ALL ABOUT

MENTA Publication of theORING ORING Empire State College Mentoring Institute

Issue 32 • Spring 2007 MENTORING INSTITUTE ALL ABOUT ADVISORY BOARD 2006 - 2007 MENTORING Eric Ball ...... Center for Distance Learning ISSUE 32 Anne Breznau ...... Office of Academic Affairs SPRING 2007

Tina Wagle ...... Center for Graduate Programs Alan Mandell Director, Mentoring Institute Editor [email protected] Karyl Denison Eaglefeathers ...... Long Island Center Kirk Starczewski Director of College Relations Julie Gedro ...... Central New York Center Publisher [email protected]

Margaret Clark-Plaskie ...... Genesee Valley Center Gael Fischer Director of Publications Designer

Alan Mandell ...... Metropolitan Center and Hope Ferguson Writer, Office of College Relations Mentoring Institute Director Copy Editor

Frieda Mendelsohn ...... Niagara Frontier Center PHOTOGRAPHY

Making Theatre, Making a Difference, Mike Merrill ...... The Harry Van Arsdale Jr. principal photography by Rik Walton. Also, thanks to Stock Studios Center for Labor Studies for photography in this issue. Other photos courtesy of faculty and staff of Wayne Ouderkirk ...... Northeast Center Empire State College, including Mel Rosenthal. Deborah Noble ...... Verizon Corporate College Program PRODUCTION Marie Tondreau ...... Hudson Valley Center Jerry Cronin Director of Management Services Ron Kosiba Betty Wilde-Biasiny ...... Metropolitan Center Print Shop Supervisor Janet Jones Keyboard Specialist College Print Shop Central Services Former Mentoring Institute Chairs Send comments, articles or news to: Xenia Coulter All About Mentoring c/o Alan Mandell Jay Gilbert Empire State College 325 Hudson Street, Fifth Floor Lee Herman New York, NY 10013-1005 646 230-1255 Chris Rounds [email protected] Miriam Tatzel Many thanks to Sandra Coulter for her important contribution to this issue of All About Mentoring.

EMPIRE STATE COLLEGE • ALL ABOUT MENTORING 1

Table of Contents

Editorial – Parallel Lives...... 2 The Independent Learning Situation Audit ...... 48 Alan Mandell Chris Rounds, Central New York Center “Killing the Spirit”? Words and Worldviews: Narrative Facts and Fictions ...... 54 Empire State College in the 21st Century...... 4 Marie Tondreau, Hudson Valley Center Wayne Willis, Genesee Valley Center TwoPoems...... 58 ThisIsTexas,Sugar...... 9 Matt Sanders, Verizon Corporate College Program Heather Ostman, Metropolitan Center No Place to Hide: Doing Learner-Centered Research: An Interview with Anne Bertholf ...... 59 An Interview with Timothy Lehmann (Part I) ...... 14 Alan Mandell, Mentoring Institute Richard Bonnabeau, Center for International Programs TheCombine...... 63 Scholarship, Mentoring, and Wisdom: Yvonne Murphy, Long Island Center Mentoring Institute Reassignment Report ...... 23 Drinking Coffee and Reading Together as a Response to Lorraine Lander, Genesee Valley Center Bowling Alone: Some First Reflections ...... 64 The Immigration Debate: All about Politics, Elliott Lauderdale, The University of South Alabama Economics and the Resurgence of Nativism...... 26 MyFirstDayatSchool ...... 68 Lear Matthews, Metropolitan Center Robert Congemi, Northeast Center Making Theatre, Making a Difference: Solving the Culture Wars, and Saving Civilization While Winter/Summer Institute in Theatre for Development...... 30 We’re At It: The Case for Environmental History ...... 70 Lucy Winner and Katt Lissard, Metropolitan Center Eric Zencey, Center for Graduate Programs and Global Risk, Hard Power and Democratic Imposition ...... 39 Center for International Programs Andrew Arato, Dorothy Hart Hirshon Professor of Political Competencies of Self-Directed Learners ...... 77 and Social Theory, The New School for Social Research Malcolm Knowles Short Circuits, or Refashioning the Scholarly Self Version 2.0 [1] ...... 44 Eric Ball, Center for Distance Learning

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About Mentoring, beginnings can help us entry by historical rigidities and social E D I T O R I A L understand the distinctiveness of the values, hierarchies. Almost concurrently (thus, our ideas, practices, tensions, and ideals that “parallel lives” not our Victorian marriage), launched a project in the first place. More The State University of New York and the than being stymied in nostalgia, a serious British Labor Party both promoted their and critical look at origins can push us educational experiments in the name of to ask how where we began informs the democracy, social justice, and educational ongoing work of an academic community. “openness.” Echoing some key Empire State College values, look at the current mission One “Special” Beginning of the OU: Empire State College came into existence “The Open University is open to as an alternative – as a living critique of people, places, methods and ideas. American higher education, which in the It promotes educational opportunity late 1960s and early 1970s was boiling over. and social justice by providing high- Not only were many people confronting quality university education to all basic questions about “legitimate” who wish to realise their ambitions Parallel Lives knowledge (no writings by or about women, and fulfil their potential. no African Americans, no Latinos or Poles What is a beginning? What must one do or Jews, no systematic questioning of power Through academic research, peda- in order to begin? What is special about and authority?), they were asking equally gogic innovation and collaborative beginning as an activity or a moment or a basic questions about forms and structures partnership it seeks to be a world place? Can one begin whenever one pleases? of learning (buildings and dormitories and leader in the design, content and What kind of attitude, or frame of mind is sports arenas make a university, you can delivery of supported open and necessary for beginnings? only be a serious student when you are 20, distance learning.” taking-in and spitting-out what those who I certainly don’t claim to know all of the know tell us is learning?). The learning Edward Said, Beginnings (1975) nuances of OU history, but as I have tried to contract, the narrative evaluation, credit understand, from its “special” beginnings, for experiential learning, the individualized the OU was committed to “distance degree program, a network of centers and The Value of Beginnings education” (the “wireless university” as it units and programs – the very centrality of It is valuable to think about beginnings. was called in an early vision), and this has mentoring – were introduced, played with, At the same time it’s also true that some always meant a radical vision of educational refined, and then fiddled with again, in the question such an interest in first steps, delivery. Could the contents of a university spirit of creating a very different university. wondering if hidden in such an interest is curriculum, one created by the most This new place (obviously, even the notion really a desire to turn the clock backwards acclaimed academics in the land, be made of “place” had to be up for grabs) was and become preoccupied with a golden available to absolutely anyone over 18 (the to be more flexible, more inclusive, more age. From this skeptical view, the world OU’s only entrance requirement)? Could attentive to student interests and needs, can be neatly divided into the pragmatists, imaginative and efficient systems of course more collaborative, more willing to take in who unabashedly face the world as it production, distribution, student support, what had been left out (both people and (supposedly) is, and the romantics, who, in and assessment be employed that would ideas), and designed to encourage us to keep wishing for utopia, skirt the tasks at hand. ensure that academically rich materials and asking the hardest questions about teaching For these self-proclaimed pragmatists, to services were available anywhere in the UK and learning. What a beginning: tradition- wonder about beginnings thus becomes and soon around the globe? With its more breaking, unachievable, presumptuous, an exercise in systematic deflection. We than 200,000 conferred degrees, its more and, of course for some, completely wrong- miss what we need to see; we imagine than 150,000 current undergraduates and headed from the beginning. better times (that perhaps never existed its 30,000 graduate students, the OU has answered with a resounding “yes” to both at all), which are really only flights of the And Another Beginning imagination. The “pragmatist” can keep questions. What an agenda it has set: how working away, responding to the times. The At about the same time that Empire State incredible it is that the more than 2 million “romantic” can never just get down to it. College was starting out, the British Open students that the OU has served have been University (now the OU) was getting its first able to buck the seemingly unmovable But thinking about beginnings (even in students. Begun as the “University of the rituals of place and perfectly proper study their complexities; even in debates about Air,” the OU shared with us a commitment that higher education in the UK had, it their interpretation) is important. And it is to access – geographical access for sure, seems, set in stone. And now the OU is important because, as Wayne Willis points and also access to a university education by literally everywhere. out in the opening essay of this issue of All individuals and groups that had been denied

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And from there? good learning. And, impressively, this is College nor the OU would ever have been what the OU and other mega-universities born at all.) But remembering beginnings, Empire State College and the Open that have followed its lead have done. and the reasons for and debates about University wanted to change basic those beginnings, can make a difference, Empire State College responded to the assumptions about access to higher particularly if the most cherished values, the need for a new university by creating a education and, certainly, both have done heart of institutional life, are at stake. just that. Each institution has helped chip fascinatingly flexible structure within which away at the ivory tower and disabuse the infinite learning possibilities could be built. If the OU were to decide that distance academy of its elitist assumptions about Why, Empire State College has asked, learning had become unfashionable, or who can learn and where one can learn. But shouldn’t a single mother in Herkimer or a new courses for new students previously it’s also important to see that while the two teacher in Mineola, or a health care worker unwelcome in the university were not worth institutions share commitments to access, in Williamsville, have the opportunity producing, or that market considerations their beginnings also set them off in different to turn their questions and everyday life meant that erecting campuses around the directions. concerns into academic studies, to design UK (or in China) were the way to go, it whole curricula that integrate their work would have lost its core. The OU responded to the need for a new experiences with new projects, and that, If Empire State College were to decide that university by creating the finest, most overall, will give them a chance to find a individualized study was just too expensive, elaborate, and well-conceived courses voice in the academy? In effect, Empire State or involving students in making academic that academia could offer. Why, the OU College has said: through the use of learning decisions was too damn messy, or that has asked, shouldn’t a single mother in contracts developed with a mentor, with an developing interesting, academically rich, Birmingham or a worker in Leeds (or institutional acknowledgement of skills and and elaborate pre-set courses and curricula now, an engineer in Kenya) have the same learning gained outside of official college with no room for improvs, little moves, and opportunity to study British Social History study, and with the promise that students student-mentor collaborations – whether or Shakespeare or Chinese Civilization or will collaborate in the construction of their offered online, face-to-face or in groups string theory as a young man or woman college and graduate study plans, we will – were the way to go, we, too, would have at Warwick or even at Cambridge? Why prove to you that imaginative, work-and-life lost our way. shouldn’t the same books and assignments relevant, and academically sound degrees and opportunities for serious university can take shape. And, impressively, this is Unless, of course, we decide that we have study be available to them? In effect, the what Empire State College has done. the “frame of mind … necessary” to begin OU has said: we will indeed provide these anew. resources and set up state-of-the-art systems It would be ludicrous to claim that selves, of communication and thereby prove to you communities and whole worlds can’t that such a basic democratization of access change, that they are stuck in their origins. will not undercut the essential qualities of (If this were the case, neither Empire State Alan Mandell

It is surprising what it takes to make an adult human being.

– John Berryman, “The Development of Anne Frank,” from The Freedom of the Poet (1976)

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“Killing the Spirit”? Empire State College in the 21st Century

Wayne Willis, Genesee Valley Center

Note: An earlier version of this article was When I first read Smith’s book in the presented as a paper at the Genesee Valley mid-1990s, I thought that, had he known Center’s sixth annual Festival of Ideas, about Empire State College, he would June 20, 2006. have liked a lot of what we did here and the spirit in which we did it. Like Santa n 1990, the noted American historian Cruz, Empire State College was born Page Smith published a blistering during the wave of higher education reform I critique of higher education in the and experimentation that swept through United States. He titled his book, Killing the America from the mid-1960s through the Spirit. Smith had been a long-time professor early ’70s. Empire State College shared at UCLA before coming in the mid-1960s many ideals, goals, structures, and methods to the new University of California at Santa with Santa Cruz and other dissenting and Cruz as a founding faculty member and inventive colleges of this period. A few, like the first provost of one of its divisions, Antioch, had long histories of educational Cowell College. He remained at Santa Cruz Wayne Willis progressivism, derived from the work of during its formative years, but resigned in John Dewey, Alexander Meiklejohn, Arthur operated with a vengeance. The “oases” in 1974 when a university committee denied Morgan, and other early twentieth century this academic “desert” were the “hundreds tenure to a young colleague whom Smith reformers. Most, however, were either upon hundreds of small, obscure colleges believed was especially dedicated to the brand new institutions or new “subcolleges” … whose faculties teach devotedly and school’s radical educational ideals. He had created within otherwise conventional whose students learn happily and well,” concluded, as Gerald Grant and David colleges and universities. In her book, The particularly the community colleges “where Riesman put it, “that a university that had Innovative Campus (1999), Joy Rosenzweig thousands of able and intelligent men and no place for such a teacher had no place Kliewer identifies 314 schools of this type women take their teaching opportunities for him.”1 Smith never returned to the that were created in the United States with the greatest seriousness,” pursuing academic world. For the rest of his life, he during the ’60s and ’70s, not including “their mission with spirit and élan.” These devoted himself to independent scholarship institutions that primarily served adults, colleges, he wrote, are “the hope of higher and raising chickens. offered external degrees, or relied upon education in America.”2 distance learning. While Kliewer excludes Killing the Spirit was largely an updated A “true education,” Smith said, was “one Empire State College on these grounds, statement of the convictions that had taken designed to produce a true person.” To the key characteristics of her “innovative Smith to Santa Cruz a quarter century achieve this goal, students needed to be institutions” fit Empire State College very before. Although a prolific author himself, made “an integral part of the learning well. Smith contended that “the vast majority process.” Smith regretted that the student of the so-called research turned out in the Kliewer closely studied six schools from revolt of the 1960s had not achieved a more modern university is essentially worthless. their founding through the late 1990s. These long-lasting success in its struggle against It does not result in any measurable benefit included two private colleges (Hampshire a bureaucratized, impersonal, “soulless” to anything or anybody … It is busywork College in Amherst, Massachusetts and system of education. Among Smith’s many on a vast, almost incomprehensible scale. Pitzer College in Claremont, California), targets was the continued dominance of It is dispiriting; it depresses the whole and four public institutions (New College in classroom lecturing, “the most inefficient scholarly enterprise; and, most important Sarasota, Florida, Evergreen State College way of transmitting knowledge ever of all, it deprives the student of what in Olympia, Washington, the University of devised,” as well as the least involving. he or she deserves – the thoughtful and California at Santa Cruz, and the University Grading was another of the “greatest considerate attention of a teacher deeply of Wisconsin – Green Bay). She found that obstacles to effective teaching.”3 (From the and unequivocally committed to teaching; in in their early years all of these places had beginning Santa Cruz had rejected letter short, it robs the student of an education.” five “dimensions” that distinguished them grades in favor of narrative evaluations, The worst offenders, according to Smith, from more typical institutions. First, these a method that it has kept to the present, were the great research universities and schools practiced “teaching and learning” although in more recent years a grading the most prestigious liberal arts colleges across disciplinary boundaries. Faculty were option has been added.) where the “publish or perish” principle not organized by departments, but affiliated

EMPIRE STATE COLLEGE • ALL ABOUT MENTORING 5 with interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary What may indeed have been unique about new Hampshire faculty talk about how glad areas of study. They had freedom to create Empire State College is that it took a they were to be released from letter grading. courses and to work independently with liberating vision of higher education that How much of Empire State College’s students on subjects of interest that were had been nurtured in residential, selective, early spirit has survived? When I came to not part of their own formal education or private and public colleges for traditional the Genesee Valley Center in 1977, I was established expertise. Secondly, all six were students and applied it to a nonresidential, amused to hear some mentors who had committed to processes of “student-centered geographically dispersed, open enrollment started with the college in the early ’70s education” that enabled students to take a institution that aimed to serve “individuals talk about how Empire State College was large measure of responsibility for designing of all ages, throughout society, according to losing its energy as an alternative school and their academic programs and shaping the their own lifestyles and educational needs.”5 was in danger, as the philosopher George learning they pursued within their studies. It is this emphasis on vastly widened access Drury put it, of being “resorbed” by the Contract learning was a common feature, to education, along with the methods used as was the use of narrative evaluation. Core to accomplish it, that most differentiates curriculum and distribution requirements Empire State College from philosophically were rejected. Thirdly, each school similar schools, such as Hampshire and If we are to understand considered “experiential learning” to be New College. If we are to understand the the original spirit of our “integral to the academic program” and original spirit of our college, it is crucial encouraged students to engage in “out- to realize that what Empire State College college, it is crucial to of-classroom projects,” internships, and attempted to do was provide for just about realize that what Empire travel study. (However, since most of their everybody the sort of individualized, self- students were of traditional college age, directed, cross-disciplinary, experientially State College attempted they did not ordinarily award credit by rooted, and just plain friendly educational to do was provide for evaluation for prior learning from work experience that was becoming available and life experience.) Fourth, an atmosphere to a minority of academically skilled, just about everybody the of “egalitarianism” prevailed within these independent minded, late adolescents at sort of individualized, academic communities. Everyone usually residential colleges across the country. Thus, dealt with each other on a first-name basis. Empire State College took on a greater self-directed, cross- In some cases, such as Evergreen, faculty challenge than any of the schools studied disciplinary, experientially had no formal title other than “faculty by Kliewer (or by most other researchers). member.” All had highly participatory Many of the satisfactions and frustrations rooted, and just plain governance structures. Finally, there was of professional life at Empire State College friendly educational an “institutional focus on teaching rather over the years stem directly from the than research and/or publication,” which extraordinary ambitiousness of the college’s experience that was was embraced by faculty who displayed an founding vision. becoming available to a ardent “spirit of vocation about teaching.”4 No vision, and certainly no institution, minority of academically I hope that our current experience (or at remains untouched by time. Yet when least our memory) of Empire State College Kliewer published The Innovative Campus skilled, independent is still close enough to this composite in 1999, she was impressed by how well minded, late adolescents description so that we can see how deeply the six schools profiled in her book had indebted our college was to the alternative managed to preserve the qualities that at residential colleges higher education movement of the ’60s and had been most important to them nearly across the country. ’70s. The innovative features that Kliewer 30 years earlier, although Santa Cruz, identifies were as integral to the early Wisconsin – Green Bay, and Pitzer had Empire State College as they were to any of drifted much farther toward conventionality the schools included in her study. When the than Hampshire, Evergreen or New College. prevailing system. What, I wondered, could college enrolled its first students in the fall A quick tour of their web sites seems to they possibly be thinking of? This was at of 1971, it added itself to an educational show that these three are still holding on a time when Empire State College still had counterculture whose formation was already pretty well in 2007. On visiting Hampshire no curricular guidelines for areas of study well under way. While we often speak of with my son two years ago, I found its or disciplines within them; there was no the “mentor role” as if it was a unique students, faculty, and top administrators precise labeling or counting of advanced Empire State College creation, faculty at retained an invigorating sense of themselves or liberal credits; students enrolled to other progressive colleges were already as intellectual and aesthetic free spirits, and study for “months” of time, rather than functioning less and less like traditional conveyed a critical social consciousness a number of credits; they could start a professors and more and more as advisors, that was not as immediately apparent at 16-week enrollment on any week day of guides, and co-learners with their students. mainstream schools. It was poignant to hear the year except for the August reading

EMPIRE STATE COLLEGE • ALL ABOUT MENTORING 6 period. During degree program planning, a In 1979, the college began to codify other hand, the notion that the college was student and mentor could put together any guidelines for concentrations in response an “adult college” weakened our sense of combination of transcript credits, CLEP to demands from the New York State fraternal connection to institutions like exams, credit by evaluation requests, and Education Department. The more specific Hampshire and New College, thereby learning contracts and give it whatever the guideline, the more likely it was to be severing us from many of our philosophical title they chose, so long as they could treated as a set of requirements. Exact tallies roots. To compensate for its intellectual convince the rather pliant members of the of the liberal and advanced credits also isolation, Empire State College increasingly assessment committee that there was a began to be compiled for assessment of each oriented itself toward the world of adult pattern there that made sense. Although student’s degree program proposal. Increased higher education. One result is that many I had read a good deal about alternative standardization of expectations, combined long-time faculty members who came to the education, Empire State College appeared with heavy student loads and limited college in the 1970s thinking of it as part of breathtakingly, even (dare I say it?) a bit imagination, caused mentors to produce a national movement to change American irresponsibly, open. Although Empire State “canned” learning contracts, rather than society by constructing new models of College was not as “far out” as some of the studies designed with and for the individual higher learning found themselves working experiments discussed in my favorite book student. The establishment of the Center in an institution that was losing its sense of on educational change, Judson Jerome’s for Distance Learning expanded access to affiliation with that broader movement. Culture Out of Anarchy (1971), it went far education for an ever-growing number of The problem was not so much that Empire enough for me. State College was serving fewer young But when I look back at some of the students than it might have done. It was college’s earliest documents, I get a glimpse However, by the late ’70s that our work with adults came to be of what may have been troubling some of mentors were carrying discussed as if it was an essentially different my colleagues. For instance, students had endeavor from what faculties at other once enjoyed even more flexibility in the large student loads and progressive colleges were doing with their timing of their enrollments. In 1972-73 a student’s four-month younger students. It now appeared that the they enrolled for 12-week quarters, but reason the college treated its students as the Empire State College bulletin for that enrollment period was individuals and enabled them to self-design year says, “The weeks do not have to be usually divided into their programs was that this approach suited sequential.”6 This reflected the new college’s a specifically adult population – but, then aim to “transcend conventional academic compartmentalized again, not all adults. For those who might structure,” including “set periods of time.”7 studies with little better be reached through a prestructured Perhaps more importantly, some of the curriculum, Empire State College actual learning contracts that are described coordination between increasingly offered other options. When the in detail in early college publications show mentors. goals of expanded access and individualized a degree of imaginative integration across learning seemed to conflict, access gained subject areas and modes of learning, as well priority.10 Empire State College publicized as an intellectual depth, that I believe was itself as a college of maximum convenience quite unusual only a few years later.8 Such for busy adults; a place that would find students, but CDL’s dependence upon highly contracts were probably never typical, but one way or another to serve you, outside prestructured courses was incompatible with they reflected goals of best practice toward the traditional campus. In this way, the individualized, student-centered education which the college had hoped its students college has steadily grown and fulfilled its as it was then understood in most branches and faculty would aspire. However, by goal of educational outreach to underserved of the college and in the wider educational the late ’70s mentors were carrying large people, while obscuring some of the other counterculture. student loads and a student’s four-month fundamental purposes and values that enrollment period was usually divided Another departure from the early vision had brought it into being. As its founding into compartmentalized studies with little of the college was also significant. Empire documents show, originally Empire State coordination between mentors. Soon the State College began to reconceive itself College wanted to be more than a method separate, course-like nature of each study as a college for “adult learners,” rather for students to earn degrees inexpensively would be underscored when the college than a haven for “students of all ages without attending classes. It aimed for a converted to a standard credit system. and situations” who did not wish, in the qualitatively different and better educational The college was becoming a more formal words of the 1972-73 bulletin, to become experience, not a replication of the norm by institution. Rumor had it that when GVC’s “standardized products on some sort of other means. former dean, John Jacobson, became vice educational assembly line.”9 On the one Despite the internal tensions and president for academic affairs in 1974, he hand, this shift acknowledged the simple inconsistencies, much of the early said his goal during the first few months was reality that most of the students who countercultural spirit of the college did to write one new college policy each week! accepted the college’s invitation to learn survive the 1980s and 1990s to endure were adults in their 30s and older. On the

EMPIRE STATE COLLEGE • ALL ABOUT MENTORING 7 the new wounds of the 21st century. Kliewer’s book concludes with an analysis in governance bodies and other college Over the last few years, general education of several factors that enabled some of forums, leaving our core values weakly requirements were inflicted entirely from the the progressive colleges of the 1960s to defended. Institutional leadership resides outside, by the SUNY Board of Trustees, maintain their special qualities over time. mainly with administrators who are often while letter grades were adopted with the She found that the continued presence of less attuned to the early spirit of the college approval of our governance bodies and a large numbers of early faculty members than were some of their predecessors. term calendar was devised and declared by helped to hold these institutions to Mentors and students are now confronted the college’s own central administration. their “original distinctive missions” and with an organization that seeks to preserve There are arguments that can be made supporting practices. Oldtimers transmitted its reputation for “personal academic for the beneficent influence of general the culture of their colleges to new faculty advising and attention” and programs built education requirements, letter grades and who, in turn, had been selected because they “around the lives of individual adults”15 a term calendar, but it cannot be credibly appeared to “share the basic values of the while operating within academic and claimed that any of these things is consistent pioneers.” As a result, faculty at Hampshire, administrative rules that are far more with the college’s founding commitments Pitzer, New College, and Evergreen had conventional than they once were. The new to “flexibility and individual learning.”11 not tried to replace the “free-flowing, emphasis on externally visible scholarship President Joe Moore’s imposition of a nondepartmental organizational structures” will reward faculty who manage to pull uniform term calendar throughout the that sustain the collaboration of faculty away from their work as mentors to college is particularly ironic, since one of and students across fields of study. Faculty produce such scholarship, but also punish the college’s boldest innovations was its were also rewarded primarily for the quality faculty who do not. The current Strategic complete individualization of enrollment and creativity of their work with students, Plan stresses expanding access to an even cycles. Chancellor Ernest Boyer wanted to rather than “being evaluated on the basis of wider range of adult students and new free the student from “the rigidity of the the conventional, disciplinary research and devices to improve our retention rates. calendar,”12 something that Empire State publication standards.” It has been just as Worthy goals in themselves, and the plan College was well designed to accomplish. important for administrative leadership, as also aims to enhance “learning resources for When President Jim Hall wrote the final it has for faculty, to retain its understanding individualized and group studies.” But no chapter to Richard Bonnabeau’s history of core principles and the practices that current college document conveys Empire of the college in 1996, he predicted that are consistent with them. Administrators State College’s former passion for providing by 2021 Empire State College’s system, at private colleges, or at public colleges access to a liberating style of education that “permitting students to begin study at with a relatively high degree of autonomy was superior to what traditional colleges virtually any time” according to their (such as New College and Evergreen) have offered their students and might even personal circumstances, would be “adopted been best positioned to resist external lures foreshadow a transformed educational and by most institutions.”13 Perhaps if that does and pressures that threaten the distinctive social world.16 The belief that we could happen, Empire State College will reverse character of their institutions.14 do, and were doing, something like that is itself once more and tag along, when it To some extent, Empire State College what made some of us feel that it was well might instead have led the procession. can still be fit into Kliewer’s portrait of worthwhile to endure many of the college’s Students are not the only ones hemmed the enduringly alternative college. Many deprivations and indignities of work life. in by the term calendar. Already we hear of our senior faculty have spent most, (Preposterous workloads, shabby facilities, complaints from faculty, formalized in a if not all, of their professional lives here no library or other campus amenities, et resolution from the Niagara Frontier Center, and feel strongly about preserving the cetera, et cetera.) Grandiose it might have that it is not possible to churn out large college’s mission and culture. New faculty been, but when Empire State College is numbers of thoughtfully written narrative members are expected to be enthusiastic stripped of its sense of utopian promise, it evaluations within the time allotted at the about Empire State College’s educational becomes a somewhat less interesting, less end of each term period. Their proposed values and practices and to reflect them satisfying, and seemingly less important solution is to abandon narratives and in their work. Faculty still identify with place. have an all letter-grade transcript. One very broad and often overlapping areas The Yale sociologist Burton Clark says thing leads to another as Empire State of study instead of discipline-based that distinctive colleges construct an College blasts away its progressive departments. Our interaction with each “organizational saga” or “legend” about educational foundations. It remains to be other focuses far more on our work with themselves that gives voice to their seen whether the newly mandated online students than on talk about our personal distinctiveness and motivates their members registration process and catalog of “learning scholarly projects. However, most of the to preserve it.17 An organizational saga opportunities” will serve the education college’s first generation of mentors is long expresses only a part of the institution’s of students or result in more bureaucratic gone, and many other senior faculty are actual history and present reality, but it obstacles and generic instruction – just nearing retirement. Our physical dispersion, is the part that is most inspiring to its what Empire State College was meant to combined with our loose organizational members, the part for which they are overcome. structure, continues to make it difficult for willing to struggle and sacrifice. For me, faculty to develop a strong, collective stance

EMPIRE STATE COLLEGE • ALL ABOUT MENTORING 8 and perhaps for some others who are still Empire State College: The First Twenty- 12 Ernest L. Boyer, “Foreword” to here, the dissenting social and educational Five Years (Empire State College, 1996), Bonnabeau, The Promise Continues, 6. movements that flourished during the 1960s 18. 13 James W. Hall, “Imaginings: Looking and ’70s molded the organizational saga of 6 Empire State College (undated bulletin, Back from the Year 2021,” in Empire State College. Because I still revere issued for 1972 - 1973), 73. Bonnabeau, The Promise Continues, the essential spirit of these movements, 179. I mourn their declining influence on our 7 Prospectus for a New University college’s policies, practices, and sense of College, quoted in Bonnabeau, The 14 Kliewer, 217-220. itself. Empire State College may yet create Promise Continues, 18. Ê 15 Quotations from Learners First: The a new, or highly revised, saga that will be 8 Empire State College (undated bulletin, Campaign for Empire State College equally energizing. I sincerely hope that issued for 1972 - 73), 12-28. (undated and unpaged promotional it does, but perhaps I will be forgiven for pamphlet). detecting few signs of it at present. With 9 Ibid., 4. what do we replace Empire State College’s 16 “Man’s fate and the fate of education 10 As Bonnabeau shows in The Promise old radical spirit? One answer came recently are inextricably linked,” proclaimed Continues (23 - 24), the conflict from an apparently far more disillusioned Empire State College’s first bulletin between prestructured and more colleague, who wrote, “We [at Empire State (1971 - 1972). “Therefore, the future spontaneous, individualized approaches College] are a deeply religious people, and of the world,” and human survival to learning at Empire State College goes our religion is ‘business’ or, perhaps more within it, “depends upon the wisdom back to struggles between two early strictly, ‘marketing.’” of our actions concerning future college leaders, Loren Baritz and Arthur educational priorities and programs. Chickering. Although Chickering and Footnotes Sound judgments and wise priorities individualization did more to shape will support the major reorientations 1 Gerald Grant and David Riesman, Empire State College’s self-image and required for the expansion of The Perpetual Dream: Reform and practices during the 1970s (thereby human satisfactions and potentials. Experiment in the American College linking the college philosophically Misjudgment and misplaced priorities (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, to other thinkers and institutions may lead to a new human nature 1978), 280. in the educational counterculture), combining the animal irrationality of prestructured programs (especially 2 Page Smith, Killing the Spirit: Higher primitive man with the materialistic the Center for Distance Learning) Education in America (New York: greed and lust of industrial man, and eventually became prominent. Empire Viking, 1990), 7, 19-20. powered by the destructive forces State College presents itself today to available from modern technology. 3 Ibid., 204, 210, 215, 219. prospective students as a school that That could lead to the end of man.” has no philosophical preferences for 4 Joy Rosenzweig Kliewer, The They sure don’t write them like that one mode of learning over another, but Innovative Campus: Nurturing the anymore! The redemptive fervor of seeks to provide multiple pathways Distinctive Learning Environment Empire State College in the 1970s was to the attainment of a degree. This (Phoenix: American Council of quite alarming to some, such as the neutrality shows how far the college has Education/Oryx Press, 1999), xviii. New York State Education Department distanced itself from the transformative staffer who reportedly said, “Empire 5 Prospectus for the New University ethos of its early years. State is a cult, not a college.” College (1971), as quoted in Richard 11 Ibid. F. Bonnabeau, The Promise Continues: 17 Burton Clark, The Distinctive College (Chicago: Aldine, 1970), 233 - 262.

To discover who people think they are, what they think they are doing, and to what end they think they are doing it, it is necessary to gain a working familiarity with the frames of meaning within which they enact their lives. This does not involve feeling anyone else’s feelings, or thinking anyone else’s thoughts, simple impossibilities. Nor does it involve going native, an impractical idea, inevitably bogus. It involves learning how, as a being from elsewhere with a world of one’s own, to live with them.

