April 12, 2006

Family Day was an example of this campus at its best: faculty, staff, administrators, and students all working together for a common goal.  I was very proud of what we did, and I heard many expressions of wonderment and gratitude from the participants.  Thank you for all that you do for PC.  It is an honor to be president of an institution constituted by people such as yourself.  What makes this college so special are the people who are united in a common love of our students.

I am excited about some of the capital projects that Mike Frazier covered in his opening update.  The Center for Catholic and Dominican Studies will be a wonderful resource for us to educate the campus about our Dominican tradition.  We hope to dedicate it in the Fall and also honor the legacy of Fr. McGlynn as we relocate his statues of St. Dominic and St. Martin in order to integrate them better into the space created by the union of the Center and the Chapel.  I am excited that we are soon going to be able to break ground on the new Fitness Center, a facility that is much needed.  I am excited about Fr. Brendan Murphy's appointment as the next Vice-President for Student Services.  Fr. Murphy will be a terrific addition to our administrative team.  I want to thank Fr. McPhail for his long and dedicated tenure in that office; next year he will enjoy a much deserved sabbatical so that he can return to serve the college in a new capacity.  I am also excited about our prospects for filling the position of Vice President for Institutional Advancement.  Our search is at its critical point.  I have spent a lot of time this year learning about institutional advancement and assessing our efforts.  When the new VPIA comes on board, we will be ready to make dramatic advances in this all-important area. 

I want to spend the bulk of my time this afternoon on the topic of academic excellence, a goal that hinges especially on the successful completion of two important processes now underway.  The first is Core Curriculum Review.   I have asked the Core Curriculum Review Committee, chaired by Dr. Hudson, to lead the campus in a discussion that will eventuate in a revised curriculum that reflects our shared understanding of what it means to be liberally educated in 21st century.  I have set some parameters to their deliberations.  First, their efforts must be mission-centered; that is, curriculum revision has as its ultimate goal to better educate our students in the distinctively Catholic and Dominican tradition of Providence College.  Since I have already articulated the broad lines of what I understand that tradition to mean in my inaugural address, and I have not changed my mind since then, I will refer you back to that document should you wonder what that means for me.  If I could reiterate my vision succinctly, it would be that we should strive to educate our students to grasp a unified view of the whole of truth in contemplative wisdom, where faith and reason come together through a vigorous exploration of competing arguments in disputed questions. 
 
Second, I have said that the new curriculum must retain the centrality of the Development of Western Civilization Program.  I have placed this constraint for two primary reasons.  First, I believe that a central part of being a liberally educated person in the 21st century is knowledge of how we got to where we are.  A curriculum that looks to the future cannot neglect the past.  Knowledge of the past development of Western Civilization is essential to its healthy future.  Just as a connected consciousness in an individual is a prerequisite for both identity and agency--knowing who you are and acting as a unified self--so too must a civilization connect its past to its present and its future if it is to retain its identity and evolve into something new.   My second reason for insisting upon the centrality of the DWC program is because it models the kind of integrated thinking that I believe should lie at the heart of a PC education.  The interdisciplinary faculty teams who teach DWC model an approach to education that I would like to see become even more a part of our core curriculum by being replicated in other domains and at other moments in our students' undergraduate experience. 

The third parameter that I have set upon the core curriculum review is that it must retain the privileged places of philosophy and theology.  Philosophy and theology have traditionally been the architectonic disciplines at a Catholic university, since each has as its aim a unified view of the whole.  No college could remain authentically Dominican and Catholic without handing on these invaluable forms of wisdom to its students. 

Outside of these three parameters, I have given the committee the freedom to rethink the core in a fundamental way.  I have no secret plan in my pocket, for my views are evolving as I read the literature and discuss the issues.  I shall work together with the committee to make sure that what we formulate reflects a real campus consensus.   I do not intend this to be a mere tinkering with parts, but rather an overhaul.  We are in agreement, however, that any overhaul that is not informed by study of student learning outcomes and successful pedagogy will not advance our cause.  In other words, if we do not know what empirically constitutes successful teaching and learning we will not be able to reform our core. 

Our shared convictions on this matter have been formed by a collective study of the recent book of Derek Bok: Our Underachieving Colleges.   We believe that Bok's book raises fundamental questions that we must grapple with in curriculum renewal, and we hope that members of the campus community will join us in studying this book as we prepare for next Fall's Focus on the Core.  We are exploring the means to make the book readily available.  More will be said about this at the end of the semester in concert with the committee's preliminary report to the faculty. 

Based on my own response to Bok's book, I propose that we all need to reflect on the following questions because they cut across the lines of all the teaching and learning at Providence College.  Let me stress that I ask these questions in a genuine spirit of open inquiry; I do not yet know the answers. 

