“A Hell Of A JOB GETTING IT SQUARED AROund” THREE PRESIDENTS IN TIMES OF FUNDAMENTAL CHANGE: ERNEST D. BURTON, LAWRENCE A. KIMPTON, AND EDWARD H. LEVI J OHN W . B OYER OCCASIONAL papERS ON HIGHER EDUCATION XXII XXIITHE COLLEGE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO Joseph Regenstein Library, 1970 “A HELL OF A JOB GETTING IT SQUARED AROund” Three Presidents in Times of Fundamental Change: Ernest D. Burton, Lawrence A. Kimpton, and Edward H. Levi INTRODUCTION ur academic year is well launched and by all accounts our students are doing very well. There are several ways O to express the quality of the student body — including their achievements in high school and the work they did to win admission in a very competitive environment, and of course their accomplishments after they graduate. We have heard about our excellent admissions numbers from Jim Nondorf today, and we will have to wait to see the post-graduation results for our current students, yet I do not doubt that they will make us proud. But the most important and the most gratifying expression of the quality of our students is the work that they do with us every day in our classrooms and our laboratories. Of that there can be no doubt. I have become used to being stopped by colleagues — at the beginning of the academic year especially — to be told about the intellectual energy, ambition, and creativity of our students, and it never ceases to be gratifying. Among the most important reasons why these extraordinary students come to the College is the faculty. They come to learn from you and they This essay was originally presented as the Annual Report to the Faculty of the College on October 30, 2012. John W. Boyer is the Martin A. Ryerson Distinguished Service Professor in History and the College, and Dean of the College. “A HELL OF A JOB GETTING IT SQUARED AROund” 2 look to you as models of devotion to rigorous inquiry. We are fortunate to be the stewards of an academic community where our students share the aspirations of the faculty and look to us for inspiration and guidance. Our students are why our work matters to the world. It is fitting, there- fore, to remind ourselves that as a faculty we will continue to thrive insofar as our students thrive, and it is our joint well-being as a shared academic community that has motivated the essential investments in our students that we have engaged in for the past decade and more. Last year we lost two colleagues — Bert Cohler and Herman Sinaiko — who embodied this ideal of a shared academic enterprise. Herman and Bert were inspiring teachers who introduced generations of students to the pleasures and the demands of learning in our University. Throughout their careers they also cared deeply about the broader communal struc- tures that sustained our academic work. This year, in their honor, we will rename the two beautiful common rooms in Burton-Judson, one for Herman and one for Bert, and inaugurate in those settings a series of talks for students by Quantrell award winning teachers. Both of our late colleagues were Quantrell winners, and both would have been delighted to engage with our students in his way. Herman as dean of students in the College, Bert as resident head at Burton-Judson, and both of them in many other ways, were acutely aware of the fact that although our community is primarily academic we must always be mindful of the importance of our physical and social infrastructure to our academic mission. The disasters in Pierce Tower last year brought that fact home to us. I am therefore particularly pleased to report that we are proceeding quickly toward much needed new reinvest- ments in our residential system in the College. When we build new residence halls, we are not merely constructing bedrooms. In its mission as an educational community the University needs to encourage strong 3 JOHN W. BOYER patterns of friendship, sociability, and intellectual collaboration among our College students and to do so in the context of vibrant residential communities. The future of the residential system involves some of the most significant decisions that the University will make about the future of the College in the years ahead. It presents our generation of faculty with an historic opportunity to strengthen the College and to contribute to the long-term welfare of the University. These investments will take place in the context of a larger, University- wide fundraising effort to renew and strengthen the University of Chicago. As our contribution to this new campaign, College has embarked on a plan to raise $500 million over the next six years. The College’s cam- paign will be guided by a four part logic. We will raise money for our academic enterprise, for the financial aid that is essential to our students, for our efforts to help students make intelligent transitions to life after graduation, and for our many engagements with communities beyond campus — in Chicago, the nation and the world. Together the initiatives encompassed in these four categories are designed to secure for the College the future it deserves as one of the most rigorous undergraduate institu- tions in the nation, and one moreover which welcomes the very best students and makes success possible for them at each stage of their careers. Our fundraising for academic programs will center on an effort to secure a large gift to endow the Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts and thereby support the teaching of our students in the Core curriculum directly through endowment, and indirectly through operating funds freed up by the endowment. Essentially, we wish to secure substantial new resources to provide strong and enduring support for our teaching programs in general-education in the College, programs that are signa- ture elements of a liberal arts education at Chicago. At the same time we will also seek to add additional College Professorships to the faculty. “a hell of a job getting it squared around” 4 These are endowed positions for senior colleagues who exemplify the ideal of teacher-scholar first articulated by William Rainey Harper and regularly invoked by all of our presidents, because it embodies the spirit of the University of Chicago as a place where the faculty regards teaching at all levels as vital to the life of learning and the fruitfulness of research. Finally, we will ask our alumni and friends to help us expand the funds for research that are available to our students. Research opportunities bring our College students in direct contact with our distinguished fac- ulty in a host of productive ways, giving our students an immediate and palpable sense of how challenging, exciting, and risky it is to try to gen- erate new knowledge, and to do so in the context of the proud standards of a great research university. We will also be seeking new funds in support of financial aid for our students — including new gifts to the Odyssey Scholarships that will allow us to reduce or eliminate loan obligations to more families with low and moderate incomes. Moreover, we will seek funds to support merit aid for some of our most talented students — students with many choices about where to attend college. Finally, we also want to add funds that will allow us to support more international students in the College. Adequate financial aid is an ever-moving target in an educational mar- ketplace where the full cost of attendance is $61,390 — this year. The sacrifices made by every family to make a Chicago education possible for our students are extraordinary. We must not lose sight of that fact. As much as we are concerned about access to a Chicago education, we are also concerned that our students have as many opportunities as possible to make thoughtful and effective plans for their futures. We have begun to build a suite of programs through the Office of Career Advancement (formerly CAPS) that helps our students connect with alumni and professional networks in multiple fields, and also to take 5 JOHN W. BOYER advantage of the resources available in our professional schools. These programs — in the arts and business, science and technology, education and law, journalism and health professions, and public and social services — are valuable investments in the success of our students. Expanding the College’s Metcalf Internship program is also a crucial feature of this area of activity. All of these initiatives are important tools for recruiting the best students to the College and giving practical reality to our belief that a rigorous liberal education leads to distinguished professional success in many endeavors. Our alumni have always found meaning and success in professional lives of remarkable diversity. Our contemporary career pro- grams acknowledge that fact for the sake of this generation of students. Alumni are eager to give generously to support these initiatives. Our faculty, our students, and our alumni are fully engaged in the world beyond campus, and the fourth pillar of our campaign takes its inspiration from that fact. We will seek to secure funding to insure the growth and the permanence of our Civilization courses, our Center in Paris, and our many other projects abroad. Our Civilization courses in Jerusalem and Vienna were endowed by generous gifts from College alumni in the past year, and we look forward with pleasure to the spring quarter of 2013 when the 17th Civilization course abroad will be inau- gurated in Istanbul. This year will also see new investments in our Chicago Studies initiatives, and we will seek support from alumni throughout the coming campaign for expanded academic, cultural, and social engagement with the many communities of the city of Chicago.