the National Endowment for the Humanities. Photography by Chris Flynn, NEH
Harvard University President Drew Gilpin Faust
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Aerial of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Courtesy of Shutterstock.com.
Enduring Symbols
As she began her speech to the Harvard undergraduate class of 2016 last spring, Faust even went beyond the vicissitudes of everyday life on campus to wonder about the apparent world horrors reflected in recent headline news. “It’s as if we are being visited by the Four Horsemen,” she mused,
citing terrorist attacks, racial strife, famine, and the Zika virus. How are university leaders addressing “these [academic] matters” (much less evidence of the Apocalypse)? Faust encouraged her audience at Harvard to contemplate two “enduring symbols” on the campus of “this magnificent institution” visible to them at that very moment: Widener Library and The Memorial Church. “We have been here before,” she said recalling earlier eras threatened by the clouds of war, financial crises, epidemics, and more. Anchored by their buildings and traditions, she suggested, the Harvard “model,” a long-lived “vehicle for veritas,” will prevail. Clark’s leep
Less than 50 miles west of Cambridge in the edgier city of Worcester, Massachusetts, Clark University President David P. Angel has other ideas. The words “initiative,” “new,” “positive,” and “mentor” figured prominently in a recent interview with him. He’s clearly excited about what’s going on at this smaller liberal institution with a distinguished history; like Johns Hopkins it was founded in the late 19th-century on the model of German research university and is known as the only American university visited by Sigmund Freud during his 1909 trip to this country. Clark’s Liberal Education and Effective Practice program (LEEP) figures prominently in Angel’s
conversations. LEEP was set in motion at Clark several years ago, and its apparent success as a different kind of approach to education has only accelerated Angel’s determination to implement it. “Momentum is great at Clark right now,” he says. An important premise of LEEP is that experience in the classroom is directly connected to experience in the world. Angel points to a recently revamped art history class for undergraduates as a good example. Looking at slides is out. Instead, an art history professor and curator from the Worcester Art Museum challenge students to participate in every aspect of designing and curating a professional exhibit at the Museum. The final project in a pilot initiative proved the point when the student-driven exhibition won a rave review in the New York Times, soon followed by a $620,000 grant from the Andrew Mellon Foundation to incorporate similar teaching/ experiential practices into the rest of Clark’s curriculum. Figuring prominently in the mix, says Angel, are social justice and student projects abroad and at
photo courtesy of clark university
he cover story on a recent issue of Consumer Reports went straight to the point: “I kind of ruined my life by going to college,” it quoted a heavily indebted recent graduate. Her current balance due is $152,000, and she’s definitely not alone: according to recent reports some 42 million people owe $1.3 trillion in student debt. Skyrocketing tuition fees are just one of the many challenges currently faced by American colleges, and Harvard University President Drew Gilpin Faust readily acknowledges them. “There are undoubtedly many important issues confronting higher education, including tackling sexual assault on college campuses, expanding financial aid to lower income families, and arresting the decline of enrollment in the humanities,” she said in a recent email. “University leaders are working together with faculty, students, alumni and each other to address these matters.” “Teaching is a messy process,” observes Harvard University English Professor Louis Menand, author of The Marketplace of Ideas. “There are more than 4,000 institutions of higher learning in the United States, more than 18 million students, and more than 1 million faculty members,” he reports, citing the Digest of Education Statistics. “We can’t reasonably expect that all of those students will be well educated, or that every piece of scholarship or research worthwhile.” Yet, he says, “we want to believe that the system, as large, as multitasking, and as heterogeneous as it is, is working for us.”
Clark University President David P. Angel September 2016 PRINCETON MAGAZINE
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