• How well do we teach our students to communicate both in writing and orally?   As a school sponsored by an Order dedicated to preaching, we must take as one of our main educational goals the development of students' abilities to write and speak.  There has been a lot of discussion on this campus already about "writing across the curriculum."  I do not know exactly what that has meant here, but it embodies a principle that I think is crucial: the teaching of writing cannot be the sole responsibility of those who teach composition.  It has to be something that we are committed to across the campus.  Oral communication is the same thing: it has to be a competency that we seek to inculcate in our students across the curriculum. 
• How well do we develop the analytical thinking skills of our students?  A Dominican school should prepare its students to be rigorous critical thinkers.  Studies indicate that schools that emphasize active learning are more successful in creating critical thinkers.  Students who are asked only to memorize and regurgitate in a passive manner will not be critical thinkers.  As Charles Eliot of Harvard put it in his inaugural address: The lecturer pumps laboriously into sieves.  The water may be wholesome, but it runs through.  A mind must work to grow.   How well do we make our students minds work to grow?
• How well do we help our students improve their quantitative abilities or numeracy?  It is not enough that there is a math requirement.  The ability to analyze and solve problems using quantitative analysis is an ability that we need to help our students to develop across the curriculum and across the various disciplines.
• How well to do help our students reflect on the moral implications of what they are studying?  This is not something that is taken care of solely in a required ethics course.  It too must cut across the curriculum.  Moral questions emerge naturally in every area of study, and we need to help our students reflect on them.
• How well do we help our students to grow morally and develop the right kind of character?  Again, an ethics course is not enough.  As Aristotle observes in the Nicomachean Ethics, one does not become good by reading a book. This is not just the responsibility of the chaplain's office, nor is this covered by the student handbook and code of conduct.  Everyone on this campus needs to see themselves as moral models and moral mentors.  Students will learn from how we act and explain our actions.  They will also learn from discussing their own moral questions with us, both inside and outside the classroom.
• How well do we help our students understand their moral obligation to serve others?  It is not enough to have a Feinstein Institute and a campus ministry outreach.  We need to explore new ways to make community service part of the ethos of the campus.  Studies show that students who participate in community service are more likely to be engines of social change than those who do not.
• How well do we educate our students to be good citizens in the polis?  We know that civic apathy is more and more a problem in America.  So too is civic ignorance--just listen to interactive news programs.  We need to explore improved means to educate our students for active participation in our democracy.  Again, this is not something that pertains only to the political science department, but must be something that cuts across the curriculum and the co-curriculum. 
• How well do we educate our students to live in a diverse world?  From the results of a recent survey of our alumni, we know the answer is that we need a lot of improvement.  We have got to do more to achieve this goal, and it cannot be the sole responsibility of the new director of the Balfour Multicultural Center.  The single best thing that we can do is to bring our students into contact with people from different cultures than their own; nothing is more effective in changing people's attitudes than human contact with someone who is different.  We need to do that through increasing our recruitment and retention of a more diverse student, faculty, and staff population.  We need to encourage greater engagement by our students with the diversity that lies on our doorstep in city of Providence.  We need to encourage more international students and more international study.  As most of you know from recent discussions, we have a lot of work to do in promoting study abroad. Study abroad should not be something that we only permit, but something that we actively promote.  We are currently in the process of evaluating our efforts in this area and much more work needs to be done.
• The study abroad question is connected to the question of how well do we educate our students to live in the flat world brought about by globalization?  Should they all study foreign languages?  Should they take required courses in global studies?  Should intercultural competence, like literacy and numeracy, be curriculum wide goals?
• Finally, how well do we prepare students for meaningful careers after they graduate?  According to student surveys, it is what they most want from us; while what they most want is not what they most need, they do indeed need to prepare for work.  Thus while I still considering leading a good life to be the most important goal of our education, meaningful work is an integral part of a good life and we also need to prepare our students for it.  Here we come to a tension endemic to every college campus: the tension between liberal arts and pre-professional programs.  On this campus the flash point has been AACSB accreditation, and I would like to speak to that process in my concluding remarks.

I know that there is some lingering debate over whether the decision to seek AACSB accreditation was made in an inclusive manner.  I cannot speak to that question because I was not here, nor can I change the past.  I am sorry if some of you are still upset about that process, but we all need to put that behind us and work together for the common good.  I know that some people debate whether we have thought through the consequences, especially the financial implications, of the decision.  On that point I can assure you that the administration has done its homework all along, and that we do have the resources to bring this process to a successful conclusion.   The most important question of all then is:  why are we doing it?

The answer to that question flows from what we have already discussed: students educated by the core liberal arts curriculum of Providence College will have their studies in business  integrated into a larger whole that knows the place and value of work in the context of living a good life.  They will have developed the spiritual, moral, service, and civic dimensions of their lives in such a way as to be able to be agents for good when they assume leadership roles in the workforce.  Remember, studies in a major are really only a minor part of our students' education as a whole.  We make a unique and invaluable contribution to the good of society by sending men and women into the workforce with a business degree shaped by a broader liberal arts education in the Catholic and Dominican tradition.  When I talk to graduates who majored in business, this is what they most value about what they received here.  As one very successful business alumnus said to me, what he was most grateful for was the moral compass that he received at PC.  In the post-Enron world in which we live, it is vital that Providence College continue its tradition of educating business leaders with strong moral values.

If the study of business is an important part of our mission, then it must be done excellently.  We owe that to our students.  The central reason that we are seeking AACSB accreditation is so that we can do what we already do well even better.  The AACSB accreditation  process is not a Procrustean bed that will warp our programs, but rather a tool that we can shape to further our own distinctive mission.   I want to encourage the members of the Business Division to work together to make that happen.   I believe that the quality of our already existing programs is high enough that we need not move mountains to get to where we need to go, but we do need everyone to take up an oar and work together.  As Otis Baskin, our consultant, told the business faculty--You deserve accreditation.  I would amend that slightly to say: Providence College deserves accreditation, because what we do well in business is connected to the larger whole.
 
In closing, let me wish you all blessed holy days.  Whether we are Jews about to celebrate Passover or Christians about the celebrate Easter, we share a common in faith in a provident God who acts in history to liberate his people.  Whether we see the defining manifestation of that belief in the Exodus experience or the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, we can all share a common joy in our lovingly provident God.  As my own thoughts turn to the sacred triduum that those of us who are Catholic are about to celebrate, I find myself taking heart from God's revelation to Julian of Norwich: The worst has already happened and been redeemed.   Since the crucified one has been raised by God, we know that nothing is more powerful than the love of God.  Believing that to be true, I am confident that God's providence will guide us into new life here at Providence College.  May God bless you all in the coming days.  Thank you for coming today.