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Lee S. Shulman, president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, delivered the Louise McBee Lecture Oct. 19. He emphasized “the notion that the condition of higher education rests on the condition of teaching.” Some excerpts:
 “Teaching at a research university has a very special, often ambiguous, sometimes problematic status within the institution. Nearly all of us teach--it’s the one constant in our careers. And yet if we meet someone who asks what we do, we don’t say ‘I’m a teacher,’ we say, ‘I’m an historian’ (or a psychologist, or a chemist). . . . The culture privileges one aspect of our profession--our discipline--and naturally subordinates the teaching function. . . .
“Universities and colleges are the one institution in the world where the promotion of understanding is an end in itself, where seeking understanding obligates you to give it away, free. . . .
“What can we do to make teaching a form of scholarship? Peer review is what you do when you’re reviewing research in your discipline. . . . We have developed conventions so that in a dozen pages you can summarize the essence of a long, long piece of work--and that’s a miraculous accomplishment. We don’t have anything like that in teaching--economical, rigorous, compressible ways to convey pedagogy . . . public, peer-reviewed and exchangeable.”
Jay Smith, president of Cox Newspapers, gave the Ralph McGill Lecture Oct. 16. Some highlights:
“Newspapers have never been so crucial to communities as they are now. . . . [A paper] must have a commitment to the community it serves, and that commitment reflects the character of its publisher. . . . A newspaper’s future rests in the community. . . .
“Today’s publishers face stiffer competition than ever before, and you must publish quality newspapers to survive. Ideas are abundant and easy; it’s the hard work that brings them to reality that counts.” |
