Yesterday

My older daughter and her best friend were going to an ice skating birthday party and I was the designated driver to the rink. We were ready to leave and my daughter texts her friend to let her know we will pick her up in a few minutes. But there was no imminent response. So what were we to do? Head to her house though there was no response from her or wait until she responds.

We ultimately decided to go to her house and we are waiting outside on the driveway but even now there is no response. My daughter sends another text and I just innocently say to her “why not just call?” The response comes instantly and puts me in my place: “calling is sooooo yesterday.” Yikes, what a comment and what an effort to put me in my ancient place.

Two minutes later, just as I was getting ready to call the parents, the response came in the form of my daughter’s friend leaving her house and heading to my car. We were on our way, though I wasn’t ready to forget about the “yesterday” comment.

I am significantly older than my kids but I’m not a “yesterday” kind of person. I was an earlier convert to email, to online shopping, to texting, to ebooks, and even to writing a blog. I also have a strong attraction to new technologies even though my wife feels it is more an attraction to gimmicks. But there is no convincing your kids and I remember feeling the same way toward my parents.

Technology has made an enormous difference in the education we deliver and in the life we lead. The information I can access and the transactions I can complete enhance my sophistication and improve the quality of my life. I’m not interested in going back and living in a world of less robust technology or less life saving health care. But I’m also old enough to realize that with technology you may pay a price; inter-personal skills now seem less sophisticated; social situations somewhat more stained; the pace of activities more speeded up. Having lived in yesterday’s world, I recognize its benefits and its limitations. Kids seem only to see the limitations of what existed before. What can we do to make sure education makes clear not only what has been gained over time, but also what has been lost. And also makes clear, that when choices need to be made, the newest technology is not necessarily always the best technology.

Leaving the Comfort Zone

Last Saturday, I took my older daughter and her best friend to a performance of Nearly Lear at New York’s New Victory Theater.  The show stars Susanna Hamnett as the Fool.  She also plays every other role in this adaptation of the Shakespeare tragedy and she and Edith Tankus wrote the play besides.  I am a major fan of the work done by the New Victory and have been taking my kids to shows there regularly for the last ten years, but I really hesitated to buy tickets to this show.  I first read King Lear in high school and have seen it performed multiple times.  Tragedies are not my favorite form of entertainment even when the story is brilliantly developed as it is in King Lear.  And for a Saturday excursion with my daughter and her friend, something upbeat tends to create a more upbeat mood and a more fun day. I was going to the show but clearly this was outside of my comfort zone.

Susanna Hamnett was terrific. The show was terrific and with good humor and great talent Ms. Hamnett told the tale from beginning to end playing the Fool, King Lear, Cordelia, Regan, Goneril, and various other parts. Everyone died on schedule but we all laughed throughout.  And this adaptation served to remind me of the mastery present throughout Shakespeare’s work.

Unrelated to Shakespeare, King Lear, or Nearly Lear, I was at a lunch at the beginning this week where one of the participants was a very sophisticated high tech person.  During the conversation, she mentioned that when she found software or hardware that she liked or was helpful to her, she stayed with that product. And she completed the thought by saying she preferred to stay in her comfort zone. And to some extent we all do.  I took my time to make the switch from a blackboard/whiteboard with overhead slides to PowerPoint.  Now I couldn’t even tell you why I hesitated other than I was in my comfort zone.  Human nature prevails.

Higher education is being challenged as never before.  In a weakened economy, there are fewer family resources as well as less government and philanthropic support.  But economies improve and we will in time weather that challenge.  More serious, on-line delivery of education and/or for-profit companies providing education plus more international competition have turned our industry upside down and their presence will not diminish over time.  Business as usual may be our comfort zone but it isn’t our future.  As I have said for a number of years, we need to change, maintaining our quality and our integrity and responding assertively and expeditiously to these changing times.  The last thing we want is to have our industry described the same way we describe the King Lear story.

Change

I was fortunate enough to get an opportunity to teach after just one year of graduate school.  At that time, I was appointed as an adjunct to teach a basic macroeconomics course at the same institution that I had just graduated from a year earlier.  My name appeared in the course schedule but thanks to the efforts of a friend of mine, no one knew that I was teaching this course.  All my friend did was start a rumor that the Berliner who was teaching the economics course, was a “famous economist” by the name of Berliner who had taught at Leipzig before the war.  I was, of course, unaware of this but noticed when I came into class the first day, that there was a great deal of conversation taking place between the students as soon as I moved to the front of the room.  I could clearly hear one student near the front saying to another with almost a sense of disappointment “it’s only Herman.”  What a way to start your teaching career.

