us -- challenges that will bring a war home as much as the terrorist acts last week.  As you review the curriculum and general education requirements, as you consider your approaches to teaching, no matter what discipline -- physics, sociology, business, art, engineering --  as you reflect on the campus climate to which we all contribute, please consider the immediacy of this challenge.