“Not as a Thing for the Moment, but for All Time”</h1> <article> <h1>“Not as a Thing for the Moment, but for All Time”</h1> <p>sjallen1 — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 21:16:21 +0000</p> <p>The season for Alumni Weekend and Convocation is upon us and we rightly think at this time of year about both the past and the future. During the first weekend in June many hundreds of alumni were on campus to celebrate their lives and their traditions and to remember their experiences as College students. This week the Class of 2011 will celebrate and reflect on their lives at the College and their immediate futures as Senior Week leads to the Museum of Science and Industry party on Friday, June 10 and Convocation and the College Diploma Ceremony on Saturday, June 11. <br /><br />In the midst of all these living encounters with the past and with the future, I would like to call your attention to a deeper historical past and to a story from another era to which we owe much today.<br /><br />Last summer when I began my annual research project on the history of the University I decided to undertake a study of the first University of Chicago—the University founded in the 1850s on land donated by Senator Stephen A. Douglas; the University of Chicago that collapsed in the 1880s. The buildings are gone, although a stone from its central structure, Douglas Hall, can be seen today embedded in the wall in the passageway between Classics and Wieboldt; but the name was preserved in the foundation of 1892 which we mark as the beginning of our University of Chicago. Like many of us I knew very little about the first University and had always thought only in the vaguest way about the fact that our University of Chicago was in truth a re-establishment, on a new footing, of a project that was already two generations old in 1892.<br /><br />The essay that resulted is called <em>“Not as a Thing for the Moment, but for All Time”: The University of Chicago and Its Histories.</em> You can find a copy online at <a href="http://college.uchicago.edu/about-college/college-publications" title="http://college.uchicago.edu/about-college/college-publications">http://college.uchicago.edu/about-college/college-publications</a>. (If you prefer a printed copy please email spacious@uchicago.edu; while they last we can send one to you.)<br /><br />It is a richer and more complex story than I expected when I began my research, and I will let you discover that for yourself. What I will say, by way of encouragement to your reading, is that our first founders struggled hard to establish an institution that was inspired by the highest ideals of learning and aimed to provide access to that learning to the citizens of our city and the citizens of what was then known as the “Great West.” In one sense they failed, but without their failure the faculty and the students who took their place a bit further south only a few years later would have been forced to build on much shakier ground.<br /><br />One of the first acts of our new Board of Trustees was to grant to the alumni of the old University official alumni status in the new University. I think that their story will convince you that the alumni of the first University of Chicago deserve to be numbered among our founders as well.</p> </article> <article> <h1>Helping students take the next step</h1> <p>sjallen1 — Thu, 05 May 2011 14:32:14 +0000</p> <p>As June and Convocation approach the familiar signs of spring at the College are everywhere—B.A. theses are turned in, Scavenger Hunt begins, and those of us on the faculty begin to hear gratifying news from our students about graduate and professional school admissions, successful job searches, or interesting post-graduation travel plans.</p><p>These moments are a reminder that one very important part of a College education is conceiving of and planning for the next steps in life. As Dean and as a faculty member, I have always believed that the College is obliged to help students make sense of the education it offers in part by helping students to undertake thoughtful decisions about what to do after graduation.</p><p>A liberal education at Chicago prepares students for many things, not for a particular career. In fact we are effective as educators exactly insofar as we focus on the scholarly virtues of close questioning, careful argument, and fearless inquiry across all the disciplines—regardless of the careers beyond the College that our students are seeking. But it is also an inescapable fact that our students will go on to particular careers of many different kinds, and it can be difficult to make the transition from a liberal arts education to a concrete plan for a career.</p><p>In response to this situation we have created a series of programs in the Office of Career Advising and Planning Services (CAPS) designed to serve as what I like to call “enabling structures” that can help students make the transition from a liberal arts education to a professional life—a professional life that will be significantly enriched by the habits of mind engendered by our College.</p><p>These programs are called "Chicago Careers in..." and there are eight of them: Arts, Business, Health Professions, Higher Education, Journalism, Law, Public and Social Service, Science and Technology. You can learn more about these programs <a href="https://collegeadmissions.uchicago.edu/academics/future/careers/" target="_blank">here</a>. (For even more about the remarkable work that CAPS does for our students, you can <a href="https://caps.uchicago.edu/" target="_blank">visit their website</a>.)</p><p>Each program is different, as each of these fields is different, but each one links students with faculty and alumni in order to help them create a fruitful transition from their work in the College to their lives beyond Convocation.