Trends For 2016
This piece originally ran in 2014. I am running it again. The basics don’t change much. WVW Every sector of the nation’s economy is in flux. Change breeds strength, but if pursued for its own sake may pervert primary purpose. …
Category Service
A Personal Reflection for the Season
This reflection was originally published on December 15, 2008. It is worth a second look. 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…
Our Universities: Stakeholders on Student Debt Plan Need to Put Skin in the Game
The basis for President Obama’s action to cap student loan responsibility at 10% of earned income for 20 years (10/20 plan) is that education is a public good and the public should pay for it. Parts of the public, employers…
Our Universities: It’s Jobs, Stupid
Universities should be sharply focused on academic excellence and helping students develop the power to think. Thinking and doing creates value. And jobs follow like a “shadow on dry thirsty land.” Employment will be a place of refuge for thought…
Our Universities: Rural Institutions and Economic Impact
In many rural areas, even those with a university, there is a pervasive sense that economic vitality is impossible, the challenges too great, rewards too limited and regional poverty too persistent. This is a costly misconception. “Nobody made a greater…
Our Universities: Students and Their Aspirations
Guiding any organization by entitlement’s nose is risky: It is ruinous in universities. And, while entitlement rears its quality-killing head too frequently in learning environments, it is not yet pervasive. But, it’s on the way. “You cannot help people permanently…
Our Universities: Sowing and Reaping
The best ideas confront common sense with a baseball bat. They defy logic because we cannot see beyond overly simplistic views of how things work. If you give something away it must have little or no value. Right? Wake the…
Our University – 21st Century Institutions
Universities have a duty to help create a more effective republic. While this purpose has remained constant over the centuries, the means and methods necessary to accomplish that purpose must continually evolve to keep up with an advancing society. In…
Our University: The Creation of a Middle Class
This column, in a slightly modified form, originally ran in August 2008. Walter Wendler Universities provide a key ingredient for the foundation of a free society. They help create, through active faculty and engaged students, the fabric of informed economic…
Our University: Reserve Officers’ Training Corps
The season and current events cause me to offer this slightly modified piece originally published on July 11, 2008. The importance and value of voluntary military training in universities cannot be argued, nor can the interdependence in mission of a…
Our University – Bologna
The Bologna Process is an ongoing effort of the European Higher Education Area to “tune” universities from 47 countries so that more predictable outcomes and consistency across national and institutional boundaries, leading to transparency in expectations, employment preparedness and certification,…
Our University – Staff Excellence
Underestimating the value of excellent faculty and students is impossible. They are the substance of the university and what separates the good institutions from the average ones. Otherwise what is excellent is ordinary and that is impossible by definition. Likewise,…
Our University – Service Motive
Anyone paying attention to higher education knows the familiar mantra: teaching, research and service. This three legged stool of mission is resident in nearly every public and private university in the United States and it is even leaking into institutions…
Our University – 37°42’55.85”N, 89°13’16.01”W, 444.00’
Distinctiveness is the strength of any organization. True at any time, in any place, its importance is magnified when the competitive climate intensifies. We own geographic distinctiveness. The location above, the front steps of the recently renovated Morris Library, is…
Our University- Reach
Reach is the ability of an institution; a family, a university, a seat of commerce, a government to generate impact beyond its home or geographic boundaries. Reach comes from quality. Quality comes from knowledge and insight. Knowledge and insight are…
Our University – Concern and Compassion
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…
Our University – Building Community
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…
Our University – The Mathematics of Jack Graham
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,…
Our University and the Creation of a Middle Class
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…
Our University – Dr. Seymour Bryson
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…
Our University: Reserve Officers’ Training Corps
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…
Our University – Lay Leadership
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…
Our University and Social Purpose
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…
Our University and the Idea of Accountability
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…
Quality is Our First Job
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…
Our University – Our Neighborhood
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…