I was especially fortunate that at the time that I started teaching, there was a program being run where a small number of new instructors were invited to a seminar on teaching and were even paid to attend the seminar.  I was selected and was pleased to have the opportunity.  The seminar consisted of weekly meetings and also consisted of the person teaching the seminar (a senior History faculty member) coming to your class to observe your teaching.  The new faculty in the seminar were recent PhDs and graduate students, who were also teaching while completing their education.  The conversations were great and allowed us to work through the issues that inevitably arise during the first semesters that a person is teaching.  I was somewhat nervous when it was my turn to be observed; the lesson went well, however, and I felt very positive when I entered the meeting with the seminar teacher.

At the start of the meeting, I was told that I did an excellent job explaining economic concepts, getting the class to participate, and integrating current economic events into the discussion.  I was next asked a question that I wouldn’t be asked today—how old was I?  I didn’t have any sense as to why I was being asked an age question but it wasn’t a secret and I quickly answered 22.  I was next asked what I thought the age range was of the students in my class.  And though I didn’t understand the basis for this question either, I once again answered very quickly—somewhere between 18 and 24 years old.  What was going on and how did this relate to an observation of my teaching?

The mystery was solved in the next minute.  The seminar teacher summarized his observation by saying that he thought I did a terrific job and that the students were interested and involved in the class.  He next said, and I have held onto this advice for decades, “please remember that as your teaching career continues and you get older, you will need to change how you relate and how you communicate with students.”  What works when a 22 year old is talking with 20 year olds doesn’t work when a 40 or 50 or 60 year old is talking with and helping to educate 20 years olds.  We continuously get older, and clearly our “traditional” students don’t.  We also need to be cognizant of the fact that student demographics also change as we age.

It isn’t enough for us as educators to just remain current in our subject matter.  We need to continuously reflect on how we are communicating and relating to our students.  And we need to recognize that it becomes harder as the age gap widens and as there are various shifts in the age of the students we are teaching.  However, without the communication working well, being an up-to-date subject matter specialist is not enough.

When New is New

All of us are used to reading ads and seeing commercials for products and services that are characterized as “brand new” or “totally new.”  And the reality often is that these products and services aren’t really new but they aren’t really “old” either.  What they are, and there isn’t anything wrong with this, reflects evolutionary changes.  We know change is a continuum and that over time these evolutionary changes can be an effective vehicle for significant change and enhancement.

Evolutionary change often reflects constraints that make complete or total change (to something totally new) not possible.  On the product level, even if a car looks like it is totally new, the high cost of product development may dictate that the engine, the transmission, and much of what you don’t see is a carryover.  Or at times, much of what you see is unchanged or slightly changed but sometimes with (and sometimes without) new mechanicals; nevertheless, the car is promoted as “the all new” 2010 or 2011.  New is clearly relative.

In education, new is also grounded in constraints.  Programs and majors (and organization frameworks) change and evolve but often the pace is measured and sometimes it is glacial.  A measured pace makes sense to me.  Collegiality is best served by a full airing of the issues.  Glacial, though a comforting thought when the temperature outside is approaching 90, is not a productive approach for change.  A number of years ago, when a unit was unable after years of trying to pass by-laws, I involved the Provost’s office in continuous negotiations with all the different factions until the by-laws (and a framework for shared governance) were a reality.  Do we really need the Provost’s Office involved?  Certainly all the faculty members involved were intelligent and had a commitment to the University. But for some reason there was a long-term inability and unwillingness to talk through and compromise on what were minor differences.

 Tenure, for all its positives, is also a constraint.  As needs change in different areas and programs, the ability to respond to those changes is sometimes limited by a workforce that brings tremendous strengths to one area but doesn’t have the expertise in another area.  Having a structure that includes untenured faculty as well as adjunct faculty helps you maintain needed flexibility.

I have had the pleasure over the years of being in a lead role for the establishment of two new schools on the Hofstra campus (the School of Communication and Honors College) as well as numerous programs and other initiatives.  In virtually every case, “new” was built on an existing framework and existing constraints. I think the end results were excellent and moved the University forward but the magnitude of change had to be limited by the reality of constraints.

Just now, on the Hofstra campus, another new school has been formed.  The Hofstra University School of Medicine in partnership with the North Shore/LIJ Health System has received preliminary accreditation and will bring in its first class for the fall 2011 semester.  The School began with a broad vision from Hofstra’s President, and that vision was translated into reality by a Dean and his team.  This team designed an innovative curriculum that was much more integrated and patient centered and brought in those individuals that fit best with that vision. The end result is a new vision of medical education that would have been virtually impossible to implement at an existing school.  Yes, cost is still a constraint (as it is in everything we do) but the magnitude of change and progress at this new school is stunning.

The new medical school is an exception; virtually all change is evolutionary.  But we should all make a commitment, within the constraints we operate under, to make as much meaningful progress as we can.  Glacial for the sake of glacial just has a chilling effect on a college or university campus.