– Clifford Geertz, “A Life of Learning.” American Council of Learned Societies, Occasional Paper No. 45 (1999)

EMPIRE STATE COLLEGE • ALL ABOUT MENTORING 9

This Is Texas, Sugar

Heather Ostman, Metropolitan Center

t the bottom of the gate, a woman “You sure look like the way Dr. Landau said down at the woman, since she was about shook a white sign over her chest; you’d look.” The woman followed. “’Bout five or six inches taller, but Darlene was A the sign said “HIDEE” in black 16, 17, brown hair. Dress like a head.” built like a pit bull and scared her a little. letters. Everyone else had gotten off the The woman’s face was caked with heavy “A what?” Heidi stopped. plane and left a while ago. This woman tan-colored base makeup, and just like she’d was short and stuffed into tight jeans way “Yer dressed like a head!” done her eyebrows, she’d drawn brown lines too long for her. She’d tucked a pack of around her lips and filled them in with a “You don’t have to yell,” Heidi said. cigarettes under one of her short sleeves, slightly different shade of brown. Darlene over her shoulder, and her face looked “Sorry. You look like, you know, a head brought the sign down, and Heidi saw the like she was either really surprised about – a burnout. You got them too tight jeans words on her t-shirt: “If Jesus didn’t say it, I something or really alarmed – like she’d and too long hair. We git girls like you all ain’t listening.” won the lottery without a winning ticket the time. By the way, you ain’t gonna be If she’d been home, Heidi might have or talked to a man whose head stuck out needing no flannel shirts like that here. It laughed out loud, but something in the of his stomach. Get a load of this chick, ain’t like New York, ’specially in June.” way Darlene had lowered that sign made Heidi thought and turned around for “I’m from Jersey.” Heidi turned and faced her think this woman was no stranger to some sympathy – mercy, really – from the the woman. In her mind, there was a big bar fights and jail cells. Forget Jesus, she stewardess who’d marched her off the plane. difference between New York and New thought, this woman could kick some ass. Maybe she’d let her go back to New Jersey, Jersey. Any idiot knew that. If Heidi were older, if she had any money, but the stewardess’s hard Miss America face if she had anywhere else to go, she might said no way and she closed the gate door. “See, I knew it was you, sugar.” The woman have gotten a taxi right that minute – did smiled like they were playing a game and “Shit.” Heidi picked up her grandmother’s they even have taxis in Texas? If they did, she’d just gotten a Get Out of Jail Free Card old paisley print suitcase and pretended she would have told the driver to take her – something she may have needed in real to be looking for someone else when she somewhere, anywhere else but here. But life. passed the woman with the sign. Darlene’s dark eyes were hard and didn’t Heidi pointed to the sign. “That’s not how seem to have any pupils, so Heidi put the “YoumustbeHeidi!” you spell my name.” cigarettes and the lighter back in her pocket “What?” Heidi didn’t know what she’d and picked up her suitcase. “Sorry, sugar, I never knew a Heidi before.” said with that heavy Texan twang, but the “Well, are we going to go or what?” Heidi woman was abnormally happy, mental “Stop yelling already. I can hear you.” finally said. actually, about whatever it was. And up “Aw right, aw right. Anyway, I’m Darlene close, Heidi realized she wasn’t surprised or Darlene shot her a look – the kind the and I’m driving you over to The Ranch.” alarmed at all, but she had drawn on her Puerto Rican girls gave before they beat eyebrows where her real ones used to be. “Okay, Duh-leen.” the crap out of each other in the school The brown lines were thick in the center bathroom – but the woman didn’t hit her or “It’s DAR-lene.” and went up high and around, like she’d even say anything. She just turned fast on traced two eggs over her eyes. For a second, “Yeah, I know. I heard that, too.” Heidi her heels and headed toward the exit. Heidi thought maybe she was a cancer decided she had to get the hell out of here. Heidi followed, but she was careful to keep patient or something and had lost her hair, She put her suitcase on the floor between a few feet back, so maybe no one would or some of it, anyway. her feet and took out a pack of cigarettes think she was actually with Darlene, who, from her shirt pocket. She needed to figure “I said, You Must Be Heidi.” The woman by the way, walked like her ass was on it out fast, so she scanned the airport, spoke loud and slow – like she thought parade. The woman’s hips swung from left looking for exit signs. Heidi was deaf or retarded. She shook the to right with every step. Each butt cheek sign in front of her chest again. “We gotta go, sugar. We ain’t got time for a squeezed under the restraint of her tight smoke.” jeans. It was amazing she could walk at all. “Nope,” Heidi said and started walking away. Heidi’s lips tightened around the cigarette “Here we are,” Darlene said when they got and she held the lighter in midair. Her eyes to a pink Corvette in the airport parking locked with Darlene’s. Heidi was staring lot. Her voice was as friendly as it had first

EMPIRE STATE COLLEGE • ALL ABOUT MENTORING 10 been when she held up the sign. Maybe it and she began to think Darlene might not “That’s right, sugar, it’s only been six years. was the car that made her cheer up again. It have been cracking on her suitcase. But it’s a classic because it’s U-nique. Picked looked like a giant wad of cotton candy and out the color myself.” “Those are big dice,” Heidi said after reminded Heidi of a Mary Kay car she’d Darlene strapped the seatbelt around herself. “Pink’s your favorite color?” Heidi still seen once back in Montvale. But not quite couldn’t get her head around the idea that the same thing. “It’s Texas, honey. Everything’s big here!” someone would buy a car like this on Darlene’s mouth flew open as she laughed “My pride and joy.” Darlene opened the purpose. out loud, and Heidi could see large black doors of the Corvette. She pointed one hand spots on her back teeth. “No, pink ain’t my favorite color, but toward the car and put the other on her hip, I wanted to pick something nobody as if she were on a game show. “Ta-da!” Then she heard the Corvette’s automatic else would have. My favorite colors are locks bolt, and Heidi knew she’d missed her When Heidi didn’t say anything, the woman black and orange. You know, like Harley last chance to run like hell. It was just like shoved the sign behind the driver’s seat. Davidson colors. Brrrm!” Darlene grabbed she was trapped in one of those bizarro- “Yer going to have to hold yer suitcase on the steering wheel and twisted her right world stories Patrick liked to read to her yer lap, sugar.” hand like she was riding a motorcycle. The from “The News of the Weird” column woman’s eyebrows stretched up, up, up, and Heidi nodded. in the free paper – like the story he’d just she smiled that big rotten smile at her. told her four days ago, before everything “Now that’s a cute tote you got there.” happened, about the woman who dressed “Oh,” Heidi said. “Hey, what’s your last Darlene pointed to the little paisley suitcase. up in a gorilla suit to crash her own surprise name? Are you Italian?” Only Italians in Heidi made a face. She thought maybe the bridal shower, and then got mauled by her Heidi’s neighborhood drove cars almost as woman was making fun of her because the friend’s dog (the same friend throwing the tacky as this one, although she wasn’t sure suitcase was hideous. It was the one thing shower) because the animal thought she there were any Italians this far west. She her grandmother – her Nana – owned that was an intruder. Now Heidi was trapped in hadn’t seen any pizza places yet. her mother let her keep after they cleaned the beginning of her own story; she was a “Am I Eye-talian?” Again Darlene’s mouth out her apartment last year. Not only was prisoner to fake eyebrows and rotting teeth opened wide and let out a hefty laugh. it hideous in its yellow, pink and orange in a Mary Kay Corvette. Patrick would The black spots on her molars looked like paisley print, but Heidi never really liked have laughed his ass off – she would have, deep caverns, and Heidi wouldn’t have her Nana in the first place. She had never too – if they were reading about it back at been surprised if plumes of grey smoke known what soap tasted like before she home. But there was nothing funny about swirled out from behind the woman’s teeth. had sleepovers at Nana’s, and she’d never this. Heidi was alone and she didn’t know “Whatever gave you that idea? Honey, I am been called a crybaby or slapped on the face where Patrick was. She was exiled in a real 110 percent Texan.” Then Darlene’s face before, either. Staying at her grandmother’s story, where she didn’t know how she could became serious except for her eyebrows, house was never a picnic, but her mother ever get home again. which were still high and surprised, and would ship her off for weeks, sometimes “How do you like my ride?” Darlene yelled Heidi thought she was going to tell her months at a time, and pretend it was some over the roaring muffler. “Sorry so loud,” she did have cancer and had about 90 kind of vacation. The suitcase just reminded she lowered her voice a little. “I’m saving minutes to live. “Now, sugar, you need Heidi of all those times she’d be begging up to fix the muffler.” The thunder beneath to understand something. This here is an her Nana to let her go home, and the old the car made it sound like they were going anonymous program yer going to. It ain’t lady would just slap her and tell her to faster than they were, but Darlene drove right for you to be asking people their last stop whining like a baby. It added insult to slowly as they followed the signs out of the names. You hear me?” injury, now that her mother had sent her so parking lot. Every now and then, though, far away with the suitcase. “Sorry.” Heidi bit her tongue to keep from she took a turn too fast. cracking up. What anonymous program? Heidi dropped herself into the Corvette’s “It’s nice,” Heidi lied. “Really pink.” She She already knew Dr. Landau knew her first bucket seat and pulled the suitcase to her looked around the matching interior and and last name, where she came from, and lap. The smells of strawberry and orange wondered why none of this woman’s friends who was paying the bills – her stepfather scented air fresheners assaulted her right and family stopped her from wasting all that Abe. So what was so anonymous about away. And then the pink. Everything money on something as awful as this car. that? – seriously, everything – was as pink as its outside: the seats, the dashboard, the “It’s custom, sugar. 1979. It’s a classic now “It’s all right. You didn’t know it, but now steering wheel, everything. And besides a already.” you do.” Darlene turned on the radio. “An road atlas tucked between the driver’s seat anonymous program,” she mumbled to “It’s only been six years. How can it be a and the console and a pair of fuscia-colored herself. “No last names.” classic?” Heidi asked. foam dice hanging from the rearview mirror, Country western music blasted from the the car was immaculate. Heidi had never speakers behind their heads and drowned been in such a bizarre and tacky car before,

EMPIRE STATE COLLEGE • ALL ABOUT MENTORING 11 the muffler out. If Heidi had known anyone speeding up and slowing down again, like “Anyway, before that I was addicted to in Texas, she would have died four times she kept having to force herself to stay crank. Me and my ex, Barry, used to cook over already from the sheer mortification of below the speed limit. Heidi stared at the it up in my kitchen and sell it.” Darlene driving in a pink Corvette that smelled like a suitcase on her lap. Even though she’d never yowled and startled Heidi. “Lordamercy! fruit salad, blaring country music and sitting liked her Nana when she was alive, she held We made so much of that shit! We used to next to a woman with eyebrows drawn over the suitcase’s vinyl edges with two hands keep big garbage cans lined up next to the her forehead. It was unfair to be thrown out now, in case she could maybe reach her in kitchen counter. Ha!” of her house, she thought, but this was just heaven from way out here in Texas. Heidi stared at her. She had no idea what mean. “Humphf. You don’t know your doc? Like crank was. No one she knew in Jersey did it, “How long until we get there?” Heidi they say, ‘Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt,’ but she nodded like she understood. asked. sugar.” “But I was runnin’ on empty, you know, “All in God’s time, sugar,” Darlene “What?” like the song says, and my ex was cheatin’ answered. “In God’s time.” on me with my neighbor Betty Jo’s daughter “I mean, nobody’s sent to The Ranch by and he was skimming some of the profits Heidi had no idea how long that was. She mistake.” and then I just up and hit rock bottom, looked Darlene over and started to wonder Heidi wasn’t sure this was true and she sug.” Darlene got very serious again. “I was if the woman was bullshitting her with the didn’t see what it had to do with Egyptian living the junkie’s life: living fast but getting God crap. This woman was more like one rivers, but she kept her mouth shut. There nowhere. I was freebasing a lot too, back of those white-trash biker hags, the kind was no way she was going to tell Darlene then. And my son – he’s 13 now and lives biker guys call “my ole’ lady,” than a Jesus what happened when she could barely think with his grandparents – he woke me up one freak. Maybe the whole God thing was part about it herself. morning and he looked at me and I had like of the act. Maybe Darlene was really in a all these burn marks on my lips and he said, gang and had kidnapped her for the Hell’s “Well, we do have a while before we get ‘Momma, why do you have so many scabs Angels. Now that would be something, there, so I’ll just tell you my story – because on your mouth?’ and I said, ‘Darlene, what Heidi thought. If she were held for ransom, that’s what we do in the Program. We tell the hell are you doing?’” her mom would feel really guilty for sending our stories to help each other.” Darlene her away like this. What if the bikers made glanced at Heidi and lowered the air “What did your son say then?” her become a gang member until her mom conditioning. “You too cold, sugar?” “What, sugar?” paid? What if they made her rob a bank? “I’m fine.” What would her mom pay to get her back? “What did you son say after you said that? Would she pay? “All right. You just holler if the air’s too You didn’t answer him.” much.” Darlene turned the air conditioning “Too loud?” Darlene said and turned the “Oh, it’s just a figure of speech, honey. I up again. “Now before I came to work radio down. didn’t really say it out loud. I probably said for Dr. Landau at The Ranch, I was in an something like, ‘Shut up and get ready for “It’s okay.” She thought the music sucked, Adult Facility for Drug Addiction,” Darlene school, you little shit.’ Because that is the but at least it kept them from talking. pronounced the words slowly, as if she were kind of person I had become.” Darlene reading them off a card. “A TC, you know, “So what’s your doc?” Darlene kept the nodded her head like she’d said the most a treatment center. Dr. Landau used to work volume low anyway. They drove past signs obvious thing. there before she opened up The Ranch and leading to I-35. Homefield, and she remembered me from “When did all that happen?” “My what?” the first time I was there a few years back. “Ten months ago.” She keeps in touch with the other counselors “Your D.O.C. Your drug of choice. Why’d and one of them must’ve told her I’d slipped “Oh.” Heidi might have thought the woman you get sent to The Ranch?” and come in again.” Darlene looked over at was bullshitting her again, except Darlene “I don’t know.” Heidi’d already decided her. “Homefield’s the boys’ home, sug, I bet pulled a collection of colored poker chips Darlene, even if she wasn’t a kidnapper, was you didn’t know that.” on a thin chain from her jean pocket. How an asshole and she wasn’t going to tell her she fit them in such tight pants was a little “No, I didn’t.” Heidi stared at the cigarette anything. mysterious, but each chip had a number for pack under Darlene’s short sleeve and every month of sobriety, up to the number “You don’t know or you ain’t going to tell wanted to smoke bad, but she was still a 10. me?” little afraid to try lighting a cig up again. Darlene hadn’t smoked yet. And the pink “I’m coming up on my one-year anniversary. “I said I don’t know.” ashtray, like everything else in the Corvette, My life has done a 360 and I am no longer The car climbed the entrance ramp to was clean. the person I once was.” the highway. Darlene drove in the right “You mean a 180.” lane, speeding up and slowing down, then

EMPIRE STATE COLLEGE • ALL ABOUT MENTORING 12

Darlene made a sucking sound between where she was going, it didn’t really matter sending her away. As satisfying as the idea her front teeth. “One-eighty. Three-sixty. if she looked like crap or not. was, the increasing speed brought another To each their own, sugar. To each their wave of salty saliva into Heidi’s mouth, so From Darlene’s side, a horn blared outside own. The point is I am one with my higher she reached into her shirt pocket again for the Corvette. Two men in a red pickup truck power and I am clean and sober today. I her cigarettes. She didn’t give a shit now sped up next to them. Heidi leaned forward owe a lot to Dr. Landau. And now, by the what Darlene said. Just a drag or two would to look. The driver honked again, and the grace of God, I got a second lease on life, is make the nausea go away. passenger pointed at Darlene’s car. what I’ve got.” She waited before speaking “No smoking in here, sug.” Darlene was again. “When I get my one-year pin, Dr. “I get that all the time.” Darlene smiled, but quick and Heidi froze. “Put ’em away.” Landau’s fixin’ to help me get back custody Heidi didn’t know what was so great about of Rodrick.” two old fat guys in greasy baseball caps “You smoke.” pointing at a tacky guinea car. Heidi wanted to tell Darlene that Dr. “Not in here I don’t. And you don’t Landau may have gotten her sober but she “That man’s got straw all over him.” Heidi neither.” hadn’t done anything for her shitty taste in pointed at the passenger, who was now “Well, don’t drive so fast. I’m getting cars and makeup. But she held back. She wagging his tongue between his middle carsick.” Heidi crammed the cigarettes back wasn’t really sure who this Darlene woman finger and his forefinger at her. “Oh, gross,” in her pocket. was or why she’d rather say she had a she said and sat back in her seat. raging drug habit that made her lose her “Humphf.” Darlene turned the radio up “Check this out.” Darlene waved and then son than tell her last name. So instead Heidi again. A woman with a very high voice was fondled one of the foam dice. “You know just tucked a stray lock of her long brown singing a sad country western refrain: it, sugar!” she yelled toward the truck, even hair behind her ear and looked out the though the windows of the Corvette were I loved you window to avoid having to talk anymore. rolled up. She squeezed the fuscia block Around the highway, the Texan landscape You left me like it was more than a piece of foam and rose up. Constant sunshine had etched wide watched the truck in the next lane. “You I miss you cracks in the hard soil. Droves of cattle and boys come to mama!” mechanical arms of oil wells labored despite You’re gone. the unforgiving heat. Heidi watched them The car swerved a little out of the right lane. Oh, God, Heidi thought, do they listen to flicker by like a reel of film. “Maybe you should watch the road.” Heidi anything else out here? She fingered the “Yer eye makeup’s runnin’, sugar,” Darlene grabbed the handle of the passenger’s side zipper on her suitcase. Inside, she’d wrapped said after a while. She pointed toward door. a tank top around a small fishing knife she Heidi’s face. “Meant to tell you before.” stole from Abe. She was tempted to take it Darlene didn’t seem to hear her. The truck’s out, to show Darlene not to fuck with her. “What?” horn blared again. If anything happened to her now, like if “Yer makeup, yer eyeliner’s all smudged, “Come to mama, if you can, suckers,” Darlene were still a Texan crank dealer and sug. You look like somebody up an’ socked Darlene said and she slammed the gas pedal some biker’s old lady, Heidi would threaten you.” to the floor and swerved fully into the her until she stopped the car and unlocked middle lane, in front of the truck. the doors. She imagined she could even use “Look who’s talking,” Heidi said. the handle of the knife to break the glass Heidi’s forehead broke out into a light “What’d you say?” of the passenger’s side window, if she had sweat. A salty taste gushed into her mouth, to, so she could get out. But there was no “Nothing.” so she dropped her eyes to the suitcase to subtle way to unzip the suitcase on her lap, keep herself from throwing up. “Humphf.” so Heidi just kept her hand on its zipper “This car’s a real man magnet,” Darlene to be ready. If there was anything Patrick Heidi smiled to herself and then checked said, once they slowed down again, after had taught her, it was to expect weird and her reflection in the outside mirror. She leaving the pickup behind. She slapped the unwanted things to happen. And if there pushed her frizzy bangs away from her face. dashboard and Heidi looked up. “A real was anything she’d learned from her mother, Darlene was right. Her eyeliner, the only man magnet, sugar. You should get one who had a new boyfriend every few months makeup she ever wore, had made two faded for yerself.” until she married Abe last year, it was to bruises beneath her blue eyes. Four days be ready to leave, just in case things didn’t ago, Heidi would have wiped the smudges Heidi stared at Darlene’s profile. Her eyes work out. away and reapplied her makeup, but now focused sharply on the road before them, she left them. She thought they made her like she was trying to melt the windshield The more she thought about it, the more look tougher. The runny liner bothered with her vision. Heidi thought if she died Heidi was pissed about being trapped with Miss Fake Eyebrows, anyhow, so that was out here on I-35, then her mother would this crazy woman; she was pissed about another reason to leave it as is. Besides, feel really guilty for overreacting and being so far away from home; and she

EMPIRE STATE COLLEGE • ALL ABOUT MENTORING 13 was pissed – no it was more than pissed, it “When you are in your own car, you can “You did.” was fury, pull-out your eyes rage – because do whatever you want, sug. But you’re in “When?” Patrick was gone and they wouldn’t tell her Darlene’s ’vette now, and you clean your where he was. Heidi decided that from now mess.” “Before. You said ‘shit.’ You said it twice.” on she wouldn’t talk to Darlene, no matter “I don’t have a car.” Darlene’s expression shifted. “Well, that’s what. And she wouldn’t talk to anyone at different. I was talking about the past.” The Ranch either, until they called her mom “Well, then, maybe you should show a little and told her to take Heidi back to Jersey. more respect in somebody else’s, somebody “It is not different.” who didn’t have to use her personal vehicle, “We’re almost there, sugar,” Darlene said “Yes, it is. In my car, it’s different.” Darlene somebody who could have taken The Ranch to her over the sounds of the muffler and turned up the radio one more time. bus to drive your bratty Yankee ass, so another country singer crying about the everyone in the state of Texas would know Heidi resolved again not to speak. She loneliness of love. yer goin’ to a home for bad girls.” wondered how Abe convinced her mother Heidi heard her but wouldn’t answer. She to send her away. Then she thought of She hadn’t seen Darlene’s blast coming held the suitcase zipper tightly. But her fury Patrick and wondered if they’d sent him and the words stung her. Heidi wished she faded when they passed a billboard with an somewhere like this, too. She could feel could be home again and go back to when illustrated family above the words: Vacation the rage climbing up her throat, and if she it was just Patrick and her. If she were any at Lake Dawton. The people in the picture were home, she would have been screaming other girl, she might have started to cry, but were at a lake surrounded by white and already, slamming doors, and throwing instead she mouthed “bitch” to the window blue cabins. The mother and the daughter whatever was nearest. None of this seemed and rubbed the mark with the handkerchief. reclined in matching bathing suits and wore fair. But stuck in the Corvette, a ridiculous broad straw hats on a small beach, and the “Did you say something to me?” Darlene hillbilly-guido car, she only clenched her fists father and son were throwing a football. demanded. tightly until her nails punctured the skin on her palms. “Is Lake Dawton nearby?” Heidi asked “Nope.” Heidi kept her face to the window. Darlene over the roaring muffler. She forgot “Just relax now, sugar,” Darlene glanced “Seemed like you did.” she wasn’t going to talk anymore. at Heidi. “I’m going to let this bad boy out Heidi looked at her. “I said I was wondering – we need to make better time.” She floored “Why? You goin’ swimmin’?” Darlene if you had cancer.” the gas and swung two lanes over into the laughed out loud. “Don’t you worry. The left lane. The muffler vibrated beneath them Ranch is sort of like a resort, just with no “Cancer! Why?” and the landscaped blurred. lake, no men, lots of chores, and group “Because your eyebrows are fake. I bet you ther’pee.” Darlene laughed again. “Hey The speedometer leaped over 100. Patrick! get up really early in the morning to draw now, watch them prints, sug.” Heidi screamed in her head. Where the fuck your face on.” She crossed her arms and are you? I swear to God, I’m going to find “What prints?” watched Darlene to see the effects of her you! She dug her nails into her palms even insult. “There, the ones you made pointing to the deeper and swallowed hard to keep from sign.” Darlene’s face lost its smile as she The woman’s lips moved but no sound came throwing up. But it made no difference. looked toward the fingerprints Heidi had out. It looked like she was counting. Then Heidi loosened her fists and heaved vomit left on the window. “This here car’s my she spoke. “A word of advice, sugar: lose all over the pristine, pink interior of baby. I like to keep things neat, sugar. Shows the ’tude. Dr. Landau ain’t goin’ to tolerate Darlene’s pride and joy. class, not trash.” Darlene pushed back in any bull from you at The Ranch. Just her seat as she drove and dug her fingers remember: ‘Compliance gets you recovery. into the front pocket of her tight jeans. She Defiance gets you high.’” Thanks to my colleagues at the handed Heidi a soft man’s handkerchief. Metropolitan Center for everything. The “What the hell does that mean?” Heidi It was warm from being squished in her piece is the first chapter of a longer work. jammed the handkerchief between Darlene’s pocket. seat and the atlas, but Darlene yanked it “What do you want me to do with this?” away and stuffed it back into her pocket. Heidi stared at her. Her sobriety poker chips rattled on their chain. “Wipe ’em off.” Darlene pointed to the window. “It means, don’t worry, sug. Put a little ‘gratitude in your attitude’ and you’ll get “There’s barely anything there.” This this deal.” Darlene stopped and thought. woman, she thought, would have to do “And I will thank you kindly not to use more than clean fingerprints from this car to profanity in my car.” prove she wasn’t trashy.

EMPIRE STATE COLLEGE • ALL ABOUT MENTORING 14

Doing Learner-Centered Research: An Interview with Timothy Lehmann (Part I)

Richard Bonnabeau, Center for International Programs

The following interview with Timothy were committed to improving practitioner- Ernie, followed by a trip to Saratoga in Lehmann was conducted by Empire State based research and the theory of adult May 1973, that I really became much more College mentor and college historian learning. So I’m carrying two basic aware of what Empire State was trying to Richard Bonnabeau on January 14, 1991, responsibilities. do. as a component of the Empire State College Bonnabeau: When did you first join the Bonnabeau: What attracted you to the Oral History Project. The original text has college? college? now been reviewed and edited. Thanks to both Tim and Richard for their time and Lehmann: I came to the college in the Lehmann: Well, knowing Ernie, and attention, and for their willingness to allow summer of 1973. I joined the college’s knowing a little bit about the kinds of us to present this material. A second part of Office of Research and Evaluation, at that enterprises he would get involved in, I was the interview will be included in All About time headed up by Ernie Palola. I came in as intrigued with how he described it. For Mentoring #33. director of program evaluation. example, take the college and its innovative aspects. I’ve always been interested in Bonnabeau: How did you hear about innovative higher education and I came Bonnabeau: Why don’t we begin this, Tim, Empire State College? out of Berkeley during the time of a lot by having you identify your title as well as Lehmann: I heard about it from Ernie. I had of change, turmoil and innovation. I was your association with NCAL (The National worked with him when I was a graduate involved in a department at Colorado State Center on Adult Learning). student at the University of California at University that was undergoing enormous Lehmann: I am currently [1991] associate Berkeley. At the time I first met him I was growth, enormous change, with the creation vice president for research and evaluation working at the Higher Education Research of new Ph.D. programs in Developmental in charge of the Office of Research and Center in Berkeley, and I got involved for Change. This program was responding to Evaluation. I am also the director of the about four years in a research project on immediate social, political, and economic recently created National Center on Adult statewide planning in higher education. changes along the Rocky Mountain Range. Learning [NCAL], which is sponsored by Then I completed my Ph.D. and we parted So, I was, in a career sense, involved in Empire State College and located here in ways. I went to Colorado State and became changes in the academic world. Also, one Saratoga. The center was established as a a member of the faculty in the department of my specialties in my Ph.D. program was join venture by leaders of innovative colleges of sociology there. Many years went by. organizational change in higher education. and nationally recognized researchers who Ernie and I had been in touch occasionally I had those two interests in my academic over those years, but then he got involved in background. When the opportunity of this innovative institution and gave me a call learning something about Empire State came one day and said that he had an interesting up, I was interested. Prior to coming here opportunity that he wanted to talk to me for interviews I asked Ernie who I should about. So that’s how it all started. know about and who would be involved in the interviews – those kinds of questions. Bonnabeau: Would you say that you were And when he mentioned Arthur Chickering fairly familiar with Empire State College and also Loren Baritz, I went to the library through your discussions with Ernie or and looked up who they were. I was not through conferences you had attended and familiar with either one of them at the time, knew about the mission of the college? but I got hold of their books and tried to Lehmann: I did not understand or know prepare myself a little bit prior to coming about Empire State College prior to starting for the interviews. That’s the researcher bent a conversation Ernie. I had not heard of in my approach to things. Empire State College. Being way out on the Bonnabeau: What were you hired to do, West coast or in the Rocky Mountains, I initially? was not aware that such an enterprise had been started two years earlier. It was only Lehmann: The Empire State College through more extended conversations with research office had just received the first FIPSE [The Fund for the Improvement of Tim Lehmann, circa 1980s

EMPIRE STATE COLLEGE • ALL ABOUT MENTORING 15

Post-Secondary Education] grant to develop kind of change comes about? What occurs on the student. We knew that the focus a new model of higher education research, a in the programs that are individually created should be centered on the learner: What do cost-effectiveness model in higher education for those students? And at what cost? Most learners think has been happening as they that would be grounded in Empire State educational research models don’t focus go through the program? What do they College but would be generalizable to much on costs, but PERC placed great think about their own learning? What do other institutions as appropriate. It was a emphasis on linking outcomes and costs. So they think afterwards and so on? Certainly three-year project, which turned into four. to restate, we wanted to understand what you have the faculty writing the narrative I was hired initially to look at the kinds kinds of students, working with what kinds evaluation – how they view over time what of students that were going to be involved of faculty are going to change in what kinds had happened to that student and how in Empire State College’s program and to of ways in their programs of study and the student progressed through what he consider the following questions: Who does what does it cost to do that? Those were the or she has taken on – a very rich array of this program best serve? Who does it not master questions. information that’s available within our kind serve very well and why? What happens to of historical, developmental record of the Bonnabeau: So, as you earlier mentioned, adults as they move through the program? student. And beyond that academic record, these are actually “outcome” questions. What causes them to drop out? What we had the research office coming in with were the impacts of the program – that is, Lehmann: At that time, I certainly didn’t all kinds surveys, questionnaires, interviews, what we’re now today calling “academic realize to what extent these discussions and a limited amount of formal testing. outcomes?” How effective was the program, Bonnabeau: And presumably at that time given the fact that it was individually there was also evaluation from outside of tailored to meet the needs of given students the college. not only with particular backgrounds, We knew that the focus but also with particular experiences – life should be centered on the Lehmann: We had accreditation teams experiences that perhaps had college credits coming in – outside people looking at the that could be identified and extracted from learner: What do learners program coming around and talking to them? My formal title was director of think has been happening students, and employers making judgments program evaluation. But Ernie was going and comments about the value of our to build a conceptually based five-pronged as they go through the program and what’s happened with their office of educational research under this program? What do they own employees. So, just right there in that grant. Paul Bradley was already on board at kind of description, you have a pretty the time, and he was going to work in the think about their own encompassing view of student learning. It’s area of faculty, as well as serve the college as learning? What do they not like getting a grade in the traditional director of institutional research. I was going college or having a grade point average, to be in the area of students. Ernie was think afterwards … which is really a number that reduces going to coordinate the office. Eventually, complex learning to a single dimension. Richard Debus was hired to do the cost-side The PERC approach is really a much more and Jack Lindquist, a little later on, worked that we were having in ’74, ’75, ’76 student-centered approach, which says on the policy-making and the program – and Chickering was involved in a fair there may be certain kinds of learning side too. So, we really had the five prongs: number of those, for example, on multiple that only the individual going through it students, faculty, programs, outcomes and perspectives of learning – would today knows about, really fully appreciates and costs. These were the five variables that be one of the cornerstones of national understands, or is in a position to reflect on came into play in the eventual model. debates on outcomes and the assessment it. That way, even the faculty that work very movement. The idea is that no given single closely as the primary mentor oftentimes Bonnabeau: This was what you called the measurement like an SAT score can account cannot fully appreciate some of what, in Program Effectiveness and Related Costs, for and explain what happens as adults the old Chickering days, was called the the PERC model. learn. It involves multiple ways to approach “affective domain of learning” compared to Lehmann: Yes. The basic idea of this project student learning – multiple measurements the “cognitive domain.” was to really look at a number of master at multiple points in time – what is now Bonnabeau: In those early years of the questions: What kinds of students come into called by Sandy Astin [renowned UCLA college, you had a great deal of information a place called Empire State College? And, researcher on student learning] and others to use, didn’t you? what kinds of students come in and work “longitudinal designs.” with what kinds of faculty? Because we did Lehmann: We talked about the multiple We really talked and developed and had have diverse kinds of faculty at the regional perspectives strategy, but we really looked at in our very early publications from the learning centers and units and in special the whole record that students presented as office, some strategies and diagrams that programs, what is the influence of these they came into the college and went through laid this out. In the best of Empire State different faculty roles? That is, what affects it. At that time we used to have, as Ernie College tradition, the research strategy the kind of learning that students do? What Palola called them, the six-monthers. Full- parallels the learning strategy, which centers

EMPIRE STATE COLLEGE • ALL ABOUT MENTORING 16 time students could go through the program percent. We had, by about 1978, 4,500 But we also had a qualitative side. The and graduate if they had a maximum student biographical inventories completed idea here was to intersperse among a lot of amount of advanced learning in six months. and we had them coded, computerized, the quantitative checkpoints, ideas about That was the shortest possible time. And we and were able to generate a lot of reports case studies, interviews with students and did, in beginning, have some really bright that gave a collegewide picture on the faculty at different points in time, and people move through the program and fit background characteristics of our students. faculty panel reviews of documents. So we that kind of category. But it wasn’t too long So we did have, in our data bank, a great drew a sub-sample for a number of our after the early ’70s that it became clear that deal of information. Later, we shifted to a studies and followed students through the the majority of our students were going to sampling procedure for subsequent studies college. We also did content analysis of the be part-time students. They really had busy in the PERC series. The initial FIPSE grant formal documents. All of these approaches lives; they were working full time; they provided us with the foundation to establish complemented one another and provided were involved in lots of other activities; they the PERC model and to develop the a very comprehensive picture of student were married and so on. For these working instruments. learning at Empire State College. So, we got adults, it would not be really feasible or both the quantitative and the qualitative side Our next survey instrument was a student possible to sustain a full-time learning of things to give us a richer story of what experience questionnaire, which focused on schedule. was happening, especially as people dropped the critical point at which people completed out or came back in. So the idea of a longitudinal study came their portfolios and were awarded advanced into play. I think that a very important standing. We wanted to know how long it Bonnabeau: And what were you seeing? base of information that many other took and what was involved? We developed Lehmann: We began quickly to find out colleges did not have at the time was the a four-page questionnaire that we sent out that not everybody was going to go through admission form. The early admission form to sample the students, about 400. Then we as a “six-monther,” that many students was much more narrative with open-ended followed that with a program completion were going to take three years, four years, questions. People wrote a lot about why questionnaire. When students were in five years, even though they may have a they wanted to come to this college, what their last contract, we had them complete maximum amount of advanced standing kind of community resources they could the questionnaire. And we were tracking credits. Events happened in the lives of take advantage of, and how they expected individuals. That was the idea. They were adults that made it much more difficult to carry out their program. We looked at not anonymous in that sense and that didn’t to easily understand why they just didn’t students from that point of entry all the cause us any particular problems. Students proceed through. Our normal image of a way through their learning contracts, their were voluntary respondents. And then that four-year undergraduate process did not fit narrative evaluations, and the creation of questionnaire was followed up by a graduate part-time adult learners. We had to create a their degree programs. Back then, the college questionnaire. That was the conceptual research strategy that would accommodate a also had “3A and 3B” [a description of a sequence of PERC and that’s how we had lot of the variance that we knew was going student’s specific and general purposes] in it laid out. We wanted to know two years to be there. the degree program transcript and lots of after, and then maybe five years after, what portfolios were sizable in nature. Since that had happened to the students. How did they At the same time, we also had to create time, the college either eliminated certain look back on their education and what were a research strategy that would prevent us requirements or simplified them so they they getting out of it? from getting trapped into what happens were more manageable. But we had, in on a traditional campus. Critics could say: Bonnabeau: And how about the faculty that sense, a more comprehensive flow of “Yes there’s been change in your students, side? information by the college, by the faculty but can you prove that it was a result of and, in some cases, in some centers, by the Lehmann: Yes, we also had faculty in this. Empire State’s program and not maturation students themselves. Often times, students At several points in time, very early on, levels of an individual or outside events had their own self-evaluations of learning Paul Bradley did an Empire State College that occurred? ” By careful longitudinal contract work that they placed in the mentor role report [see excerpt in All About study, where we have a narrative kind of hopper. Mentoring #31], and a second report titled document analysis, transcript analysis, “The New Professional: A Report on where we have quantitative checkpoints in Bonnabeau: In effect, you were able to Faculty in Individualized Education (1978) the surveys and where we have qualitative watch and describe the student over time. that was based on both interviews and interview information, we were able to Lehmann: Yes, the research office developed faculty questionnaires. We did a followup pin down the extent and depth of student our model from the actual way in which one to two years later that gave us kind of learning. This is almost what a lawyer does students went through the program. Then baseline information about the faculty that in a legal model – a trial where the attorney we developed a series of instruments. The were attracted to Empire State College, what seeks to establish the truth, cross-examines student biographical inventory was used they found of interest, and so on. So that’s witnesses, demonstrates where the burden at entry. At that time, we sent every newly the quantitative side. of proof lies, and concludes, yes or no, that enrolled student a biographical inventory. in fact learning has occurred. We had a We got a very good response – about 65 great deal of information on a number of

EMPIRE STATE COLLEGE • ALL ABOUT MENTORING 17 our students about whom we could really, level of learning, and the highest level of of preparation, very different amounts of more definitively, say: “This was indeed a satisfaction with their programs and with motivation, and so on. And this changes wonderful, marvelous learning experience.” the faculty. with each student who you sit with.

