4A
Tuesday, February 13. 1996
OPINION
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
ANALYSIS
Chancellor's inaugural lessons feel good, lack usual goals and plans
Chancellor Robert Hemenway brought a little of his classroom prouwess to the Lied Center on Sunday.
Instead of an inaugural speech crammed with "noble rhetoric," as he put it, Hemenway taught a class about the University of Kansas. Not about its history or traditions, but about the reason for the University and about connecting students with all the possibilities created by the bare facts. He used a story about his son to illustrate the connection between fact and knowledge. He used a piece of his own hair to explain the
speed of fiber-optic lines.
Time for a change
In a dignified, low-key ceremony, Hemenway officially took office as the University's 16th chancellor, but he seemed more like a first-time teacher at a new job.
He was giddy and always smiling, and he spoke of potential, possibility and life more than budget cuts, administrative restructuring and National Merit Scholars.
This was quite a change for such a goal-oriented chancellor, but it was time. Hemenway has changed the structure of the administration, has increased the accountability of administrators and has involved students in administrative decision-making.
But his inaugural address contained little of substance when it came to the concrete goals for the University. No numbers, no future academic rankings or basketball picks. He told the University why it was here and why he wanted to lead it.
It was a human lecture about the human connection between a student and the University.
A higher level of thinking
Hemenway said thinking on secondary and tertiary levels was becoming more important in a time when information travels faster and easier electronically rather than by a professor and a podium. Even the inauguration itself was being
televised.
Students can feel like numbers at universities as large as this one, and with the telecommunications revolution, the distance between students, teachers and the University only will increase. Hemenway recognized this, but said that the key to maintaining the student-teacher relationship was a sense of community, both in Kansas and at the University. Again, no goals or plans, but Hemenway was optimistic that the relationship could be kept. That says more than a plan.
"A chancellor's actions make a statement about beliefs," he said. "I believe in the classroom."
Troubled waters?
Unfortunately for Hemenway, the classroom is where the University seems to be having the most trouble. Gov. Bill Graves said in his speech that he was committed to rebuilding crumbling classrooms. Hemenway did not mention it. Nor did he mention goals for faculty salaries, qualified admissions or the University's financial struggles with the state.
He did say that students brought desire, purpose, potential and joy to the classrooms, and that a university should use these raw materials to extend students' horizons.
"We must respect these human gifts," he said.
Avoiding news and, especially, bad news, the chancellor instead told stories and laughed, and he pointed out that student potential and curiosity made a university, not dollars or technology.
Perhaps he should have addressed more concrete issues, but it felt better that he didn't.
It is somewhat reassuring to have an idealist at the helm.
When a leader comes to his people and tells them exactly what he wants to do, what plans he has, what goals he has set, the people think, quite logically, "Sounds good. Go do it."
Hemenway did not do this in his inaugural speech. He did, however, express a fresh confidence in the students here and in his own ability to make this a student-centered university. KU students can think, less logically and more emotionally, "Feels good. Let's try it."
Paul Todd is a Littleton, Colo., senior in journalism and environmental studies
"We find our students' potential when we extend their horizons."
The following are excerpts from Chancellor Robert Hemenway's inaugural address, delivered Sunday at the Lied Center.
I know, because I have read the inaugural speeches of all my predecessors. Since the installation of Dr. John Fraser, KU's second chancellor, in 1868, there has always been an inauguration ceremony, and the chancellor has usually given a formal speech, noble in purpose, high in rhetoric.
For example, almost a century ago, during an inauguration that lasted four days, and included a five-hour formal dinner for 1,000 people, Chancellor Frank Strong issued a clairion call to KU supporters: 'Men and women of Kansas, do you love this state? Do you love its broad prairies, where in the springtime the wandering breath of God stirs the perfume of a million flowers? Do you love the memory of its pioneers, their struggles, their hardships, their tears? Do you love your children? Then do not allow the University of Kansas to miss its destiny.'
$ \textcircled{6} $The formality and seriousness of this ceremony create its own set of expectations.
These are noble sentiments, nobly expressed,
and I admit to you today that I tried to write such a speech.
I must be honest. It was terrible. I will not inflict it upon you. You don't know how glad you should be. You will thank me for years to come.