</p> </article> <article> <h1>A twilight tour of campus</h1> <p>sjallen1 — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 17:09:31 +0000</p> <p>Take a look at this stop-motion animated tour of campus, which I narrated:</p><p><a href="//magazine.uchicago.edu/1102/every_issue/lite-of-the-mind.shtml"> http://magazine.uchicago.edu/1102/every_issue/lite-of-the-mind.shtml</a></p> </article> <article> <h1>In praise of the foreign language requirement</h1> <p>sjallen1 — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 17:04:07 +0000</p> <p>Why bother with a foreign language requirement?</p><p>After all, the argument goes, English is the dominant language for business the world over; the large number of English speakers abroad means travelers can easily manage without knowing another language.</p><p>For these reasons, foreign language programs have become the target of cutbacks at schools facing serious budget shortfalls. Earlier this year, for instance, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/05/education/05languages.html">SUNY Albany trimmed back its foreign language program, announcing that new students could no longer major in French, Italian, or Russian.</a> </p><p>Despite the challenges to foreign language instruction, at the University of Chicago, we remain committed to the serious study of another language. The College instituted a foreign language requirement in the 1960s. To this day, students are required to complete one year of college-level study of a foreign language (or its equivalent). But rather than merely taking the <em>requirement</em> seriously, we take learning a foreign language seriously.</p><p>To that end, we’ve been devoting a massive level of resources to helping students to travel in, study in, and experience personally the countries in which those languages are spoken. We have excellent foreign language programs on campus, but at a certain point if you’re really going to learn French or German or Chinese, there is no substitute for living in a nation where the language is widely spoken. I believe it is essential to have a real cultural interaction. When students go abroad, they have the opportunity to meet people who speak, say, Italian every day, and to experience the sense of time and the texture of living surrounded by the language. Such an experience is irreplaceable no matter how effective we are in the classroom.</p><p>Beyond the language requirement lie opportunities for deeper experiences for all College students: our Civilizations programs abroad, our Foreign Language Acquisition Grants, our international study grants. All of these initiatives are an attempt to move students beyond the minimum because language learning, as a part of liberal education in general, has a profoundly de-parochializing effect.</p><p>The most important feature of language instruction, then, is not the minimum requirement. It’s the effort we put into encouraging students to gain real proficiency in a second language. We don’t want Chicago’s language requirement to be a box students have to check—that would be a missed opportunity.</p><p>For more on what we are doing see <a href="http://study-abroad.uchicago.edu/" title="http://study-abroad.uchicago.edu/">http://study-abroad.uchicago.edu/</a> and <a href="http://languages.uchicago.edu/" title="http://languages.uchicago.edu/">http://languages.uchicago.edu/</a> and the many course offerings every quarter in the time schedules: <a href="http://timeschedules.uchicago.edu/" title="http://timeschedules.uchicago.edu/">http://timeschedules.uchicago.edu/</a>.</p> </article> <article> <h1>35 years of Harper Fellows</h1> <p>sjallen1 — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 22:37:36 +0000</p> <p>This year marks the 35th anniversary of the establishment of the Harper Fellows program in the College. Since 1975 the Fellows have played an important role in the teaching of the Humanities and Social Sciences Core in the College. The cadre of 4 Fellows who inaugurated the program in 1975 has now grown to 36, divided evenly between the Humanities and the Social Sciences and extending out to the Arts Core and to Civilizational Studies. </p><p>This year also marks the 10th anniversary of a transformative milestone in the community of the Harper Fellows. In 2000 the Fellows were constituted as the Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts. The Society functions something like an inter-disciplinary department in the College, bringing the Harpers as Junior Fellows and a number of senior Chicago faculty as Senior Fellows together into a collaborative enterprise that can support the teaching and the research of all its members. In 2000 the Harpers were also given the rank of Collegiate Assistant Professor and welcomed as full members of the College faculty as a way to recognize their essential work of behalf of College students.</p><p>These three anniversaries provide me with an opportunity to acknowledge the important work of this remarkable group of gifted young scholar-teachers, selected on the basis of a rigorous international competition for their teaching skills and for the quality of their scholarly work. Together the Junior Fellows and the Senior Fellows lead on-going conversations about pedagogy and research that do much to keep the Core curriculum rigorous and engaging for students and faculty.</p><p>The Society’s website is worth taking a look at: <a href="http://societyoffellows.uchicago.edu" title="http://societyoffellows.uchicago.edu">http://societyoffellows.uchicago.edu</a>. Current and former Fellows are listed there along with a schedule of activities for the current year. The list of institutions that the Junior Fellows transition to after starting their teaching and scholarly careers at Chicago is distinguished indeed. This is an important way for Chicago to extend the influence of its teaching ideals throughout higher education and to insure that the Core remains what it has been and always ought to be: a vital intellectual enterprise taught by our most distinguished and our most promising faculty members.