Bonnabeau: What was the size of your Bonnabeau: What were some of the In addition to that, you have curricular sample? How many students were you additional findings that were generated by diversity. We have a fairly open and flexible tracking? the PERC and the LCER studies? curriculum. It’s built on where students come in with their experience, background Lehmann: Well, as I said, we started with a Lehmann: The satisfaction levels, in some and with the diversity I referred to. And huge number at the beginning about 4,500 ways, were no surprise to the college, they can pursue what they want to study, student biographical inventories. We made a because the faculty told us from day one building on where they’ve been or starting lot of investment upfront. Then we got into how pleased adults were with their learning off in different directions, new directions several hundred of the student experience and how well they thought this program and so on. So, that was another real questionnaires during the 1974 self-study. was serving their needs. But there were hallmark of diversity that seems to me is a As I recall, we had about 385 responses. other results. For example, one group of critical kind of contribution. And then we followed several hundred PERC studies showed that the entering students through to the graduation point. characteristics of our students included We also served a higher proportion of In addition to the longitudinal studies, we tremendous diversity. Under diversity, we blacks and minority students than other did independent surveys of graduates. One had not only geographical diversity (serving adult education or nontraditional programs. of the first ones we did had about 600 every county of the state with students from There’s a whole series of reports that graduates. We took all the graduates we had the rural north to highly urban New York demonstrate the types of diversity we as of 1977 or 1978. So, we had almost a City), but background diversity as well. have and that identify the educational complete picture. We had a very high rate of Many studies that came out in the mid-to- implications of such diversity. return – about 90 percent in that group. late ’70s typified the adult learner as upper Because we serve students over the life cycle, middle class, white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant, We wanted to be able to show to we have all kinds of events occurring in the kind of person who typically succeeds accreditation teams that were coming in the lives of our adult learners. There was in education. Empire State College certainly ’74 and ’79 that the college was doing a period in the late ’70s, early ’80s, where included a profile of WASP students, but a good job, that this was a college with adult development became a big buzz word. what we quickly learned was that we had credibility to it, and that our students were We have students that are undergoing an enormous diversity beyond that. For good students – they were as good as, if various crises in their lives: career shifts, new instance, we were serving far more blue- not better, than those at other institutions. directions, job advancement, or something is collar workers. Ideally, we would have liked to draw fully happened in their family setting, or in their upon our longitudinal study, but practically Bonnabeau: And how about gender? personal lives in ways that require thinking we couldn’t do it because it took too much through what developmental issues are at Lehmann: We had an interesting change in time away from other kinds of things we stake. This can impact or be reinforced by that area. If you go back to ’74 and ’75, were also being asked to do. their learning and can be the occasion for about 55 or 60 percent of our students more effective strategies for their learning. For example, in 1978, Empire State College were men and more of them were full- So that’s another area. participated in the Legislative Commission time students. Within about eight years, on Expenditure Review Study, the LCER that had flip-flopped. We now had about Bonnabeau: What other clusters were there? Report. Legislative staff was looking at all 63 or 64 percent women. So, we were Lehmann: Well, take the other end of the the new institutions at SUNY. This included serving students at the collegewide level in picture – Empire State College graduates. It Old Westbury, Purchase, the College of all 62 counties of the state. And in terms was surprising to me, I guess, coming out Technology at Utica/Rome and Empire State of background, in terms of academic of a more traditional kind of campus in College – the newly emerging institutions, preparation, in terms of motivation, in Colorado and to some extent at Berkeley, the innovative SUNY institutions. LCER terms of skills and ability, prior learning that we had a large number of graduates wanted to know how good Empire State and learning style – if you take any of these fairly early on from a program of this small College was in comparison to the standard research variables, you’ll find that our size. I can remember one of my first tasks arts and sciences colleges. So they included students’ span the continuum. They also in the fall of ’73 was to find out what two arts and science colleges in their span the continuum in terms of age. We’ve happened to our graduates. We wanted to studies. We had 1,100 graduates in one of had students from 16 or 17 to 82. know if our graduates were going to be the surveys, far, far more than any of the Obviously, this presents an enormous accepted into graduate schools with this other colleges. And of course the results challenge. The faculty confronts, deals funny narrative transcript. A lot of questions were very significant because it showed that with, and educationally manages a kind of were being raised: How were they going our students were at the top. There were diversity that exists in few other places. This to be reviewed by graduate admissions six institutions involved and our students is an institution in which you’ve got very committees? What happened in the and our graduates expressed the strongest different backgrounds, very different levels employment world? Would these transcript

EMPIRE STATE COLLEGE • ALL ABOUT MENTORING 18 documents be understood, and so on? [1991]. Graduate admissions committees are We don’t say to them: “Well, you’ve got to And so we surveyed a couple of hundred allowing our students, in large numbers, to go back and take 20 courses of prerequisites graduates at that time, in ’73 and ’74. come in. They’re not saying, “Well, we’re in order to become a biologist,” or going to discriminate against them.” Or, whatever. So Empire State College builds- We found out what had happened to them, “Well, we’re only going to take three; we’re off their prior records and experiences. And the number of times they had applied to going to have to set up a quota, or we’re that, to me, is an interesting other side to graduate school, which graduate schools only going to take a small number of people this. Our studies of graduates demonstrate they applied to, and what kinds of problems in because you’re really not going to be in how the college fosters a spirit of pursuing they had encountered. And there was a this profession long enough to really do any education, both in the formal sense of distinct minority of people that were finding good, or whatever.” Or, “If you have to degrees and certificates, as well informally. graduate admissions committees wanted go on for a Ph.D., you know, you’re going But that set us against an earlier record more information. They wanted letters to be 55 by the time you get out.” To my where people really ran into failure, ran into from the deans; they wanted conversion of surprise, we found much less of this. It was difficulties, ran into barriers. They couldn’t narrative evaluations to letter grades; or they a surprise to look at the proportions of our get it together, for whatever reasons. I don’t just downright did not accept our students. students that decided to go on. It really says want to always cast them in a negative But we also found that the majority – the something about Empire State College. sense. I mean to look positively. They larger majority – was accepted into graduate got married, they moved to another state school. They went on, and they were telling – things have happened in their lives. Here us – some of them had already been through we have an institution that has an admirable a semester or two at that time – how much record of success, a good outcome and better prepared they were for graduate-level impact. In short, Empire State College plays work. We did talk to a number of graduate In short, Empire a vital role in taking attrition casualties from admissions deans. Their response was mixed State College plays everywhere else, providing a supportive until they began to get experience with a learning environment, helping them few of our students, the pioneers going a vital role in taking graduate, and fostering lifelong learning in through, the path-breakers. It became clear attrition casualties its best sense! that our program was going to work, that Bonnabeau: What other critical studies did deans and admission’s people were going to from everywhere else, you undertake in your early association with be impressed with the kind of work that our providing a supportive Empire State College, other than PERC and students could do. learning environment, the LCER studies? Bonnabeau: And we had a good number Lehmann: In 1972, Ernie and Paul had of Empire State College graduates pursuing helping them graduate, done “Ten Out of Thirty,” which was graduate work, didn’t we? and fostering lifelong an interesting case study of the first 30 Lehmann: That amazed me. I can learning in its best sense! graduates, an analysis of who they were, understand maybe a quarter or a third, but and what they encountered, and what they here in the studies we began doing in the were doing after graduation. I joined the early ’80s and continuing up until today, college just after that report was prepared. we found between 50 and 60 percent of It was extremely influential in the State our students going on for some kind of Bonnabeau: This certainly has to be seen as Education Department’s review of the advanced education. We’re finding, in another important “outcome impact.” college in 1974. It gave a wonderful way our more recent studies, that somewhere to understand the college as seen through between eight and nine percent, just under Lehmann: If you look at our students that the eyes of students: What are they ten percent, already have a bachelor’s degree come in, almost every one is an attrition experiencing? What does this college do? when they come here. So, they’re looking for casualty from somewhere else. They’ve gone Here we’re talking about learning contracts, either some other kind of quick learning that to two or three other colleges, on the whole, contract evaluations, creating portfolios they want to pick up, or a second bachelor’s or they’ve been involved in other academic before it was really that common a thing to degree, or some way to piggy-back that experiences. Either they have had a bad do. What is mentoring all about? What does into an eventual Master’s degree somewhere result or they haven’t been able to put it that mean? What does it mean to create else. To me, in a way, this fits in now with together as a degree. There are a lot reasons your own individualized degree program a larger picture about the upgrading of why they haven’t achieved a degree, so and be aware of academic standards? education and the need for generations of when they come to us, we are like a second, We produced thousands of copies of that older students that are pursuing degrees or third, or fourth chance place. We are an particular report, believe it or not, and sent new learning in a rather serious way. opportunity for them to at last really pull it all over the country. It was a wonderful some things together in a way that builds off But what also struck me is that here we now way to explain the college in real terms their strengths and doesn’t penalize them. have over 17,000 graduates in our college outsiders could understand. When people

EMPIRE STATE COLLEGE • ALL ABOUT MENTORING 19 read our bulletins and other literature Lehmann: We found about 50 percent of the Lehmann: Yes, we found that a fifth of the filled with special Empire State College time the problems were with the individual. total reasons for leaving in the remaining 50 jargon, it is sometimes hard to follow and That is, there was a death in the family, percent were mentor-related. The chemistry comprehend. A lot of our basic policy a job change, health reasons, those kinds between the mentor and the student was statements were not defined until ’75, ’76. of personal dynamics going on that led to just off. There were other differences: age If you go back and look at individualized the person withdrawing from Empire State differences, you’d have a very young mentor program documents and others, those College. That was the basic reason. And and an “older” person or the reverse of came out of APLPC [Academic Policy and a lot of people like Loren Baritz [at that that, or a man and a woman – a gender Learning Program Committee] after ’74 (for time the provost of the SUNY system] were difference. There was something going on in example, the policies on advanced standing) skeptical of these results. They thought that that chemistry that led to a person saying, so the “Ten Out of Thirty” study played a the results were just self-serving, an easy “I can’t do this. This is not the program special role in explaining the early college. way to get the college off the hook. That for me. I don’t want to work under these argument could be certainly made about the circumstances,” and drop out. They didn’t Bonnabeau: How about attrition? Did the early stage of work here, but since we’ve necessarily go back and say, “I would like to administration establish that as a priority? repeated this with different methodologies change my mentor. I’d like to do something Lehmann: No. That came out of a many, many times, I’m more persuaded that else.” About a quarter of the reasons statistical tabulation we did around ’75 students are talking straight to us. focused around the assessment process. At or ’76 that was part of a PERC study. that time, it was much more erratic than They really are telling us something about During the course of working with some it’s now become. It took too much time. what’s happening in their lives and that of the other institutions involved in PERC There were difficulties in understanding was different from research done on 18- to – SUNY-Plattsburgh, Hampshire College, the process: How it was going to work for 23-year olds, who were at one particular the University of Wisconsin at Green Bay, them? What kind of credits could students developmental stage. They were away from and a small private institution, Northland really get? How would they put together home, they were on campus; sure they may College in Wisconsin – we began to ask their portfolio and so on? So there was get sick and so on, but it’s not the same questions about what attrition means in a sizable cluster of problems there. Then kind of thing as when you’re 45 or 55, this context. We wanted to find out in another, probably a quarter of the attrition, and you’re faced with traumatic events in a quantitative sense. So Paul and I did a had to do with the program itself: something your life: you lose your job, you have a study and looked at about 1,000 students. about the program, their course of study, death in the family, or finances affect you We had to drop the anchor on timeframes. and the difficulties students encountered in a way that doesn’t happen, let’s say, When is it that attrition will happen? For with the program led them to be unhappy when you are 20 or 21. So, I think one the purposes of our study, we found that and withdraw. The final component of the of the adult development findings that I we were graduating approximately 45 to remaining 50 percent, probably another 20 mentioned earlier that came out of this 50 percent and the rest of them were either percent, had to do with billing problems, research was that we really found there was still in the program or gone, and we weren’t financial aid and other bureaucratic an irreducible life cycle attrition factor that sure when or if they were going to come difficulties. There were a fair number of was going to occur in programs that serve back. So that raised some questions about these in the ’70s compared to the ’80s. We a majority of students between 30 and 55 what was happening. For example, to what have certainly seen a maturation in the years of age. Serving that kind of mid-life extent was “stepping out” something that college in terms of the ability to get proper population means that you are going to the college was responsible for? To what and workable procedures in place. have an attrition factor occurring around extent is attrition really part of the way 18 percent of the time. You’re just going to Bonnabeau: What percentage of those adults in which adults have to step out and tend lose those people for some period of time by that dropped out really didn’t drop out? For to their personal lives, health concerns, or the very nature of the students served by the example, they might have had very specific whatever else leads to their withdrawal from program. We have to understand it doesn’t objectives. “I want to take two courses in the college? So we did a lot of interviews need to go on forever because we know we accounting or two contracts in marketing at that time and began to look at some of have a good number of those people come and that’s it.” Did that show up in your that information to determine where Empire back in and eventually graduate. It may research? Certainly, not every adult student State College might improve its program, as take them eight years, it may take them wants a college degree. well as what steps we could take to recover ten years, or it may take 12 or 15 years for students – a kind of recovery program for Lehmann: That’s right. And that’s something quarter-time students. So, the whole notion the number of people who said they were we’ve come to realize more recently. of attrition gets really stretched out. The going to reenroll. We then would track these most recent Barton-Gillet surveys in1989 One major reason we got into the adults and see if, in fact, they did reenroll. confirmed these early studies. attrition area is that we are part of the So, we were pursuing those kinds of studies. State University of New York. Another Bonnabeau: And how about mentor issues; Bonnabeau: What kinds of things did you major activity deals with the fact that were these a factor? uncover in your attrition study? our office is responsible for completing and complying with the State University,

EMPIRE STATE COLLEGE • ALL ABOUT MENTORING 20 the State Education Department, and the and debates with SUNY Central. They place for them. You got in here because you federal government’s requests for surveys, wanted us engage in course section analysis thought you could do the work. But when information and reports. And this has and all kinds of other things that would somebody picks up these zebra reports, become over the years quite a sizeable determine the faculty workload, which we the SUNY documents summarizing all the workload. We produce something like 50 don’t do. But they have all these systems campuses in a comparative way, they say, to 60 reports a year of various complexity. set up, and then Empire State College is an “Look at this!” Empire State College gets Most of those go to SUNY, and then they’re asterisk at the bottom of the page! We’re fingered as having a terrible problem. This transferred to other parts of the hierarchy, off on the side here in terms how SUNY was one of our concerns in the self-studies but we used to do a lot of this by hand. accommodates Empire State College. It’s of ’74 and ’79, i.e., that the accreditation not because we don’t wish to accommodate teams were going to pick this up and say, Attrition was one of these studies. Just SUNY requests, but it’s because Empire State “What is going on here?” In part it becomes counting the students in this college was a College ’s program and way of operating an artifact of the way you define cohorts, challenge. For attrition, the State University, is very difficult to capture accurately in the way you’re calculating and whether you for many, many years, developed its own SUNY’s traditional categories. include half-time students. We’re not sure reporting and counting schemes. At a even now what the definition of attrition traditional campus, you say, okay I want On the current attrition picture, to give you means for a place like us, for adult learners. to find out how to calculate attrition; I’ll an example, they want a report on full-time Let’s take the question of how long should take everybody who comes in as a full-time attrition for first time students, i.e., first time it take to complete a degree. Is eight years student during the fall. If they’re still there and transfers. They break these things down reasonable? Is 10 years good enough? Well, when the fall census is taken, we’ll drop the SUNY’s forms only go five to six years at anchor and include them in the cohort and the most for full-time students. SUNY does so on. Traditional campuses can more easily not report any information on half-time measure freshman level attrition, sophomore There are a lot of reasons students. We know that students may drop level attrition, or, whether students graduate out and don’t come back for three years. in five years rather than in four. why people are here Bonnabeau: Ten years is not unusual? Well this cohort strategy presents enormous aside from the dominant problems for Empire State College, because numbers that obviously Lehmann: Ten years is not unusual. So we don’t have a fall semester. We don’t here’s a set of issues that revolve around have a spring semester. We enroll monthly; want a degree. We have another aspect of this attrition question. we enroll daily. So we artificially created a no good way of sorting You pointed to the question of goals. What’s cohort that fit the SUNY general parameters the learner’s goal at the outset? We need to and put everybody into the hopper for our them out in the present know that information in order to factor computer system. computer system. it in. We should only be counting attrition as a counterpart to 18 to 20-year olds on We know that learners have different the regular campus, i.e., for Empire State motivations: I only want two courses. I College students who are serious and degree- don’t want a degree. I already have a degree. oriented. Students with degrees would There are a lot of reasons why people are a lot of different ways. We knew this going have to be pulled out, which takes special here aside from the dominant numbers into it. We protested. We finally got them programming. Or look at those who have that obviously want a degree. We have no to change the forms so they would include different purposes in mind: “We’re only good way of sorting them out in the present half-time students, because that’s the bulk of going to be here for a couple of contracts computer system. We’ve had that as an item where our students are. But first-time, full- worth of learning.” In the Center for that we wanted to give attention to, but time students, who are predominately 18- Distance Learning [CDL] you see a good bit it’s low on the pecking order of priorities year olds, have little meaning to our college. of that. Then we have to know that and sort to get served by the computer center staff, “How many full-time students do you that out. especially given the needs over the last say have?” We have very few. “How many first 10 years. So we made some estimates about time students do you have?” Very, very few. Bonnabeau: We found that there are many that, and we certainly know that it occurs, So we had something like 80 to 100 new reasons for students enrolling in CDL. but to really pin it down in a definitive way first time, full-time students per year, and we Lehmann: There are two other things I’ll just does present some problems from SUNY’s would show an attrition rate of 85 percent. comment on about the attrition situation. standpoint. Now an attrition rate that seems unusually We have drafted a paper arguing that if a high is perfectly understandable to us. First Bonnabeau: So the responses of SUNY to person leaves the college in good standing, of all, we understand why we have so few what we were tracking were not always good academic standing, that person should students who fit this desc ription. This is not favorable. not be counted as attrition. This is true at a college for them. Mentors and program community colleges. They face this attrition Lehmann: When I first came here in the administrators are advising a lot of these issue also. If a person who has a GPA of early ’70s, we had a lot of discussions students, very legitimately, that this is not a

EMPIRE STATE COLLEGE • ALL ABOUT MENTORING 21

2.5 and leaves a community college, that 1977 in big way. In 1980, Jim Hall started Bonnabeau: From an anthropological point person should not be considered part of the strategic planning and there was a change of view, I see some value in bringing in attrition. The person just may have gone as in the office with Ernie and me. In the faculty from outside of the center being a transfer student to another college. Why discussions I had with Jim, I began to see the analyzed. In effect, you have created a should you be penalized as an institution value of doing intensive program evaluation formal mechanism for faculty from around by calling that attrition? That person left studies of individual centers. CDL got the college to share in the analysis of work your institution, but if they left with a included early on. done by colleagues at another center. This track record of good academic standing, has the potential to diffuse information So the idea here was to build research into meaning that whatever the faculty defines as and to move away from these individual the strategic planning process of the college. satisfactory academic progress, you can’t call collectivities of centers that have their own Each center was asked what they were that attrition, or you shouldn’t, especially cultures, and possibility move toward a planning on a biennial cycle. And we would with adults because that has a negative label more uniform academic program. This could then look at a learning center like Rochester and creates other problems. break down the isolation of the centers. or CDL or the Public Affairs Center and Bonnabeau: That’s right. Adult students are review their strategic plan in detail. We Lehmann: This was one of our goals. highly mobile. would review the annual reports prepared Another one of the problems, historically, by the center and then create an evaluation has been what to do with area of study Lehmann: If people leave to transfer plan that made sense to the faculty and to groups. Over the years, Academic Affairs elsewhere, then why should the institution the deans of that center or program. has done some less extensive analyses of from which they left be penalized with portfolios, but nothing of the kind that a higher attrition rate? So there are real Instead of collegewide surveys, we looked at we started to develop at a few centers. We problems in this new view of the purpose an individual learning center. In Rochester really carried them through collegewide and definition of attrition involving adult we did student biographical inventories on in preparation for Middle States. But learners. entering students. We did several hundred of precisely to the point here, I think that’s those. We did graduate follow-up analysis Bonnabeau: Of those studies that you did, a very valuable way for the college as a there. We did detailed enrollment analysis from 1973 until 1979, which do you think whole, all the faculty, to begin to see what there, and the circulation management was the most important? Is there one that is going on and see the issues involved. I program was another piece. We did studies sticks out? thought in 1988 when we did this for the on the faculty and so on. college as a whole that it was an enormously Lehmann: Well, I mentioned that the “Ten About every year and half we’d take an valuable way to pull together for faculty Out of Thirty” was a baseline study. That intensive look at a new center or a new and administrative review significant was very important because, to external program, which involved interviews and issues affecting planning and the next audiences, it was very powerful, very other data collection efforts. In the course developmental steps. meaningful, and very helpful; it lasted of that, we started a faculty panel review quite a number of years. Then I would say To highlight this, let’s take interdisciplinary of student transcripts. That really started the PERC sequence of studies took over studies, for example. We know that this is a in an intensive way in Rochester. It was a from there. We made a lot of presentations very fast-growing area. It is the third highest new kind of qualitative approach where around the country and we got other degree area in college, behind Business, we were drawing a sample of students colleges involved to some extent in adapting Management and Economics and Labor from a particular center at a particular this model. Studies. You have got to think about Labor point in time. We brought in faculty from [HVACLS] when you’re talking about the Bonnabeau: Have you done follow-up outside that center to spend three days college, because we have three or four studies that built on what you did on PERC reading those files. We developed protocol hundred associate degrees awarded in a back in the ’70s? In other words, did PERC forms and evaluation forms. Later, this given year. Yet we have no area of study set the agenda for you? became part of what you experienced in group that is known as interdisciplinary the recent Middle State’s evaluation. And Lehmann: It has but there’s been a twist. studies. We have the early Dearing report that worked well. It also was so much more That came in 1980. It is important as far guidelines [the first formal effort to spell out powerful because it tells us a lot about what as looking at the history of the research the academic focus of the college] on this a student’s program really represents. So office. Up to about 1979, we were doing area that contain several murky definitions. we pulled together all the documents on a collegewide studies. That is, we were doing So, one good thing that came out, although given sample of students including all the the surveys that went out to graduates, we haven’t really followed up yet, was to assessment information. It was a very rich to the new students, to whatever target identify that area. This is going to be an qualitative review. Judgments were made by seemed appropriate. We tried to reach every area of growth where we must pay more faculty knowledgeable in the area of each center. But we often did not include some attention and we also should have faculty student’s program. So that became, I think, a places like the Labor Center [The Harry looking at what’s happening here and more major instrument for improving the kind of Van Arsdale Jr. Center for Labor Studies, research. research work we were doing and tying it to HVACLS]. They were just getting started in the strategic planning cycle of the college.

EMPIRE STATE COLLEGE • ALL ABOUT MENTORING 22

Bonnabeau: Getting back to the point that I would be released, that Jim Hall didn’t like autonomy to be able to write that up as made, did you see early on in the college the that focus on center cultures at that time. staff saw it, as you would do in any serious emergence of fairly independent centers with He did not want to – although Chickering disciplinary and professional work. their own cultures – centers with their own did not mind – see a report come out that But then there was the question that approach toward providing individualized started to show diversity and different center emerged when the review of a report learning, student-centered learning? Did that development. For Jim, we were one college becomes subject to top administrative present a problem? and he was very concerned. I did not have concerns that the content might embarrass a direct conversation with him about this; Lehmann: Yes it did. When I first came into the college. Or, there might be a fight this is my interpretation of what Ernie and the college, Ernie and Paul had been around between Baritz, Chickering and Hall. the others had said to me. This part of the to the centers, at that time, maybe four or Sometimes we had some of that. So, Ernie report had to be put on the back burner five, and they had interviewed all the faculty really took some strong stands to insure the because of the “one college” idea and fact and deans and had prepared the first of credibility and autonomy of the office. In that mentors are mentors, and you don’t the mentor reports that eventually Paul put the case of the mentor report, we did not want to start making these differences into a out. Well, I’m a sociologist by background publish the center differences. But there different kind of college or cluster of centers. and training, and so is Ernie. Paul was a were other things that we fought over in It was believed that this would only create psychologist. I joined the discussion about other reports that were published even internal problems and future inequities. how to present the center profiles. It became though, as the administration saw it, they very clear at that point, that they had There was also the fear that the State were not in the best interests of the college. started to write about the cultures of the Education people could come in and We felt that it was our responsibility to centers. Two or three pages described how say that the college’s policies were not report what had been found in our surveys, Long Island was different from Rochester, consistent. There was a lot of tension at that interviews and research in order to maintain which was different from Albany, which time with very strong-willed people. There a credible research operation. It is important was different from Metropolitan. Not just was also a serious aspect of this in terms to remember that, as part of a new college, in terms of their organizational layout and of the independent function of the research the research office was also new, trying to the kinds of faculty they had recruited, but office. ORE staff had lots of debates among establish its own strategies and procedures in terms of the nature of the faculty culture ourselves about how far we could push a for doing studies. We had a lot of or the center patterns of behavior or the given report. We were trying to do objective discussions to determine agendas, priorities values that had begun to develop and the research. We were independent, going out and publications. We had a research agenda images promoted. And I remember very well and bringing back the message from the to fulfill. that in our first draft of this report that like centers, whatever that might be. There was others had a very wide distribution before it a strong sense that ORE should have the

“Whose knowledge are we studying? Why? Is there an official knowledge? Why? Are some people privileged by the knowledge we study? If so, who? If knowledge is socially produced, am I a pro- ducer or consumer? Why? If knowledge is affected by the socially constructed culture and the context from which it arose, then whose culture is being celebrated? If social knowledge is not objective, then how does that affect the way we conduct research? If objectivity is only one way of knowing, in what other ways can we know?”

– Phyllis M. Cunningham, “Let’s Get Real: A Critical Look at the Practice of Adult Education.” Mountain Plains Adult Education Journal (22:1) (1993)

EMPIRE STATE COLLEGE • ALL ABOUT MENTORING 23

Scholarship, Mentoring and Wisdom: Mentoring Institute Reassignment Report

Lorraine Lander, Genesee Valley Center

ne of the first challenges was challenge. I think good communication with to find I began my quarter-time all parties was very important to make this O reassignment for the Mentoring work. Institute in the summer of 2005 with three Probably the most important individual objectives. The first objective was to learn who assisted me to make my reassignment more about the general topic of faculty work successful was Alan Mandell. I can scholarship. The second was to learn more not thank Alan enough for all the time he about mentoring (and how scholarship invested in talking with me, reading things relates to mentoring at the college), and the I wrote, and guiding me through various third was to learn more about wisdom (and phases of this year-long project. It was a perhaps its connection to mentoring). It was pleasure and privilege to work with him. a great deal to accomplish in one year, but One of the many benefits I think I obtained I was eager for the challenges of doing this from this reassignment was the opportunity work. to work closely with Alan, to benefit in One of the first challenges was to find some ways from his long experience with the time to fit this work into my busy mentoring and with Empire State College. schedule of mentoring and other faculty His assistance was invaluable to me in this responsibilities. In order to do this, I found work. Lorraine Lander it useful to be proactive and engage in The first piece of my reassignment work scholarly activity is discussed and debated in discussions with my dean and fellow faculty started during the reading period, in August many other locations. Issues of how to fairly about the difficulty of this challenge. I 2005, when I began to consider the topic measure intellectual activity and scholarship located a tutor who could work with many of faculty scholarship. I started with Ernest have also been discussed, debated, and of the students that I currently mentored Boyer’s conceptions of scholarship, and after much has been written on this topic. While and arranged for that person to be available reading the review of Boyer’s work written my own scholarly interests are more related to students at the center. In discussing the by Chris Rounds (All About Mentoring, to internal motivations for scholarship, financial arrangements of funding for my spring 2005, #29), and then Boyer’s original there has certainly been consideration of reassignment with my dean, I was also able publication, Scholarship Reconsidered, my the external motivations for conducting to obtain a small amount of funding for a initial goal was to review what had been scholarship, as well as the difficulties of research assistant, who helped me through written on faculty scholarship since Boyer’s publishing and presenting for new faculty various parts of the year to find reading work was published. I was interested in leaving graduate school today. I would refer materials, assisted with the web site I was finding out about the impact of his work you to my annotated bibliography on the developing, assisted with my research work, and the current state of thinking on the topic of faculty scholarship, if you would and carried out other duties. topic. The results of these readings was an like to know more. The last piece that worked well for me to article I published in the fall in All About I would also like to add that any additions make the time for the reassignment work, Mentoring (winter 2006, #30), as well as to this annotated bibliography on was the decision that Monday would be an annotated bibliography on the topic scholarship would be welcome. I believe my Mentoring Institute day and I did not of scholarship which was published on the annotated bibliographies that have typically go into the office on Mondays. Mentorsite in the fall of 2005. been developed on various topics such as This allowed me the undisturbed time I I would like to share some of the things I adult education and development, faculty needed to read, write and think about the learned from these readings on scholarship. scholarship, mentoring, etc. are works topics of my reassignment work. Fellow First, the tensions and issues around in progress. Please consider sharing with faculty and students adjusted to this scholarly activity that we face at Empire others at the college when you have read schedule quite well. I was successful in State College are not unique. They are something in these areas that interests cutting my load to the three-quarter time for present in many other institutions of higher you and might be of interest to others. the reassignment through the cooperation of education and throughout different types Annotations for the bibliography on faculty various individuals at my center, and I want of academic institutions. For example, the scholarship or mentoring can be submitted to thank all those who helped me with this question of what constitutes scholarship and

EMPIRE STATE COLLEGE • ALL ABOUT MENTORING 24 by contacting me, or annotations for any findings for a future issue of All About comparisons between the fields of therapy of the bibliographies by contacting Alan Mentoring. As I consider and learn more and mentoring since I had some graduate Mandell. about faculty scholarship, the motivation school preparation as a clinician. I thought behind it, and the topic of self-directed of the lessons I was taught concerning the The next piece of my reassignment work learning, it has become clear to me that responsibility of a therapist to both consume was further investigation of the topic of faculty scholarship is clearly a self-directed scholarship in their field and to produce scholarship as it impacts our work at learning activity. scholarship. We read of our responsibility Empire State College. Two activities assisted to be a scientist-practitioner and to me with this investigation. The first was At the same time I was working on communicate what was learned in individual to arrange some one-on-one conversations constructing my faculty survey of work with clients, in order to assist the field with fellow faculty on the topics of both scholarship, I was also reading and working to move forward in improving practice and scholarship and mentoring, which I carried on an annotated bibliography of mentoring. education of new therapists. I wondered out with individuals around the college at The annotated bibliography of mentoring if we, as mentors, could do more to both various points in their academic careers is now included in Mentorsite. I discovered consume and produce scholarship on the and in different centers and programs. there are a wide variety of written materials topic of mentoring adult college students. The second activity was to organize a one- on the topic of mentoring, as mentoring has day meeting on the topic of scholarship. become an important topic in recent years I also considered connections between This meeting took place at the Northeast in the business world, in public schools in education and mentoring. I encountered Center in late January and involved a group the mentoring of new teachers, in relation an interesting article by Lee Shulman of of faculty also from various parts of the the Carnegie Foundation about a table of college and in various points in their careers. learning (Shulman, 2002). In this article We engaged in a thoughtful intellectual As I consider and learn Shulman wrote about the usefulness of discussion on the topic of scholarship. taxonomies and hierarchies to provide us The culminating activity in the afternoon more about faculty with a common language in discussion of involved the group providing me with scholarship, the motivation practice in education. In consideration of ideas for a survey I was constructing on Shulman’s thoughts and what I know about motivation and faculty scholarship. It was behind it, and the topic the scaffolding of learning, I also wonder invaluable to me to have the views of my of self-directed learning, if taxonomies and hierarchies can become colleagues to contribute to my thinking for useful structures around which we can build the survey and I want to again thank all it has become clear to me the complexities of our real world practice those who participated. that faculty scholarship in mentoring. While I see their usefulness, I am also in agreement with Shulman that One of my goals for my reassignment was is clearly a self-directed there are limitations to such heuristics. I to try to understand the links between began to wonder though if there were other mentoring and scholarship in the minds of learning activity. taxonomies that were missing from the field faculty at the college. In April of 2006, I of mentoring. For example, could we take distributed the above-mentioned survey on Shulman’s table of learning and propose faculty scholarship to all full-time faculty at to mentoring youth, and also in the context mentoring activities that would accompany the college (144 in total). Sixty-six mentors of mentoring in higher education. I hope each aspect of learning? responded. This is an excellent response rate my annotated bibliography reflects some and I believe it reflects the collegiality and So I found some information on taxonomies work on each of these topics, as well as cooperative spirit of faculty at the college. and hierarchies and ended up wondering a more extensive sampling of materials This excellent response rate may also reflect if there are more that could be created. I on mentoring in higher education and the the importance of the topic for many of us. also discovered philosophies of mentoring, mentoring of adult college students. Thank you to all who responded. I believe which provided me a different and useful the results of this survey will provide some I would also like to share a little of what look at the topic of mentoring. Texts that answers to questions on scholarly activity of I learned about mentoring. I confess that considered these philosophies, interwoven Empire State College faculty. my background in psychology and human with case studies and examples of practice, development led me to begin my search include Mentor by Daloz (1999) and From Analysis and evaluation of the results of the for theories of mentoring that were based Teaching to Mentoring by Herman and survey is ongoing at this time. I presented on taxonomies and hierarchies. I found Mandell (2004). I found these philosophical results of the survey at the All Area of works on stages of mentoring, types of approaches to be important sources of Study Meeting in November 2006. I will mentor relationships, aspects of mentoring, information in my reading about mentoring. be presenting findings from the survey at and even information on taxonomies and So again, if you would like to know more, the International Self-Directed Learning hierarchies from adult development that please consult my annotated bibliography of Symposium in February 2007 as I discuss interact with mentoring (see for example, mentoring and consider submitting some of faculty scholarship as self-directed learning. Daloz, 1999). I began to wonder about your own annotations. I also anticipate writing a summary of my