Fortunately, 35 years ago, Clarke Wescoe stood on the stage of Hoch Auditorium and in plain and simple words identified the purpose of this occasion. Leadership of the University.
occasion. Leadership of the University is responsible to the university.
city is responsible to the society within which and for which it exists. You are entitled, therefore, to hear from me my personal convictions.' I agree with Chancellor Wescoe. I am going to share my personal convictions...
"I want to begin with the true story of Ruby Williams of Warner Robins, Ga. I know about her because a reporter named Kevin Sack, working for the New York Times, has written about her."
Ruby Williams is 84 years old, and she has lived a hard-scrabble life. From an early age she worked in the Georgia sun, chopping cotton and cutting asparagus.
She didn't go to school often as a young woman, some 70 years ago, and when she did it was only for a month at a time. It was a segregated school, poor and inadequate, three miles from her home. By the age of 14 she had dropped out. She married at 18 and spent a lifetime of sharecropping and domestic work. She was poor and illiterate, unable to read beyond the most simple words.
What is remarkable about Ruby Williams? Ruby Williams, in the year 1995, at the age of 84, learned to read.
Williams' story illustrates a basic truth about learning that can serve the University of Kansas well. Even at the age of 84, she has not yet reached her potential as an educated human being. There is more for her to learn, unused capacity in her brain, and she has the will to reach a little higher, push a little harder to understand her world. She acquired a skill she needed to interpret that world, and it has brought her great joy.
Not only does she have the desire to learn and a potential to learn, she also has a purpose in learning. She wants to experience personally the word of God. Desire, potential, purpose and joy—the are the raw ingredients of learning that every KU student brings to the classroom. We must respect these human gifts!
The effect of the Word on Ruby Williams cannot be overemphasized. As she puts it, 'I can read, I can read. Sometimes I pick up the Bible and read and read and read, I sure do. Glory, halleluiah!'
'I want to read my Bible,' she said, and she learned to do so, working every night with a tutor in a literacy project. She reads slowly, methodically and phonetically, with her right index finger sliding across the lines of the large-print Bible.
Most students who enter here will have the potential to learn enough to graduate from the University of Kansas. A few will not.
side. But until we are confi dent that every single individual student is being challenged, helped to reach their individual capacity, respected for what they bring here, cared about, we cannot say that we are graduating enough of our students or that we have fulfilled our mission.
The classroom is a graduate student in pharmacy finishing an experiment that may lead to a cure for cancer. It is a pianist in a master class in a studio. It is a group of civil engineering students in the field in Topeka, finding a way to save the city a million dollars in storm sewer design. The classroom is a social work practicum in the Juniper Gardens project in Wyandotte County, and it is a seminar for a screen writer in the Hall Center for the Humanities in Lawrence.
ration, 15 years ago: 'The faculty are a priceless asset for the State of Kansas.' My own personal belief is that faculty recreate the University of Kansas every time they enter the classroom. When you believe in the classroom, you recognize its many different forms. The classroom is a group of medical students on grand rounds in Kansas City. It is a fourth-year family practice student seeing a patient in Wichita.
In all these classrooms, the common element must be a high standard. Students will strive to meet the standards set. We find our students' potential when we extend their horizons...
"So I want to tell a second story about learning, about my 8-year-old son, Arna.
You have named me chancellor, but I also teach. I teach
He is a very curious boy. He loves to explore the large house that he lives in, and he is always trying to understand what
celeron, but I also teach. I teach American literature at 7:30 a.m. to
American literature at 7:50 a.m. to a class of 40 freshmen and sophomores. I do so because I love to do it but also because I believe the chancellor's actions make a statement about his beliefs.
I believe in the classroom. It changed me, and it changed Ruby Williams, and it will change your son or daughter, grandson or granddaughter. Every one of us sitting here can think back to a teacher who made a difference in our lives. Chancellor Gene Budg, who has been so helpful to me in this transition, said it well on his inaugu-
idea. I explained that he could be shocked or electrocuted.
'What is electrocuted?' he asked.
I tried to explain electricity and how he could be badly injured if he played with electrical outlets. Searching for a dramatic example, I said, 'When really bad murders are executed, they are strapped in a chair and electricity goes through their bodies and they die.'
Arna thought a moment.
