I have been selected as the new director of Syracuse University’s Renee Crown Honors Program and accordingly my wife Connie and I are moving back east. Both of us are New Yorkers and so this opportunity is not merely a significant career step it’s also a real homecoming.
Perhaps it’s inevitable that in a time of transition I should be nostalgic. My family moved to Albany, New York from rural New Hampshire in the summer of 1963. My father had taken a post as the assistant commissioner for higher education.
Those were extraordinary days for American higher education. The post WW II influx of veterans seeking college degrees through the G.I. Bill and the initial wave of baby boom students drove a necessary expansion of Higher Ed. The Republican governor of NY, Nelson Rockefeller saw an opportunity for the Empire State to match California’s superb public university system. That goal was lauded by both political parties. The McCarthyite suspicion of post-secondary education felt like a matter of history–indeed the Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction in ’63 went to Richard Hofstader’s book “Anti-Intellectualism in American History”. Our body politic was it seemed, once again, all for learning.
My nostalgia feels odd because I’m not generally sentimental. As a person with a disability I went to public schools and to college in the years before the advent of the Americans with Disabilities Act. People with disabilities, people of color, women, GLBT persons–all know that the “good old days” weren’t so good. Moreover even today our fight for acceptance in the village square and on college campuses still feels largely provisional, feels in fact like a delicate work in progress.
And so I find myself asking what exactly I’m nostalgic for. The answer can’t be found in a vintage clothing shop. I’m nostalgic for a time when Americans believed that Higher Ed was worth the hard work and sacrifice that it actually takes to get a university degree. At the present time the importance of getting a college diploma is being loudly questioned by pundits of every type. Worse we see discourse that questions the efficacy of college instruction, most notably Richard Arum’s book “Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses”.
Arum’s book argues in essence that approximately one quarter of American college students graduate without having attained better critical thinking and writing skills than when they entered academe. By turns the conclusion is that many colleges let down their students by failing to demand sufficient rigor, either because professors are inattentive or the curriculum promotes loopholes (courses without writing assignments) that students can exploit rather easily.
“Academically Adrift” doesn’t take into account the fact that the United States is the only country in the world where almost anyone can go to college–a matter that is astonishing and rather inspiring. The opportunity to learn is available to all comers. And I am nostalgic for the idea of opportunity–but opportunity mixed with a good, old fashioned American “go-get-em” determination to make the most of a good thing. To my mind the only thing that the Arum book proves is that there are plenty of people who possess insufficient ambition to make the most of a remarkable opportunity.
So it turns out that as I head back east I am not nostalgic for a place so much as a state of mind.
S.K.
– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Planet of the Blind 
Congratulations on your new position as Director of this program which sounds wonderful. My best wishes for a successful move and a great new job!
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SK: Congrats on this new opportunity! Won’t you miss those Iowa thunderstorms? I spent childhood summers with my grandparents in Kansas City. Whenever I fly over the midwest and encounter air turbulence, I suspect that those thunderclouds still want one more chance to finish me off.
My B.A. studies in Human Services from the Adult Degree Program at Prescott College emphasized critical thinking skills. Their unique model of community-based instruction also meant that I could choose course mentors who were, for the most part, professionals in the field of vision impairment rehabilitation, most of whom were visually impaired themselves.
Last month, during a long overdue, top-to-bottom painting of my living space, I came across a 1997 post card from one of my mentors who passed away at age 92 just this past summer:
“Dear Leslie B., (possessor of a Baccalaureus Artium) Biggest and best news this year to date. A chapter is now closed and a new one opened for opportunities in mental health counseling. I’ll file your note in the Burkhardt correspondence and be glad I had a hand in the whole procedure. Yours with warmest congratulations, Jim Burns (Baccalaureus Artium and Magister Artium, UCLA, 1940 and ’42, A.A. Los Angeles City College, 1938, J.C. Credential, 1941, Special Honor: Mentor to L.Burkhardt, 1993-94.)”
Yes, it was truly an education, learning how to learn. I am so proud of my graduation proposal, that I’ve posted the link below:
http://www.trip.net/~bobwb/stuff/proposal.doc
http://www.prescott.edu/academics/adp/how.html
Liberal Arts Seminar:
Degree-seeking students are required to take a second cohort course, Liberal Arts Seminar (LAS). Multiple section of LAS are offered each semester and students may take one or more sections after completing their first semester. The core faculty who teach these seminars create the conditions for students to apply the methods and perspectives of the liberal artist–critical thinking, reading, writing, and discussion–to selected aspects of the human experience. The seminar encourages students to examine their lives and values and carry their findings into their professional and personal futures. In this way, the seminar is aimed at enhancing the liberal education of all students as a complement to their individualized curricula.
Mentored Studies:
What distinguishes the ADP from other limited-residency programs is the fact that students have the opportunity to study face-to-face with experts who live in the student’s home community. We refer to this model as community-based education. This means that each of our students’ home communities are extensions of the ADP learning community. With the guidance of core faculty, students create study contracts with local mentors who support the students’ learning in one to three courses. Each study contract spells out the learning objectives, activities, and materials chosen by the student, mentor, and core faculty to satisfy the academic standards of the ADP and move the student toward competence in her or his field. Being ready and able to identify local mentors is one of the more challenging aspects of being an ADP student. Yet, working with local mentors, students build a network of professionals in their field of study that often lead to rewarding internship and employment opportunities. Further, by involving committed practitioners in their programs, students can better design their programs to anticipate the demands of working in their chosen field upon graduation. Mentors must meet or exceed the ADP criteria for mentor credentials—a minimum of a master’s degree, substantial teaching experience at the college level, or alternative demonstration of expertise—and are paid a small stipend for their services. Core faculty may assist students to a greater or lesser degree in creating study contracts and finding mentors in their communities, depending on the academic program of each student.
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When’s the moving date?
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