EMPIRE STATE COLLEGE • ALL ABOUT MENTORING 25

The last piece of my reassignment work and Baynes, Psychotherapy East and West Institute such a positive experience. It was a related to my interest in wisdom. My by Watts, and Care of the Soul by Moore wonderful opportunity for me and I would academic interests in graduate school all now rest in a pile near my reading chair. encourage others to consider proposing a centered on cognitive development and the From the Native American perspective I project for consideration at some point in impact of motivation on cognitive activities acquired Wisdomkeepers by Wall and Arden their careers at Empire State College. like attention span and learning. Since and added it to books I already owned on joining the faculty at Empire State College, the topic: Voices from Our Ancesters by Works Cited these interests have led me to consider Ywahoo, Teachings from the Longhouse Bucke, R. M. (1991). Cosmic Ê critical thinking and its development by Thomas and Boyle, and To Become a Consciousness. New York: Penquin. Ê and adult college student motivation for Human Being by Wall. Daloz, L. A. (1999). Mentor. San Ê learning (including the topic of self-directed I must report that reading about wisdom is Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Ê learning). These interests have expanded to not what I would call “light” reading. I find my current project on faculty motivation Herman, L. and A. Mandell. (2004). From I must read and then spend time thinking Teaching to Mentoring. New York: for scholarship, as well as a new project about what I have read. I suspect it will take RoutledgeFalmer. I began in fall 2006 related to motivation me some time to work my way through and student persistence. I continue to work Huxley, A. (2004). The Perennial Ê these materials (particularly considering Ê also on a developing interest in the topic Philosophy. New York: Perennial the many other aspects of my work that Classics. Ê of wisdom, considering its connections to compete with the time for this reading). I motivation, critical thinking, and learning. James, W. (2002). The Varieties of Ê believe I will continue to refine my thinking Religious Experience: A Study in Ê Wisdom is a complex topic and difficult to and perspectives on wisdom as I work my Human Nature. New York: The Ê study, as wisdom can be conceptualized in a way through this reading. Modern Library. Ê variety of ways. For example, the three most One portion of my reassignment work was Moore, R. (1992). Care of the Soul. New common conceptions would include wisdom to consider the relations between wisdom York: Harper Perennial. in relation to understanding the meaning and mentoring, and I had several interesting Shulman, L. (2002). “Making differences: of life and our place in the universe, conversations with mentors at the college A table of learning.” Change, 34, 6. pp. wisdom in relation to understanding how about whether it was possible to identify 36 - 44. to lead a good life that is compatible with certain mentors who possessed wisdom Sternberg, R. J. (2003). Wisdom, our environments, and lastly, wisdom about mentoring. I had thought to interview Intelligence and Creativity Synthesized. as practical knowledge in relation to these individuals to see if I could gain some New York: Cambridge University Press. expertise and performances at high levels of information for my own scholarly work on Sternberg, R. J. (ed.). (1995). Wisdom: achievement. this topic and hopefully find important and Its Nature, Origins and Development. Wisdom seems to be one outcome of useful information on mentoring to pass New York: Cambridge University Press. cognitive development for adults and thus a on to others. As it turns out, I could find Sternberg, R. J. and J. Jordan (eds.). topic I would like to learn more about and no consensus about who these individuals (2005). A Handbook of Wisdom: continue to study. In order to further my would be and so have not further pursued Psychological Perspectives. New York: understanding of this topic, I led a session at that goal at this time. Considering the Cambridge University Press. All College in March of 2006 where we had complexity of the concept of wisdom, it Thomas, J. (1994). Teachings From the a lively discussion. The starting place for my should not be surprising that reaching a Longhouse. Toronto, Ontario: Stoddart. own reading on wisdom began with Robert consensus on who possesses it might be Wall, S. (2001). To Become a Human Sternberg’s Wisdom: Its Nature, Origins and difficult. This is a project I may come back Being. Charlottesville, VA: Hampton Development, which is an edited volume to at some point in the future when I have Roads Publishing Company. of essays by psychologists on the topic. gained a better understanding of wisdom. Wall, S. and Arden, H. (1990). Adding to the psychological perspective, Wisdomkeepers: Meetings with Native I want to end by saying that I found my I have recently acquired A Handbook of American Spiritual Elders. Hillsboro, reassignment for the Mentoring Institute Wisdom by Sternberg and Jordan, as well Oregon: Beyond Words Publishing useful in many ways. I have learned a as Sternberg’s Wisdom, Intelligence and Company. great deal. I have also been able to work Creativity Synthesized. Wanting to acquire Watts, A. W. (1963). Psychotherapy East on several pieces of scholarly interest and more of a broad perspective on the topic and West. New York: Mentor Books. scholarly activities that will have positive I sought resources that reflected more Wilhelm, R. and C. F. Baynes. (1997). The benefits for my professional development. philosophical perspectives, as well as some I Ching or Book of Changes. Princeton, My reassignment has provided me a chance that represented eastern perspectives. Titles New Jersey: Princeton University Press. to get to know many of you better than ranging from Cosmic Consciousness by I did before and that is also a positive Ywahoo, D. (1987). Voices of Our Bucke, The Varieties of Religious Experience Ancestors: Cherokee Teachings from benefit for me. I want to again thank all by James, The Perennial Philosophy by the Wisdom Fire. Boston: Shambhala. those who contributed and assisted me in Huxley, The I Ching translation by Wilhelm making this reassignment for the Mentoring

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The Immigration Debate: All about Politics, Economics and the Resurgence of Nativism

Lear Matthews, Metropolitan Center

Introduction categories that carry a high risk of physical and psychological harm. he timing and furor over what to do These industries – agricultural about undocumented immigrants and service-based especially T and how to protect the borders of – desperately need workers and are the United States is by no means accidental. seemingly unable to attract those As one political observer argues, the current that are American-born. Indeed, immigration debate “is fraught with the this situation has already led to usual high-level intensity,” heightened by competition and outright conflict the anxiety of mid-term elections, and the between American working-class involvement of presidential candidates groups and new immigrants, in (Herman, 2006). part at least due to the willingness This debate has a well-documented history. of those most vulnerable to accept However, what has been a topic of some the paltry wages about which they national importance (even within the have no choice. context of deep concerns about the Iraq There may be strong arguments on quagmire), has become a significantly both sides of the debate between simmering social issue churned by political those who seek to liberalize current rhetoric, economic claims, and deeply immigration laws and those who felt cultural assumptions. An increase in want to further restrict the flow of the number of immigrants, particularly migrants to the United States. In in states not known for sizeable new promoting each of these opposing immigrant populations, has also fuelled PHOTO BY MEL ROSENTHAL views, however, advocates need to the debate (Lyman, 2006). The perennial assess the effects on the host society questions are often posed: Are “illegal however, the presence of undocumented as well as immigrant countries. The impact aliens” (as I see it, already a disparaging immigrants is blamed for many social of lost human capital in the sending nations term) actually displacing Americans in the ills and attempts to stem the influx of is seldom considered in this debate. That job market and destroying the fabric of immigrants into the United States and to is, while many immigrants bring needed American society? Or, are they energizing assess what is presumed by vocal critics to skills to the United States, the transition the economy and keeping the American be the negative impact on American society also contributes to the “brain drain” or dream alive? (Hinojosa, 2004). Answers of these new residents is unprecedented. “skills drain” in their country of origin. It to these questions, however accurate or What is often ignored is the fact that must be reiterated that the vast majority of distorted they are, have become part of the industrial exploitation among this group immigrants who are employed in the United escalating deliberations on a controversial is quite common. As Frum (2003) notes, issue, whose solutions have both domestic the undocumented and international implications. My purpose often work off-the- here is to examine some critical dimensions books in low-level jobs of the debate and share some thoughts and not protected by about various attempts to find meaningful labor laws. They are solutions to it. exposed to detention and deportation, particularly The Problem since the World Trade Center tragedy. These For decades, immigrants (primarily Latinos) workers are usually have been lured to the United States as employed in a broad agricultural laborers with little alarm about range of jobs as domestic their immigration status from politicians, servants, day laborers, the American public or employers. Today, and other employment

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international issues perceived as threatening crimes. In addition, according to the law, to many political reputations. even legal residents could be deported, and those who were seeking asylum could be A closer examination of the immigration denied humanitarian aid. As part of the debate shows to what extent it is actually current debate, some advocates for stricter a battle over ideology rather than a serious regulations have espoused actions such as discussion of commitments to any pragmatic mass deportation of illegal immigrants and resolution to an age-old problem. It modification of the Constitution to prevent invariably pits those primarily in favor of children born to undocumented immigrants border security/enforcement/wall-building (so-called “anchor babies”) from claiming as a priority, against those calling for so- citizenship (Horowitz, 2006; Sugrue, 2006). called comprehensive reform, thus adding No doubt, the wrangling over deportees fodder to what have become divisive between the United States and sending verbal exchanges in formal and informal countries could potentially sour diplomatic settings. Furthermore, today’s debate is in relations. part a battle among contending right-wing ideologues, who have found new political As introduced above, over the past fortitude as “immigration restrictionists” decade, seething tensions have prevailed (Barry, 2006). Ironically, some conservatives among those involved in the debate about who are traditionally pro-immigration, undocumented immigrants in the United favoring big business that relies on States. Concerns have been expressed for undocumented immigrants as a major labor what some refer to as “broken borders,” PHOTO BY MEL ROSENTHAL supply, have been touting anti-immigrant and the act of “rewarding” persons for slogans as a political strategy, aligning violating the immigration laws of the States enter legally, by family sponsorship or themselves with those who claim their country. That tension has mushroomed into work visas. Among the undocumented who interest is national security. Our post-9/11 a major dilemma for lawmakers, while, may or may not seek employment are those era has forged an interesting link between at the same time, drawing attention to who overstay their temporary visas. immigration and the “global war on both the contributions and the plight of Recent reports concluded that the terrorist terror,” which has emerged as a noticeable millions of undocumented immigrants. Two attacks of September 2001 elevated dimension of the debate. competing policies proposed by the House the skepticism of the American public Dissatisfied with the government’s toward the country’s relative openness to capacity or willingness to stem immigration (Farkas, Duffett and Johnson, the tide of illegal immigration, 2003; Renshon, 2005). By extension, the particularly in the southwestern threat of further terrorism, magnified by United States, citizen border- the media and by election-year political watcher groups, such as those pandering, is compounded by the perceived involved in the Minutemen or real threat of job displacement of Project, have increased (Robbins, American citizens by undocumented 2006). Whether participants immigrants. of this controversial group are The political ideology and policies of the further motivated by patriotic federal government, the rhetoric of public sentiments or ethnic intolerance officials, as well as the expressed views of is not clearly understood. The “think tanks” on the immigration issue, extent to which the activities of such groups actually exacerbate the problem undoubtedly play a significant role in of Representatives and Senate respectively, or contribute to its solution is open to much abating or intensifying the rejection or have been at the center of this struggle over speculation. accommodation of new immigrants. In immigration reform. Although both focused an attempt to represent, if not appease on regulating legal entry into the United Contending Policies: their constituencies, and thus gain political States, their implementation raised a number A Cause for Concern mileage, public officials have used “the of critical questions with regards to the problem of immigration” as a bedrock issue The 1996 “Illegal Immigration Reform treatment of immigrants and benefits to the for their political campaigns, thus seeking and Immigrant Responsibility Act” gave host society. to promote their own agendas. Excessively sweeping powers to the then Immigration The first was the Border Protection, focusing on “illegal immigration” may also and Naturalization Service (INS) to Anti-Terrorism, and Illegal Immigration serve as a timely distraction from other determine admissions, detention, and Control Act (H.R. 4437), which strongly serious, but unpredictable domestic or deportation of immigrants who committed

EMPIRE STATE COLLEGE • ALL ABOUT MENTORING 28 supports enforcement, more border fences, contemporary immigrants are viewed as such as charity work and volunteerism, and deportations. A series of massive “transnationals,” simultaneously sustaining or support workers’ rights activities at the protest rallies against this legislation was social relationships and often political ties to national level. In this regard, an Empire held in cities across the nation, signaling both the societies of origin and settlement. State College student, who was violently a high level of organization among the Consequently, retaining the home country’s assaulted during advocacy work with undocumented, as well as significant language/accent for many immigrants is immigrant day laborers in New York City, public empathy. However, in an apparent desirable. This may raise questions about vowed to “continue the struggle,” but also xenophobic response to the rallies, and their allegiance to one nation or another, expressed concerns about being deported out of concern about passage of the less but does it necessarily make them less (personal communication). Deportations restrictive immigration bills, a barrage of “grounded,” less patriotic? Clearly this create economic and psychological hardships vitriolic assumptions and judgments about presumption has been part of the current for children and other dependents when illegal immigrants were also voiced. Some “English-only” thrust. guardians and breadwinners are taken away. public officials and talk show hosts engaged Furthermore, the tightening of immigration There are those who have labeled the in unbridled diatribe, often referring to “the measures preclude the sending of proposed language policy as racist, pointing alien invasion.” Undocumented immigrants remittances, a primary source of income and to the assumption that most undocumented were branded as the scourge of the nation, essentials to many communities in countries immigrants are poor Latinos. No doubt, though exception was granted to those of origin. one of the ironies of this language debate with certain professional or technical skills is what has been referred to as a “national needed in the U.S. Protesting immigrants Possible Solutions amnesia,” whereby we forget that “the early were dubbed uneducated, burdensome to history of what is now the United States was New entrants into a society often generate the American taxpayer, jobs and benefits Spanish, not English, and our denial of this tensions and fears, but they can also be thieves, prone to criminality, alien to heritage is rooted in age-old stereotypes that viewed as a significant revitalizing force with American values, and transforming – for still entangles today’s immigration debate” the potential to contribute positively to the the worse – the culture and character of the (Horwitz, 2006, p. 13). society. Americans of all social strata in this United States (Owens, 2006; Horwitz, 2006; nation of immigrants appear to be conflicted Buchanan, 2006; Toburn, 2006). The second, less draconian bill, the Senate’s over what to do about the immigration Secure America and Orderly Immigration Increased immigration over the past two problem. Whichever plan is implemented, Act (H.R. 2330) included the granting of decades may have affected the cultural and the solution to “illegal” immigration must temporary work visas to the undocumented, political landscape of the United States, be informed by a rational, humane and who must adhere to certain residency, tax but the above-mentioned vilification and pragmatic program, and awareness of both and English language requirements. This public pronouncements, even in situations the short- and long-term consequences legislation requires a thorough background in which, at least in part, they could be of reform. These include considering check, but would create a “path to justified, could ignite community tensions the demands of the labor market, the citizenship” for an estimated 12 million and derail any attempts at tolerance. They impact on social services, effects on family undocumented workers. Opponents of this also reveal a revitalization of a 19th century constellations, and the ramifications of bill decry the granting of what they view as form of nativism based on anti-immigrant any policy on international relations. “amnesty to illegals” (Caputo, 2006). An views, sentiments and actions based on the Argumentation and demonstrations extension of the bill was the hotly debated threat that immigrants will undermine the will and should continue, but despite guest worker program, which would allow economic, social and cultural interests of the divisive positions taken, when the millions of undocumented immigrants to native-born people (Marger, 2005). Such gavel finally comes down on this debate, work temporarily in the United States, while thinking, as Horwitz further notes, “seems participants need to emerge with a policy of commuting back to their home country, and to have found new life among immigrants’ compromise. As Batista-Schlesinger (2006) would allow some to even gain legal status strongest foes, whose rhetoric carries traces notes, such policy is as much about securing (Herman, 2006). This extension, in addition of both ancient Hispanophobia and the the American dream as it is the security to the debate on language, reflects the true chauvinism of 19th century expansionism” of America’s borders. Unfortunately, it is nature of transnationalism, a much more (2006, p. 13). more likely that politicians, chief architects common quality of millions of lives in the of the debate, will continue courting votes, This xenophobic trend was also reflected world today. including, interestingly, the immigrant’s in the call for English to be made the Although the focus in the debate appears vote, but must realize that neither a blanket “official language” of the United States. One to be on Mexicans, there are obvious far- amnesty nor the construction of a “virtual Senate debate focused on whether to make reaching implications for immigrant families fence” offers a reasoned solution. English “America’s national language or its from various countries. For example, national common and unifying language” It is difficult to stop the flow of determined increased public exposure of immigration (Gamboa, 2006, p.1). It is interesting individuals from developing countries. matters, positive or negative, will make to note that unlike the non-English- This is a worldwide phenomenon, and for some immigrants less inclined to openly speaking pre-19th century immigrant, many, an existential issue, one of survival involve themselves in humanitarian causes

EMPIRE STATE COLLEGE • ALL ABOUT MENTORING 29 for individuals and families. As Michelle immediate political and economic exigencies Marger, M. N. (2005). Race and Ethnic Wucker, senior fellow at the World Policy in the particular country. My hope is that Relations: American and Global Institute eloquently puts it, the increasing issues such as those raised in this piece can Perspectives. (seventh edition). U.S.A.: influx of immigrants, especially from contribute to guiding policy and inform Thomson/Wadsworth. Mexico, Central America and Africa, is action, which will be beneficial to both the Owens, W. (2006). Lou Dobbs Tonight. caused by economic inequality between host society and to newcomers. Ultimately, CNN. March 4. those regions and the United States. as former president Bill Clinton suggested, Consequently, she notes, the solution “is not “the future of America is not threatened by Renshon, S. A. (2005). The 50 Percent to tighten border security, but to equalize immigration, but the success of America lies American: Immigration and National the economic and working conditions of in the future of immigration.” Identity in An Age of Terror. those regions” (Paull, 2006, p. 1). Perhaps Washington, D.C.: Georgetown a good starting point is to acknowledge Works Cited University Press. the existence and persistence of such global Barry, T. (2006). Immigration debate Robbins, T. (2006). Minutemen Begins inequities and to develop an integrated splinters conservatives. Caribbean Life. Arizona Border Patrol. NPR. August 5. market system that mutually benefits August 8. host and sending nations, but does not Sugrue, N. M. (2006). American-born persistently exploit human capital. Batista-Schlesinger, A. (2006). Dobbs the children shouldn’t be deported. The demagogue: CNN anchor scapegoats Immigrant’s Journal. Volume 5, Vigorous debate on these matters of immigrants relentlessly. Daily News: Number 47, July 29 - August 12. international importance is inevitable. Opinions. September 3. But whatever deliberations do occur must Toburn, T. (2006). Pat Buchanan says be conducted with dignity and mutual Buchanan, P. (2006). State of Emergency: Mexican immigrants smell worse respect for those trying to find a better The Third World Invasion and than other immigrants. http://the life, as well as for those attempting to Conquest of America. U.S.A.: Thomas washingtonbeltsider.wordpress.com. preserve what they take to be the integrity Dunne Books. Retrieved 9/3/06. of their nation. Thus, a number of critical Caputo, M. (2006). Election immigration issues must be considered in taking steps debate turning ‘Offensive.’ Miami to ameliorate the problem of illegal Herald. Tuesday, August 15, 2006. immigration. Policy makers and advocates, regardless of ideology, must be cognizant Farkas, S., A. Duffett, and J. Johnson. of the contextual polemics in which they (2003). Now that I am here: What operate, i.e., a nation of laws, and a land America’s immigrants have to say with a tradition of voluntary as well as about life in the U.S. today. American forced immigration. Such a historical reality, Educator. Summer. in addition to making us more aware of Frum, D. (2003). The guest worker geopolitical considerations, should provide program: both sides of the issue/ the backdrop for a workable solution political stands. The Right Man. June 1. that requires a combination of strategies. Effective planning and implementation Gamboa, S. (2006). Senate passes should not be the exclusive domain landmark immigration bill. www.news. of politicians, but must include those yahoo.com. Retrieved 5/26/06. organizations containing professionals and Herman, K. (2006). As Senate battle activists with a track record of working with approaches, Bush pushes for a guest immigrant groups. A careful look at how worker program. The Pulse News. Cox other countries handle their “immigration News Service, Friday, March 24. problem” may also be useful. Hinojosa, M. (2004). Immigrant Nation, Conclusion Divided Country. CNN Presents. October 8. It is clear that immigration reform, heretofore an incendiary social issue, Horwitz, T. (2006). Immigration – and the is driven by economic, political, and Curse of the Black Legend. The New nativistic forces at a time when there is also York Times: Op-Ed. Sunday, July 9. preoccupation with globalization, the effects Lyman, R. (2006). New Data Shows of terrorism, as well as national security. Immigrants’ Growth and Reach. The The debate will undoubtedly continue, New York Times. August 15, 2006. with its intensity varying according to the

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Making Theatre, Making a Difference Winter/Summer Institute in Theatre for Development

Lucy Winner and Katt Lissard, Metropolitan Center Principal photography by Rik Walton

n June of 2006, in the Winter/Summer Institute bright, high mountains in Theatre for Development I of Lesotho, Southern (WSI). Our goal was to Africa, people from four challenge ourselves to create different lands came together collaborative, issue-based, to make theatre, to try to aesthetically provocative make a difference. We were theatre. We wanted to 22 students and eight faculty empower both student and from four countries and community participants three continents. Because our with the tools and resources homes were so far apart and necessary to create similarly the seasons were reversed, inspired work in their own we called ourselves the communities and lives.

Mountains of Lesotho

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National University of Lesotho Roma, Lesotho

FACULTY Rethabile Malibo, Selloane Mokuku, Sele Radebe

STUDENTS

Lereko Lekena, ‘Masoai Matala, Relebohile Mokone, Litšeo Mosenene, Mosele Peshoane, ‘Matšepo Sethunya, Motjoka Ramonono

Empire State College, State University of New York, U.S.A.

FACULTY Katt Lissard, Lucy Winner

STUDENTS Tamu Favorite, Eric Feinblatt, WSI students and faculty Marjorie Moser, Jussara Santos, Melissa Shetler In Lesotho University of Sunderland Sunderland, U.K. The Institute included students and faculty Lesotho has a staggering HIV infection rate from the National University of Lesotho – currently estimated at 37 - 50 percent, and FACULTY (NUL) (our host); Empire State College, disproportionately affecting young women Kath McCreery, Nigel Watson State University of New York, New between 18 and 24. We wanted to look at York City; the University of Sunderland, how gossip and silence, in Lesotho and in STUDENTS United Kingdom; and the University of the each of the cultures we represented, could Jacqueline Cadger, Ufoma Komon, Witswatersrand, Republic of South Africa. lead to disempowerment and danger in the Neil Marshall, Bernie McLaughlin, face of the most significant challenges of Sara Owen modern life. We worked together to create University of the a piece of theatre focused on Making the Play: Research, Witswatersrand Presentations and Improvisation Johannesburg, South Africa the role of gossip and silence Before we met in Lesotho, we read relevant FACULTY in the spread of HIV … material, like Catherine Campbell’s Letting Alta Van As, Gillian Attwood Them Die and University of Pretoria’s Jonathan Stadler’s work on rumor, gossip STUDENTS In Roma, Lesotho, we worked together to and blame. Once in Lesotho, the readings Phumlani Dimon, Kim Hess, create a piece of theatre focused on the role were enhanced by a series of presentations Ditchaba Lekaota, Thobile Mtsweni, of gossip and silence in the spread of HIV, by National University colleagues on topics Thembeni Phoseka a play which would ultimately be taken ranging from language taboos and gender into the rural communities of the Malealea inequities to the role of customary practices Malealea Project Advisors Valley for further collaboration with local in the spread of HIV/AIDS. This established villagers. The focus of this first Institute a shared platform from which our multi- Gillian Attwood, Moso Ranoosi was a response to the community health cultural company could build creative situation inside our host country, Lesotho. group work. Along with most of sub-Saharan Africa,

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Using ideas and inspirations from the readings and presentations as a starting point, the faculty devised improvisational “tasks” for students/actors, and functioned as facilitators as the work progressed. Creative work was structured and guided by faculty, but the core of the work was actor- driven, actor-improvised and actor-imagined – drawn from a rich and complex cultural interaction of stories, dreams, myths, songs, dances and lived experience.

Dance Me to the End of Love The resulting theatre piece, Dance Me to the Rehearsing in Roma, Lesotho End of Love (Ntjeke Ho isa Pheletsong ea Lerato in Sesotho), was a montage of scenes derived from the improvisational work that had been deepened and refined through the creative shaping and direction by the faculty. Using a mixture of primarily English and Sesotho (with bits of Zulu, Portuguese, Tswana, Spanish, Xhosa and Afrikaans), the cast played multiple roles. Four Gossips (two male; two female) served as transitional commentators, scene announcers, and translators, and a silent Trickster assisted (or resisted) the Gossips, and helped define the flow of the play.

Performances: Roma, Maseru and Malealea Improvising and scene-building Dance Me to the End of Love was performed on the National University of Lesotho campus in Roma on July 3 and at Winter/Summer Institute Presenters the Maseru Sun Hotel’s convention center in the nation’s capital on July 4. After each As a crucial part of our creative process, eight presentations were given for WSI participants (June 22 - 27) on topics related to our dramatic theme. We wish to thank them.

SPEAKERS AND TOPICS Victor Nkiwane Ingrid Fandrych The Work of Women’s Law Groups Hlonepha and Human Rights on Sexual Abuse Selloane Mokuku Ê Litšepiso Matlosa Tu? Abuse of Women in Lesotho (film) Ê Power of Language in Relation to HIV/AIDS Chris Dunton Problematizing Keywords: Culture, Makalo Marite Tradition, Modernity Application of Methods of Social Work to Problems in Discourse on Sexuality Chris Chitereka and HIV/AIDS The Role of Customary Practices show, a post-play bilingual discussion with in the Spread of HIV/AIDS Mamotsamai Ranneileng HIV/AIDS Counseling the audience was facilitated by WSI faculty member Selloane Mokuku of NUL.

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Performance Programme Songs and Scenes Opening Songs: Tloho, Utlwa, Nko’usubenam and Dance Me to the End of Love

Scene 1: Bohali Bo Tsoile (The Cattle Have Been Paid) Song: Mama Tembu’s Wedding Scene 2: Hoa Tantšoa Ntlo ea Cha (Waltzing While the House is Burning)

Musicians from three continents rehearse together. Scene 3: Kokoana Ha e Tšele Mohokare, kapa Banna ke Mekopu; Basali ke Likh’abeche (The Virus Doesn’t Cross the Caledon, or Men are Pumpkins; Women are Cabbages) Song: Amazing Grace Scene 4: Ke Moetlo; Ha Se Moetlo (It’s in My Culture; It’s Not in My Culture) Song: Tula Scene 5: Monna Eo Ke Sa Mo Tsebeng Likobong Tsaka (Stranger in My Bed) Scene 5A: Seotsoa Sea Bua (Sex Worker Speaks)

Scene 6: Boithuto ba ABC (Learning Your ABC’s) Scene 7: Bo Ntate ba Ratanang le Banana (Sugar Daddy) Scene 7A: Pale Ea Ka (My Story)

Dance was an integral part of the piece. Scene 8: Ha re Sa na Makunutu (We Have No More Secrets) Scene 9: Ha a Re “Che” Seo a Hlileng a se Bolelang ke Hone “E” (When She Says “No!” She Really Means “Yes!”) Scene 10: U Ne U Ka Etsa’ng? (What Would You Do?) Finale/Song: The Rhythm of Life The play began with a procession of songs and movement. Music, played and sung by the actors, was woven throughout the montage.

The “gossips” comment on the action. EMPIRE STATE COLLEGE • ALL ABOUT MENTORING 34

The company then traveled to the Malealea Valley in southern Lesotho to connect to the locally driven community project there guided by Moso Ranoosi and Gillian Attwood, and based on Brazilian educator Paulo Friere’s “REFLECT Circles.”

After being revised and rehearsed (to translate as much of the play into Sesotho as possible), Dance Me to the End of Love was then performed for a Sesotho-speaking audience of Malealea villagers on July 6th. The outdoor venue, chosen for WSI by REFLECT Circle members, was in front of the community health clinic where HIV tests are given.

Malealea: Passing it On The health clinic performance was the first step in community dialogue and collaboration with village residents. After the performance, there was a bilingual discussion with the audience, again facilitated by Ms. Mokuku, and then 30 participating villagers began work with Institute actors and faculty. After dividing into three groups, each with enough Sesotho/English speakers to translate, the Performance at the Community Health Clinic, Malealea next five days were spent in intense rehearsal sessions. During this time, facilitating and directing roles were largely passed from faculty to Institute actors. Using a process similar to the one they had just experienced, Institute actors worked with village actors to improvise scenes based on villagers’ responses to the performance. Together they created three new scenes reflective of village concerns.

Village women singing in rehearsal Villagers and students use images to build scenes

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Malealea Festival Performance These new scenes were interwoven with several scenes from the original show and a new musical finale was created. This new drama, now almost entirely in Sesotho, was the centerpiece of the 20th Anniversary Festival of the Malealea Lodge on July 11. Forty-nine mounted Basotho ponies led the procession of Institute and village actors in song and dance from the lodge to the festival grounds, where over 500 village residents and the village chief watched the show. Basotho Horsemen lead procession

Villagers and students use images to build scenes Procession to the festival grounds, Malealea

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The idea, then, was that all of us would take the model of work that we developed and carry it on in our own lives, passing it on to our own communities.

Audiences came from surrounding villages

The final performance drew over 500 people PHOTO: ERIC FEINBLATT

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Passing it Back and Forth at a meeting called by the chief. We of the group. For example, helping want to visit many villages and perform each other to buy seeds for fields There is one critical question: what is the drama so as to share important and community gardens. point of engaging in a project of this kind, messages with as many people as unless there is a way for it to sustain itself? possible. Africa to New York

From the very beginning, we began with the • Performances should benefit the Since we returned from Lesotho, the Empire notion of passing it on, handing over the members who are performing. We want State College student participants have reins. This handing over of responsibility, to see ourselves growing as a group, given a presentation at the Student All one step at a time, was built into the eventually making videos that might be College Conference and performed part structure of the work. This first happened in sold. We also want to perform for TV of Dance Me to the End of Love for the Malealea when the students took on the role Lesotho. This could even be a way of International AIDS Vaccine Initiative’s (IAVI) with the villagers that the faculty had played making some money for ourselves commemoration of AIDS Day at the U.N. with the students. as a group. on November 30. On December 2 and 3, the student/participants helped run a two- The idea, then, was that all of us would take • We want to support each other as day residency at the Metropolitan Center, the model of work that we developed and members of the group, not only in the called “Gossip, Silence and HIV/AIDS: carry it on in our own lives, passing it on to group, but also with daily life outside Theatre for Development, Africa to our own communities. We hoped, also, that New York.” the villagers who worked with us would incorporate what they learned into their participation in the Malealea Community Development Project.

“Eradicate Negligence” Since we left, the villagers have formed a new collaborative theatre group. They call it Khalemang Bohlasoa, which means “Eradicate Negligence.” They are focusing their work on issues of HIV/AIDS, drug and alcohol abuse, fighting and domestic violence, rape and theft. They have drawn up a set of plans and goals, which they developed and agreed to. Following are some excerpts of what they wrote:

• We want to use this drama as a means of communicating at village meetings where education can be done.

• Our objective is to see understanding and behaviour change in the community.

• We want to use drama as a way of bringing people together (men, women and youth). This is important because it’s important to be neutral and not take the side of men or women or youth, as this will disunite people and we are all in this together. No one group is to blame.

• Once we have consolidated ourselves as a group and have a sketch ready, we will approach the chief and then perform our drama for the community

Back in New York our Residency passed on the WSI model. PHOTOS: ERIC FEINBLATT

EMPIRE STATE COLLEGE • ALL ABOUT MENTORING 38

The goal of the residency was for the WSI Next Steps participants to take a group of students through a very compact version of the work We have all learned more than we could The following foundations, institutions we did in Africa. Students who attended have imagined – about the complexities and offices have supported this project: read many of the same materials that we and challenges, certainly, but also about the read before our trip, and also listened to possibilities. In some respects, our learning The United Nations Development audio files of some of the presentations that was surprisingly concrete: we were there, we Programme (UNDP) we heard in Lesotho. The WSI students were doing, we found ways together, and we The Heidtke Foundation spoke about the project, showed video, and can see what we did ripple and transform, performed a scene from the play. Then they from the work of Eradicate Negligence, The Margaret Reuss Trust used the same model of work as we used in to a NYC Residency participant planning The Unger Foundation Africa, breaking the students into groups, a similar project in her native Mexico. In giving them improvisational tasks, shaping other ways, we continue to be amazed at National University of Lesotho the scenes, and finding a thread and a shape. the layers of learning that are still forming, being learned, and those yet to come. We Empire State College, State University Everyone worked incredibly hard for want very much to continue. Our immediate of New York (Student Activities Fund, two very full days, until, by 5:00 Sunday plans are to complete a short documentary The President’s Office, Empire State evening, we had developed an entirely new film, and to begin planning for the next College Foundation, United University piece of theater. The new piece, about taboo Winter/Summer Institute in Lesotho, slated Professions) and denial, wove responses to the readings for 2008. In the meantime, we hope that all University of Sunderland and presentation with the individual participants in this project – students from and cultural experiences of the residency four countries, villagers, audiences, faculty, University of the Witswatersrand participants. Ultimately, all 37 participants and residency participants, will continue to and over 30 generous individuals. performed a 40-minute piece, including make theatre to make a difference. music and props.