</p> </article> <article> <h1>A look back at opening convocation</h1> <p>sjallen1 — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 14:39:53 +0000</p> <p>At last month’s opening convocation, I had the privilege of welcoming the class of 2014 and their families. For those who may have missed the event, here is a brief excerpt from my speech. (You can also see some highlights of the parting ceremony that takes place immediately after Convocation <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAOD-EM-xqA">here.</a>)</p><blockquote><p>You will read and hear much in the weeks and months to come about how great the University of Chicago is, about its many special traditions, about its various educational heroes. We have a beautiful neo-Gothic campus with a rich architectural history, we have 8 million books in our Libraries, we have many Nobel Prize winners, we have amazing scientific laboratories, we have distinguished faculty who write important books and articles each year, and we have bright, hardworking College students who come to us replete with impressive SAT scores and high school class ranks and fascinating extracurricular activities. It all adds up to a great university. Or does it? What in fact makes a great university? </p><p>Books, libraries, scientific laboratories, famous faculty, and gifted students--they are all important. But equally important are the foundational ideals of the University of Chicago, dating to the University's inception in 1892, which presumed that we were to be <span>one</span> University, and that as one University we would be solely devoted to intellectual excellence. From its founding Chicago was unique, for it was to be a place without crippling boundaries. Of course the University came to have organizational units, and disciplinary departments, and it even had a territory defined by street grids. But in fact these were all to be rather secondary. For the original impulse of the University was to constitute a community of research and teaching in the liberal arts in which all members shared common values. These common values essentially created a common citizenship, devoted to the discovery of knowledge and to the love of learning.</p><p>This common citizenship founded on shared intellectual inquiry was evident in the plans of our founding President in 1892, William Rainey Harper, for the relationship of graduate and undergraduate education. Harper's driving ambition was to create a research university in which collegiate education would be centrally integrated to the work of scholarship and research. Harper not only wanted an institution doing "real university work" and infused with what he called "the university spirit"--by which he meant that it should be a place fiercely devoted to the generation of new knowledge--but he believed that undergraduates should share fully in the deliberations of that spirit, and that they should then use their educations to transform and improve the public good. Research was salutary not only as a way of advancing new knowledge, but as a way of publicly demonstrating the imagination and creativity of the faculty and of mobilizing the capacity of the University to improve and enrich society. Hence Harper’s conviction that the University was a powerful defender of democracy and liberal values by its capacity to touch “life, every phase of life, at every point.…The university is of the people, and for the people, whether considered individually or collectively.”</p><p>I believe that Harper's values distinguish the enduring greatness of your University--not rankings, not prizes, not external honors--but rather the uncanny ability of the professorial faculty to encourage in you, as they have encouraged tens of thousands of students since 1892, that intellectual seriousness, that devotion to general learning, and that excitement for intellectual discovery and risk taking which has come to define the character of the University. Because they espouse the broadening and coordinating features of general education, our faculty advocate a special brand of intellectual citizenship that is good for a lifetime, whatever profession you eventually join. Our kind of education has a great seismic force. Once assimilated, its force endures. Hence, Harper’s vision that the University would constitute a force for democratic enlightenment that would enrich the public good is no less compelling today than it was over a century ago.</p><p>As students at a College that stands at the center of a major research university, you will have available to you an incredible array of fascinating courses and programs, taught by women and men who are leaders in their scholarly fields. You will come to know--first-hand--their passion for learning, and this will quickly become your passion as well. Our alumni repeatedly tell us that the educations they gave to themselves at Chicago not only transformed their personal lives, but that they left Chicago well prepared to engage the world with intellectual fearlessness. Your self-education will depend on your confidence in yourself and your respect for your fellow students, and on your capacity to welcome thoughtful dissent. Such an education is a precious gift, a life-long gift, and wondrously, it is a gift that you can only give to yourself.</p></blockquote><p> </p> </article> <article> <h1>Coming soon: the history of the first University of Chicago</h1> <p>sjallen1 — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 15:15:40 +0000</p> <p>As some of you may be aware, I write an annual monograph about the history of the University. In the past, I have examined such topics as student housing, the arts, and academic freedom at the University. (All of these monographs are now available <a href="http://college.uchicago.edu/about-college/college-publications">online</a>.)