Ronald Crutcher, Interview

Interview with Ronald Crutcher, President of the University of Richmond Dr. Ronald Crutcher is President of the University of Richmond and a found- ing member and co-chair of Liberal Education & America’s Promise (LEAP), the American Association of Colleges & Universities’ Centennial Campus Ac- tion, Advocacy, and Research Initiative. He is also a world-renown musician and was the first cellist to earn a Doctorate in the Musical Arts from Yale University. He has held numerous teaching and administrative positions, including the of- fice of President of Wheaton College, Massachusetts and before that Provost at Miami University of Ohio. DOI: 10.17323/1814–9545–2015–4–21–32 Thank you very much, Dr. Crutcher, for taking the time to do this interview, especially while on sabbatical in Germany. I’m sure our read- ers will really appreciate it. So, maybe to start, could you say a little bit about what led you into academia and the liberal arts? You’re mul- titalented, you’re a successful musician and a successful academic, and I’m sure you could have gone in a number of different directions. Why the liberal arts? Ronald Crutcher: Well, it’s really that the person who influenced me most, other than my parents, as a young man, was my cello professor, Elizabeth Potteiger, who was a professor at Miami University, Oxford, Ohio. She started teaching me when I was fourteen years old, and I would travel from Cincinnati to Oxford to study with her. And it was really her model that presented an option—a profession that I had not ever even considered. I thought about becoming a lawyer or an ar- chitect, or perhaps a teacher, but never a university professor. And so over the time that I studied with her, I decided that a life in academia would be a way for me to do a number of things. To begin with, to have an impact on the lives of young people the way she had an impact on my life. But secondly, to perform chamber music—she played in a string quartet there. And then thirdly to teach classes, because I had always enjoyed teaching, working with folks. So that was really the overall impetus. When I was at Miami—Miami happens to be a liberal arts university; it’s a large university, but it’s unusual in that it requires all the students, no matter what their major, to take a liberal arts core. It’s called the “Miami Plan for Liberal Education” right now—I was one http://vo.hse.ru/en/ LIBERAL ARTS & SCIENCES EDUCATION of those students who wanted to learn everything. To professor Pot- teiger’s consternation, actually, because I would load up lots of courses. I would take more courses than I really needed to, and she, of course, wanted me to practice the cello more. And I was interested in German, and Psychology, and Mathematics, because I just wanted to learn as much as I possibly could. And that was supported by my other professors there. I was in the Honors Program at Miami University. That really was my grounding. It started in High School, yes, but really I honed the interests that I had and that zeal to want to learn everything, which is of course impossible. But I didn’t know that at the time. But it’s worthwhile to try, anyway, right? It’s worthwhile to try, yes. What you said about Miami University is interesting, because here in Russia there’s a movement toward American style liberal arts education or some aspects of it. But there’s also an emphasis on publish- ing internationally, because Russia right now is really interested in in- creasing its universities’ standings in the various world rankings. So could you speak about how a large research university can integrate parts of the liberal arts style education without having to completely rebuild itself or change its identity? Yes. I think that, in the United States, if you look at Harvard and Yale, on the undergraduate level, or Princeton—your alma mater—they pro- vide for their undergraduates a first class liberal arts education. Yet they are also first class research institutions. So I think the key is to ensure that there are opportunities for the younger students… In Rus- sia I imagine they don’t have what we consider undergraduates, if it’s based more on the European system… It is, but because of the Bologna Process they’re shifting to the Bach- elor’s—Master’s degree sequence. Yes, of course, the Bologna Process will change that. But my point is that there are opportunities for professors who are doing a lot of research to have an impact on younger students as well, with the assistance of graduate assistants. The other thing I might add, is that I think technology can be of assistance here as well, in the following way… Obviously, what I’m about to say doesn’t work to a massive scale, so if you have a hundred thousand students at the university it might not work… But you can utilize technology to deliver some of the content to students, so the professor is not required to lecture constantly, but rather can spend his or her time with smaller groups of students, ba- sically ensuring that they learn the content. Interrogating them, if you will, about the content. Voprosy obrazovaniya / Educational Studies. Moscow. 2015. No 4. P. 21–32 Interview with Ronald Crutcher, President of the University of Richmond The Socratic method… It really forces them to think beyond what they’ve read. I think that sounds very feasible, actually. There are some universities here with around a hundred thousand students, but there are plen- ty that aren’t that big, or have multiple campuses, so the effect is different. I think the key, at least in my own experience both as a student as well as a professor, is that professors should never underestimate the power that they have to transform the life of the student or to change that student’s thinking. Such that… let’s say you have a student with very, very narrow interests… to open that student up, so suddenly he or she has this zeal for Psychology, or Biology, or Music… so that students realize that being more broadly educated is going to help them to succeed in life. Do you think that a sort of liberal arts education at the undergraduate stage will have a long-term, positive impact on the research output of universities when the students… of course a small portion of them will become academics… but when they do, do you think they’ll be more adept at research, just because of the liberal arts foundation? I think so. I don’t have any way to prove that, but I would say that my intuitive response is “yes,” because those who really embrace the liberal arts approach are the individuals who will become lifelong learn- ers earlier. Some people do it accidentally, or eventually. They get into a job, then they realize they want to do something else, and they start reading on their own. But that process will begin sooner, and my experience has been that when opportunities are presented for those students to be engaged in research early on they really do well with it and they want to do more of it. So, hypothetically, “yes,” but I don’t really have any evidence to prove it. I don’t know if anyone has tried to come up with quantifiable evidence for that or not, but it would be interesting. Actually, as I was responding to you I was thinking about that. I don’t know that they have. It would be interesting to find out. Yes. It would be a pretty large research project, but it sure would be interesting. What about the role that students play? I feel like my students sometimes learn more from each other than from me. I set the context, and they talk. If they’re friends with each other, then they learn more. I’ve noticed that. http://vo.hse.ru/en/ LIBERAL ARTS & SCIENCES EDUCATION That’s why I said what I did before, about the content being delivered in a way other than having the professor be “a sage on the stage,” because, to answer your question directly, students can learn a lot from each other. And in fact, we as professors can learn from them as well. Most certainly. I think, the idea istomodel the notion that there’s not one person in the room—the professor—who has all the knowledge, per se. He is, or she is, very knowledgeable and experienced, but that doesn’t mean that he or she can’t learn something from you, or that you as a student can’t learn something from your colleagues and friends, even more than what you learn from the professor. Again, I think it sets up this model of learning as being holistic and being lifelong but still ground- ed in facts and content. What about civic engagement, speaking of students learning in different environments, students learning from each other. I don’t know what the general opinions about civic engagement are in Russia, but could you maybe talk a little bit about it? Sure. I think that civic engagement and social responsibility are criti- cally important. I’m going to share with you my view of higher education, in the United States, at least, and that is, I feel that we ought to be producing citizens who are prepared to lead in a very, very complex world, an incredibly complex and global world.

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