EMPIRE STATE COLLEGE • ALL ABOUT MENTORING 39

Global Risk, Hard Power and Democratic Imposition

Andrew Arato, Dorothy Hart Hirshon Professor of Political and Social Theory, The New School for Social Research The following essay was presented on now, to an important extent, even poverty power, and moral universalism because the October 15, 2006, as the opening keynote can be seen as a fundamentally second order indirect forms of intervention as well as at this year’s All Areas of Study Meeting, problem of risk caused by our attempts moral persuasion are both enhanced by the whose theme was “The Risk Society: to deal with issues of wealth and perhaps power of a moral universalist structure of Realities, Fears and Opportunities.” Thanks even with schemes of poverty redistribution argument. Unfortunately, even the latter can to Andrew Arato for his care in reviewing themselves. be used strategically or inauthentically. But and editing the text and to Sandra Coulter when so used, democracy and human rights While for classical capitalism, non- for her initial transcription of the talk. become available to be used by the victims interventionism was the fundamental of inauthentic strategies. problem, for risk society, intervention itself intend this presentation as either an becomes the main issue. We cannot do What I have introduced so far is the exercise in the philosophy of history or without intervention. A return to classical methodological context of what I wanted to I as prolegomena to a future democratic capitalism has always been an illusion. That, discuss, but mostly I don’t want to focus on foreign policy. In recent theories of the however, is not my topic. methodology. subject, “risk society” is a type of modern What I want to argue is that, in general, When it comes to international affairs, ever society where the main risks faced by there are two ways to address the dilemma since the invention of the atomic weapon, human existence are “second order” risks of intervention: the idea of reflexive we have been in a kind of risk sub-society produced by the attempts to deal with intervention and the idea of soft power. of the international world society. Beck “first order” ones – that is, the ones which Reflexive intervention (and this is the side and others date risk society much later, have to do with our problems facing nature that has been developed by the theorists and think of it as an entirely contemporary – where our own strategies and their side of the risk society such a Ulrich Beck, problem, perhaps as only a full-blown effects are themselves the greatest source Anthony Giddens and others) involves the historical potential in the future. But I think of risk. intervention upon intervention itself – in it is a mistake to see things developing in an The transition from the problem of natural other words, a process that intervenes in even way with respect to different domains scarcity to the ecological problem we face the process of intervention, and also tries of social life. And especially with respect to today was the classical context in which the to control for its side effects. It attempts issues of war, diplomacy, and international theory of risk society was developed. But to put autonomous agents in a position to relations, it would seem to me that with intervene in their own processes and tries to the end of the Second World War and the avoid the direct attempt on the part of the invention of atom weapons, we entered planner to deal with the outcomes. a situation in which risk in Beck’s sense became a fundamental problem. On the other hand, soft power, which can be the tool of reflexive interventionism, In a famous set of conversations with tries to act on the motives of actors by Milovan Djilas, and collected in a volume cultural or moral persuasion, rather than by called Conversations with Stalin, Josef positive or negative sanction, promises of Stalin said the following: “This war is money, or threat of military force. Rather not as in the past – whoever occupies the than going along with Beck or with Joseph territory also imposes on it his own social Nye, the main theorist associated with the system. Everyone imposes his own system idea of soft power, I would argue neither as far as his army can reach; it cannot be reflexive intervention nor soft power are otherwise.” We all know of course, roughly, in themselves positive. For example, both that this actually happened after the reflexive intervention and soft power can be Second World War to a significant extent. in the service of imperial penetration and On the one side, the Central European the suppression of political autonomy. On countries, some of which began having the other hand, there is a certain “elective constitutional governments at the end of affinity,” as Weber would have called it, the war, had Soviet-type systems imposed Andrew Arato between reflexive intervention and soft on them, my native Hungary as well, in

EMPIRE STATE COLLEGE • ALL ABOUT MENTORING 40 the mid- or late 1940’s and culminating were potentially bankrupt. The Americans had just learned in Vietnam what happens in uniform dictatorships at the end of the had a chance to learn from their experience; when we try that, so we must use proxies, ’40s. But similar processes have occurred the Soviet imperium, however, came down surrogates, others whom we can influence in the American sphere of influence. Here I because of it. either reflexively with money and power, or would stress more Asia than Europe, where perhaps through soft strategies, or through a My interest now is in the history of the to an important extent, the developments combination of both. But in any case, what American imperium. And that brings me were restorational or autonomous. But is important is that they do what we want to the post-Vietnam strategies, which is Japan certainly had an imposed American them to do in our place. when the risk society strategies were really constitution, and Korea, the American- developed under a lot of headings, but I just Vietnamization was the name of this in occupied part of it, had an American want to stress two: The Nixon Doctrine, the Vietnam, and of course it was a hopeless, imposed authoritarian regime for decades. reflexive strategy, and The Carter Human dying strategy because it could not succeed So at least to some extent, Stalin’s prediction Rights offensive, the soft power strategy. after the direct strategy already had already to Djilas made in 1942 or ’43 turned out One of them I would normatively be very failed. But this is not the only place in the to be correct, but really only up to a point, critical of and the other I would normatively world where this strategy was tried. The because the invention of the atomic weapon be in favor of, but I don’t think that these same reflexive strategy was adopted with foreshadowed by its use in Hiroshima and strategies are, in themselves, positive or the coup in Chile. In other words, Pinochet Nagasaki, and the Soviet rediscovery of negative. It all depends. But these were the would be the right kind of surrogate this weapon, put an end to the process. two major risk society strategies developed to play that role in the Latin American One could not simply proceed militarily to by the United States after Vietnam. context, perhaps helping other bureaucratic Sovietize or Americanize the world without authoritarian dictatorships emerge. any further limits. The superpowers would There are other examples, but what is have clashed with one another and done Certainly the issue of immediately relevant today is that in 1967, so in a world-destructive confrontation. the English announced their intention to And so the process had to end. The whole democracy didn’t enter leave the Persian Gulf. They no longer problem of the so-called “third world,” the the conversation. On the had the desire to play a direct or the main whole problem of the non-aligned world indirect imperial role, and they were going became possible and plausible because the contrary, the reflexive to leave by 1971. This meant that this two then-superpowers could not continue strategy was pretty well extremely important part of the world the war with the same means that they had because of its oil resources – and not just fought the Second World War and perhaps, connected to people who the actual, but even more the projected oil arguably, even some of the Korean War. wanted to control the oil, resources – was going to be in some kind of Think, for example, of where MacArthur jeopardy. Remember, these were the days of was forced by President Truman to stop: who had little objection Arab nationalism, of Nasser and the Baath. at the boarder of a hot, perhaps nuclear to dictatorships. So what is going to happen? An indirect war between the powers, which the general strategy had to apply there too. There were was ready to risk, but which the American three choices: the U.S. could go in there government was no longer ready to risk at Think about really about what is involved. directly, but this was just a tremendous the particular moment. The United States still wants to fight the failure in Vietnam; it could do nothing, but What was now possible were proxy wars, Soviets, it still wants to expand its influence then the Soviet Union might do something but these wars, as long as they were over the so-called “third world.” In fact, – it could apply its own indirect strategy or proxy wars, turned out to be particularly both the Americans and the Soviets are who knows, even direct strategy, because destructive for the superpower in question. interested in their power, but they cannot the terms were not yet so clear. Or, third, Think of Vietnam and think of Afghanistan do it directly; the pre-risk society strategy the U.S. could apply the indirect strategy, to the extent that the direct strategy, the pre- leads to confrontation between them. The and this is what was adopted. It was openly risk society strategy, of direct conquest, the U.S. realizes that if the other side uses a admitted then that this was for oil, so at the one that Stalin was talking about to Djilas, proxy and they are there directly, untold time the reasons were not so mysterious. was carried out by either the Americans in disasters can result. So the Nixon Doctrine Certainly the issue of democracy didn’t Vietnam or the Soviets in Afghanistan. Now is generated, and the Nixon Doctrine, which enter the conversation. On the contrary, the there was the possibility of a really dramatic is already a response to the beginning of reflexive strategy was pretty well connected defeat, which caused the other side relatively the withdrawal from Vietnam, says that we to people who wanted to control the oil, little (what did the Soviets lose with respect must everywhere use surrogates or proxies. who had little objection to dictatorships. to Vietnam? What did the Americans lose We cannot do the thing directly. We are a Appropriately, the “two pillars doctrine,” in respect to Afghanistan?) – Or, each had kind of imperium, a kind of quasi-imperial as it was then called, was connected to the only to gain when the other side was willing power, reluctantly so perhaps, but we Saudi Arabian monarchy and the Shah of to play that kind of game. These strategies cannot do that kind of work directly. We Iran. They were reliable, they could control

EMPIRE STATE COLLEGE • ALL ABOUT MENTORING 41 their own countries, they had a lot of oil, the human rights part only helped to So, the Nixon Doctrine helped to create and the Shah had a very large army. He had loosen the authoritarian system, but had no Saddam and all the people we now see in 150,000 very good troops, and this was after human rights consequences. The result was power – not all the people, but Cheney, the end of the Mossadegh affair, and Iran the destruction of the pillar of the Nixon Rumsfeld, and Gates for sure, were a was reliable and economically dynamic. And Doctrine without having a clear replacement part of that. This was the realist idea and so the strategy adopted was this one, and for it. Iran had its Islamic revolution and so Saddam Hussein was a dictator, but the idea was that it was going to work. But the key pillar, the more important pillar of that’s what the doctrine required because this was not the view of the whole world, the Gulf strategy, collapsed. This led to the democracy is messy, unpredictable; you and the United States is not simply a country most interesting set of events that we should know “stuff happens,” you don’t know that is in love with dictatorships all over the recall as Mr. Gates, today, is in the process where democracy goes, and this is not world. There are other things here we like of being confirmed as Secretary of Defense, what you want. Some Israeli politicians and are interested in, and in any case, the because once Iran had its revolution, the now say we prefer the “old” Middle East authors of this particular doctrine wound realist advocates of the Nixon Doctrine to the “new” New Middle East. Well the up doing things at home that turned out had desperately searched for a replacement, “old” Middle East was like that, full of being disastrous for them: thank God. But in for a new pillar, for a way of representing authoritarian regimes, and so that’s what any case the authors of the Nixon Doctrine indirectly but efficiently America’s, and they wanted. It was not a problem. “Axis also had Watergate and they were in part through America, other Western interests in of Evil,” well, yes, they’re evil, but on replaced, and the next strategy was Carter’s. the Gulf. the other hand, they understood quid pro quos. The idea that they’re crazy is a late Carter’s Human Rights Doctrine also, of The only candidate for it was Iraq. invention. Democracies are crazy. Dictators course, had something to do with American Everybody talks about the Rumsfeld- are rational. That was the fundamental power in the world. Foreign rights policies Hussein handshake; and everybody now assumption. Of course, dictators could be are never developed just for altruistic reasons. talks about Gates being the boss, a very occasionally crazy too. But they were more But, nevertheless, this doctrine was different. different one. At the time of the handshake, easily purchasable than a whole electorate. First of all, its stress was on soft power and they were however in the same realist camp. Personally, I don’t doubt that, and Aristotle not on hard power, and secondly in some It was a realist, and not a neo-conservative is right, democracies can be rational. I’m respects, it cut across the Nixon Doctrine – in handshake, a reflexive realist and not a not suggesting who is right. I’m just talking some places it reinforced it, in some places hard realist one. In any case, the so-called about the assumptions of the doctrine itself. it provided oppositional energy to it, and in realists then discovered Iraq because it was some places it acted ambiguously. not only the only candidate, it was also a So there it was. Iraq was armed to the teeth very logical one because Iran represented a and supported through most of the Iraq- The Carter strategy was extremely important threat to them as well, because of the large Iran war, except for the Iran-Contra episode and successful in building human rights Shiite population in Iraq itself, and because that was only good to earn Saddam’s secret in places where there were autonomous of the dynamic nature of the Iranian regime enmity. But, of course, he was never a very movements. It had a very important role and next to what was already becoming a kind good bet. “Realism” was a terrible failure influence in the democratization of those of patrimonial clientalistic deformation of in the Gulf. We do have to remember, countries. I certainly don’t share the view Arab nationalism in Iraq. Remember they and it’s been mentioned a thousand times, that American promotion of democracy had came to power in 1968 and this was now Saddam Hussein gassed his own people, the primary or even a very significant role 1979. They could have done wonderful he also used gas against Iran, and it was in the transformation of those places, but things with all the wealth, the power that he, not Khomeini, who started that war. It a least the human rights policy contributed they had; Iraq is a rich country. Don’t blame produced no good for either state. In the some and it certainly didn’t contribute by it all on Israel and the United States. They process, he created an awful regime at home any direct interventionism. were making a horrible mess of it even and also made the region much less stable. I think the Latin American one is already a before the Iraqi/Iranian War – a mess of it This would have been still OK, but either somewhat more mixed picture. Where the not on an economic level, there was a lot through misunderstandings or stupidity on bureaucratic and authoritarian regimes that of money because of the oil for hospitals the part of the American ambassador, it’s were the result of the reflexive strategy were and education, but on a political level, for hard to know now, Hussein also proceeded in place, the Carter Doctrine helped – even example, banning the Communist Party, to attack the other pillar. It’s OK for him to in Chile – their liberalization, or partial which was actually a multicultural force, be the main pillar, but to attack the other liberalization, eventually transformation. But and destroying the remaining elements of pillar and to become a regional superpower in Central America, the two doctrines came representative institutions and legality, and – that was not OK. He attacked Kuwait, but to collide and resulted in extended periods eventually even worse things. In any case this that of course means that he was ready to of civil war. Iraq, with all its warts – including its state attack or gravely threaten Saudi Arabia too, socialist economy – became the candidate. So with its own unpopular rulers. That was Finally, in the area that we are most arming Iraq became a huge and important unacceptable. He could have had a part of interested in here, where there were no proposition. You’ve had to try to put Iraq in Kuwait, and maybe the misunderstanding democratic, civil society based movements, the place where Iran once was. was they thought he only wanted some of

EMPIRE STATE COLLEGE • ALL ABOUT MENTORING 42 the wells and some of the ports, but in any by any means. This is something that many cannot persuade them for cultural reasons, case, he invaded the whole country and this Iraqi nationalists and Arab nationalist have or because they have too much oil money was completely unacceptable. sought, so it is useless just to blame one and too many instruments of repression man. – they need something extra. It is going to The point is not to provide all of the have to be something more direct than this details of the history, but to point out that The realist doctrine, the reflexive doctrine “soft” thing; it has to be hard. Someone “realism” then produced something that collapses, so then we get to the Bush like Norman Podhoretz, who was never was entirely untenable because, in fact, Doctrine to replace it. This is what we all particularly interested in soft power anyway, the dictatorship could not be controlled. live now. Most of us in this room have lived says this much more openly. Podhoretz went And then the third thing, which Chalmers through the whole thing, but if we were from left revolution to right revolution to Johnson wrote about before it happened, dreaming that the realists could now put hardline neoconservatism. Unfortunately, I was that dictatorships produce “blow order back into the world, I wanted to show think many who are much more to the left back.” I saw it because I only lived four that they have contributed mightily to the have also gone for this kind of argument. blocks from it. I was evacuated for over six disorder themselves. They all forget that human rights and weeks, but I think all of us felt it. The idea Let me just mention the main lines of the democracy are the sorts of things that people that Arabs just love dictatorships and this movement from the Nixon to the Bush have to struggle for themselves, and when is really the kind of system they all want Doctrine, which, for me, really represents there is an attempt to impose them by force, to live under and they are happy about the a return to a pre-risk society-strategy. the principles themselves are compromised. fact that the west helps to impose them, Instead of indirect intervention, it will be and that there will be no consequences for There is also a kind of strange kind of “new direct intervention. We can’t trust these that – all of this turned out not to be true. Wilsonians” that support this argument. proxies; the thing that was not done by I hate to say that the neoconservatives I would say that in some respects I am an Nixon with respect to the Gulf, we have have emphasized this point, thought they internationalist too. Wilsonians believe in to do it ourselves. Look what happened in were neither first nor alone. You know an international order with an international Iran, what happened to Saddam: we are we have to go through everything that has law. But what if the current organization a superpower; we can and have to do it been said over these miserable five years of the international order is systematically ourselves. The Risk Society is for chickens, and not automatically eliminate everything blocked, and that there is always some it’s not for a true American cowboy. We can that anybody has said. The realists have awful country, whether it is the Soviet Union do it ourselves. That’s our current president’s been right about some things; for example, or France that just always blocks the kind point of view. He’s the least important they said the Iraq War would be a disaster of action everybody else in the world would thinker in all this, but he was “the decider” and they were right about that. And the undertake if it just weren’t for these terrible (even my grammar check did not know the neoconservatives have said that supporting people like or Khrushchev or Villepin word) and indeed Bush did have to decide dictatorships is a disaster too, and I think or whoever it is that is the candidate for the matter, given that there was significant they are also right about that. “Freedom Fries.” People can say that’s the disagreement between the realists and United Nations today. So, the arguments The central point is that the Realist Doctrine the other people. I won’t mention all the goes, we are for international law, but first has produced unpredictable dictatorships specifics of the realist-argument of a Brent it has to be changed, and until it is changed, that have their own agendas and not just Scowcroft now because you can all imagine we will only accept unilateralism. The our own pillars and our own proposals and what they were. They thought that if you advocates forget, that a new international our own reflective doctrines, which they will go in to Iraq you will inevitably destroy order must be at all stages different than pursue for us. Pinochet didn’t do anything the balance of power and you will give all imperial law, and only a wide and legitimate that was particularly bad for American geo- the power to Iran. And that is basically agreement among states can be the basis of political interests, but Saddam was different; what has happened. And now we have the future legal construction of an international he was also his own person. When you disastrous choice of accepting defeat, or order. Certainly, the violation of the UN read John Burns in The New York Times, trying to provoke another war with Iran! Charter on some of the most important “Looking for Another Strongman,” just this What spoke for attacking Saddam? Well points is a bad start. week, everything I’ve been saying is there. one argument, and it’s really a radicalization We need to start from the beginning; the And then the strangest case: Cheney and of the human rights posture that people only thing that can pull the Arabs together Rumsfeld were heavily implicated in the like me have to be serious about, is that is a new strongman now. But what if this realist policy themselves. The question is: there are places where the soft strategies new strongman is so strong that he won’t how did it happen? And I think one really of Joseph Nye just don’t work, where you follow our agenda and develops his own? has to see that from their point of view, can’t persuade enough people who have Why would this new strongman not think, the old realist doctrine shipwrecked and significant influence in society to transform as Saddam and indeed many members of the they really then wanted to have something society from within, or where there is so Iraqi government have thought, for example, new, and given that the old realist doctrine much oil money around that the forces that Kuwait is just another Iraqi province? was developed at a time when the Soviet of oppression can just keep civil society This is not something that Saddam invented Union existed, they now felt there was no down. So either way – either because you

EMPIRE STATE COLLEGE • ALL ABOUT MENTORING 43 need for it. The old realist doctrine was every conceivable area, but for almost that reflexive strategies cannot be free needed because of the Soviet threat, which everything that was done, the administration of normative guidance. And the kind of was completely formative for these kinds of recruited people who knew almost nothing normative assumptions that they have made, people. But because the Soviet threat doesn’t and very young people at that, the main namely the kind of neutrality with respect exist, we aren’t really bound by the doctrine. qualification being whether you favored the to the political regimes that they would A country like the United States doesn’t reversal of Roe v. Wade, or if you worked establish in order to pursue their strategies have to worry about an Iran, doesn’t have for the Bush campaign in 2000. These were were disastrous, whether it was the Shah of to worry about guerillas. For them, we lost the questions asked of the people who Iran or Saddam or Pinochet. In almost no Vietnam because of the Soviets. They have were candidates for the jobs, and if they instance did those people promote political drawn all of the wrong lessons even from had expertise that was not good because democracy. Vietnam. then you were not going to believe in the On the other side, the side of idealism, I democratization of Iraq anyway. This is the Things are different now, and I think think we have to understand, and this is way they approached the work and this is this is why they were able to shift from a clear lesson from the current experience the way it failed. soft realism or reflexive realism to hard that I would hold, that as valuable as liberal realism. But these are the forces, a kind of But the point I want to make is that the democracy is, even universally speaking, corrupt Wilsonianism, a kind of absolutism very project itself is obsolete in terms of this idea cannot be understood as a single of human rights, a kind of muscular the kinds of concepts that I have tried to political system, which exists in only one interventionism. I would have thought that fundamental version. We have to understand Henry Kissinger himself would have stayed that this kind of system would have to exist with the old realist doctrine. Not so. He in different political and cultural versions. has been a top advisor to the Bush group There is no way to (For example, saying “separation of church at least through a good part of the current impose liberal democracy and state” just doesn’t do it.) Obviously enterprise. So he too, the granddaddy such a strategy, like the one we have seen in of the Nixon Doctrine (when you say by military force. It Iraq, has very little chance of public political Nixon doctrine you basically say Kissinger has to be based on the acceptance. Doctrine), actually became an advocate And secondly, perhaps an even more of the Bush Doctrine. Because he thought, aspirations, movements, important lesson, to whatever extent one confusing radical Islam and Saddam, and political activities of can pursue a liberal democratic strategy, attacking Afghanistan was not enough of a one can only pursue it by way of soft response to the attacks on September 11 to local people themselves. power. There is no way to impose liberal deter future ones. So they shifted, and they democracy by military force. It has to produced the Iraq war today, in the process be based on the aspirations, movements, creating a far greater threat than we faced introduce here. The old realist, the soft or and political activities of local people back in 2001. the reflexive realist, is not on the same sands themselves. Of course, the older American that this new strategy has been, and that’s Not only did they undertake a war in the idea that “example helps” remains right. why one sees Gates and Baker today (or, if name of an overall strategy that, from the I suspect that our recent election has done you want it in biographical terms, the old point of view of discussions here were more for democracy in the world than all Bushes against the new ones). That’s why obsolete, mainly that one country could of Bush’s interventions. And don’t think some have said, rationality has returned. But directly impose its will on the world through they’re not watching. Don’t think that in I think it is important to acknowledge that force, but they also made fundamental Iran or in the Arab world this is not seen this is also the team that has contributed to errors every step of the way, which are in very precise terms. If you watch the the problem through the kind of normative reconstructable from the confusion of announcements, even the official radio and notions that have led their realism, that have the prewar planning, to the number of television news in the Arab world, they were led their reflexive strategy. Bringing them troops that they have used, to the kind of rather positive about just this thing, these back is perhaps good antidote for what has authority they gave to Bremer, to the type of elections, this exemplary defeat of Bush by happened in the last couple of years, but constitution-making process they organized, the American people when given a chance. It not a sign for a progressive or a constructive to the way they have included Iraqi actors in was impossible not to approve because the role for the United States in the future. In the work. There was almost nothing about populations approve, and probably would this sense, the way that Maureen Dowd the process that was done right. The kind of like to do something similar, for themselves, of The New York Times has written what detail that Rajiv Chandrasekaran provides in but hardly under foreign guns. So in fact, she sees as our choice between the idealism his Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside I think we should worry about being of the neocons and the realism of the Iraq’s Green Zone seem almost impossible democratic ourselves, something we have current Bushes, are wrong choices. I think to believe, but it is all so true, and much not been in these six years. That’s the first that we need to take reflexive strategies worse than what people already know. The step in any future democratic foreign policy. further – something we need to take from United States is full of experts in almost the realists, but we have to understand

EMPIRE STATE COLLEGE • ALL ABOUT MENTORING 44

Short Circuits, or Refashioning the Scholarly Self Version 2.0 [1]

Eric L. Ball, Center for Distance Learning

We get the distinct feeling that we will Greek cookbooks and the construction “academic” and the “practical,” for sheer convince no one unless we enumerate of cultural identities, and it even yielded pleasure. certain approximate characteristics of the a dissertation chapter and a publication. Upon arriving at Empire State College, I rhizome. Sure, it was on a timely and (in the parlance got lucky in that my scholarly food self was – Deleuze and Guattari in of the profession) sexy academic topic, able to contribute something to my mentor A Thousand Plateaus but I stumbled into it accidentally when I self. Many of us in the Center for Distance ordered a cookbook from Greece that dealt Learning were faced with the problem of with traditional recipes of Crete. I hadn’t erhaps the most sincere, if banal, figuring out how to create online learning even ordered the cookbook for academic way I can introduce the reflection opportunities for students that would purposes; I just wanted it for the recipes. that follows is by saying this: One of both fulfill the newly imposed-by-power P But, as one thing led to another, I found best things for faculty about Empire State SUNY General Education requirements myself living two separate but parallel College is that it remains possible for all and respond meaningfully to the unique food lives. On the one hand, I was doing kinds of connections to occur in one’s mind contexts of an especially diverse group of more and more academic research into and in one’s life, inevitably short circuiting students of almost any age and from almost such topics as food in film and literature, the dichotomies and hard boundaries and any country (an especially perverse version the anthropology and sociology of food, distinctions that modern faculty often of what I suspect physicists could only call and critical folkloristic studies of food and become accustomed to, and comforted by. the “one-size-fits-all-bodies problem”). My tradition. On the other hand, I was learning Sure it can mean that it’s extra difficult to foodie background provided me with an a lot of practical stuff about cooking and figure out where to categorize this or that angle for creating a potentially interesting other related topics (like breadmaking activity in one’s review portfolio essay, “opening” for students into some of the with wild sourdoughs, how to forage wild but isn’t it worth it? What follows is one concerns of the humanities (one of the greens, ways to manage fermentation, how example that happened to me recently. SUNY boxes) that would draw on each to interpret labels in light of deceptive FDA student’s unique experiences and curiosity In graduate school, studying Modern regulations). At the time, I was mostly without coercing them into a traditional Greek culture, I got caught up for a while doing all this food-related stuff, both the disciplinary or textbook approach. on a side project that had to do with Meanwhile, in my parallel food life, my partner and I bought a house and continued extending our practical knowledge of food, for example into vegetable gardening. I also spent time teaching home cooking to interested family members. So at some point it occurred to me: Why don’t you write something new related to food? You obviously enjoy the topic immensely and you seem to know a lot about it, so what’s stopping you? Besides, the academic economy is mostly one of publish or perish, better safe than sorry. I thus spent some time catching up on the growing scholarship in the emerging field of “food studies,” revisited many of the classics (Claude Levi-Strauss, Mary Douglas, Sidney Mintz, Jack Goody, Luce Giard, films like Babette’s Feast, novels like The Debt to Pleasure), and started mapping out some timely research questions that I was especially well-positioned to address given Eric L. Ball

EMPIRE STATE COLLEGE • ALL ABOUT MENTORING 45 my academic orientation (putting aside for might there be between my academic crisis related to food (e.g., genetically the moment that taking these questions on and nonacademic interests in food? Is modified organisms, the depletion of from within a teaching-centered college there something in common driving both topsoils) and from social scientists might be especially difficult, or at the very my academic agenda and my goals and about food politics (e.g., Marion least s-l-o-w). During the same period of principles as a home-cook, forager, and Nestle’s work on nutrition), how can time, I received an invitation to attend a food shopper? Assuming I figure out what you carry on like this about everyday Mentoring Institute-sponsored event on some of these connections are, will there domestic pleasures? Do we really have scholarship that was created and led by still be a writing project left in all of this? this luxury? Aren’t you degenerating Genesee Valley Center colleague Lorraine What kind? And so, with questions like into an academic version of consumer Lander. One of the things that stuck with these in mind, I began working on a new society’s Food Network? Have me from the meta-discussions of scholarship Word document, which was more like a you forgotten your admiration for on that fine afternoon was a series of basic journal than an outline for an academic Kazantzakis’s celebration of those who questions about scholarship that any scholar paper. I described significant food-related struggle-to-the-very-end – his “modern” might ask himself or herself, such as: Do I events in my life over the years – learning Odysseus, his Captain Michales, his have a particular question that I am trying how to bake from my grandmother, the Saint Francis and his Christ? Is this to answer? Where does this question come first time I realized how naive I was about what a steady job and a mortgage have from? Why am I taking on this question? To ingredients, wine-making in Crete, learning done to you? whom is it potentially relevant and why? to identify wild greens in Ohio. I was trying Perhaps. But aren’t you sliding back to make sense out of my own relationships In the weeks subsequent to the workshop, into the dangerous assumption that with cooking and eating over the years, as I kept hearing the chorus of these every struggle has to be a strictly ascetic and I was on the lookout for patterns. questions playing over and over in my head, affair? Don’t Deleuze and Guattari, I brainstormed and catalogued themes the gradual mapping out and articulation who you also admire, make joy and of particular interest (the environment, of a food-related writing project was desire central to their revolutionary exposing and critiquing industrial food suddenly short circuited as I came to realize project? Wouldn’t Kazantzakis’s interests, hospitality). I constructed what I something: Even though I was confident Odysseus wear his cap playfully tipped thought would be clever opening sentences that “my question” was relevant to both to the side? (“O Sun, great Oriental, for an as yet undetermined writing project: to food studies and to my own sense of my proud mind’s golden cap/I love to “The pursuit of socio-ecological pleasure social and political responsibility, and that wear you cocked askew, to play and through food and drink is as complex as it is it was exactly the kind of thing I might burst in song throughout our lives, worthwhile,” and, “People who think they pursue if I were in a research-centered and so rejoice in our hearts.”)[2] Can’t know me often comment about how I like institution, it was nevertheless almost people pursue their own desires and to cook, a characterization which invariably completely unconnected to my parallel pleasures and work toward a greater provokes me to object on the grounds that practical interests in the kitchen, in the good, without necessarily buying into it misrecognizes one symptom of a passion soil, and around the table. Then I began the mythology of the invisible hand? for the passion itself … No, I don’t like to to wonder if there might be a substantive cook, I like to eat, and I like to eat well, so So maybe the question is really when connection between my academic questions I usually have to cook whether I like it or should we be willing, or better yet, and my everyday passion for food-related not.” when might we desire to sacrifice the know-how. And if there was, I wondered pursuit of our own intellectual, bodily, if this might eventually yield an even more As I continued writing in this journal, I and spiritual pleasures in the name interesting writing project than what I had started to suspect that I was struggling of some collective well-being? Or so far conceived. I also thought to myself: to formulate a ”philosophy of eating“ maybe this is it: Might we discover or Isn’t this one of the benefits of being at but couldn’t yet articulate it in writing construct particular paths on which the a place like Empire State College – that because there were still so many issues I dogged pursuit of our own pleasures I have more room to breathe and grow hadn’t sorted out carefully enough, not to seamlessly contributes to the cause of a as a thinker, even if this risks taking me mention that I was suddenly bumping into greater good? away from what is currently recognized all kinds of new areas where I essentially as legitimate by disciplines, fields, or had no formal intellectual or academic In attempting to get at my “philosophy departments at other institutions? knowledge (topics like pleasure, leisure, and of eating” I found myself coming face- conviviality). But the more I kept trying to to-face with many of the “big questions” So I closed the Microsoft Word file that I sort out the food-related issues the more I of philosophers, artists, and intellectuals had been writing in up until then and started kept being pulled outward, and my journal- (“How should I live?” ”What is over. Having stepped out of the familiar like Word file evolved into a Socratic happiness?”), questions that I wouldn’t scholarly territory of ”food studies,” I dialogue between me and me: presume to have answers to, and which no longer had a “research question” in themselves generate more and more the conventional sense, only questions of Given what you are learning from questions. I had begun to stray from bare-naked curiosity: What connections scientists about the environmental questions related to food per se.

EMPIRE STATE COLLEGE • ALL ABOUT MENTORING 46

But then, as I began to reflect on the fact my food project. One of my selves dutifully help his family, all the while working that I had inadvertently wandered away reminded another self: full time? from the topic of food, another occurred, Hey, this contemplative business is Don’t exaggerate! Okay, so that student this time between my scholarly short all well and good, but keep in mind and I happen to have something in circuiting self and that part of me that that you (and your colleagues) live in common, but there are also so many desires to understand mentoring. “A single multiple contexts, and this includes differences. Each of us is enabled and question, so long as it is important to the the hard reality of “publish or perish” constrained by our respective contexts learners, can open the world,” I remembered and the CV-fetish of faculty and in very particular ways, and we each from colleagues Lee Herman and Alan administrators across the nation. If you have to go forward with our lives, Mandell’s From Teaching to Mentoring (p. allow yourself to become bewildered by prioritizing our responses to the specific 16). “[O]nce [adult students] are assured all this talk of pleasure and desire and contexts and forces that are beyond that the content and organization of their good,” you’ll never get anything written our immediate control. And in my case, learning will suit [ … ] practical needs, … then you’ll be sorry! this includes protecting my scholarship our students also want to address the from being short-circuited by too many more contemplative issues which almost Indeed, my good sir, and I’m the first to mentoring-related ideas and questions! invariably underlie, suffuse, and trouble the admit that we faculty have to negotiate daily business ordinarily consuming their the tension between our own individual Wait a minute! I wasn’t suggesting attention: Who am I? What sort of life do I desires as thinkers and the political that you focus on something you want to live? How can I be free?” I recalled economy of academia that is beyond might happen to have in common (ibid, pp. 1 - 2). In other words, I recognized our immediate control. But may I also with a student in order to erase your a certain correspondence between what remind you that conflicts between differences. What I was trying to show can happen to students through mentoring individual desires and the political you was that things may begin to look – that is, if mentoring hasn’t been reduced economy of academic credentials differently if you take the dialogues to mere degree-plan-engineering – and and worlds of work are exactly what between you and your students as what can happen to scholars during the many of your mentees experience and a “starting point,” or better yet as leisurely pursuit of their learned questions: have been learning to negotiate as a useful frame of reference, instead In setting out to accomplish a particular nontraditional students, and with which of making a fetish out of categories goal thoughtfully and critically – and with you as a mentor claim to “help them:” like “teaching,” “scholarship,” wonder – sooner or later one comes face- “[A]s university faculty, [mentors] are “mentoring,” “course development,” to-face with “contemplative issues.” Indeed, responsible for counseling our students “cooking and paying the mortgage,” as Herman and Mandell argue in their and for helping them learn not only and so on. From the point of view of discussion of two of their students: what they individually desire, but also “the small and diverse communities the content and skills typically expected students and mentors create together” More or less eagerly, [Doris and Alex] of a university graduate. Our role is to (Herman and Mandell, p. 8), maybe will do what is necessary to obtain help our students, each one, learn to these categories are little more than the support, certification, and post- integrate and manage the complexity provisionally useful fictions that, when academic opportunity they desire. and tension of these multiple contexts – taken too seriously, start getting in the Like Thrasymachus, they expect to their own and ours – within which they way. find happiness (including a kind of seek academic degrees and a ‘higher’ economic justice) in power. But Doris In the way of what? education” (Herman and Mandell, p. and Alex also sense that such a view of 7). And might I also point out that you Well, that’s a good question, and I’m life is insufficient; they are also inspired are constantly trying to “help them” in not sure I can articulate this well with wonder. They are curious, even this regard even though you are never enough yet, as I am still trying to passionate, about learning which will certain that you exactly know how to make theoretical sense out of it myself. help them understand the meanings of help yourself when it comes to the very What I think I am getting at is this: their own and others’ lives, regardless same issue, and that this is precisely Maybe the reason that the things you of its “use value.” (p. 23, my emphasis) one of the reasons why as a mentor have been describing feel like instances So, whether it’s a student seeking a degree you should “concentrate on learning of “short-circuiting” is because you in business management or me trying to from, with and for the sake of [your] have overly privileged, or naturalized, figure out what I want to write next about students, each one, individually?” all these different categories, and so food (or to cook for dinner), life’s most (ibid, p. 140). Don’t you, Mr. career- you wind up experiencing the sudden contemplative questions are always right protecting, tenure-track professor with and forceful connections of one to there in front of us … Look out! your philosophy of eating, see that you another – from “the academic” to “the have something in common with that practical,” or from “the scholarly” Feeling like I was getting carried away by all student of yours who is trying to get a to “the mentorly” – as potentially this mentoring business again, I made one bachelor’s degree to get a promotion to destructive and undermining of your last valiant attempt to stay on track with

EMPIRE STATE COLLEGE • ALL ABOUT MENTORING 47

well-calculated and intelligently laid desire in Anti-Oedipus (which talks Notes plans – plans, that is, which were about “desiring-production”) in trying predicated on your already having to articulate all this to you. But to be 1. ÊEric Ball’s “Refashioning the Scholarly completely bought into these categories honest, I still have a lot to learn about Self for Higher Education: Reflections as ontological realities. What if you it. in Progress,” was included in All About look at it differently? Like the flows of Mentoring #31, summer 2006. Well, it sounds to me like you need wonder-electricity passing through an to spend a lot more time just learning 2. ÊTranslated from the Modern Greek by incredibly complex circuitry – passing what those two are saying if you ever Kimon Friar. here, then there, and then there, and hope to translate it to somebody like then there … Only after the fact, in me! But I am intrigued. And you know Works Cited retrospect, are particular instances what else? Even though according of these flows being pigeon-holed Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari. (1983). to my current way of thinking it is by an historically contingent system [1972]. Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and probably a long-term career-risk, I of representation: “That was about Schizophrenia. Minneapolis: University think I am going to put my writing scholarship!” “That had to do with of Minnesota Press. project on hold for now and go back mentoring!” “That was a matter of to re-read the Herman and Mandell Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari. dinner!” But these aren’t short circuits. book about mentoring, and focus in (1987). [1980]. A Thousand Plateaus: They are just the free flows of wonder particular on what I can learn about Capitalism and Schizophrenia. through rhizomatic circuits. taking the “mentor-student dialogue” Minneapolis: University of Minnesota So you’re saying that by overly buying as one’s point of reference. And I also Press. into categories like “scholarship” want to think some more about some Herman, Lee and Alan Mandell. (2004). vs. “mentoring” or “academic” possible studies I could enter into the From Teaching to Mentoring: vs. “practical” I am having a hard new Learning Opportunities Inventory, Principle and Practice, Dialogue and time recognizing flows of wonder? having to do with a number of the Life in Adult Education. London: And maybe even worse, that I am different themes that I found myself RoutledgeFalmer. misrecognizing them as “unhealthy”? bumping into when I thought I was working on a food project. Kazantzakis, Nikos. (1985). The Odyssey: Yes, and maybe even that your belief A Modern Sequel. Translation into in these categories as privileged or And I’m going to do what you English Verse, Introduction, Synopsis ontologically prior, contributes to recommend and spend more time just and Notes by Kimon Friar. New York: generating the real problems: not by reading Deleuze and Guattari on desire. Touchstone. creating short circuits, but by cutting And you know what else? I received off whole segments of the circuitry this invitation from Lorraine Lander of wondering-production from one the other day to a follow-up Mentoring another, by conditioning and restricting Institute-sponsored gathering for meta- the flows of wonder in ways that are discussion of scholarship. With the unnecessarily repressive. sudden jump in enrollments this term, and the ANGEL conversion project “Wondering-production”? What are coming fast, I was thinking I’d turn you talking about? this one down, but now I think I’m I’m sorry. I’ve been drawing on Deleuze gonna go! and Guattari’s materialist ontology of Me too!

