NOTES FROM …
Brien Lewis
Dean of University College, Winthrop University
Suite A, Bancroft Hall
Rock Hill, SC 29733 USA
(803) 323-3900
[email protected]
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African proverb posted on factory floor of auto parts manufacturer in China: “Every
morning in Africa a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it
will be killed. Every morning a lion wakes up. It knows it must outrun the slowest
gazelle or it will starve to death. It doesn’t matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle.
When the sun comes up, you better start running.” (Friedman, 137)
Friedman contends that, taken together, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the rise of the
Windows operating system, the internet browser, the software revolutions and the
explosion of fiber optic connections means:
1. The individual can author his or her own digital content and send it anywhere;
2. Everyone is everyone else’s neighbors; and
3. There is a universal platform for collaboration.
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We need to change habits – silo connections have shifted from vertical to
horizontal to capture productive time. (Friedman 276)
“In Globalization 3.0, individuals have to think globally to thrive, or at least
survive. This requires not only a new level of technical skills but also a certain
mental flexibility, self-motivation, and psychological mobility.” (Friedman 276)
What course should you take to “learn”? Take the teacher or professor that truly
engages you and helps you learn to love to learn! (Friedman 302-303)
Warp Factor
“There is not enough time to tinker around edges – we must rethink and clarify goals.”
- Carol Geary Schneider, President of AAC&U
“This flattening process is happening at warp speed … The faster and broader this
transition to a new era, the greater the potential for disruption, as opposed to an orderly
transfer of power from the old winners to the new winners. To put it another way, the
experiences of the high-tech companies in the last few decades that failed to navigate the
rapid changes brought about in their marketplace by these types of forces may be a
warning to all the businesses, institutions, and nation-states that are now facing these
inevitable, even predictable, changes but lack the leadership, flexibility, and imagination
to adapt – not because they are not smart or aware, but because the speed of change is
simply overwhelming them.” (Friedman 49)
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Gene Sperling, former economic adviser to President Clinton, on today’s workers: “They
have to prepare like someone who is training for the Olympics but doesn’t know what
sport they are going to enter. … They have to be ready to do anything.” (Friedman 290)
Alan Blinder, Princeton economist: “It is clear that the U.S. and other rich nations will
have to transform their educational systems so as to produce workers for the jobs that will
actually exist in their societies …In the future, how we educate our children may prove to
be more important than how much we educate them.” (Friedman 302)
“It is going to take more than just doing your homework to thrive in a flat world, though.
You are going to have to do the right kind of homework as well. Because the companies
that are adjusting best to the flat world are not just making minor changes, they are
changing the whole model of the work they do and how they do it – in order to take
advantage of the flat-world platform and to compete with others who are doing the same.
What this means is that students also have to fundamentally reorient what they are
learning and educators how they are teaching it. They can’t just keep the same old model
that worked for the past fifty years, when the world was round.” (Friedman 277-278)
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(qtd. in Friedman 422)
“If you want to flourish in this flattening world, you better understand that whatever can
be done will be done – and much faster than you think. The only question is whether it
will be done by you or to you. Will you drive the innovation or will one of your
competitors use it to drive over you?” (Friedman 425-426) [italics in original]
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"The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it,
but that it is too low and we reach it."– Michelangelo
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(Friedman 366)
“To make such a transition campus members must have a level of pain or ‘anticipatory
pain’ that induces them to realize that there is an urgency to undertake fundamental
change. (People need a compelling reason to make fundamental changes in how they
work.)” (Guskin)
2005 National Student Satisfaction and Priorities Report
http://www.noellevitz.com/Papers+and+Research/Research/ResearchLibrary/2005+Nati
onal+Satisfaction+Report.htm
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The Compelling Reason: The World is Flat and We Are Not
Darwinian view: species that survive are the ones "most responsive to change". We may be “ok”
now but … if students (and their families) do not perceive the university as being relevant,
responsive, and a worthwhile investment they will connect and collaborate with a
“competitor” (or simply an alternative) who can give them what they seek/need faster and
cheaper. Where we don't provide what they need, others do - or soon will. "Facebook" is a
perfect example of that on the social front - while we are trying to create affinity groups, our
students are a step ahead of us, doing so (for better or worse) in their own ways. How can we
position ourselves to be the best enablers of students?
Those who will fuss that these conclusions are driven by a "business" model miss the point
entirely. Our students (and prospective students and their families) are not looking at us in that
light. They are individuals who will find ways to "connect, collaborate, and compete" without us
if we do not make the case that they need us in order to do so - or at least that we can enable them
to do these things better than anyone else.
“Our educational institutions were created in a world defined by boundaries that are now
dissolving—disciplinary boundaries, organizational boundaries, national and regional
boundaries, even boundaries between teachers and students or professors and
entrepreneurs. While they have evolved significantly from their origins as seminaries and
professional schools, few colleges or universities today see their role as the education of
truly creative, entrepreneurial innovators.