</p><p>This year, I am writing about the history of the first University of Chicago, the one founded by Stephen A. Douglas in 1856 that collapsed in financial insolvency in 1886. This story is important for a number of reasons, not the least of which is to help us better understand how our University came to be founded and how it quickly escaped the narrow denominational aura that damaged the reputation of its predecessor.</p><p>The story has lots of drama—feuding within the Board of Trustees of the first University, conspiracies to fire one President and the actual firing of another, bouts of extreme optimism followed by deep pessimism, a divisive law suit with an insurance company that essentially bankrupted the first University, extraordinary efforts by a group of Baptist clergymen to re-establish the University in the Morgan Park neighorhood on the far south side of Chicago, complex political maneuvering among Baptist educational leaders on the national level, and so forth.</p><p>The story also helps us to understand not only what William Rainey Harper did in 1890-1891 in imagining a completely new concept for a University, but also why he had to do what he did in order to ensure that the second version of a University of Chicago flourished in a way that the first proved incapable of. </p> </article> <article> <h1>"Big Problems" Turns 10</h1> <p>sjallen1 — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 21:55:14 +0000</p> <p>The College’s innovative Big Problems program has reached an important milestone, and I want to take a moment to celebrate the program, its founders, and all the colleagues and students who have participated in it so far.</p><p>This year is the tenth anniversary of the Big Problems program. It began in 2000 with the idea of offering advanced courses in the spirit of the College’s Core to advanced students in the College. Bill Wimsatt in Philosophy and Paul Hunter in English suggested that the College begin to offer a regular set of courses designed for third- and fourth-year students. These courses would take on matters of global or universal concern, intersecting with several disciplines, and affecting a variety of interests. </p><p>From the start, Professors Wimsatt and Hunter felt that Big Problems courses should be team-taught by colleagues across disciplines and divisions. They believed the program should bring rigorous intellectual engagement and disciplinary learning to its subject matter and make an effort to include voices from outside the academy. The first Big Problems courses on the sustainability of development, economic and cultural globalization, and evolution, set a high standard for the program.</p><p>Since that time, the Big Problems program has continued to offer courses that explore a wide range of complex issues. These courses have tackled science and religion, war, energy policy, the AIDS epidemic, memory and mourning, and even romantic love. During Autumn quarter, William Schweiker in the Divinity School and Donald York in Astronomy will co-teach “Cosmos and Conscience: Looking for Ourselves Elsewhere.”</p><p>This fall marks another important moment for the program. John Kelly of Anthropology and Laurens Mets of Molecular Genetics and Cell Biology will succeed Bill Wimsatt as faculty Co-Directors of Big Problems. I am grateful to them for being willing to take over these responsibilities, and to Professor Wimsatt for his many years of hard work creating and sustaining Big Problems.</p><p>I look forward to beginning the second decade of Big Problems under their leadership.</p><p> </p><p> </p> </article> <article> <h1>Welcome to Spacious Ideas</h1> <p>johne — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 05:00:00 +0000</p> <p>In 1962, Alan Simpson, one of my favorite former deans of the College at the University of Chicago, <a href="https://spacious.uchicago.edu/sites/spacious.uchicago.edu/files/simpson.essay_.pdf">gave a speech</a> called “The Marks of an Educated Man.” In it, he reflected on the state of American education, and reaffirmed the value of a true liberal arts education.</p> <p>“[The humanists] understood the possibilities of the whole man and wanted an educational system which would give the many sides of his nature some chance to develop in harmony,” he said. “They thought it a good idea to mix the wisdom of the world with the learning of the cloister, to develop the body as well as the mind, to pay a great deal of attention to character, and to neglect no art which could add to the enjoyment of living. It was a spacious idea which offered every hospitality to creative energy.”</p><p>Simpson’s idea of a liberal education continues to shape the values of the College, and it is an important source of inspiration for this blog.</p> <p>My hope is that this blog will be a forum for spacious ideas of all kinds, a place where the wisdom of the world can mingle with the learning of the cloister.</p> <p>In the same speech, Simpson argued that “an educated man ought to know a little about everything and a lot about something.”</p> <p>In this respect, too, I hope to fulfill Simpson’s vision. I look forward to introducing readers to the areas of my expertise: everyday life in the College, my research on the history of the University and the College, and my scholarly work on the Hapsburg Empire.</p> <p>But I will also take time to focus on other areas of interest—issues in higher education, the city of Chicago, and so forth. From time to time, I will ask my friends and colleagues to weigh in and give a sense of the “full flavor,” as Simpson called it, of their fields. I also very much welcome your comments, ideas, and suggestions.</p> <p>Welcome to the conversation, and welcome to Spacious Ideas.</p> </article> </main></body></html>