EMPIRE STATE COLLEGE • ALL ABOUT MENTORING 48

The Independent Learning Situation Audit

Chris Rounds, Central New York Center

This audit was first designed for use my own called “Independent Learning that students are worried about. And with students engaged in a Central Strategies: The Basics.” it highlights what they perceive to be New York study group that, in its their strengths. Students tell me that it first incarnation, was called “Making The “audit” is designed to get has helped them think through some of Sense.” It later became “Independent prospective and newly enrolled student the challenges they’re likely to face as Learning Strategies,” and was eventually students thinking about the various they re-enter the learning environment. redesigned as a Center for Distance dimensions of becoming an effective It also puts some topics “on the table” Learning course. I saw this primarily independent learner. (For example, I between mentor and student that I as a transitional study, helping students have used this as a part of educational believe are crucial to their success in the new to Empire State College to navigate planning.) Some of the topics covered college. two substantial transitions: from are quite predictable, including reading, classroom-based to independent study, writing and critical thinking skills. What the audit does not do is solve any and from introductory to advanced Other topics are more environmental of the problems it may raise. It doesn’t level work. The group also created an than academic. These questions get improve a student’s writing skills or opportunity for students to meet other students thinking about managing their solve the problem of creating a place students going through the same changes time, creating a space or spaces in which to study in a crowded apartment. But in their lives. I am confident that the to study, and developing a network of by raising these issues, it does create group experience was at least as helpful supporters. opportunities to begin addressing them. to these students as were the materials presented. The audit has proven useful to me in ways that I hadn’t anticipated when it I’ve used this piece in conjunction with was developed. It helps me gain insight a variety of additional readings over the into the particular situations from which years. Currently, I’m using a writing of my students are coming. It flags topics

his audit is intended to help you think through the implications of your decision to return to college as an independent learner. It should get you thinking about some of the challenges you will face in becoming an independent learner, and it will suggest some T ways in which you can respond to those challenges. It may also prompt you to discuss your decision to return to college with other important people in your life. By returning this form to your mentor or tutor, you will also help that person get to know you better which, in turn, will enable him/her to respond to you more effectively.

You have received, with the audit, a handout titled Independent Learning Strategies: The Basics. You are encouraged to read it before completing the related portion of the Audit. This Audit can be used in many different ways. Guidance concerning where to send it, or who to give it to, should be provided with the audit. Please complete the following form, including comments and observations. Send the original and keep a copy for yourself. Your Name: ______Address: ______

E-mail: ______Telephone: ______Date: ______

EMPIRE STATE COLLEGE • ALL ABOUT MENTORING 49

Finding/Creating the Time to Learn Fill out the weeklong calendar below and then complete the questions about finding the time to learn. • Fill in the time commitments you have that can’t be changed (work, travel, family, community commitments, sleeping, eating, etc.). • Circle the commitments that might be modified or eliminated. • Calculate from this the number of hours potentially available for study. Be realistic. This exercise will be useful only to the extent that you are honest with yourself.

Hours Mon. Tues. Wed. Thurs. Fri. Sat. Sun.

5 a.m. ______

6 a.m. ______

7 a.m. ______

8 a.m. ______

9 a.m. ______

10 a.m. ______

11 a.m. ______

12 p.m. ______

1 p.m. ______

2 p.m. ______

3 p.m. ______

4 p.m. ______

5 p.m. ______

6 p.m. ______

7 p.m. ______

8 p.m. ______

9 p.m. ______

EMPIRE STATE COLLEGE • ALL ABOUT MENTORING 50

Hours Mon. Tues. Wed. Thurs. Fri. Sat. Sun.

10 p.m. ______

11 p.m. ______

12 p.m. ______

1 a.m. ______

2 a.m. ______

3 a.m. ______

4 a.m. ______

Number of hours potentially available for study: ______

Assuming that you will need about 10 hours per week to study for each 4-credit study in which you are enrolled, do you have a problem? ______

How serious is that problem? ______Can you identify some strategies that you might use to resolve the problem? (e.g., delegating responsibilities, reducing social commitments, sleeping less, working fast! studying fast! driving fast!) ______

If you commit yourself to these changes, do you think you will stick to them? ______

Given the limits on time available to study, name some strategies you think you can use to go about learning to study as efficiently and effectively as possible. ______

Finding/Creating a Place to Learn How would you evaluate your situation regarding a place to study?

q No problem:

q Potential problem:

q Serious problem: How critical is the issue of space likely to be for you? What are you going to do about it? ______

EMPIRE STATE COLLEGE • ALL ABOUT MENTORING 51

Supportive Learning Network Who are the important “players” in your learning environment? (consider spouse, children, parents, siblings, friends, employer, and co-workers, among others) ______Do you have critics among those players? Why, do you think, are your critics hostile to the prospect of your continuing your education? ______Can you think of strategies you might employ to “win over” some of those who seem skeptical or critical of your plans to complete a college degree? ______If there are people whose hostility you can’t overcome, how can you protect yourself from their influence? ______

Are there people in your community whom you don’t necessarily know well but who might prove to be supportive? Your list might include other adults returning to school, alumni of the college interested in helping current students, people at work who have strongly supported the concept of continuous learning, religious and community leaders, previous teachers with whom you have lost touch, etc. ______

In general terms, how supportive do you think your learning network is? ______

What can be done to improve and expand it? ______

Defining and Expanding Access to Learning Resources The following is a checklist of learning resources available in many communities. Evaluate the degree to which each is accessible to you.

Resource Availability Limitations Small public library Large public library Two-year college library Four-year college library University research library Corporate/private library World Wide Web at home World Wide Web at work World Wide Web at library Bookstores Community organizations Government agencies

Nongovernment organizations Public officials Individuals with special knowledge Other:

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The World Wide Web has the potential to provide you with access to an incredible range of learning resources. But using the web requires experience along with access. How would you evaluate your level of experience in using the web for research?

q I have no experience:

q I have access but little experience:

q I’m an accomplished web user: Do you know someone who would be willing to give you a hand in getting started with the web? (One of your children, for example!) ______Are there “short courses” on using the web available locally? Be sure to visit Empire State College’s Library and Learning Resource Center, where under “Learn More” you can complete a range of training exercises. ______In light of your circumstances, how important do you anticipate the web being as a learning resource for this and other courses?

q Not important:

q Of some importance:

q Very important:

q I don’t know yet: Do you think of your local learning environment as resource rich or resource poor?

q If it’s resource rich, what strategies can you use to capitalize on those resources? Are there specific tools you will need or contacts you ought to make? ______

q If it’s resource poor, what efforts might you make to expand the resource pool or expand the boundaries of your environment? Ê Are there unchangeable limitations within which you will need to learn to work? ______Ê ______

Independent Learning Skills

Discipline: How would you characterize your ability to set tasks for yourself, carry out those tasks, and resist distraction while you’re engaged in the task? Ability to Complete Tasks At Home Ability to Complete Tasks At Work

q Very good q Very good

q Pretty good q Pretty good

q Okay q Okay

q What was the question? q What was the question?

Concentration: Do you expect that your ability to concentrate on a reading or writing project will be a problem in your efforts to complete assignments? Explain. ______

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Writing Skills: (please place an X next to your response.) Levels of Reading: How would you characterize yourself as a writer? Read the observations on Levels of Reading first before answering the following: q I love to write! q I’ve done well at tasks requiring writing in the past. How would you characterize yourself regarding reading for understanding? q I didn’t mind ‘writing-intensive’ classes in the past, but don’t use it much. q I have not engaged in reading in this way.

q I haven’t had much exposure to writing. q I have read for understanding, but only occasionally.

q I see writing as an academic skill area I need to work hard at. q I’m comfortable with this concept and read for understanding often. How much writing do you do? How would you characterize yourself regarding critical reading? q I write every day, both on the job and off. Ê q I can’t think of a time when I’ve engaged in critical reading. q I write occasionally, but not a lot. q I read critically as an aspect of my job. q I don’t write very much, or don’t feel comfortable writing. q I have read critically in previous college courses. Given the academic and professional goals you have set for yourself, how would you characterize the challenge you face with regard to q I find myself reading critically both at home and work … I’m writing? comfortable with it.

q I think the abilities I now possess will serve me well. Can you describe a situation in which you have engaged in comparative reading? ______q I think my skills need some polishing. ______q I think I’m going to have to work hard to rise to the expectations inherent in my academic and professional goals. Can you imagine a situation in which the skills required for comparative reading would serve you well in your community or Reading Skills: at work? ______How would you characterize the reading you normally do at home? ______q I read only occasionally … newspapers and popular magazines. Analytical and Critical Thinking: q I read books, but for personal enjoyment. Can you describe a situation in which you have been obliged to q I read “serious” books and think of myself as a reader. think critically about a problem or issue? ______How would you characterize your work-related reading? ______q I’m not required to read much at work. Is critical thinking a skill you feel comfortable with, or does it make q I read a good deal, mostly technical stuff. you uneasy? Explain. ______q I read a lot, including reports and professional journals. ______How would you evaluate yourself as a reader? ______q I’m very confident that I’ll be able to read and learn effectively Can you identify someone you know well whom you would on my own. characterize as a critical thinker? Why? ______q I enjoy reading, but haven’t done it very seriously in a while. ______q I’m not used to doing much reading, but it hasn’t posed a ______problem before. If you were asked to place yourself at some point along this q I’m concerned about my ability to keep up, and to absorb continuum, where would it be? Explain. information and to remember what I’ve read. q I’m already a critical thinker. q I engage in critical thinking sometimes but not often. q I want to learn and I understand the need for critical thinking. q I haven’t done it and don’t see the usefulness of ever doing it.

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Words and Worldviews: Narrative Facts and Fictions

Marie Tondreau, Hudson Valley Center

want to talk today about the narrative I wondered if that would be freeing, or construction of worldviews, so perhaps constricting, and suspected that the question II should begin by stating what I mean would never occur to those who had by that. A worldview is a belief system, a grown up with a very different internalized perspective about the world, how it works, worldview than mine. Since I believe that and what our place in it is, or should be. our narrative worldviews (which are coded A narrative worldview is that perspective in our stories) guide our actions, I wondered clothed in the language or form of a story. what guide there would be for someone who did not own the right to tell their Literary insights have long been utilized own life story. Then I thought that perhaps to enhance our understanding of lived their actions would be guided by stories experience in diverse disciplinary domains, nonetheless: stories about other people’s but this is only one dimension of their lives, and perhaps by a desire to have their value. The other dimension concerns the life represented in a positive way by those appropriation of “story” (in its magnificent who would tell it later. I am still pondering coat of many colors) as a “root metaphor” the implications of that simple difference in or organizing framework in the human perspectives on what a “life story” is, and sciences and in education. Metaphor is a I hope I have learned to always consider way of seeing that provides a powerful Marie Tondreau context, which may turn “facts” into vantage point from which to attempt a “fictions” before my astonished eyes. diagnostic reading of the twists and turns said that a life story is a chronicle of what of human existence, to understand what happened in an individual’s life, usually told Emotions and actions stem more from the is and visualize what could be in human from their inside perspective, usually told in stories we believe than from any simple lives and cultures. Narrative as a metaphor chronological form (beginning with “I was set of facts, so fabrications and fictions is about composing worlds–the narrative born” and ending in the present). One of may rule the life experience of many construction of self, society, and structures the other group members was a Native from people, at least some of the time. Our of knowledge. It is not the only way to the Okanagan tribe in British Columbia, emotional realities are shaped by what we compose a world, but it may be one of and he smiled gently and spoke his own believe, not whatever consensual “truth” the best ways to understand how human understanding of what a life story may be. may be, and we act in accord with our realities are constructed. As psychotherapist He stated that his people, if asked to tell narrative worldviews, however distorted Susan Baur (1994) says: their life story, would likely not understand or embellished they may have become over time. Narrative therapy works on the Narrative – the stories we tell about the request, and that if pressed, they would premise that stories can change (although ourselves and our worlds – is becoming start with the lives of their ancestors, seven the facts of a life, to whatever extent the root metaphor for knowing. As each generations back, ending with “I was born.” they can be determined, do not). This is of us constructs a personal reality, it is He said they believed that a life could not sometimes taken to mean that all one has to organized as we put it into words. It is as be a story until it was ended, and that the do to be happy is to make up a new story. if we construct a world for ourselves from telling belonged to those who came after. I Not true! We cannot so easily fool ourselves the fragments of information at our disposal thought about this long after the seminar as that, most of us, most of the time, and and then find we are held back or pushed was over, as it disturbed part of my own trying to do so is a dangerous endeavor. ahead by the very constructions we create narrative worldview – my own assumptions Still, interpretations can change, new facts with our stories. (p. xiv) about the centrality of self in the stories we tell about our lives, and the importance may be discovered and incorporated, and I am especially interested in life stories, of internal reflection on the meaning of stories can change. When they do, the and how they may contain embedded those lives. It was an alien concept to me, emotions and actions that derive from them worldviews of which we often remain that my life story might have nothing to usually change as well. oblivious. I was once at a seminar that dealt do with me, that telling it might belong to The exploration of a life story (whether with problems of narrative representation, the others who shared my time on earth, undertaken for purposes of research or in and participated in a small group discussion that others might determine what it meant. the context of therapy) occurs at a given about life stories. One of us (perhaps me)

EMPIRE STATE COLLEGE • ALL ABOUT MENTORING 55 point in time, a present moment that is store, all that occurs within their sphere to vicariously enter other worlds and share suspended somewhere between past and of awareness. So, what we attend to is the other experiences. However, it is a quixotic future and in which both participate. first way in which we story our experience. window, often rose-colored or carnival Often, the past is viewed as that which has And what resonates for us, what we notice, funhouse, shifting what is seen through its already happened and cannot be changed, is often (consciously or not) influenced by bracketed framing. Lifewriting is constructed a story or history already written which the stories we already possess, and which from fragments of memory, in the shifting may be excavated by eliciting memories, “prime” our limited attention to notice weather of moods and motives that swirl a chronological recitation of happenings certain things and not others. John Kotre within the storyteller and shape the telling that constitute “reality” apart from any (in a wonderful book called White Gloves: of the tale. If “truth” lies within, it is a interpretation placed upon them. Theories How We Create Ourselves Through “narrative” rather than a “historical” truth of human nature often define normality Memory) states that there are two opposing (as Donald Spence contends), molded by a as being in touch with reality, being able elements in the functioning of what he calls “narrative” rather than a “paradigmatic” to perceive and understand and accurately “the remembering self.” The first is to act or scientific mode of thought (as Jerome remember what is true and verifiable like a librarian or the keeper of an archive, Bruner asserts). This does not invalidate by so called “objective” investigation. filing pristine facts away in neat, ordered the worth of such tales, nor does it relegate Mental illness then becomes synonymous categories – cross-referenced and ready for them to the category of fiction; however, with being “out of touch” with reality retrieval at a moment’s notice, in its original it provides a context for understanding – perceiving, understanding, remembering in form. He writes that: “Memory is supposed what is there. Memory is always a dynamic ways that do not correspond to the “real” process of interpretation, rather than a static world – or experiencing emotions that are retrieval of stored facts. According to Burr not comprehensible to self or others as Lifewriting … provides a and Butt: “The ‘facts’ of the past are not “appropriate” responses to external “facts.” like mushrooms, waiting to be collected; Postmodern paradigms challenge this view window into the world of they are picked out within shifting narrative of reality, and thus invalidate this way of other times and places, an searchlights. When a new story emerges, defining normality and illness: if reality new facts are remembered” (p. 201). is a social construction, normality and opportunity to learn from And as The Personal Narratives Group illness reflect one’s degree of conformity to immersion in the stories puts it: normative standards rather than absolute categories that can be separated from the of lives, to vicariously When talking about their lives, people context in which they occur. However, enter other worlds and lie sometimes, forget a lot, exaggerate, human beings, as authors, do not have become confused, and get things complete creative control, and cannot simply share other experiences. wrong. Yet, they are revealing truths. imagine whatever life they want into being. These truths don’t reveal the past “as Like the authors of literature, human beings it actually was,” aspiring to a standard cannot ignore the boundaries of possibility to distinguish between what is true and of objectivity. They give us instead the without becoming unintelligible, to self and what is false, between fact and fantasy … truths of our experiences. They aren’t others, and in that way lies madness. As It is supposed to strive for accuracy and the result of empirical research or the Wayne Booth (1990) notes: revise itself to conform to historical logic of mathematical deductions. truth” (p. 116). However, says Kotre, the Unlike the reassuring Truth of the Many of us … [live] so much of our lives remembering self also plays a different role: scientific ideal, the truths of personal in stories that we must wonder what to call narratives are neither open to proof nor primary, the plowing and planting or the Memory’s archivist by day has a secret self-evident. We come to understand stories about plowing and planting. And passion by night: to fashion a story about them only through interpretation, when we go too far along that line, or when itself, a story that some of us call the paying careful attention to the contexts we embrace certain kinds of destructive personal myth. A myth, in the sense that that shape their creation and the “realities,” we are rightly declared deranged. we use the term, is not a falsehood but a worldviews that inform them. (p. 261) (p. 15) comprehensive view of reality, a different kind of reality than a librarian knows. For example, Neruda’s poem titled “The Autobiographical memory is keenly involved A myth is a story that speaks to the heart Me Bird” is an elusive portrait of the inner with the issue of fact versus fiction – in as well as the mind, seeking to generate life of the poet, a self story that offers only much the same way that the writing of conviction about what it thinks is true. provocative glimpses of muted emotion and any history demands a judicious mingling (p. 116) hidden meanings, disclosing no details of of fidelity to events as they happened with time or place or circumstance, an intimate a literary sensibility in the crafting of the Lifewriting (such as autobiography and lifewriting that touches deep resonant chords tale when it is told. Memory is necessarily memoir) provides a window into the world without revealing more than a shadowy selective; human beings do not have an of other times and places, an opportunity to silhouette of a life: infinite capacity to process, let alone learn from immersion in the stories of lives,

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I am the Pablo Bird, that face the (post)modern world. According actions, there can be no true understanding. bird of a single feather, to Michael Roemer (1995): “Like quantum Education (like life) is not a journey a flier in the clear shadow theory, traditional story acknowledges that with a defined destination. My passion and obscure clarity, we cannot observe the ‘real’ accurately or for narrative derives, in part, from my my wings are unseen, directly … Stories, like most physicists, awareness of multiple paths and possibilities, my ears resound take a realist position. They acknowledge from my belief that there is no one road when I walk among the trees that what is ‘out there’ cannot be known, and no single destination in life, and from or beneath the tombstones but their very form commits them to its my desire to honor context and diversity in like an unlucky umbrella existence” (p. 84). Marie-Laure Ryan (1992) human lives and in the quest for knowledge or a naked sword, concurs, in harmony with philosophers who and understanding. stretched like a bow refute the notion of mind as a “mirror” The relevance of narrative for education or round like a grape, of reality (like Richard Rorty), and pertains to broad issues of educational I fly on and on not knowing, historiographers who insist that all accounts philosophy and curriculum design wounded in the dark night, of historical events are “emplotted” by those – what is taught, and how it is taught. who is waiting for me, who tell their tales (like Hayden White). Stories have been a tool of socialization who does not want my song, Ryan claims that “reality does not present and acculturation for centuries. Tribal who desires my death, itself to immediate experience in narrative knowledge was expressed in myth and song, who will not know I’m arriving form … Narrative is form – and form is and passed down through the generations and will not come to subdue me, imposed by the mind (or in a more radical orally. Later, written stories captured such to bleed me, to twist me, version, by language)” (p. 258). However, tales, becoming independent of individual or to kiss my clothes, not all would agree that stories “take a or collective memory. Stories are still the torn by the shrieking wind. realist position.” For instance, Jonathan way we learn to negotiate our way through That’s why I come and go, Culler (1997) contends that “literature … the world. Families tell stories so children fly and don’t fly but sing: takes its place among the acts of language will learn what it means to be a person, a I am the furious bird that transform the world, bringing into member of a particular culture or religion, of the calm storm. being the things that they name” (p. 92). an adult, a man or a woman. Children Our stories (whether rooted in actual or (Neruda, n.d.) learn how the world works and what imaginary realms) shape our world in behaviors are accepted or shunned. People This is a metaphorical lifewriting, a poetic words, and thus shape our worldviews. communicate in storied form as they move fiction which evokes inner experience that Narrative worldviews are not only through the minutes and hours of their tantalizes but provides no clarification. important for individual life stories. Stories days. Western society has devalued stories This is an impressionistic self-portrait or shared by people in groups (such as families, in education, relegating them to the realm an jazz improvisation, not a photograph religions, societies, or countries) affect life of recreation or quaint folklore, dismissing or a historical chronicle. I picture the poet on every level, with sometimes devastating them as peripheral distractions with no writing at a desk before a window, in a effect. Burr and Butt (1999) remind us that: legitimate place in the “serious” scholarly small circle of lamplight, surrounded by the communities of scientific and social science black shadows of midnight, struggling to Storytelling is not a simple individual-level disciplines. Stories of personal experience reconcile the wild exuberance of flight with phenomenon. The stories we inhabit belong have been marginalized, leaving many the dark weight of pain and loneliness. His to a particular time and social context … students with an education that provided poetic fiction may not hold facts about his Though they require a basis in the lives of access to a vast library of facts and figures life, but it does convey deep truths about his tellers, they also need encouragement and and information, but little guidance on how inner experience. the articulation of others to produce them. to integrate it into their past, present, or It is also necessary to have audiences willing All literature is a web woven of words, future lives. Furthermore, there has been to accept them, and perhaps recognize their language in rich and textured costumes that little (if any) acknowledgement of the storied own experiences within them. (p. 201) reflects the very world it seeks to create contexts that shaped the creation of the facts anew. However, even imaginary worlds Whether the attack on the World Trade and figures and information taught; many contain an implied cosmology and cannot Centers in New York City is the story of (if not most) students have sought evidence ignore the boundaries of possibility without a terrorist attack or a holy war depends of their existence in the world in vain. The becoming unintelligible to readers. Literary on whether you were inside the towers or canon of “dead white men” dictated what theorists are certainly not alone in the flying one of the planes that crashed into mattered: what must be taught, what must elusive borderlands between the actual and them. This doesn’t mean there are no valid be learned. Story in teaching and learning is the imaginary: exploration of the parameters grounds for making moral determinations not just about literature and storytelling: it of reality (of what is “out there”) and to about the actions of others; however, is about the construction of self, society, and what degree it corresponds to our perception without consideration of the blurred lines structures of knowledge; it is (all at the same of it (or is a construction of the mind) is that comprise the facts and fictions of the time) process, product, and paradigm. We perhaps one of the most fundamental issues narrative worldviews that guide people’s are storied creatures. We learn by the stories

EMPIRE STATE COLLEGE • ALL ABOUT MENTORING 57 we live, and live by the stories we learn. Burr, V. and T. Butt. (1999). Psychological Roemer, M. (1995). Telling stories: It is my contention that educators should distress and postmodern thought. Postmodernism and the invalidation utilize this natural propensity to enhance the In D. Fee (ed.). Pathology and of traditional narrative. Lanham, MD: learning process, and provide an expanded the Postmodern: Mental Illness as Rowman and Littlefield. repertoire of stories to supplement those we Discourse and Experience (pp. 186 - Rorty, R. (1981). Philosophy and the acquire on our own. 206). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. mirror of nature. Princeton, NJ: Culler, J. (1997). Literary theory: A very Princeton University Press. Works Cited short introduction. New York: Oxford Ryan, M. L. (1992). Possible worlds, Baur, S. (1994). Confiding: A University Press. artificial intelligence and narrative psychotherapist and her patients Kotre, J. (1995). White gloves: How we theory. Bloomington: Indiana University search for stories to live by. New York: create ourselves through memory. New Press. HarperCollins. York: The Free Press. Spence, D. (1982). Narrative truth Booth, W. C. (1990). The company we Neruda, P. (n.d.). The me bird. Retrieved and historical truth: Meaning and keep: An ethics of fiction. Berkeley: 4/2/01 from the World Wide Web: interpretation in psychoanalysis. New University of California Press. http://members.aol.com/RSanti1014/ York: W. W. Norton. Bruner, J. (1986). Actual minds, possible mebird.html. White, H. (1973). Metahistory: The worlds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Personal Narratives Group. (1989). Truths. historical imagination in 19th-century University Press. In Personal Narratives Group (ed.). Europe. Baltimore: John Hopkins Bruner, J. (1990). Acts of meaning. Interpreting Women’s Lives: Feminist University Press. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Theory and Personal Narratives (pp. Press. 261 - 264). Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

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Two Poems

Matt Sanders, Verizon Corporate College Program

Dear Student Dear Mentor The CBE I thought you’d have my work by now in your DP But I was on vacation in Curacao is BME, Sitting with my laptop at the water not SMT With my spouse, the triplets, and our infant daughter, (your AOS) When Rex (our Chihuahua) began to bark And then – we saw – this Enormous Shark – and we have the LC from the LOI Well, we pulled all the children out of reach at GVC, And ran for safety up the beach, but we need a CE from CDL – But while I was using the lifeguard’s phone, OK? My hard-drive got clogged with Coppertone, And every time that I press “Enter” – Sincerely,

Your DAR No! I can’t lie to my mentor! We’re both adults, so I’ll just tell you

cc The reason my paper is overdue: OCAS The kids ate my homework. *

EMPIRE STATE COLLEGE • ALL ABOUT MENTORING 59

No Place to Hide: An Interview with Anne Bertholf

Alan Mandell, Mentoring Institute

Anne Bertholf came to Empire State about “me” – he hadn’t thought about Students could then go off in lots of College’s Niagara Frontier Center in 1984. writing to someone who knew nothing wonderful directions on their own. But I She served as part-time mentor, as associate about cotton. After we’d talked about how also remember discovering, in the one-on- dean, as dean, and then as advisor for new to give someone step-by-step instructions, one format, how impossible it is to hide deans in her role as “special assistant to the he came back with a new draft. I couldn’t at Empire State College. Students cannot provost.” She left the college in December, believe the improvement! I was knocked avoid direct confrontation with ideas, with 2005. out. When I asked him why his second opinions, with mentors. As associate dean, I draft was so much better than the first, he did hundreds of orientations over the years. Mandell: Your first experiences at Empire responded, somewhat impatiently, “You I always warned incoming students that State College were as a mentor, weren’t told me what to do!” Well, over the year their Empire State College experience would they? What actually attracted you to this I had told many students how to improve be different from sitting in a 400-person kind of work? papers, but it had never worked quite this lecture hall, where you could easily keep well! This student had come to Empire in your head down, avoid eye contact, and Bertholf: Yes, I was a part-time writing large part because poor writing skills were never have to participate. At Empire State mentor. Early on, I worked with a man who an impediment for him: rather than the College, all students get called on! was a high-level manager at the local Ford tedious and routine speech explaining to a plant. He was very smart, but with spotty Mandell: And for the faculty too. class of 18-year-olds why they needed to be formal education – a sharecropper’s son better writers, I had finally met a student Bertholf: Yes. In the same way that students who had grown up in Mississippi. I asked telling me why he needed to write better. cannot avoid interacting with the mentor, him to do what I usually asked students His background and his mind-set meant the mentor cannot avoid dealing directly with technological backgrounds to do: that our discussion opened the door for with students and with their difficulties. In write a “how to” paper. He didn’t know him. It helped him see something that he my experience teaching writing at Kent State what to write about, so after we talked a hadn’t understood before, that writing is University, typically to classes of 25 - 30 while, I asked him to tell me how to plant actually about communicating with another students, there were certainly students in cotton. He wrote his paper in a sequence person. I was immediately converted by the those classes whose thinking was disordered, that made no sense. We went through the excitement of working with a smart, highly but that state of disorder could easily paper, and I told him that some of what motivated grown up: I was hooked on the remain unaddressed in classes of that size. he wrote was clear, but he hadn’t thought Empire State College student. I believe that “received wisdom” suggested that simply having students complete Mandell: So it was the “opening the door” more and more essays would remedy the part that was appealing? disorganization. Talking with students far Bertholf: Yes. As a part-timer, I saw that less frequently than in the Empire State the college’s processes made me impatient. College mode, instructors might never I’m a results-oriented person. I want to recognize or address serious limitations. get the task done, and complying with Here you cannot avoid dealing with the the “paperwork” requirements sometimes problems. Because you talk with the student seemed like obstacles to “getting the task about what she did in her composition and done.” Having the luxury, as a part- what was or was not communicated, there time instructor (not a primary mentor) is no escaping the student’s limitations. of learning only what had to be done The process strips you, just as it does the immediately for the students I was working student. Students can’t hide from faculty, with, rather than trying to understand the and faculty cannot ignore students’ needs. entire flow of paper, meant that I could Mandell: There is the question of absorb the “rules” in fairly leisurely fashion. acknowledging to ourselves and to our So the system – the paperwork didn’t get students that there is a problem or a in my way. I found it exciting that I could limitation, and then there is the question of help students structure learning tasks, and whether we know what to do about it or Anne Bertholf that this skill could be incredibly useful.