And yet, while our colleges and universities perhaps were not designed for the tasks that
lay ahead, they are better positioned than any of our other institutions to meet the needs
of an innovative society. They are the institutions that we rely on for nurturing talent,
performing frontier research, and generating breakthrough ideas.”
Wince-Smith, Deborah L.. The Creativity Imperative: A National Perspective. Peer
Review, Spring 2006. http://www.aacu.org/peerreview/pr-sp06/pr-sp06_analysis3.cfm
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“No problem can be solved from the same consciousness that created it.” – Einstein
Solutions must focus on enhancing student learning, and maintaining and enhancing the
quality of faculty and staff work-lives. We can no longer “muddle through” – we need to
transform: shift from concept of (and emphasis on) faculty teaching/productivity to
student learning/productivity (Guskin).
“Fortune favors the prepared mind.” – Louis Pasteur (qtd. in Friedman 136)
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Employ the most effective educational practices that best enable and empower
student learning.
Encourage and facilitate connection, collaboration, innovation, and integration.
Be nimble, efficient, informed and responsive.
Use outcomes based assessment focused on core capacities.
Align resources and time with priorities that reflect and enact guiding principles.
Significantly improve timely graduation rates.
Internationalize.
Significantly simplify systems and expedite processing of internal academic and
administrative information and services.
Define and revise expectations, roles, and basis for rewards for members of the
campus community.
Define and revise process of and standards for allocation of resources to
accomplish objectives.
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Reform academic calendar to facilitate integrative approaches.
Implement and emphasize integrative study opportunities for students to engage
in creative, interdisciplinary, cross-disciplinary, and individualized programs.
Establish Global Literacy focus for all programs and majors.
Integrate academic and administrative systems, programs, and processes to
facilitate information access, service and planning.
Revise expectations, roles, and rewards to align with integrative approaches.
Facilitate realignment using University College: unique platform because of its
interdisciplinary foundations, its role as a converging point for academic and
student life, and its international component.
Adopt budgeting process to align resources with integrative approaches.
(Giamatti 144)
“Thinking horizontally applies to everything from business to education to military
planning. It takes an adjustment to move from vertical to horizontal thinking …. Because
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vertical thinking often requires you to start by asking who controls what system, not what
is the outcome or effect you want to create.” (Friedman 210)
“ ‘Threads represent a departure from a vertically oriented curriculum whose goal is the
creation of students with a fixed set of skills and knowledge,’ explained [Merrick] Furst
[Associate Dean, College of Computing, Georgia Tech] in his course description. ‘A
thread is a fundamentally horizontal idea whose goal is to give students the broad
collection of skills and learning experiences they need to thrive in the globally
competitive Conceptual Age. A thread provides an intuitive, flexible and mutually
strengthening set of courses that allows a student to craft his or her own distinctive
future.’ ” (Friedman 313)
Rich DeMillo, former HP chief technology officer, now Dean of College of Computing at
Georgia Tech: “The threads are aimed at putting things together that make sense. That is
why you need to run a whole university this way. The whole notion of separate
departments is crazy. You really need to change the whole approach. This is not about
small tinkering.” (Friedman 315)
Merrick Furst, Associate Dean, College of Computing, Georgia Tech: “It has to run
through the whole curriculum … It can’t just be a single course; otherwise we will never
nurture a high enough percentage of the population to be competitive.” (Friedman 315)
***
“A transcript, for instance, no more tells the story of an education than a railroad
timetable tells the story of a journey.” (Giamatti 128)
“[T]o link the various sites and strategies for integration by putting in place a variety of
structures and practices that enable students to connect, say, their first-year learningcommunities experience to a final capstone course or to study abroad in the junior year.
In order to be truly effective for students, integrative learning must be not an isolated
event but a regular part of intellectual life.” Huber, Hutchings, and Gale. Integrative
Learning for Liberal Education. Peer Review, Summer/Fall 2005.
http://www.aacu.org/peerreview/pr-sufa05/pr_sufa05analysis.cfm
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(Giamatti 123)
We don’t want the next generation to miss the boat – we
want the chance to convey, instill, and infuse the
message of higher education.
Key References:
Friedman, Thomas L. The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century.
First Updated and Expanded Edition. New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux. 2006.
Giamatti, A. Bartlett. A Free and Ordered Space: The Real World of the University. New
York: W.W. Norton & Co. 1988.
Guskin, Alan E. “Facing the Future: Creating a Vital Campus in a Climate of
Restricted Resources.” 25th Annual Conference on the First Year Experience. Hyatt
Regency Hotel, Atlanta. 25 Feb. 2006.
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