The coming of a new millenium

Although I sit at my computer to write this column at the end of March, contemplating when you will read these observations leads me to realize that yet another academic year is coming to an end. Likely as you read this, you are busy with exams, grades and the usual round of bringing the semester to a close. While I realize that in today's world of higher education, the traditional boundaries of beginnings and endings can become blurred, still I have found that most faculty and students hold to the academic year as a marker of time and progress. With that in mind, I note that this summer will be a time for many of us to plan the academic year spanning a new millennium.

The bewildering mixture of promise and threat

Such a marker cannot pass unnoticed. Indeed, one reflection from a small group of Western European and American educators stands out in my mind as particularly erudite because it is able to focus our attention both backward and forward, using our past to presage our future. This group met last May 1998 in Glion, Switzerland, to address the issues we face as educators. There, acknowledging the bewildering mixture of promise and threat that we face and feel as this millennium comes to its close, they proposed that the essential key--though not the only key--to human well-being in this daunting new world is knowledge.

But, knowledge is not free. It may be thought of as the new precious metal of the 21st century. In a sense, what coal and iron once were to the industrial era, knowledge is to the information society. At the same time, it is not a naturally occurring resource to be mined. Rather, knowledge needs an environment that encourages and nurtures personal discovery and individual creation. It must be coaxed into existence by reflection and inquiry. Knowledge requires thinking creatively and critically, exercising judgment, sorting through complexities, tolerating ambiguity and adapting to change.

Those things on which the future of humankind will chiefly depend in the new millennium--education, personal skills, effective capacities and sustainable communities, as well as wise leadership, informed choice, discipline, sound policies, international agreements and the humane use of technology and the judicious and benevolent use of resources--will depend increasingly on knowledge: knowledge discovered, knowledge gained, knowledge tested and knowledge shared and knowledge applied.

And where does society turn, to whom do they go for this knowledge? They come to us, the faculty, those who carry on the work of our colleges and universities. And, they come to us for even more than accurate data and reliable information; more even than dependable standards and useful knowledge. What they seek from us is that we be bearers and custodians not only of knowledge, but also of the values on which that knowledge depends. They expect not only professional skills, but also the ethical obligations that underlie those professional skills. They demand of us scholarly inquiry, disciplined learning and broad understanding. And, they demand of us the means to make inquiry, learning and understanding possible and enduring. In essence, we the faculty of today must be the creators of knowledge and the teachers of those who will create knowledge in the future.

Reflect and determine our role

As challenged by the group meeting in Glion: "In its institutional life and its professional activities, the university must reaffirm that integrity is the requirement, excellence the standard, rationality the means, community the context, civility the attitude, openness the relationship, and responsibility the obligation upon which its own existence and knowledge itself depend. For 900 years of the present millennium, the university, as a community dedicated to these values, has served society well. Its effectiveness in the new millennium will depend on its reaffirmation of these ancient values as it responds creatively to the new challenges and opportunities that confront it.

This is the moment for both society and the university to reaffirm the social compact on which our future depends. It is the time for each of us to reflect and determine our role in making this happen."

I wish each of you a fine summer of reflection, renewal and reaffirmation as educators, mentors of a new generation of learners who are not only highly knowledgeable and skilled but who are also broadly educated, self-motivated, aware of their heritage, conscious of their obligations and ethically responsible in their careers and lives.



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