EMPIRE STATE COLLEGE • ALL ABOUT MENTORING 60 whether we have the resources to do what with how comfortable you are with the faculty meetings and other meetings, as well we wish could be done. disclosures that students make to us. as how we talk informally about students. One of my jobs as associate dean was to Bertholf: The resource question is very Mandell: This gets right to the question of assign new students to primary mentors. important, and there are other questions, who our students are and who the college I felt like a matchmaker! To be honest, a too. At Kent State, there was a student who believes is a “good candidate” to succeed lot of my decisions were gut reactions. Did scared me. She was a single mother living here. We may have an ideal of a person I think this student needed a mentor who in a remote rural area. She wrote a paper who comes to the college very focused and was more nurturing? Who would treat this about extraterrestrial beings in which she very disciplined as a learner, but, it’s my seemingly fragile person with the utmost described running out into the fields in the experience at least, that most of our students respect, or who would help this “off-beat” middle of the night with her children and do not have those skills and that sense of student develop a degree program that could welcoming these visitors. This unnerved themselves when they begin here. be approved? Mentors who seemed to me to me: I felt concern for her and for her Bertholf: For me, what you’re asking hugely be not particularly diligent about the details children. So I took her paper to the director is about the changes that have been taking were not assigned people I judged to be of freshman comp and he read it and said place in the college. One of my concerns is “high-needs” students. I sent these mentors something like, “I don’t see a problem here. that many of our successful students would students who appeared to be competent, She writes pretty well and the sentences are not have made it in a traditional institution students who appeared likely to succeed here OK.” He didn’t get the point. He didn’t see – in a classroom-based institution. We need no matter who their mentor was. And this, that I had any business being alarmed by to concern ourselves with these students of course, led to inequity in mentor loads. I her content given the little that I knew about and provide what they need, allowing the was very aware of that, and I never found a her. I’m sorry to confess that I don’t know luxury of taking time with that student to creative solution to that problem. the outcome. I referred her to the counseling build the skills and the confidence that she center, but I had no strong sense that she Mandell: And, for you, this was one way in needs to be successful. It can be a very time- would follow through. which you responded to academic quality? consuming process. For example, I’ve never Mandell: I guess this also gets to the issue directed introductory-level writing studies Bertholf: Yes. I think the academic quality of what mentoring is – does it mean being in four meetings. Not possible. I never did issues had a great deal to do with what more attentive to student skills than if it. Not once. I never even tried. I always I knew about individual mentors and we were in a situation with many more assumed that the student and I would meet what I had learned about their sense of students? Does it mean listening to the frequently, and I would have been surprised professionalism, about their mentoring individual student’s voice? Does it mean to finish “on time.” styles, and about how I perceived they were being concerned about a person’s entire doing their jobs. Mandell: This “luxury of time” question is worldview, as you seem to have been with so significant. Mandell: It’s interesting that you also your Kent State student? mention the quality of the center Bertholf: And it affects the issue of our Bertholf: I think that it means all of those community. This is the question of the mission and who we can serve and who we things. When we get to “worldview” ongoing conversation that we have or don’t should be serving and whether we have the issues, however, we must worry about have and without which individual mentors resources to respond effectively to them. the fine line between being a mentor and are really isolated and the work becomes being a therapist. I think that mentors in Mandell: With all of these issues about that much more private. human services deal with this all the time, the range of mentoring styles and student Bertholf: Absolutely. I often thought about and it’s probably not anything that can skills, and learning resources, and with what this question of the importance of the be ever be perfectly resolved: where does is certainly a really very private world of “conversation” in relation to our increasing the counseling begin and where does the mentoring – there is no one who is sitting in reliance on part-time colleagues, many mentoring begin? If you have a student on our one-to-one sessions with our students of whom do wonderful work with our who is so distracted by the pressures of her – how do you get at questions of academic students, but do not have time in their lives life that she seems unable to concentrate, quality? As an associate dean, how did for the kind of community we have been do you spend valuable time talking about you even begin to address these “academic discussing. What do we do when we don’t these things, or do you say something like quality” issues? have the kind of physical contact with each “My job is to teach you philosophy, and I’m Bertholf: Honestly, there were times where other that gives us the chance to talk about sorry you are having a bad day, but we’ve the crunch of the work and the pressure academic issues and about students? Of got to get going,” even though you know of the work meant that the absence of course, this is often the case for full time the student can’t “get going.” Empire State bad news was good news! I think that mentors, too. It’s a major challenge. College mentors are all over the map about the community developed at a center is this. Some of it has to do with academic Mandell: In part, this seems to be about extraordinarily important. The conversations discipline – some disciplines invite more that moment in which one mentor can we have with each other – about everything personal disclosure than others – and some communicate – in some way – to another: – are crucial. That means what happens in of it has to do with you as an individual,

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“Remember student X … ” “What do I do values and what you cherished as an one of those great “way to go mom!” … ”? educator? What held this work together for moments, “You get so much feedback in so many years? your institution and you get it so quickly.” Bertholf: For sure. There are also these When you teach 18 - 22 year olds, you little prophetic moments, when suddenly a Bertholf: As you know, after I retired from rarely know what happens in their lives book that you hadn’t even thought about in the position as dean, I served as something because of you. We certainly don’t know connection with a particular student pops like a job-coach for new administrators, so that about every student at Empire State into your head during a mentor session, and I had lots of time to think about how the College, but we often see transformation you’re so sure that it’s the right book for work can be held together. I felt fortunate that happens very quickly and we see people this student right now. It’s such an exciting that I’d begun as a mentor, and I truly who overcome huge educational deficits moment. And this can be part of, a result believe that the best possible way to learn in an astonishingly short amount of time of, the give-and-take with colleagues. I loved to be an associate dean or a dean is to when they get turned on and decide that those moments. start off in that role. I think a lot about the this is what they want to do. You have the transition from being a part-time writing Time is surely an issue. People don’t have external stuff – people get a job and people and literature mentor to being an associate the time they need for those conversations. get promoted and people tell you they got dean, and I realize I already knew who So what happens at centers and at center a better job. But you get other stuff too the students were. That was it. That was meetings and how you try to make room for – people who walk out the door and are always it. I had experienced the incredible these kinds of conversations is so important much more confident about who they are, range of our students. I had this notion of to the academic quality of the college. who were not confident at all, in fact, who what an amazing place this is. It was this were terrified when they began. Mandell: I was just thinking about our variety I cherished. It was that I was asked conversation at dinner and specifically about Mandell: I wish we actually knew more what Bob [Anne’s husband] was saying about this kind of change. about the importance of a student knowing That was it. That Bertholf: When I first became associate this or that about a particular topic. He was dean, one of the training chores that I saying something like: “Student, you should was always it. I had assigned myself was to take information know about X.” He was thinking about his experienced the incredible calls for a while so that I could hear role as a resource person, someone who can from those who were calling the college, tell a student about this book or that topic range of our students. learn who they are and what kinds of or this piece of criticism, or this problem I had this notion of what information they needed. After a few calls, that should be tackled. Isn’t this a very I was taking most of the calls in a rather specific understanding of being a mentor? an amazing place this is. perfunctory way, signing learning contracts It’s very much about the content, isn’t it? It was this variety and vouchers and purchase reqs while I Bertholf: He does think about himself I cherished. provided information. But I picked up the as a mentor and it is, in his academic phone one day and said: “May I help you?” environment, hugely about content. For us, and there was a huge gasp. A silence. A of course, it’s always also about process. woman said to me: “Can you just hold on to be central in the educational process of I think about one of my dear friends and for just a minute? You have no idea how all of these people – the sharecropper’s son, colleagues here who really thinks that much courage it took for me to make this the stockbroker, the housewife, the middle educational planning cannot be done until phone call.” And I said to myself: “OK manager, the single mom and dad. And with nearly the end of a student’s time at the Bertholf, put your pen down, pay attention. every student coming in the door, I had to college, because educational quality and There’s a lesson coming your way.” It was shift gears; the conversation was always educational decisions have to do so much astonishing. It was a defining moment for different. When I went out into the world with the processes that the student and the me. It told me that it is not easy for many to talk about the college and was asked, mentor engage in along the way. How can of our students to come to us. It took a lot “What kinds of adults need an institution you really know what there is to learn or for this woman to pick up the phone. And like Empire State College,” I could answer, read or do, especially because you can so that has been a huge value for me about “All kinds of adults: people from every easily and abruptly go off in an entirely the entire institution, which carried over conceivable walk of life, every conceivable different, but entirely valuable direction? in all the jobs that I did and fed into basic economic strata. We get them all. And we For some mentors, this model is how the questions that I didn’t want to forget: Why get them all every day.” college began. It has great attraction for a is this important? What is this doing? What committed mentor and student, yet it is a Mandell: And, often, we have this incredible is this feeding into that will make life better hard model to sustain. privilege of getting to know these students for our students? as well. Mandell: In your roles as writing mentor, Mandell: Over the 20 years that you have as associate dean, as director and as dean, Bertholf: After one of our graduations, been at the institution, there have been many what centered you in terms of your own my husband remarked, in response to changes, including the growth of new forms

EMPIRE STATE COLLEGE • ALL ABOUT MENTORING 62 of teaching and learning, especially our use build this into a mentoring model is the This was, of course, well before some of the of educational technologies. I wonder what challenge. It can be very difficult, and I current technologies that make many of the kind of public college you would want to set certainly don’t know exactly how to do it. I practices that connect students and mentors up now – a new college – if someone gave remember a wonderful and thoughtful piece completely simple and, for some mentors, you that opportunity? that, some years ago now, Diana Worby just a “taken for granted.” Diana was quite [Hudson Valley Center mentor] wrote about clear about who this student, who this Bertholf: I’ve thought about that question “distance learning” [included in Facilitating woman, was. She was working with her, this a lot and I don’t know the answer. The Learning at a Distance, Office of Academic individual. I admired and referred to that technological changes over these two Affairs/the Mentoring Institute, 1996]. She example a lot. I don’t exactly know what decades have made such a difference. I described how she kept the student’s photo, a new institution would look like, but this cannot see how we can avoid the use of new and the student had Diana’s photo, in front kind of individualization, this attention to technologically mediated modes of working of them as they worked together, and she the particular person, is something I would with our students. Taking advantage of described brief personal conversations that like to hold onto. I think institutions can, them is the right way to do it. It’s how we preceded their telephone work sessions. but of course, in new ways. all increasingly get things done. It’s what and how students need to learn. Yet, to

More than in any other human relationship, overwhelmingly more, motherhood means being instantly interruptable, responsive, responsible. Children need one now (and remember, in our society, the family must often try to be the center for love and health the outside world is not). The very fact that these are real needs, that one feels them as one’s own (love, not duty); that there is no one else responsible for these needs, gives them primacy. It is distraction, not medita- tion, that becomes habitual; interruption, not continuity; spasmodic, not constant toil … . Work interrupted, deferred, relinquished, makes blockage – at best, lesser accomplishment. Unused capacities atrophy, cease to be. Tillie Olsen, Silences (1978)

EMPIRE STATE COLLEGE • ALL ABOUT MENTORING 63

The Combine

Yvonne Murphy, Long Island Center

I. II.

As wheat came through the thresher, chaff flew. Just taller than the wheat, – My grandfather drove and my father or uncle followed break time or cows to burst over the fence, with the baler, pitching finished bales off the side. men stammering in off their tractors, their sweethearts Ernest from up the hill lost his whole hand left sighing momentarily in the fields. in his combine. Sitting on back, I’d watch the field mice and rabbits get caught in the blades, On grandmother’s lawn we served them: piles end up later, packed neatly into a block of hay. of bread and sausages held in grit-caked hands. At six, I knew there was no place to go My little hands shook, poured water over ice in their glasses, once the blade hits you – except to get a flurry of chewing. Leftover hulls from the threshers bounced bundled in with grass, dirt, straw. out of their sleeves, work clothes soiled with chaff. No talk.

Bolting through the field barelegged each day, In the kitchen, grandmother dreamed of ocean liners. I sliced up my calves and knees, Waltzing with her grace undisguised, she swirled and panted, freshly cut wheat sharp the pantry gleamed in her smile. I held a washed plate at my chest as an attacker’s pocket knife. No amount of grandma’s ointment like a moon, a life-preserver, gangplanks and portholes or whiskey or love could help. got imagined to the music box Hi Lily, hi Lily, hi Lo. . . I’d be out there again the next day, with the other small animals – When the handle came unwound I’d twist it again for her, dancing and darting, tempting I’d float around after her – Lily, her own name, her body the combine’s thick edge. reeling into dizzy sparks.

“The Combine” is part of a feature (four poems) of Yvonne Murphy’s work published in the fall ’06 issue of The Recorder, the literary magazine of the American Irish Historical Society in New York City.

EMPIRE STATE COLLEGE • ALL ABOUT MENTORING 64

Drinking Coffee and Reading Together as a Response to Bowling Alone: Some First Reflections

Elliott Lauderdale, The University of South Alabama

here is an important tradition coffee shoprelationships is to bring as peop well e as together, in formal commonality of themes is nonetheless Corecarried onValues by adult educators of all people, diverseacademic people. settings; If people are striking and closely related to central themes T – Jane Addams, Myles Horton, notattracts, comfortable, respects, the and purpose is enriched is defeated. by a wide of adult education, especially that part of and Paulo Freire come to mind, who go to I do notrange control of people, it, I allow ideas, it perspectives to happen” and our area that is concerned with community communityEmpire commonplaces State to learn with (personal conversation,experiences. September 19, development. The task of understanding is other adults (Finger and Asún, 2001). 2006). further complicated by the anecdotal nature These learners familiar with neighborhoods We value a learning-mentoring organization of much of the evidence, which tend to be College (2005) In these remarks, I hesitated making public and their needs have enriched university and culture that: storytelling about common places. what I enjoy. There are, however, numerous service learning and servant-leadership clearinvites arguments collaboration for common in the mu pl tipleaces wherecontexts I will not explore in depth the potential of programs. The political scientist Robert people can come together.of our work; This is a simple Internet-based communities. One can recall Putnam’s Bowling Alone (2000) is subtitled story of expanding connections. Having the special interest affinity groups when “the collapse and revival of American fosters innovation and experimentation; become accustomed to working well in considering Putnam’s warnings about even community.”We value learning-mentoring Perhaps a commons, goals or that:what coffeedevelops shops andstructures enjoying and their policies open that further fragmentation of our community. sociolrespo o ndgis tt oRay the Oldenbergacademic, professionalcalls a “third and encourage active participation of sociability, I was attuned to Robert Putnam’s News channels that divide us are a source place” betweepersonn alhom nee dsand of workeach student;for public all constituents in decision-making recourse to poetry when describing their of Daily Show humor. Do we ask questions gathering, allows us to combat the lack processes; identify and build upon students’ existing potential as “commons” in his Bowling to engage the other? The Kettering of trust and reciprocity that accompany knowledge and skills; Aloneadvocates (2000, for 94): the interests of adult learners Foundation’s “deliberative approach” asks the decline of social capital that Putnam in a variety of academic and civic us to learn to make the best case for those documents.sustain lifelong Lately, curiosity an increasing and critical number inquiry; There St. John mingles with my friendly forums. with views we oppose as we argue our case. of our fellow citizens are spending more bowl provide students with skills, insights, and Kettering deliberation is aimed at public time individuallycompetencies in ourthat cars support and withsuccessful our The feast of reason and the flow of soul. decision-making and action for community private media. Thesecollege thoughts study. will focus on Alexander Pope (Satire I, a betterment. (Matthews) A crucial element the community-building activities that can Book II, line 127) in these deliberations is a representative occurWe value in coffeehouses learning-mentoring as they infpro o cessesrm our that: Putnam contrasts a coffeehouse common range of perspectives. While technologically efforts to respond to this atomization and to emphasize dialogue and collaborative place with the isolated Internet café enhanced divisiveness is a clear danger, one recreate a commons for adult learning. As I approaches to study; experience wherein folks would gravitate may also sample the web pages and blogs hope to describe, preliminary observations to links where people share their views. of one’s adversaries or find solidarity with insupport three coffee critical shops exploration and other of hangouts knowledge and experience; What connections and networks developed geographically distant fellow travelers. (Satori Coffee Shop, Whataburger, Carpe in coffee shops, or similar common places, Diem,provide Dotch’s opportunities Barber and for Styleactive, Salon, reflective, and Putnam joins a long tradition of advocates that enable adults to learn in a way that Coffee andLoft) creative focus on academic reading engagement.and discourse of the commons with Bowling Alone. builds social capital and leads to civic between dissimilar community members Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in action? Social capital indicates the extent of inWe non-formal value learning-mentoring groups. How, I ask, modes is this that: America is a common place for Bellah et generalized reciprocity, or community, and behavior related to the literature on adult al., Cunningham, Daloz et al., Etzioni and respond to a wide array of student styles, Putnam measures these by a wide range of learning and community development Colby et al. Indeed, Putnam attributes the levels, interests, and circum stances; surveys of civic engagement, volunteerism, traditions of the settlement house and term “social capital” to L. J. Hanifan, who foster self-direction, independence, and participation, informal sociability and social community center? expounded the value of community centers reflective inquiry; trust (291). (395). Is this progressive idea passé? My reflections are inspired by the many fine reflect innovation and research. Ideas about the commons arise in coffee shops I have made my office. One One of Putnam’s key claims is that we diverse disciplines and are connected to colleague, like me, held office hours in a need to revive the commons. He compiles a We value a learning-mentoring community several domains, including social capital coffee shop only to find too many students mass of evidence to document how its loss that: theory, participatory democracy, city partook. On one plane, I am asking simply has led to a decline in public participation and regional planning, transformative what definesmakes aeach fine membercoffee shop. as a Whenlearner, I in traditional institutions of democracy: encouraging and appreciating his/her learning, geography, social movements, asked Beth Goldberg, owner of the Coffee religious, community, workplace, nonprofit distinctive contributions; community development and place Loft, why her coffee shop works, what does and informal organizations. It is through (“third” or common). As a caveat, I shre cognizesdo, she said,that learning“It’s your o c c cursoffee in shop.” multiple these connections and associations that have tried to explore a literature beyond When I suggestedcommuni t ies,hat environmentswas public spirited, and our communities have had a commons. my interdisciplinary expertise. But the she denied it, saying, “The purpose of a For example, the tradition of the commons

EMPIRE STATE COLLEGE • ALL ABOUT MENTORING 65 is represented in the fondness numerous I was able to learn of the details involved gatherings were generally same-gender but writers have had for the New England town in planning two family reunions and gain welcomed the other gender. In fact, in his meeting where citizens could work out their some political education. Printed materials, book, Oldenburg explores gender relations differences and allocate taxes to educate including walls full of notices, are central and emphasizes the importance of informal children and maintain public services. identifiers of community centers. Such gathering spots of all sorts. In this same “good places” are friendly to reading and spirit, Daloz et al. note recurring efforts, Not only does Putnam meticulously hanging out. They are places of community even a need, to recreate the commons – to document a decline in numerous community learning. have “a place where the diverse parts of a organizations using a large number of community could come together and hold studies, but he also endeavors to explain The Common Fire authors help us a conversation within a shared sense of an underlying change in our democratic understand the potential of common participation and responsibility” (2). sociability. We eat together less, listen places in the development of what they less, trust less, are less tolerant, have describe as “lives of commitment.” The However (and this is very important), Daloz more malaise, and are less safe. Declining authors conclude that the distinguishing et al. caution us that there is romance in participation indicates a changing adult learning experience in most of the our dream of the commons. “[F]or some citizenship. Those states with more social committed leaders they interviewed in depth in this society,” the authors write, “a sense capital suffer fewer of the declines. Bowling, was their encounter with someone outside of participation in the commons only getting our hair cut, or meeting for coffee of their “tribe.” The authors assert that emerged slowly over time, and for others it can build our social capital. such encounters are necessary to inspire was never possible at all”(2). For example, class divisions are replicated in the type Interestingly, Putnam notes that we have of hangout people frequent. The price of reported the same amount of free time coffee compared to the price of a fast food (about twenty hours per week) for the last hamburger discourages some working quarter century, and that despite claims to people from visiting coffee shops, but other the contrary, time studies suggest non-work Civic literacy is a casualty establishments serve a similar function. So burdens have actually declined. (190) Yet, of declining social capital. too, while expense removes many of the we choose to spend our time watching working class from some coffee shops, as screens and commuting as we participate the Lynd’s already noted in Middletown less in civil society than earlier generations. (1929), people who work shifts find places Larry Parks-Daloz, Cheryl Keen, James Keen that are open early. At two observed coffee and Sharon Daloz Parks in Common Fire: sustained participation in civic life. We need shops, the participants actually show up at Leading Lives of Commitment in a Complex to be shocked by an “enlarging experience different times of the day – some very early World agree with Putnam that television has with the other [that] counters the tribal in the morning, some on their way to the allowed people to believe they are “engaged fear of the outsiders … [and permits] office, some at lunch, some during their and removed” (3). commitment … to a larger more inclusive work breaks, and others on their way home, Civic literacy is a casualty of declining common good” (65). Such experiences are or even later. Those freed from more typical social capital. One phenomenon found in more likely in a “shared, public space of the work hours (retirees, students, and other the coffee and barbershops that interests sort that anchored the American vision of “regulars”) visit with the parade of diverse me here is plenty of public newspapers and democracy,” and in other “commons” like people throughout the day. And during any reading materials. News reporters commonly “the square at the county seat in the South, time of the day, a coffee shop can function note important informal discussions the bodega in the Latino community, Main as a gentlemen’s or women’s club. occurring in coffee klatches. Street in middle America, a ballpark, school, What are these leisurely common spaces temple or cathedral in the city, or the fishing Ray Oldenburg, author of The Great Good like? In addition to availability of reading wharf on the coast” (2). Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, material of all kinds, one crucial element is Bars, Hair Salons and other Hangouts at People do congregate in hangouts by the establishment’s attitude toward loitering. the Heart of a Community, is recognized “tribe.” However, while I must admit that One informant reported how he knew as a sociologist of this “third” or “great the three coffee shops observed were middle several writers who did all their writing in good place” tradition opposed to fast food class, they aspired to be open, diverse coffee or donut joints. Satori Coffee is such outlets designed to rush customers through communities in the same way Beth Goldberg a scholars’ office. I lived through graduate an efficient place (1989; Putnam, 2000, 102; talked about the Coffee Loft. Regulars school in several Ithaca, NY, coffee houses, Ritzer, 2000). The “third place” is one other appear to seek both comfort with some including the Commons Coffeehouse, than home and workplace. Barbershops similarity as well as some opportunity for which is also reported to have the longest noted in Oldenburg’s subtitle are traditional surprise or shock. The coffee shops I know continuously running regular live radio community centers, especially in African- are diverse, but the majority are white, broadcast of folk music in the country on American communities. For instance, while while the barbershops and hamburger shops Sundays. I have felt at home among the getting my hair cut in Dotch’s Barbershop, visited were majority black. The morning many different sizes and kinds of tables full

EMPIRE STATE COLLEGE • ALL ABOUT MENTORING 66 of students studying or playing chess. The local rape crisis center by promoting “Vday” commons. The purchase of 12 chairs Satori owner, Chuck Cox, who also sells in the three coffee shops. It makes perfect and two kettles and a bit for supplies has music and food, welcomes a wide range sense that Daloz et al. cited Cornel West resulted in the emergence of an occasional of groups. A school board member meets and Jim Wallis, along with Putnam, in their international community between our citizens in Satori, as does the Jesus Tribe advocacy of community spirit – the so-called adult learners and English-as-a-Second- and the Feminists for Progress. Satori Coffee “common fire” in their title, as an antidote Language learners for some two years now. is near the University of South Alabama; to the armoring of individualism, busyness, A wide range of papers by academics and Carpe Diem is across the street from consumerism, cynicism, and tribalism (1996, local organizers of all kinds is suggesting Springhill College. 10 - 15). the usefulness of just such a community commons for successful aging, ecological All three shops have separate meeting rooms A recurring theme among the writers I’ve upkeep (like community gardening), public used by religious, political, reading, poetry, consulted on this topic is that “great good health education, literacy, and mental and other groups. One particular group of places” provide a recharging that allows a health work. Literature in library science women meets regularly in a Carpe Diem renewed contest with larger global forces is increasingly overcoming its “no drinking back room after Torah study. This group, (Putnam, 2000, 3). Thus, the Common in the library” tradition and including gentiles and Jews, calls itself “Alabama Fire authors carefully selected only those coffee shops in library buildings. In efforts Solution.” That “solution” is simply who did not confine themselves to a single to cross the town-gown lines and to build to elect more women to office. But this issue, but who addressed complexity of a community, several colleges have put energy diverse group accomplishes a wide range global ambiguous situation. Anthropologist into organizing coffees or teas. Bringing of missions for the community – political Arturo Escobar comes to a similar coffee, reading and talking together is at the and intellectual – including recommending conclusion regarding international activists heart of adult learning. We shouldn’t forget the choice for “Mobile’s Book: A Shared who use the web while they organize local the power of these places. Experience” – project. Instead of a leisurely neighborhoods. (2003) And David Korten, club atmosphere, this multitasking group who has written extensively about “people- Among the sources that have taken up the seizes time in the coffee shop common place centered development” and civil society, themes and questions addressed in these to contribute to our community’s social summarizes numerous small efforts like reflections are: capital. Women, who despite pressures coffee shops and their significance in the Adams, F. with Myles Horton. (1975). of work and home, manage to be more making of a strong democracy: Unearthing seeds of fire: the idea of involved in their communities than men “These and countless other positive Highlander. Winston-Salem, N.C.: J. F. (Putnam, 2000, 199 - 200). Coffee shops are initiatives are creating the outlines for self- Blair. reputed to have been the locus for hatching organizing, life-sustaining economies that the U.S. revolution and have been censored Bellah, R. N., R. Madsen, W. M. Sullivan, are: numerous times through history. These A. Swidler and S. M. Tipton. (1996). informal gathering places have significance. – Radically democratic. Habits of the heart: individualism and commitment in American life. Berkeley: Accidental meetings appear to be a – Rooted in place. University of California Press. major attraction of this small sample of – Comprised of human-scale firms, commons. Folks get to know each other’s Colby, A, T. Ehrlich, E. Beaumont and J. owned by and accountable to people schedules and happen in when they are Stephens. (2003). Educating citizens: with a stake in their function and likely to encounter someone. Schedules are Preparing America’s undergraduates for impacts. somewhat predictable. I can identify with lives of moral and civic responsibility. some certainty five individuals who will be – Frugal with energy and resources, San Francisco, Jossey-Bass. in the Coffee Loft every Sunday morning allocating them efficiently to meet Cunningham, Phyllis. (2000). A sociology between 8:00 a.m. and noon. Several friends needs, recycling the “wastes.” of adult education. In Wilson, A. and are likely to interrupt my writing in the – Culturally, socially, and economically E. Hayes (eds.) Handbook of Adult and morning before 10:00 a.m. Regular meetings diverse, supportive of innovation and Continuing Education. (573 - 591) San occur of reading groups, religious study the free sharing of knowledge. Francisco: Jossey-Bass. groups of differing ages, business associates (I have formally witnessed contracts being – Mindful of responsibility to self and Daloz, L. A., C. Keen and S. Parks. (1996). negotiated and signed). A fine Appalachian community. Common Fire: Lives of Commitment tradition of the Blue Grass circle meets in a Complex World. Boston: Beacon – Bounded by permeable borders, which one the first Monday of the month at 7:00 Press. allow democratic self-regulation” (YES, p.m. Our cycling group meets each Sunday spring 1999). Ellis, A. (1956). The Penny Universities: at 6:30 a.m. A community soccer club The History of Coffeehouses. London, has formed by means of announcement A small experiment in our university Secker and War. and promotion by the coffee shop barista. building’s hall has suggested the potential Recently, I raised more than $3,000 for the of encouraging co-learners toward the

EMPIRE STATE COLLEGE • ALL ABOUT MENTORING 67

Escobar, A. (2001). Culture sits in places: Positive Futures. Retrieved December community. New York: Simon and Reflections on globalism and subaltern 11, 2006 from http://yes.futurenet.org/ Schuster. strategies of localization. Political article.asp?ID=780 Ritzer, G. (2000). The McDonaldization Geography 20, 139 - 174. Lynd, R. S. and H. M. (1959). of Society. Thousand Oaks, Ca: Pine Etzioni, A. (1993). The spirit of Middletown: A study in modern Forge. community: rights, responsibilities and American culture. New York: Harvest the Communitarian agenda. New York: Books. [Note: Elliott Lauderdale would welcome Random House. Mathews, D. (1999). Politics for People: comments, suggestions and questions about Finger, M. and J. M. Asún. (2001). Adult Finding a responsible public voice. “Drinking Coffee and Reading Together.” education at the crossroads: learning Urbana: University of Illinois Press. He can be found via: elauderdale@usouthal. our way out. London; New York: Zed. edu.] Oldenburg, R. (1999). The Great Good Korten, D. C. (1998). Globalizing Civil Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, A version of this paper was presented at Society: Reclaiming our right to power. Bars, Hair Salons and other Hangouts the annual meeting of the American Higher New York: Open Media Pamphlet at the Heart of a Community. New Education Alliance in Dallas, Texas in Series, 4. York: Marlow. October 2006. Korten, D. C. (1999, Spring). The post- Putnam, R. D. (2000). Bowling Alone: corporate world. YES: A Journal of The collapse and revival of American

Communication is sometimes a creative process in which the other person offers a new expression, and I understand it not because I am looking for how it fits with given paradigms, but because I am open and suspend my assumptions in order to listen. (53)

– Iris Marion Young, Intersecting Voices: Dilemmas of Gender, Political Philosophy, and Policy (1997)

EMPIRE STATE COLLEGE • ALL ABOUT MENTORING 68

My First Day at School

Robert Congemi, Northeast Center

he other day I finished 40 years of I kissed my wife goodbye as she lay abed room, American History to Mr. Ferguson’s teaching school. Yes, 40 years – an in sleep, though she, once wakened, had room, Four Modern American Novels to T almost embarrassing sum, isn’t it? the presence of mind to tell me she had Miss Weems’ room. Thirty copies stacked, – except that I started teaching so early in made lunch for me, and that it was in our ready and available in the classrooms, for life that I feel myself still a young man, and refrigerator. the opening bells of the school year, for somehow that fact makes my stint seen less the careful assignment of each text to each “You’ll see it, Roger – in the brown paper embarrassing. I was a high-school teacher student, book numbers recorded dutifully. bag,” she mumbled. “Your favorites. Behind then, 23, my students 17 and 18. I had Thankfully, I found the bookroom with little the milk.” come to a small town from a large city, trouble, used the key that had been given already married with two little girls, and I walked the few miles to school, which me to unlock its treasures, and switching worried desperately about how well I’d do, was at the opposite part of town, pale light on its light, revealed to myself the stern and though everyone tried to assure me I’d do of morning slowly replacing the black of abundant, endlessly replicated books of just fine. I had rented a big, old house on a night. No one was at school, except perhaps learning that would dominate the time and street that faced a mountain, the last street for janitors. I suspected there had to be minds of this year’s student body. Somehow, in that part of town. The house needed so janitors – there were small lights outside the I counted, I carted, the appropriate tomes much repair, and of course I had little ability buildings, and a fugitive sound caught my and the appropriate numbers of them to to make it better. My only thought was to ear as I approached the school entrance. To each of the classrooms, and then returned wash down the walls and floors and keep my surprise and relief, the doors were open, to my own classroom, already somewhat the rooms as clean as possible, paint what I and I walked inside to the greeting of broad, harried and weary, but quite young and could, for painting even a young intellectual gleaming hallways and darkened, empty resistant enough, I knew, to recoup from my could perform, and work hard at school to rooms awaiting the young people who sudden losses. be so good a teacher that my poverty and would soon fill them with stunning energy When classes were over, finally, that first the poverty I submitted my young family to and life. Lighting hallways in front of me as day of school, I took a ride from a new would be in some way counterbalanced. I journeyed to where my classroom was, I friend and colleague who had her husband’s distracted and entertained myself by reading I was also pleasant and compliant with my car, and went home. Uncharacteristically school posters and notices on the walls, and landlord. He was a plumber, I remember, voluble, I went on and on to the poor names of teachers on the homeroom doors. in his 30s, who had bought this house to woman about what had happened that achieve some extra money for his own At my own room, I entered, flicked on the day. Her name was Mrs. Joan Summers, a family. Like the most eager of students, I lights, put the books and writing supplies, pleasant, chubby woman in her 50s who learned from him how to burn layers of old which I had been carrying, on what was always struck people, I was to learn, as paint from doors and window moldings, now my own desk, and sat behind it, absolutely delightful, a home economics and how to strip even greater numbers vaguely uncomfortable, like a first-day teacher. I remember she listened so kindly of layers of wallpaper from walls. In this king, wondering what I should do next, to me, so politely, amused, and nodding her way, I contributed to the re-creation of the wondering if I could think of something head in understanding. house and helped perhaps to justify the good so that I would be worthy of my new “I think I shall enjoy myself, Mrs. modest rent he had proposed to me. To this position in life, until suddenly, in mild panic, Summers,” I told her. “I think I shall enjoy day, I remember him well – his name was I remembered I had also been assigned to myself very much. My students really Bob Beecham – and fondly, and hope truly be – how might I put it to cloak the mild listened to me. They were quite nice. Of his life went well for him and his family, humiliations of those days? – the designated course, a few I’ll have to bring around though I heard virtually nothing of his life’s distributor of textbooks. more, somehow, but they were nice, too, fate after I left our little town two years Leaping from my seat of privilege at the really, when you think they hardly knew later. I still regret being unable to help him front of my classroom, I hurried into the me. My goodness, I could almost be a friend in the tiniest way with plumbing, heating, hallway to find the room where resided – I’m scarcely older – which they seemed electricity, and the other household arts, the stacks upon stacks of books that to like. Oh, there’s so much I want to tell which he had been able to master. needed to be in each classroom so that them, so much I want to teach them. And I remember my first day at school I was the school year could begin as it should they want to know these things. I know it. I up and ready hours before I needed to be; – Introduction to Science to Mr. Singer’s just know it. I can’t wait until tomorrow. I

EMPIRE STATE COLLEGE • ALL ABOUT MENTORING 69 can hardly sit still. Do you understand? Am In the evening, when she and the children I have fashioned my career with it keenly I babbling?” were asleep, I wandered downstairs from in mind. I’m not so sure, though. As we all our bedroom, and settled for a few moments know, life has a way of distracting us very Mrs. Summer’s turned her husband’s old in the kitchen. I noticed that during the day, far from our insights and intentions. Yet I Chevy onto my street and drove up the Bob Beecham had replaced the old faucets believe it did some good, probably in some block toward where I motioned my house of our sink with new, shiny ones, and that subterranean part of my thinking. I can’t was. My wife and my little daughters were made me feel good. I gathered together understand why it wouldn’t. At any rate, in the front yard, the girls playing on a my school books and pencils and papers I had the moment, had the chance to do swing set my landlord Bob Beecham had and stacked them neatly on the kitchen something with it. Not everyone has. graciously lent to us. My wife sat on the table. I thought over again what I would porch steps. I had never seen her look more Putting out my cigarette, I stood up and try to teach the next day, for all five of my beautiful than at that moment, her head went back into our house. I had things to classes, and if I would ever master the subtle leaning against a pillar of the porch, just do – a family to help bring up, cities and demands of homeroom and study hall. thinking, I guess, yet watching her children universities to teach in, endless classes to I thought of the other teachers, those that scrupulously. speak before, thoughts and ideas to tender day at the periphery of my consciousness, to thousands upon thousands of students. “Well,” Mrs. Summers said. “You did have but people I would soon meet and like to a good day, didn’t you, Roger?” become friends with, and colleagues to. Upstairs my wife was asleep in our bed. I I listened to hear noises of my family. All could hear no sound of distress from our “I mean,” I continued on, beside myself. was silent. daughters in their tiny bedroom. As quietly “I’m really going to like this teaching. as I could, I lifted the sheets and blanket I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t completely sure. Rising from the kitchen table, I went outside of the bed and slipped in beside her. I, of I sort of knew, but I didn’t completely our house and sat on the top step of the course, had no thought of today, this day know. I loved talking about Dickens, and old porch. Above the trees of the mountain of recollection and writing which has come about Wordsworth, and about Herman face in front of me, the sky was teeming to me, another sudden gift from the stars, Melville. And I loved talking about writing. with stars, a quite unusual sight for me, or the cosmos itself, or from whatever Yes, writing. I loved it. And gerunds and being that I was from New York City. incalculable plan that might govern participles and … outlining, for God’s sakes, The numbers of those stars thrilled me – it our lives. I loved talking about outlining for their was incontestable – and lured me towards essays. Can you believe it? After class, one a cosmic dimension. This small town, to of my students came up to me and said, ‘Sir, which I was such a stranger, to the sides you made outlining interesting to me. Thank of me and behind me, was, too, totally you, very much. I think I’ll like your class. I silent and asleep, only a house or streetlight never thought outlining could be interesting. here and there accenting its silence. I must I hope you stay in this town for a long understand this moment, I thought. I must time.’” in some way comprehend its meaning. “Well,” Mrs. Summers said again, now not I lit a cigarette, my first of the day, and quite so sure what to say, but smiling, letting began to smoke. me know she was happy for me. “Good for Here I am, it came to me, at the very you, dear. Is that your little family waiting moment of the beginning of my career. I for you?” she asked, gesturing towards have my whole working life still in front of them, on somewhat more comfortable me, and I recognize this fact. Sitting here, I ground for her. know that someday I will look back upon After I had introduced Mrs. Summers to this day and on this moment, and tell myself my wife and daughters, I went upstairs to that I understood what was happening to change out of my suit and tie and to put on me. I knew and understood one of the most old clothes. important days and moments in my life. I had the power to stop, to think, to plan, to “I’ll take over now,” I called downstairs to make the rest of my career just as I wanted my wife. “I’ll walk the girls, and give you it. I had that chance. I had that good luck. some rest. You’ve had a busy day, too. I know.” Yes, it’s all in front of you, Roger, I told myself. So now what will it indeed be? “And you, Roger?” she asked, calling back up. Over the years I have beguiled myself perhaps into thinking that I did seize upon “It was wonderful, really wonderful,” I told that moment, that youthful insight, and that her. “Wait until you hear.”

