II “BROAD AND CHRISTIAN IN THE FULLEST SENSE” WILLIAM RAINEY HARPER AND THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO J OHN W. B OYER OCCASIONAL PAPERS ON HIGHER XVEDUCATION XV THE COLLEGE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO William Rainey Harper, 1882, Baldwin and Harvey Photographic Artists, Chicago. I I “BROAD AND CHRISTIAN IN THE FULLEST SENSE” William Rainey Harper and the University of Chicago INTRODUCTION e meet today at a noteworthy moment in our history. The College has now met and surpassed the enrollment W goals established by President Hugo F. Sonnenschein in 1996, and we have done so while increasing our applicant pool, our selectivity, and the overall level of participation by the faculty in the College’s instructional programs. Many people—College faculty, staff, alumni, and students—have contributed to this achievement, and we and our successors owe them an enormous debt of gratitude. I am particularly grateful to the members of the College faculty—as I know our students and their families are—for the crucial role that you played as teachers, as mentors, as advisers, and as collaborators in the academic achievements of our students. The College lies at the intellectual center of the University, an appropriate role for the University’s largest demographic unit. We affirm academic excellence as the primary norm governing all of our activities. Our students study all of the major domains of human knowledge, and they do so out of a love of learning and discovery. They undertake general and specialized studies across the several disciplines, from the humanities to the natural sciences and mathematics to the social sciences and beyond, This essay was originally presented as the Annual Report to the Faculty of the College on October 25, 2005. John W. Boyer is the Martin A. Ryerson Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of History and the College, and Dean of the College. I “BROAD AND CHRISTIAN IN THE FULLEST SENSE” 2 I drawing encouragement, inspiration, and confidence from several hundred brilliant faculty teachers as they go. The College is a strong force for the inter- relatedness of knowledge and a powerful agent to ensure the coalescence of the University’s common purpose. It has served that function with growing authority and effectiveness since its creation as a separate faculty ruling body in November 1930, seventy-five years ago. The University’s reputation for vigorous interdisciplinary practices owes a profound debt to the deep and enduring impact of the College’s core curriculum over the past seventy-five years. In bringing together faculty from all of the arts and sciences and from many of the professional schools, in welcoming the contributions of many advanced graduate students participating in our educational programs, in drawing upon the advice and support of our alumni who, in many fields of professional success, testify to the vibrant, creative power of their liberal educations, and in inviting gifted and highly motivated undergraduate students to join our common endeavor, the College lies at the center of our collective community of learning and discovery. In the 1960s, President Edward H. Levi often described us as one university, a complete university, as an institution that was not a “multi- versity” but one that was distinctly more than the sum of its parts. In our time, such a character of unity amid diversity, of common values and common excellence, is strongly defended by and sustained through the work of the College. The intellectual and the practical well-being of the University and its capacity to sustain the kind of unity so valued by previous generations of scholars and students depend on the College’s academic accomplishments and on the cultural and social cohesion of our students. The College’s welfare depends, in turn, on our capacity to educate our students in rigorous and imaginative ways, to create a welcoming and supportive community life for them on (and beyond) our campus, 3 JOHN W. BOYER I I to support their personal and professional success in all possible ways, and to stay in close touch with them once they have earned the high privilege of becoming our alumni. My primary concern as Dean of the College at this moment in our history is to ensure that we have the human and material resources and the institutional structures in place to sustain the academic success of our students and the educational success of our faculty and to guarantee (as far as that is ever possible) that our success will continue in the genera- tions to come. All of us hope the work that we do with our students provides them with scholarly skills and the habits of mind that will stimulate and support an engaged and thoughtful life at the College and after graduation. We have an obligation as educators to provide the highest quality liberal education. We must do this not only because we promised that we would provide that kind of education when we recruited and admitted our stu- dents, but much more because, as I hope to show later in this report, imaginative teaching and learning is at the heart of the historic mission of this University. Our collective reputation as an institution with powerful teaching traditions is nothing less than remarkable in the history of American higher education. We have done well thus far in sustaining and protecting that reputation. But we must not lose our momentum nor imagine that because we have reached our enrollment goal we have done all we need to do to guarantee that the College of 4,500 students will continue to be excellent and continue to operate effectively. The humanities and social sciences core courses are particularly important as signature elements of our curriculum. These small discussion classes, based largely on original texts, and functioning as true general- education experiences (none do double duty as introductions to disciplines) for all of our students, define our educational culture and set a standard I “BROAD AND CHRISTIAN IN THE FULLEST SENSE” 4 I of rigor and engagement that our students and alumni value. All students in the College will take both the humanities and social sciences sequences during their careers. Insofar as it is still possible, given the current state of knowledge and the academic disciplines, these courses lie at the center of our ability to create a unified educational community and to provide a common liberal education. Evidently, the faculty must lead these courses and define their character if we are to remain a truly faculty-taught and faculty-governed institution. I believe that we need to do all that is possible to sustain current levels of faculty participation in teaching the humanities and social sciences core. I am deeply grateful to the many senior faculty members who, year-in and year-out, provide leadership for our core staffs and an ongoing commitment to teaching in the core. Your dedication to the practice of general education is one of the most vital activities that you undertake on behalf of our students and the larger University community. We have also been extremely fortunate to have the extraordinary service provided by our postdoctoral Harper, Schmidt, and Graham Fellows who teach in our general-education programs and who have the rank of collegiate assistant professors. By selecting highly qualified young scholars with completed doctoral dissertations and strong research profiles who have performed well in a highly competitive national search, we recruit colleagues who are in a position to devote a great deal of their time to preparing the areas taught in the core that they did not cover in their graduate-school studies. The fellows help us maintain the character of the core as belonging to our faculty and to guarantee the across-the- board quality of these courses for all of the College students who take them. I am delighted that last year we were able to announce a gift from the estate of our alumna Katharine Graham to endow four of the collegiate assistant professorships. No greater need exists than to raise more such endowments to secure and to strengthen this wonderful program. We 5 JOHN W. BOYER I I need more such support, which directly benefits both young faculty and our College students. When our students turn from core courses to their majors, they find themselves most frequently in courses taught by the tenured and tenure- track faculty. This is as it should be. Specialized knowledge based on the highest standards of original research reflects the great achievements of the various disciplines, and Chicago’s reputation as one of the most distinguished research universities in the world should be and is visible in the work of our majors. It is vital that our third- and fourth-year students have a suffi- cient number of upper-level, faculty-taught courses available to them in their majors, and that students be able to work in close contact with the faculty in these programs. We need to do much more work to improve the research opportunities available to our students. Our students want these kinds of interactive relationships with the faculty, perhaps more than anything else. The larger College has brought with it many challenges, most of which the faculty has admirably accomplished. It says a great deal about the high sense of responsibility of the Chicago faculty, and about how deeply most faculty members care about the educational mission of the College, that we have been so successful in assimilating an additional eleven hundred students. Some issues remain. For example, the problem of congestion of competing upper-level courses within and among the departments in a relatively small number of instructional time slots, largely on Tuesday and Thursday mornings and on Monday and Wednesday afternoons, is still a serious concern.