From "Making A Place for the New American Scholar"
By Eugene RiceTaking off from Ralph Waldo Emerson's famous 1837 essay on the role of the scholar in a new democracy, Eugene Rice concludes that universities' roles in our developing democracy demand a radical re-imagination of faculty roles. Below is a top-ten list of highlights from Dr. Rice's Working Paper.
The full text is available from the American Association of Higher Education / One Dupont Circle / Suite 360 / Washington, DC 20036-1110.
Dr. Rice will be visiting Emory in mid-November, 1999.
1. At the beginning of this century, public service by faculty "was privileged" work; "the public intellectual was very much alive and well."
2."What is needed are new ideas, fresh conceptions of faculty work, ones that reunite institutional and personal endeavor and bring wholeness to scholarly lives."
3. Questioning the epistemological narrowness of the current assumptions used in evaluating scholarship, Rice calls for a "broader conception of scholarly work" that would "reconnect liberal education with professional education, academic disciplines with a larger landscape of learning, and the academy with the needs of society."
4. The academic career as it is currently imagined fosters a disconnection from the larger society--its problems and opportunities--and even from the self."
5. "Junior faculty are insisting on a more balanced personal life, but are finding it tremendously difficult." The impact of the "dual-career" family is "profound."
6."What is striking about the interactive approaches to learning, and particularly the new information technologies, is that the intellectual content of the field and the process have become inextricably intertwined."; we are "on the verge of a 'sea-change' in the instructional role of faculty."
7. We need a shift from the "emphasis on the professional autonomy of faculty " to "increased faculty involvement in academic institution-building."
8. "An important kind of knowing is implicit in professional practice that we have yet to fully acknowledge. How do we "provide for" the "cultivation of knowledge anchored in practice" in "the way we structure academic careers?"
9. "Faculty might want to spend extended periods of time in other work settings . . . then move back into an academic appointment, enriched by the alternation of practice and reflection."
10. "The professoriate has not effectively articulated the social meaning of tenure--the protection of the university as a place where inconvenient questions can be asked, and not as job protection for a specially sheltered status group."