EMPIRE STATE COLLEGE • ALL ABOUT MENTORING 70

Solving the Culture Wars, and Saving Civilization While We’re At It: The Case for Environmental History

Eric Zencey, Center for Graduate Programs and Center for International Programs

n cultural criticism, as in comedy and The phrase “culture war” seems to have not so much among teachers of American cooking, timing counts for a great been invented by Pat Buchanan, who spoke history) there are clear cultural differences I deal. So it may seem quixotic to offer at the National Republican Convention in over how history should be taught. The a solution to a problem that has long since 1992: “There is a religious war going on stories we tell ourselves about how we got dropped from public consciousness: the in our country for the soul of America. It where we are today tell us who we are; contentious tug-of-war over the writing of is a cultural war, as critical to the kind of like national politics itself, “[National] National History Standards that played out nation we will one day be as was the Cold history … is about national identity”6 – and in our media a decade ago. Nevertheless, War itself.”4 The first salvo in one of the Americans today have dramatically different the concerns of social theory – especially major battles of this war, the battle over a ideas about who and what we are as a social theory that addresses our ongoing set of advisory history standards prepared nation. environmental crisis – are more enduring by a group of professional historians and At issue in the struggle over standards was a than the ephemeral attention of the media. teachers of history, was fired by Lynne fundamental question: what will we tell our If, as some observers say, we are enjoying a Cheney, former chair of the National kids about who we are? To the conservatives bit of a truce in the culture wars,1 we should Endowment for the Humanities. She who railed against the new standards, that recognize that the conflicts in evidence launched a pre-emptive strike against the as- question reduced to a simpler one: would in the struggle over how America should yet-unpublished standards in an op-ed piece we let a select group of academics who had teach itself history have by no means been in the Wall Street Journal on October 20, “bullied their way into power positions,” resolved. They have been damped down or 1994, under the title “The End of History.” and who “worked in secret,” teach our have simply gone elsewhere, percolating up “Imagine an outline for the teaching of kids that “our country is inherently evil?”7 as bilious disagreement over other issues.2 American history,” Cheney began, “in Would we offer what Cheney characterized And in the decade since matters came to a which George Washington makes only a as a “grim and gloomy” portrait of the head over the National Standards, we’ve fleeting appearance and is never described as country by including in American history had a full decade of globalization, bringing our first president.”5 The piece continues in stories about the Ku Klux Klan, lynchings, with it increased contact between the that vein, ignoring an essential distinction: and genocidal practices against Native world’s national and supra-national cultures, standards for producing curricula are not Americans, McCarthyism? Or would which offers increased opportunity and the curricula themselves. (One might as well we hold up before the next generation increasing cause for intercultural conflict rail against screw-pitch standards set by the of Americans a narrative of progress, a on a global level. The current controversy American Society of Engineers for failing call to sustain (and perhaps extend) the over representations of Mohammed in to be made out of metal.) The Constitution noble ideals on which the country was print is one example; in its heat, in the is dealt with extensively in the document; founded? To the historians who worked demagoguery and misrepresentation that she claimed that it was not, but allowed on the project, the question was a bit more mobilized mass attention, in the righteous that “it does come up in the 250 pages of complex: How can we communicate to uncompromising passion that has been supporting materials” – which were, in fact, students that history is not a settled matter brought to bear, the controversy has a form the standards themselves. Rush Limbaugh – not simply factual, not simply “what familiar to any observer of the domestic dramatized these invented omissions on happened,” as Limbaugh, in a fit of know- culture wars.3 As our integrated, globalized his show, giving his listeners the sound of nothingism, told his audience – but the economy faces the end of an unprecedented tearing and crumpling pages, as from a product of an ongoing intellectual effort, era of cheap energy, tensions between East history book, saying “Here’s Paul Revere. a continual re-examination of the past, in and West, between Christianity and Islam, He’s gone. Here’s George Washington as which the concerns of the day invariably between North and South are more likely to president … ” shape the questions and interest we bring be aggravated rather than softened. So: to Cheney’s account was inflammatory and to it?8 clarify the grounds on which a permanent inaccurate, but beneath the demagoguery, cease-fire in the culture wars could be Conservatives rallied around a denunciation misrepresentation, and fallacious reasoning negotiated promises to be a useful thing. of “multiculturalism,” the idea that distinct was the kernel of a fundamental truth: subcultures and groups within America history matters, and in America (if, perhaps, have distinctive points-of-view on many

EMPIRE STATE COLLEGE • ALL ABOUT MENTORING 71 of the events, dynamics, personages, and But to give the conservative cause its that our system, any system, at some point stories of American history. Since the 1960s most compelling argument, one that few presupposes – is rent. (into which decade the origins of this conservatives actually made: national I believe that here the conservatives have culture war are easily traced), decades of history is the crucible of national identity, a valid but misdirected concern. The scholarship had proliferated these alternative and if we fragment our history into a set of conservative backlash against the new lenses on the subject matter of American competing (and sometimes contradictory) National Standards was based on a mistaken history. To ignore them in the production ethnic, class, gender, and racial histories, understanding of the true foundation of of standards for teaching students would we risk undercutting some core of shared American exceptionalism, a failure to have been professional malfeasance; and, vision and values that may prove necessary accept the bold premise that underlies our on the contrary, to present those alternative to the functioning of the American polity. founding. What ties the American polity interpretations accurately in classrooms In this vision, it makes sense to argue that together isn’t a common history but a promised to engage students in critical the struggle against the elimination of a shared commitment to the abstraction thinking – the evaluation of arguments, of common, core, and boosterish narrative of of process, to the meta-objectivity of evidence, of modes of interpretation – and to American history is in fact a moral struggle, political forms explicitly designed on the require them to become not just students but a fight for the soul of the American nation. understanding that a free and diverse people practitioners of the art of history. To Cheney will worship and think and behave – even and Limbaugh and other conservatives the interpret their own history – in ways that new standards were the work of a cabal confound any expectation of consensus of politically correct scholars who sought A world in which truth is or unanimity. Thus, the epistemological to foist a distorted version of history on relative to point-of-view ecumenicism behind our Constitutional America’s schools; they wanted instead a machinery, including the Bill of Rights. Were return to the status quo ante, the teaching is a world in which, to Thomas Kuhn himself to have designed a of a single, settled, authoritative narrative, their way of thinking, the constitutional system of social regulation, I one that would inculcate national pride as think he’d have aimed at something much well as acquaint students with the founding machinery of democratic- like our system with its fragmentation of values of the country. republican government powers – the checks and balances of shared The particular battle over these advisory under the Constitution authority – and protection of minority rights standards was resolved as political struggles in speech, thought, and (within limits) deed. often are resolved: as Todd Gitlin says in his becomes very nearly Unfortunately, appreciation of the value account of the controversy, “Representatives inoperable. of this boot-strapping out of particular of the two sides split their differences and subjectivities and into the meta-objectivity agreed to approve revised standards.”9 of process is, among the American populace, Since the conservative position was styled notoriously weak.13 In public opinion as a moral rather than political position – it What the most thoughtful conservative surveys Americans announce themselves asked for complete purity in its call for a critics fixed on was the relativism behind willing to trade away civil liberties if the return to the monocultural history teaching the multiculturalism of the new approach: government can thereby be more effective of yore – the compromise looked rather like to give any space at all to Native American in pursuing whomever authorities designate a victory for the multiculturalists: under the critiques of reservations as concentration as threats to national security. No surprise new standards, says Gitlin, “At all levels of camps, or of the distribution of smallpox- here: 30 years ago as a political science education, the traditional story of steady infested blankets as a form of genocide, major I learned of a notorious bit of social progress in American history has been is to say that Native American views survey research that found that a majority shattered by stories of the battles fought by have validity, perhaps not only for Native of Americans sampled refused to sign the women, Native Americans, and members of Americans.11 A world in which truth is Bill of Rights when it’s placed in front other disadvantaged groups. Non-Western relative to point-of-view is a world in which, of them as a petition.14 If our divisive, history has a more-honored place alongside to their way of thinking, the machinery of interest-group-competing Constitutional Western civilization.”10 democratic-republican government under system (in which, to quote Madison from The argument made by conservatives is the Constitution becomes very nearly the Tenth Federalist, “ambition must be easy to pillory for its excesses: there was inoperable.12 To admit the existence of made to check ambition”) requires a shared no cabal, there were no secret meetings, many truths, which vary according to where consensual mythos to hold it together the standards do cover the Constitution one stands, is to deny that a single unifying against the centrifugal forces unleashed by and yes, under them it is possible to narrative about the history of American religion, regionalism, competitive economic teach about George Washington and Paul culture can be told by any but arbitrary interest, and difference of moral opinion; Revere and the other iconic figures of the authority; and without that narrative, and if the abstraction of an Enlightenment- monocultural, America-is-exceptionally- the political integument of the nation – a era commitment to shared processual wonderful school of historiography. solidarity of purpose, vision, and value values proves too abstract to serve as that

EMPIRE STATE COLLEGE • ALL ABOUT MENTORING 72 consensual mythos; then perhaps we do of industrial development that we have cradle of civilization, home to one of need a single historical narrative to serve built.18 Using the work of Robert Costanza, several relatively simultaneous inventions of as our shared foundation. But in the wake they point to a dozen different categories agriculture – is now dry and stony desert, of what Gitlin calls “the great compromise of natural capital that provide very real land that offers little surplus biomass to of 1996,” there is no single, authoritative goods and services to the economy. The feed humans. Not until I read George interpretation of America and its history list: low-entropy matter and energy, water Perkins Marsh’s Man and Nature, the ur- embedded in the National Standards as purification and regulation, soil creation text of environmental understanding,20 did finally issued. And, says Gitlin, “We are and fertility, moderation of micro- and I see why: deforestation reduced rainfall. likely to live without a new, overarching macroclimates, pollination of plants, a Irrigation salinated the soils. Loss of the narrative for quite some time to come.”15 library of genetic information, protection agricultural base led to the decline of from cosmic and solar radiations, nutrient population and the disappearance of the But there is a candidate for shared, recycling, waste absorption. Some forms of local civilization. overarching narrative that would fill the bill natural capital are replenishable – forests, satisfactorily. And the time for recognizing The forests and soil fertility of the Fertile for instance – others, not (the planet’s this new, overarching narrative has long Crescent were part of the stock of natural endowment of fossil fuels). The existence of since arrived. capital used by ancient Persia. Any company this natural capital is necessary to human that draws down its capital, and treats the Every day, 15 million tons of carbon are productive life, both as it is practiced now resulting flow as income, is clearly not a exhausted into the atmosphere, adding to (can you imagine the expense and effort sustainable enterprise: when the capital the burden that causes current and future of hand-pollinating all the plants that we is gone, so is the income – and with it all global warming. Every day, 115 square rely on?) and in absolute terms. Without possibility of future income. What is easily miles of rainforest are destroyed, with protection from radiation given by the ozone seen in the corporate economy remains consequent effects on local and global layer, we die of skin cancer; without the under-appreciated in the natural economy. weather patterns. Every day, 72 square moderating effect on climate of rainforests Jared Diamond’s Collapse documents the miles of desert are created, with similarly and ocean currents, our agriculture shrinks ways in which “civilizations choose to dire results. Every day, 40 to 100 species to a fraction of its current scale; without the fail or succeed,” and makes clear that the disappear, to what end we can scarcely water-absorption and regulating functions unchecked consumption of natural capital now anticipate.16 These are matters of of deltaic marshes, we lose cities to storm as income played a role in the disappearance incontrovertible fact – “what happens,” to surges; without the transfer of tropical of almost every civilization that has failed paraphrase Limbaugh. The world is a big warmth to Europe though the ocean the evolutionary test of survival.21 We place, but these are daily figures, and this Conveyor Belt, Europe becomes a cold, will, I’m afraid, prove no exception to this planetary despoliation cannot be sustained energetically more expensive, agriculturally clear fiduciary principle – not until and indefinitely. The result of this rapacious use less hospitable place to live; and so on, and unless we learn to value natural capital as of the planet is incontrovertible by rational so on. Problem: natural capital has long capital rather than income, not until and beings (though many Americans do still been taken for granted. It is constantly unless we learn to reign in our productive steadfastly controvert it – if, that is, they diminished through private appropriation life to operate within sound, which is to can be dragged, unwilling, toward seeing it under economic institutions that fail to value say conservatively estimated,22 ecological at all). We are changing planetary systems it as any sort of good, let alone a capital margins. The difference between our on a grand scale, in a one-off, never-to-be good whose stock should be preserved civilization and those Diamond discusses repeated experiment in seeing if nature can through careful management and investment (a difference he expands upon) is that ours adapt as rapidly as we can give it injury to (defined here, as in neoclassical economics, is a global, rather than local, civilization: which it must adapt. If the experiment fails as a form of savings produced by foregoing there exists no horizon over which reside – which is increasingly likely, if we credit consumption). That diminishment will, at Spanish Conquistadors, Inuit, or Polynesian reports from biologists, meteorologists, some point, reach a critical level from which Islanders with access to nondepleted natural climatologists, ornithologists, piscatologists, the affected ecosystems cannot recover.19 capital, who can emigrate to seed a new oceanographers, herpetologists, When that happens, the ecosystem – and and different human culture in the degraded entomologists, et al. – the changes we are the human economic life dependent on it – environs of our decline. wreaking now will have destroyed the ability crashes. (To the extent that human economic of the planet to continue to support human life depends on extraction of limited natural The first step in developing the sort of civilization at anything like a level that capital as a flow of input to the economy, understanding we need about natural capital we would find commodious, comfortable, it may crash well before its host ecosystem is to see nature historically. This was the perhaps even recognizable.17 reaches its own point of no return: there are innovation in Marsh’s text: he saw that few lumber camps in the Adirondacks these nature did not stand outside history, aloof In their text Ecological Economics, Herman days, fewer oystermen on the Chesapeake, and unchanging, but had been drawn into Daly and Joshua Farley make a careful, no oystermen on the Mississippi at all.) I it through human action. How are we to rational economist’s argument for crediting recall being puzzled as a schoolboy that know if greenhouse gases are producing the role that planetary ecosystems play the area called the Fertile Crescent – the global warming? We study history. How in sustaining the economy and culture

EMPIRE STATE COLLEGE • ALL ABOUT MENTORING 73 are we to know what the consequences of if we fail to cap carbon emissions and limit lessons of environmental history apply to cutting down the rainforest will be? We fish catches – if, more generally, we fail to matters of large national policy (whether look for clues in history – in the change learn and apply the lessons of environmental we choose, for instance, to put a substantial of ecosystems over time in response to history – succeeding generations will view tax on fuel, and thereby efficiently promote changes we have instigated. As I’ve argued that sort of controversy as being a tragically its conservation26) and petty individual elsewhere,23 because nature’s rhythms exist pathetic distraction of no greater lasting choice (that paper-or-plastic question we’re in a broad spectrum that far surpasses our import than the medieval scholastics’ confronted with at supermarket checkout own at either end, historical understanding debates over how many angels can dance on time27). is the fundamental precondition for an the head of a pin. And environmental history as a meta- ecological understanding. An appreciation Third, as an organizing narrative the story narrative has this one, paramount, of environmental history shows us that our of the mutual interaction of culture and additional virtue: by understanding the experience of “now” – the brief three-score- nature has a reach and scope unsurpassed history of how humanity has related to and-ten span of our lives, which we very by any other meta-narrative, whether the planet, we will have available to us the naturally take to be normal and ordinary that narrative be the story of God’s information and perspectives we need to – is instead a remarkable aberration in the Righteousness Redeemed, The Progress ensure that the project of human civilization history of the planet. Ironically, among of Enlightenment, Our Manifest Destiny, has a good chance of continuing beyond the ways in which the current era is the next few generations or so. No other unprecedented is the intrusion into human candidate for meta-narrative can credibly life spans of ecological changes that have make this claim. heretofore been noticeable only in geologic … because nature’s time. rhythms exist in a What can be said against environmental history as a candidate for overarching As a meta-narrative organizing our thinking broad spectrum that meta-narrative? Most obviously, it doesn’t about American (indeed, world) history, pass Lynne Cheney’s “doom and gloom” the story of human culture’s relationship far surpasses our own test: the news from environmental history to nature has some distinct advantages. at either end, historical is bad, and is getting worse. But the test First, it is objective: there is no gainsaying itself is suspect; a commitment to bright- its insights, no credible argument holding understanding is the eyed Pollyannadom is inconsistent with that the facts of our ecological abuse are fundamental precondition careful, reasonable assessment of existential simply a matter of opinion that could be conditions, and it is the latter course that is changed by adopting a different interpretive for an ecological necessary for collective life to be founded lens. Glaciers are measurably retreating, understanding. on wisdom rather than delusion. (It hardly the oceans are measurably warming, needs emphasizing that cultures founded storms are measurably more powerful as a on delusion rarely pass the Darwinian test consequence, fish are measurably scarcer of survival.) Too much doom and gloom is in our over-exploited fisheries, species Marxist Class War, or the (Right) Hegelian dysfunctional – if environmental history is are demonstrably extinct, the planetary End of History tale currently beloved of going to “save the planet,” as Richard Foltz endowment of oil (and hence the Petroleum neoconservatives. It may be true, as Thomas suggests28, students of it need to be left with Age) is demonstrably finite. The truths of Kuhn said, that the comparison of such a sense that our end is not foreordained. environmental history can be discounted alternative visions is more a matter of Whether that sense will prove to be justified only at the cost of discounting most of aesthetic vision than logical proof, more is a question that is difficult to resolve the edifice of science itself – which is the a matter of utility in practice than simple before the fact. In the meantime, wisdom system of knowledge that has given us our comparison of evidentiary support.24 But counsels that we behave as if our actions unprecedented power to manipulate and one sure guide to utility in practice can matter. change nature to begin with. It takes quite be found in a set of processual criteria a bit of logical legerdemain to maintain a for the evaluation of worldviews, criteria Another objection: the over-arching meta- position that says, “Science is true and right whose metaphysical stature is not so narrative of environmental history may and good when it is coupled to an economic much that of a rule-of-thumb as that of a be grounded in fact, but to count this as a system that brings us wealth, but it’s not transhistorical, transcultural near-certainty: distinctive strength is disingenuous. All such credible when it warns us of the dangers of When comparing relative strengths and visions have some grounding in facticity, and destroying planetary ecosystems.” weaknesses of overarching visions, breadth what we should judge is not scope and reach of application and degree of assimilation of the vision’s factual fit, but the practical Second, environmental history is of detail (scope and reach) are positive result of the system in use. This unabashedly transcultural and transnational. Civilizations virtues relatively easy to compare.25 Scope: pragmatic approach seems to be at the core can clash all they want over whether every civilization has a necessary root in of Cheney’s argument against multicultural Abraham or Adam Smith is a better guide nature. Every civilization stands or falls on pluralism in history classrooms: teaching to the regulation of our common life, but how well it husbands that root. Reach: the

EMPIRE STATE COLLEGE • ALL ABOUT MENTORING 74 that way is wrong because it results in this Americans are exceptional, but not for the not on this planet, ever. From that stock we instead of that. reasons they think. To a degree unparalleled extracted wealth, which we used to purchase in the rest of the world, Americans believe comfort, distance from want, distance from To make the best case for this line of themselves to be free of history, whether nature, distance from compulsion of nearly argument: it traces to Plato and the Noble the history they’re abjuring is the trajectory every kind, and we have for several centuries Lie he would tell his guardian class, in time of a collectivity to which they enjoyed the freedom we so purchased. To giving them an historical myth by which belong – the nation, the culture, the sub- some extent we’ve been able to export to understand themselves, their polity, culture, the neighborhood, the ecosystem this bargain – low entropy in, wealth and and their role within it. Locke, too, was a – or solely an individual, biographical freedom out – to other nations, but the proponent of noble dissimulation, suggesting story. We value the myth of meritocracy: global pursuit of that bargain is sustained that because the recondite reasoning that we believe in individual economic progress only by the world’s ever-increasing use supports the meta-level process insights of and in the saga of the self-made man. What of fossil fuel – stored sunlight, the past natural law was beyond the capacity of is this myth but an assertion to ourselves low-entropy income of the planet. When the mass of humanity, it is better that they that unlike other cultures, for us the past the stock of available low entropy can no should be given a few simple rules, such has no distinctive, determinative hold? “A longer support the level of flow that our as the ones offered as a matter of faith by people without history is like wind upon institutions require, the system – and, unless Christianity, to regulate their social and the buffalo grass,” the Teton Sioux would we are careful, the freedoms built upon it political intercourse. He didn’t envision tell their children. “However far the stream – will necessarily change. (Or: they have a culture war, in which those who had flows, it never forgets its source,” said the begun to change already.33) been told his Noble Lie would become Yoruba people in West Africa.30 “You can a democratically empowered majority The unavoidable conclusion: In the face of do it, Timmy,” is the closest thing America campaigning against the rationalist policies environmental degradation our customary has to an equivalent anthemic statement: and foundations of his polity. (Locke wrote faith in individual and collective progress you aren’t ruled by the past, by the failure of in ignorance of a fundamental ecological will be insufficient to secure our future. your previous attempts; you’re growing and principle: action within a complex system What is required is dramatic change in the developing and with such change anything will have unintended consequences. Or, relationship of industrial culture to nature. is possible. Forget what has been: What is as the First Law of Ecology puts it, “you That change will come, whether we will it supremely required is that you have faith can’t do one thing.”) Besides this practical or no; an unsustainable relationship must, in what could be.31 I don’t doubt that a difficulty, the very notion of a noble lie runs by definition, come to an end. The only democracy on meritocratic principles is counter to the American enlightenment question is, how intelligently will we face preferable to a polity that embraces the tradition, embodied in our institutions, of and prepare for that end? Which is to ask, stifling yoke of tradition or any other grounding political discourse and exchange how much natural capital will we reserve illiberal restriction. But it is not necessary in reason, evidence, and publicly accessible from current consumption? Which is to ask, to be freed from history in order to be debate. To have a philosopher king, priest, how many humans will the earth support politically and culturally free; and we must or former chair of the National Endowment a generation from now? What standard of ask, what have we given up in establishing of the Humanities consciously orchestrating living, what political and economic freedoms for ourselves this kind of freedom? I think mass delusion for political ends, however will they enjoy? Intelligence increases the we limit ourselves to the shallowest forms of noble, is inconsistent with the principles and prospects of the survival of the values we self-knowledge, and we deny ourselves the practice of democracy.29 cherish: we can, if we choose, use what we wisdom we need to make good decisions for know and can learn about the environment The more telling rejoinder to this objection ourselves, our polities our planet. and our dependence on it to ease our accepts the pragmatic criterion explicit To the perspective of environmental history, global transition to a post-cheap-energy, in the argument (as Plato and Locke, the notion that America’s greatness as a post-rapacious economy, a world in which if not Cheney, made it). Knowledge nation depends solely on some quality of democratic freedoms and a decent standard of environmental history is crucial to American character, or on that quality of living are no longer purchased by cheap establishing human culture within ecological of character in combination with the energy and the destruction of natural limits, which we must do if human culture is exceptional quality of its economic and capital. to survive on the planet. Among all possible political institutions, looks to be naïve meta-narratives it is the best and likeliest A general appreciation among the American narcissism that is both ecologically and to lead us to the creation of an ecologically populace of the truths of environmental thermodynamically ignorant in the extreme. sustainable human civilization that preserves history is not anything like the sum total of Europeans set forth on this continent a the cultural and political freedoms we the intelligence we will need to make that new nation – one that happened to have currently enjoy. transition. However, such an appreciation lucked into history’s largest-ever stock of would make rational anticipation of A people’s history is in fair measure its unexploited scarce low entropy, in the form inevitable change a good deal more likely. identity, and in America’s relationship to of deep soil fertility and easily extracted In rationally, purposefully planning our history we see the truth and the perversity minerals, including especially fossil fuels.32 move to a sustainable society lies the of American exceptionalism. The truth: It’s a lucky accident that can’t be repeated,

EMPIRE STATE COLLEGE • ALL ABOUT MENTORING 75 best, indeed I think the only hope for the 7 All phrases from Rush Limbaugh, a key to understanding in history. In continuation of the human project for an by way of Nash, p. 5. All three their evident commitment to rational advanced civilization of any sort – our characterizations are unfounded. The discourse, in lieu of a single narrative own exceptional, noble, Constitutional work of producing the standards was history, as the shared foundation of democracy included. administered by the National Center the American polity, the standards for History in the Schools at the writers were firmly within the American End Notes University of California, Los Angeles Constitutional tradition of bringing under the guidance of the National Enlightenment thought to bear on the 1 Todd Gitlin, for one: see “A Truce Council for History Standards, a problems of political culture. Prevails; for the Left, Many Victories nongovernmental advisory group 13 are Pyhrric,” his contribution to a drawn from various organizations of This would not surprise John Locke, Colloquy on the Culture Wars in professional historians, and was, by the who offered a defense of the political The Chronicle of Higher Education, account of many participants, a model utility of Christianity (I paraphrase): March 6, 1998, accessible online at of open, consensus-building process. “The hand that is used to the plow http://chronicle.com/colloquy/98/ Work was initiated by the Department does not belong to a mind capable of culturewar/background.htm of Education, responding to a diagnosis the long trains of reasoning that reveal natural law and natural right. The vast 2 To name the most obvious: civil rights offered in a widely distributed report, majority of men cannot know; it is for gay couples, mandatory childbirth A Nation at Risk, produced by the sufficient, therefore, that they believe.” for pregnant women, placing copies of Department of Education under This is a notion to which I return, the ten commandments in public places, Reagan and published in 1983. The below. requiring the teaching of fundamental standards were developed with funding religious metaphysics in high school from the National Endowment for the 14 No source for this; I recall it from a science classes. Humanities and the U.S. Department of lecture given by Prof. Hank Reynolds Education, and any school district’s or in Poli Sci 302, “Survey Research 3 Here it’s appropriate to nod at Samuel state’s use of them is voluntary. Methods,” at the University of P. Huntington and his work, The Clash Delaware, sometime in 1974. of Civilizations, Simon and Schuster, 8 This is the perspective of Nash et al. 15 1998; and the original article in Foreign 9 Gitlin, Chronicle of Higher Education Todd Gitlin, Chronicle colloquy. Affairs 72(3):22-49. Huntington doesn’t colloquy. 16 The numbers come from David Orr, see the international clash of cultures as “The Problem of Sustainability,” in being modeled, in fine, by our domestic 10 Gitlin again, same place. Ecological Literacy, State University of culture wars; but then, in his analysis, 11 Ironically enough, in a more recent New York Press, Albany: 1992, p. 3. As civilizations tend to be homogenously battle in the culture war, partisans and he notes in a later edition, the numbers filled black boxes, devoid of diversity. defenders of the teaching of Intelligent have only gotten worse since he first 4 The whole speech is available at http:// Design in the York, PA school district wrote. www.buchanan.org/pa-92-0817-rnc. appealed to the authority of some 17 This has an apocalyptic tone. html. Buchanan went on, making clear notable relativist epistemologists in I’ve spoken against ecological that the culture war was not merely arguing against the authority of science; apocalypticism elsewhere: see interest-group politics-as-usual: “And the work of Thomas Kuhn and Paul “Apocalypse and Ecology,” in my in that struggle for the soul of America, Feyerabend was adduced to support the Virgin Forest: Meditations on History, Clinton and Clinton are on the other view that science itself is has no greater Culture and Ecology, University of side, and George Bush is on our side.” epistemological stature than religion, Georgia Press, 1997. My call there Certainly Buchanan knew that as that scientific belief is in essence a form for temperate, sustainable thought a matter of duly ordained electoral of faith. This is a misreading of Kuhn on our ecological crisis has been procedure, George Bush was in fact (The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, misused to suggest that we do not running against Clinton and Gore. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1970) but not of Feyerabend (Against face an environmental breakdown 5 As reported in Gary Nash, Charlotte Method: outline of an Anarchistic of apocalyptic proportions; that Crabtree, and Ross E. Dunn, History Theory of Knowledge, Verso Press, interpretation is incorrect. on Trial: Culture Wars and the 1975). 18 Herman Daly and Joshua Farley, Teaching of the Past, Vintage, 2000, Ecological Economics, Island Press, p. 3. (The authors were part of the 12 Conservatives thus didn’t appreciate 2004. group of historians and academics that or chose to reject the meta-objectivity produced the National Standards for manifest in the standards-writers’ 19 A cavil: nature endures. It recovered History.) commitment to the processes of from the shock of the meteor strike rational discourse – to the use of that ended the Cretaceous Era, which 6 Nash, p. 7. fact, evidence, logic, and debate – as is the nearest historically proximate

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event comparable in scope to the 24 Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of 30 Nash, p. 8. I don’t know whether or depredations of (what geologists now Scientific Revolutions, University of the degree to which this appreciation call) the Anthropocene Era. Whatever Chicago Press, 1962. of history has been displaced by these we do nature will eventually recover, 25 Stephen Pepper, World Hypotheses: cultures’ cooption into a temporal in geologic time, to exist again as a A Study in Evidence, University of consumerist culture. lush, variegated, complexly interrelated California Press, Los Angeles, 1948. 31 Our tradition does offer wisdom about system of life and non-life. When Pepper was Kuhn’s mentor, and some history. The study of it, Jefferson I speak of nature not recovering, I of his insights are traceable in Kuhn’s said, should be undertaken by anyone mean that it will not re-establish itself work. who would participate in democratic in human history to a state that will government, for only then could the provide us with anything close to our 26 The Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency citizen be able “to judge of the future” accustomed level of enjoyment of its Standards are an ecological failure; and evaluate for themselves “the actions natural capital. every fuel-stingy hybrid that is sold allows its maker to produce another and designs of men.” Jefferson’s advice, 20 Marsh, Man and Nature, or Physical profligate SUV. while sound and admirable, has neither Geography as Modified by Human the poetry nor the general currency of Action. Belknap Press, 1965. First 27 Which choice minimizes the chooser’s the epigrams from other cultures. published in 1864 (a few short years ecological footprint? Which represents a 32 On the notion that low entropy stocks after Darwin’s Origin of Species more efficient use of scarce matter and and flows are the ultimate source in 1859) this is the first text in the energy? Of course it’s more eco-friendly of economic value, see Nicholas Western tradition to accept the idea that to take one’s own reusable tote to the Georgescu-Roegen, The Entropy Law human activity could have a cumulative store. and the Economic Process, Harvard effect in transforming natural systems. 28 Richard Foltz, “Does Nature Have University Press, 1971, or, more Interestingly, Marsh takes Darwin to Historical Agency? World History, accessibly, the discussion in Daly and task for not recognizing that some of Environmental History, and How Farley, Ecological Economics, 64 - 70. the mutability he saw in nature was the Historians Can Help Save the Planet.” 33 product of human action; see p. 247. The History Teacher, 37:1, November Here it is possible to cite an increasing shelf-full of recent works on Peak 21 Jared Diamond, Collapse: How 2003, available online at http://www. Oil, Hubbert’s Peak, the end of the Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. historycooperative.org/journals/ht/37.1/ Petroleum Era – some of it very gloomy, Viking, 2005. foltz.html. Foltz’s essay contains a useful review of recent scholarship in some of it merely sobering. Compare 22 Daly and Farley note that exogenous environmental history. Richard Heinberg, The Party’s Over: shocks (the vagaries of El Niño, for Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial instance) and our own ignorance mean 29 I may seem to have countenanced a Societies, New Society Publishers, 2003, that caution is advisable in estimating noble lie myself, above, in cautioning and James Howard Kunstler, The Long nature’s ability to serve both as a sink against excessive doom and gloom. Emergency: Surviving the Converging for the products of our activities and as But to leave students and citizens with Catastrophes of the 21st Century, a storehouse for the flows and stocks some sense of hope for the future is not Atlantic Monthly Press, 2005. we extract. to lie to them. The future is unknown and not fully knowable; our ignorance 23 In Virgin Forest: Meditations on should license optimistic action (not History, Culture and Nature, University inaction). of Georgia Press, 1997.

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Competencies of Self-Directed Learners

Malcolm Knowles

As part of a Mentoring Institute-sponsored 7. The ability to identify human and workshop on Independent Learning material resources appropriate to Strategies held at the Northeast Center on different kinds of learning objectives. November 3, we reviewed some of our 8. The ability to select effective strategies assumptions about “ effective independent for making use of learning resources learners.” One text we used as a basis for and to perform these strategies skillfully that discussion was a more than 30-year old and with initiative. “resource” developed by Malcolm Knowles in his Self-Directed Learning: A Guide for 9. The ability to collect and validate Learners and Teachers (Association Press, evidence of the accomplishments of 1975, p. 61). various kinds of learning objectives.

Knowles developed a list of “competencies of self-directed learning” to be used by students as a “self-rating instrument.” Students were to judge their own competencies (as “none,” “weak,” “fair” or “strong”) in the following nine areas:

1. An understanding of the differences in assumptions about learners and the skills required for learning under teacher-directed learning and self- directed learning, and the ability to explain these differences to others.

2. A concept of myself as being a non- dependent and self-directing person. 3. The ability to relate to peers collaboratively, to see them as resources for diagnosing needs, planning my learning, and learning; and to give help to them and receive help from them.

4. The ability to diagnose my own learning needs realistically, with help from teachers and peers. 5. The ability to translate learning needs into learning objectives in a form that makes it possible for their accomplishment to be assessed.

6. The ability to relate to teachers as facilitators, helpers, or consultants, and to take the initiative in making use of their resources.

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Submissions to All About Mentoring f you have read a book or article that interested you; attended a stimulating conference; had a valuable, surprising or difficult mentoring experience, or a “mentoring” moment you would be I willing to describe, please consider submitting it to All About Mentoring. If you have a scholarly paper-in-progress or a talk that you have presented, All About Mentoring would welcome it. If you developed materials for your students that may be of good use to others, or have a comment on any part of this issue, or on topics/concerns relevant to our mentoring community, please sent them along. If you have a short story, poem, drawings, or photographs, or have reports on your reassignments and sabbaticals, All About Mentoring would like to include them in an upcoming issue. Send submissions to Alan Mandell (Empire State College, Metropolitan Center, 325 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10013-1005) or via e-mail at [email protected]. Submissions to All About Mentoring can be of varied length and take many forms. (Typically, materials are no longer than 7,500 words.) It is easiest if materials are sent via e-mail to Mandell as WORD attachments. In terms of references and style, All About Mentoring uses APA rules (please see Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association or http//library.albany.edu/users/ style/ap2.html

All About Mentoring is published twice a year. Our next issue, #33, will be available in summer 2007. We invite submissions for that issue by May 15. * A special issue of All About Mentoring, #34, to be edited by Cathy Leaker, Margaret Souza, and Alan Mandell, will focus on the theory and practice of Prior Learning Assessment (PLA) and Educational Planning. We invite contributions from a variety of perspectives and on a variety of topics, including: • Reflections on the history and theory of PLA; • Reviews of key texts on PLA and educational planning; • Interviews with those involved in this work; • Materials for students engaged in PLA and educational planning that have been developed by mentors; • Case studies of PLA and educational planning work with students;

• Descriptions and analyses of PLA and educational planning models at other institutions in the U.S. and across the globe; • Examination of the meaning and use of experiential learning opportunities in on-going study. We invite submissions to this special issue of All About Mentoring by July 1, 2007.

EMPIRE STATE COLLEGE • ALL ABOUT MENTORING