Writing

The sudden shift to remote teaching and learning following the COVID-19 outbreak and global pandemic has been a remarkable experiment for students, faculty, instructional staff, IT staff, and colleges and universities. We are learning on the fly, from one another, and through trial and error, about how to teach online, how to maintain communications with students in and out of class, and how to maintain continuity in a severely fractured academic year. Whether by collective intention or not, schools have largely stayed away from assessment of teaching during this crisis and our ‘transition semester.’ This is not the time, that time will come later. What are the five key lessons learned through this great experiment in online (remote) teaching and learning? (Remember, it’s not just online, taught in purpose-specific digital production studios. Faculty are teaching from their homes.)

As we continue to navigate what may be one of the most challenging and disruptive times in higher education – with hope, with optimism, and with a new-found spirit of unity – we begin to turn our collective attention to what’s next. For university leaders and their teams, this means focusing on the fall 2020 semester. Summer provides a natural bridge between the shuttered spring semester and what we all hope will be a return to normalcy by fall. This means we must start thinking NOW about how we will ramp back up, what we will look like as an institution, and how we can best serve our students.

Those who know me well know of my profound respect for our nation’s public and land grant universities and systems and both the knowledge and the opportunities they create – through mission and mandate – for their communities, the State, the nation, and the world. Never has the role of our great public universities – in teaching, research, and service – been more important or more needed. We are called by the grand challenges around environment, climate, food, water, energy, national security, poverty, and human health, and population health. But we are also called for leadership and light around democracy, justice, civility, and peace. The greatest of our public universities and systems will rise to these challenges and callings, rally their intellectual and human capital around finding solutions and pathways, engaging those resources and harnessing collective energies for the greater good.

Two words that have permeated academic culture, only slightly behind other industry sectors, are innovation and entrepreneurship. Yet experience has shown resistance by faculty frequently results from efforts to create, foster, leverage, or even promote innovation and entrepreneurship opportunities at some universities, particularly those that identify as primarily liberal arts institutions or those that have strong liberal arts traditions or intellectual cores. These terms are generally associated with STEM disciplines, business, and perhaps academic medicine. At first mention, these terms appear foreign to some, crass to others, and decidedly corporate to more still.

Reflecting upon many years of discussion about the state of American higher education, we noticed that it is often the very structures and principles that have made our model great that are potentially holding us back. How do we keep alive our traditions and all that they stand for – namely the foundational value of free inquiry as the source of true liberal education – without letting them inhibit our ability to respond to new intellectual and social contexts?

The world is changing. Higher education must also change. Such words are now said so often they hardly seem provocative. And, a quick read of the news quickly illustrates the necessity of change (or at least the implications for not doing so). An increasing number of colleges and universities are reorganizing, merging, or closing.

We are, without question, operating in one of the most challenging, rapidly changing, and also hopeful times for US higher education. Such a bold statement demands, and deserves, some explanation. The challenges facing US higher education writ large, and public higher education in particular, are well known. We have watched as both costs and expectations have risen while public support has declined. We have seen the popularity of traditional academic majors ebb and flow, while new fields of study and entirely new disciplines have evolved, demanding new resources and new expertise.