Then he looked up; 'Wouldn't it just be easier to give them a screwdriver and tell him to unscrew the outlet plate?'
Human beings are driven to dis-
Human beings are driven to d cover what is behind the protective wall plate, what causes things to work. What is electricity and how does it happen? Like most research scholars, Arna was willing to take risks to find out. At a research university, this quest to learn how things work, why things happen, is carried out at its most sophisticated level. Faculty at a research university are willing to go to extraordinary lengths to satisfy their curiosity.
"KU is a research university because every day faculty and students are driven by the need for original intellectual inquiry. The Harvard mathematician and philosopher, Sir Alfred North Whitehead, has described this research process with great eloquence.
In his essay, Universities and Their Function, Whitehead argues that universities are both schools of education and schools of research, but the primary reason for the university's existence is not to be found either in the mere knowledge conveyed to the students or in the mere opportunities for research afforded to members of the faculty.
He says that so far as the mere imparting of
versity has had any justifica-
on for existence since the popularization of printing in the 15th century. He means that so long as there are books, we can always acquire information by ourselves.
What is the justification for a university then?
The justification for a university, said Whitehead, is that
it preserves the connection between knowledge and 'zest for life' by uniting young and old in 'the imaginative consideration of learning.' What does this mean? Is this some empty rhetorical flourish? I don't think so. It means, says Whitehead, that the 'atmosphere of excitement arising from imaginative consideration transforms knowledge. A fact is no longer a bare fact. It is invested with all its possibilities.'
In Arna's story, the bare fact of the wall plug and the nature of electricity are invested with possibility as soon as he understands the danger. He
sees
possibilities in the wall plug that his father never imagined...
"I believe we are entering an era in which second- and third-order thinking will become increasingly important to the future of the University.
One phenomenon, in particular, will challenge our abilities: the telecommunications revolution. In 1972, there were only 150,000 computers in the world.
Today, Intel ships 100 million personal computers a year. Let me illustrate how fast information can be sent to and from these computers. Fiber-optic technology has become so sophisticated that a fiber the size of a human hair can deliver in less than one second every issue ever published by the Wall Street Journal.
The combination of the personal computer and the Internet will have a profound impact on the way we teach and do research. Students now have at their personal disposal an entire world of information and interaction, only a keystroke away. If not now, then soon, we will all be able to shop, bank, worship, conduct a courtship or rid ourselves of aggression by the simple act of accessing the Net.
The economies of scale in bringing large numbers of students together to hear one professorial voice will be reversed. The economies of the future will be in distributing information electronically, with the professor available on line as coach and resource, while the student, in the isolation and convenience of personal space and
time, interacts with the computer. Curi-
function of space, may be less important than the faculty response speed, a function of time. Our challenge will be in figuring out how to maintain the human contact between professor and student, the tissue connecting our academic community.
I believe Kansas and its University will more than meet the need for second- and third-order thinking. I believe Kansas can be a leader nationally.
ment, private industry and public higher education created a new partnership for this new century.
The key to this partnership will be the sense of community special to this place, meaning both this University and this state of Kansas.
Leah and I have been overwhelmed by the kindness of the people of Kansas. We have learned there is something special about the human community in this state and this University.
So let me end today with the only part of my earlier, high-flow speech that I felt was worth keeping, because it addressed the human community gathered here today.
Gov. Graves, Sen. Kassebaum, members of the Board of Regents, members of the Kansas Legislature, I thank you for being here. Your presence emphasizes the importance of this University to the Commonwealth of Kansas. I pledge to you that I will strive to serve Kansas with the integrity demanded by your trust.
Chancellors Wescoe, Shankel and Nichols, members of the faculty, staff members, students, alumni, members of the Endowment Association, your presence emphasizes the academic community created here in the past and the community to be sustained in the future if KU fulfills its destiny. I pledge to you that I will respect this community's values and prize its individuals.
Delegates from other colleges and universities, representatives of learned societies, my colleagues from other Kansas institutions, friends of KU generally, your presence emphasizes the Kansas belief that an educated citizenry will best perpetuate a democratic way of life.
I pledge to you that I share that belief and will act upon it, as we continue to construct a great University, working together, building on the excellence of our past.
But the past is not enough. Let us join together now to invest with possibility the fact of our future.
Photos by Brian Hott
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