Washington, D.C.
October 16-18, 1996
Ettore F. Infante, Visiting Professor
Brown University and
former Vice President for Academic Affairs
University of Minnesota
Thomas W. Shaughnessy, University Librarian
University of Minnesota
MR. SHAUGHNESSY: I am pleased to introduce Jim Infante to you. Jim received his Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin, and then rose through the ranks at Brown University to become a Professor of Applied Mathematics.
Around 1984, he left Brown and went to the National Science Foundation as a Senior Administrator, and about four years later he was recruited by the University of Minnesota as Dean of the Institute of Technology. A few years after that he was promoted to Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs, and that is when I began reporting to him.
A few months ago he resigned from that post, unfortunately. He is now back at Brown as a visiting professor, and is doing some special work for the National Science Foundation.
I have worked with Jim since 1989, when I went to Minnesota. At that point, he was Dean of the Institute of Technology, and subsequently I worked with him in the role of Senior Vice President. I have worked with a lot of provosts and vice presidents in my time, but Jim Infante is the very best.
MR. INFANTE: Thank you very much for this opportunity, one in which I take a considerable amount of pleasure, partly because it has led me to reflect during the last couple of months on my experiences at Minnesota, which, as you all know, have recently been varied, numerous, and exciting.
After I received this invitation, I sat down to decide what message I would like to convey. I hope to make a presentation that is complementary to those of my colleagues here, as well as to re-emphasize a point that I have repeatedly heard in the remarks that have been made.
First, I would like to focus my remarks around four words we are constantly hearing, and that are at the heart of the matter:
Responding: Responding is a key word for this panel, which questions how the institutions are responding to the circumstances in which we find ourselves.
Renewing: Renewing is a key word in ensuring a strong and active future role for our universities.
Redefining: This is word has been chosen for this particular membership meeting, whose title and focus is “Redefining Higher Education.”
Restructuring: Restructuring is what Tom Shaughnessy has been doing at the University of Minnesota library, and something that has been taking place at numerous other universities.
I would like to share with you a bit of both what I think and the data I have gathered from my five years at Minnesota. Martha recently visited the University of Minnesota as part of my presentation team, and one of the comments she frequently made to me, and was later made in the report, is, “You people are doing too many things. Lots of things.”
All of the things that we have done, some well and some not so well, at the University of Minnesota have been responding to changes and to challenges. However, at major research universities, as was suggested this morning by Peter Magrath and again restated by my colleagues in this program, our actions are something more than just responding to challenges.
Indeed, in the Policy Perspectives we all received for this meeting (vol. 6, no. 4, Apr. 1996) there is the statement, “We have a problem.” We are responding to a large number of challenges, but there is a perception that, apart from the challenges, there is a problem. What is the problem? I would like to suggest that the universities themselves are at the center of the problem.
My colleagues have defined what we have to deal with in order to deal with the problem. In the next few minutes I would like to make a series of remarks that try to reach the center of the problem.
In a certain sense, one problem is the contrast that we as institutions are presenting to the public. There is no doubt that we have been accused of being ineffective and costly. These allegations must be addressed whether within the boundaries of research, education, or training. The contrast has much more to do with the fact that we give a perception that, in some of the activities that the public holds dearly, we are uncaring and disengaged. Bill Prokasy commented that one of the most important things that institutions, especially public institutions, have to do is convey to the public, and to the political leadership, that we are doing a good job educating our students; he is right on the mark. But before we make that statement, we have to make sure that we are doing a good job.
Another problem that is facing us is one on which a great deal has already been said: technology’s role in the changing face of higher education. I would like to remind you that we are living in a period of extremely limited circumstances. What technology is doing at institutions and universities is providing an enormous opportunity.
I just paid a visit to an organization in California that I didn’t even know existed a few months ago. They had invited me because they knew I was very interested in using technology in instruction. I spent two days with them looking at materials they were producing and beginning to beta test into the market. I was extremely impressed. I was even more impressed when I discovered that this operation of approximately 220 employees was 50 percent owned by Bill Gates, producing materials outside of the Stanford campus, yet with no connection to any university represented here. It is an organization based on some of the things Mark mentioned: competition, cooperation, a demand for excellence, and it provides a new supply of educational services.
We still operate at universities as if demand were greater than supply, but that situation has changed. The fact is that supply is everywhere, and at a discount. Furthermore, the fact that this imbalance has developed, mostly through technology, is really putting an enormous premium on quality. You must be either very good, or you will be out of the business.
So, what is at the heart of the problem for all higher education, particularly research universities, is the teaching and learning process. That is what our political leadership is concerned about, and that is what we will have to significantly work on if we are going to increase, as we must, our credibility. This is the central theorem from which a great many corollaries will fall. The way to address this is by clearly enunciating principles, making changes to implement these effectively, and using technologies to alter and restructure certain activities. I believe that libraries will play an enormous role in this.
We have to shift our perspective. We have always been very proud, especially at research institutions, of the quality of our instruction. But, it is not only a question of the quality, it is also a question of the value that is perceived from the outside. There is a developing divergence between value and quality, where value is perceived on the outside and quality from the inside. In my dealings with the Minnesota State Legislature, they repeatedly tell me, “Jim, I don’t give a darn how much time you’re spending teaching or in research. What we care about is how effective your educational and instructional programs are.”
The last thing I would like to mention is the challenge to structure the learning process. When discussing the learning process, one cannot help but be reminded of Marshall McLuhan’s statement that the process, the message and the medium, is our product. But a student is not the same thing as a customer. Knowledge exchange is one of the most peculiar transactions that takes place. In most trades, one exchanges something solid for money in a fairly simple transaction. But the person who purchases knowledge essentially receives nothing unless she is willing to input an enormous amount of effort trying to understand that knowledge. It seems to me, that that is at the center of the problem of restructuring the internal educational process: to provide a student the means to be an investor in the process, not a customer only.
One of the things, in particular, I want to convey to you is the need for leadership in renewing the undergraduate curriculum, making sure that it is reviewed as a whole process, not as a series of separate and unrelated courses. We need to make sure, for example, that we address the serious problem we face at research universities of not appropriately socializing our students into the university learning environment. Indeed, it is an area where libraries could make an enormous contribution, for what better place than the libraries to show students how to search and look for knowledge?
Thank you very much.
Copyright � 1999 by Ettore F. Infante