Christmas memories are personal, deep and important for me. My family’s New York Christmases with the strong, first generational, influence of Western Europe; Cajun Christmases with their peculiarities of place and culture, half French and half Canadian and only…
It is that season of the year, when the smell of turkey and Christmas tress is in the air. It is that time of year when finals occur. I really have never liked to think of final exams as final. …
In this season of thanksgiving and refreshment, of looking ahead and looking back, little is more central to our university than new ideas and new knowledge that build on the past and shape the future. Looking back and looking…
Barbara Bush acknowledged a number of years ago, possibly when First Lady, what she believed was the most pressing problem in America. “Greed.” We have heard a great deal about greed on Wall Street. Bankers who want to make…
Bill and Jan, our friends from Murphysboro, were at the Saluki football game on Saturday last week. Somewhere along the way the excitement and workings of time got to Bill. He had a cardiac arrest. It was serious business, his…
The greatest challenge of any university is building a community. This probably could be said for any enterprise, including towns in Southern Illinois that so many of us call home. Individuals sometimes get things done, communities almost always get things…
Work is a four letter word. Unfortunately. Our sons, while attending university worked long hours in various jobs, sometimes two or three simultaneously, to make it “on their own.’ It may have come from my constant talk about…
When Mary and I go out to eat we always decide where we are going before we leave. Sometimes we even talk about it on the phone before I get to the house. In other words, this is not a…
Calcification is what happens to soft tissue when it is taken over by calcium. It gets hard. It is no longer resilient. It becomes immobile. And eventually, it cannot work or act the way it was intended to. While I…
St. Paul was a brave man. He summed up the purpose of the Christian Church in ten words uttered to the Church at Corinth: “Be imitators of me, as I also am of Christ.” The simplicity…
I shop at a local hardware store. I have since the day I got into town. Mary and I needed a washer and dryer for our new home and someone we met, our new friend, suggested we go to this particular store. He…
Organizations are frequently in debt to quiet people. Servants who lead. Jack Graham was such a person and his death last week reminds of our responsibility to remember. There was an era at SIU in which a forceful, visionary,…
Tenure has changed markedly since its inception as an academic concept. It is often confused with the idea of sinecure. Tenure protects a faculty member from a board of trustees or, in public universities, an elected official who might not…
My mother worked as a riveter sewing sheet metal to plane wings in a defense plant on Long Island during the big war. Countless others did too. My in-laws worked at Grumman on Long Island for a combined total of…
Any good university is concerned first and foremost, now and always, with academic excellence. That is our purpose. 128 university presidents signed onto The Amethyst Initiative, a recent effort suggesting the drinking age should be lowered to 18. The primary…
In different settings people use the phrase “two sides of the house”. When you hear this relative to a university the subject is the idea that there are academic issues, and everything else is “the other side of…
I is not my intent to proselytize anyone in what follows. I will not try to force my views of the world we live in, or the one I think I will occupy for eternity. I will not…
I recently had the opportunity to spend time in Vietnam. For veterans who served “in country” Vietnam is a different place today. It is teeming with free enterprise, the entrepreneurial spirit. New business start-ups are everywhere and there is a…
Visiting with parents and prospective students always reinforces what is most important. The Core Curriculum at our university is a very good one, and provides many options for students to experience a range of intellectual exposure to ideas and subjects…
Universities are affected by many forces at work in the environment. Location, student population, faculty composition and a multitude of other factors shape what a university is. On occasion, an individual will come along and join a university, sometimes as…
The idea of coupling military training and university education originated in 1783. New York Governor George Clinton proposed that civilian colleges, one in each state of the union, offer military training to students. The construct is remarkably similar to…
In places of worship we often think about the importance of lay leadership. No matter how powerful the spiritual leader, how driven by God, how adroit at understanding the business of the organization, how gifted in dealing with people helping…
Educating professionals was not central to university life until the last part of the 19th century. It was, in a fashion, introduced through the Morrill Land Grant of 1863, and reinforced by Charles Eliot at Harvard as the 19th century…
I had occasion recently to reflect on the social purpose of a university. Actually, this reflection took place as I held my grandson and thought a bit about this little fellow’s future. My life’s work is the university, so my…
There are many perspectives that you can take of our university, ways to see it, ways to engage it, ways to experience it. I have had, over the years, a number of opportunities to talk with parents of students. They…
A farmer plants crops. The seasons, and the sun, the rain, the soil, all work in combination to bring forth fruit from sown seed. At this juncture in the university calendar what we do feels a bit like farming…and its harvest time.…
In a great university… this could probably be said for any great organization… individuals must feel responsibility for the future, that it rests on their actions and decisions. This creates a powerful kind of accountability, a deep sense of purpose…
Recently I was asked to address honors students in Union County regarding their futures. I am taking the liberty of sharing a condensed version of those comments as hints that might be of value to highschoolers who are about to…
Moral perspective is the legitimate work of a university, for without it there is no possibility of intellectual fulfillment, advancement, achievement, or satisfaction. Intellect and morality are like inhaling and exhaling, one without the other is of no real utility. …
Work is a four letter word, but not the kind our mothers and fathers used to scold us for using. The people of Southern Illinois are not afraid to work. Hard work will always produce results and fruit does not…
Over the past few months research, economic development, our library, intercollegiate athletics, graduate study, quality, leadership and resources have been addressed, among a number of other topics. The center of our University, its sole purpose for being though is about…
The ability of our university to reach full potential and to engender in students a concentrated and powerful academic experience rests with the nature of the campus as a place to live, as well as a place to study. Ideally,…
Campus evokes strong memories for graduates. The word was first used in the United States to describe the ground Princeton University occupied. In a letter Charles C. Beatty 1775 wrote to his brother-in-law Enoch Green 1760 on January 31, 1774:…
We are conditioned to think “undergraduate” when we hear the words “college student.” When we think of growing our university to more ably serve a greater number of students you can feel the predisposition building, we are thinking of freshman…
Creating a strong sense of community for students, faculty, staff, alumni and friends is crucial to building a strong university. There are many avenues through which communities are built, but one that is undeniably powerful for public research universities is…
You may have heard the old adage; the value of real estate is determined by three factors, location, location, and location. Here is a twist as we think about our university; the quality of the university is determined by three…
Stock certificates are used to prove partial ownership of a corporation. A bearer’s stock certificate entitles the holder to exercise all legal rights associated with the stock. Holders of stock certificates want the value of the stock to increase thereby…
The greatest example of a beneficial public-private partnership in our nation is public higher education. Any student of history knows the key to glory in our republic is the balance between the private lives of citizens and their support of…
Wanting our university to grow in stature and importance, because it will be a better friend to our region, is an appropriate and powerful aspiration. There is only one way to do it. Seeking quality, defined and heralded as academic…
Universities are a particular type of thread in a neighborhood fabric. In cities, neighborhood is a highly local concept, comprising maybe a few blocks, but not so with Southern, nestled between two rivers, and twice that many cultures. Our university…
I came to work one morning last week and noticed a policeman raising a flag. For those of you who don’t know our campus, this was a surprise because Robert Reid raised and lowered the campus flags every day. An…
