Colleges Have a Vital Role
Posted on: Tuesday, 13 May 2008, 00:00 CDT
By Montserrat Miller
Though I am a proud member of the College of Liberal Arts faculty at Marshall University, this commencement season finds me reflecting upon the larger project of higher education in West Virginia. Our system faces a host of challenges, including recent high-profile questions of fundamental integrity.
Yet as the spring semester ends, we ought to pause and consider the larger picture. We must recognize the tremendous academic successes that are so worthy of public pride and support at all West Virginia colleges and universities.
I want first and foremost to applaud the graduates, who through years of arduous and disciplined pursuit of knowledge have completed the requirements for their degrees and now share that achievement with their friends, family and mentors. Commencement ceremonies, if sometimes overly long, are moving rituals, an opportunity for students, family and faculty to interact and to celebrate persistence and achievement.
Professional, creative and intense teaching remains central for all those who heed the call to academic life: Student accomplishment is our greatest reward. Teaching and learning are symbiotically related; for this reason I want to also congratulate the legions of faculty and staff in West Virginia's institutions of higher education whose lives are dedicated to the quality and integrity of scholarship in our state.
Most faculty in West Virginia teach like maniacs, carrying much heavier course loads than the professors at institutions with whom we actually compete for the best students. Though increased enrollments and tuition are now the main source for satisfying our funding needs (state support having dwindled over time), and recruitment thus must be a high priority for all, it should be noted that many of our classes are chronically overloaded and that almost all classes at institutions such as Marshall are continuously full. We depend, in fact, on a team of talented yet meagerly paid adjuncts to help cover our schedules, and are in dire need of additional full- time faculty for which no funding is in sight.
Yet despite the intensity of high teaching loads and large classes, faculty and staff at our institutions of higher learning remain deeply committed to a packed schedule of wide-ranging programs open to broader community audiences.
When we calculate the value of higher education to our region and state, we need to look beyond traditional and limited measures of efficiency and productivity to include broader contributions.
We must recognize that our colleges and universities serve as centers of cultural dynamism. With art, theater, music, film festivals, economic and political forums, book clubs, lectures, dance performances and more, our institutions of higher learning provide an invaluable service to their communities.
Our college and university campuses are crucial to the celebration of culture, creativity and knowledge. They serve as sites for the regeneration of the civic commitments that can act as a counterweight to our society's rampant consumerism and materialism. They are, in fact, our most powerful magnets for attracting to West Virginia what Richard Florida terms "the creative class" upon whose endeavors our economic development largely depends.
The public and private institutions of higher education in West Virginia also operate as nodes in a larger international academic network some have called the "Republic of Learning." Our faculties - in all disciplines - participate in national and international research and publication and are connected to broader scholarly networks.
Across the state there are drastically underpaid and overworked faculty doggedly pursuing research, presentations, publications and grants on a regional, national and international stage. This difficult and dedicated work contributes to the positive profiles of both our individual institutions and our region. It enhances our ability to draw students into our programs and to attract highly talented faculty from far and wide to make their lives with us here and contribute to our present and future vitality.
I was recently asked what I would do to improve higher education in West Virginia if I were given a magic wand.
My simple answer was "fund it," premised on the tangible and intangible value that our colleges and universities provide to the state and the greater impact they would have if they could draw on the levels of public and private support that higher education garners in other regions.
Yet the person who posed this question found my answer simplistic and inadequate. On reflection, I agree. The more urgent issue we must address is the narrow perception of the value of higher education to the quality of life in West Virginia.
We must recognize that those joined in the endeavor in the state do an incredible job with insufficient resources and that our work - faculty, staff and administrators - benefits the lives of our students and our communities in myriad and complex ways. This deserves greater public commitment. All our futures depend upon it.
Miller is an associate professor of history at Marshall University.
(c) 2008 Sunday Gazette - Mail; Charleston, W.V.. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.
Source: Sunday Gazette - Mail; Charleston, W.V.
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