Missing Shades of Grue

It seems clear now that NKU is going to take the road toward reclassification as an NCAA Division I institution. We should learn soon whether our bid for joining a Division I conference has been accepted, and upon receiving an invitation we can then petition the NCAA for reclassification. Here are a few of my reflections on the matter.

I've been watching this process unfold now for several years. It's not a new idea; in fact it was considered and studied and rejected (or postponed) at least twice in recent history. Faculty might express displeasure now over not being part of the process, but it was a multi-year process that was never secretive, with plenty of invitations for input. A concerned, critical, persistent Faculty Senate could have been at the center of this decision making process all along. The Senate should own up to that, not blame the administration.

That's not to say complete and accurate information was easy to come by from the administration. As a member of the Athletic Council I and others had a chance to encourage the President to make the case to faculty and the university community. He took this seriously. I personally wanted to know that if we were going Division I athletically, we would also be aiming at becoming a Division I academic institution. Understanding that could mean lots of things, I wanted us to define what it meant in advance. I didn't just want to hold academic affairs harmless in the new venture, I wanted to see how academic affairs would be strengthened. How would this improve the central mission of the institution to educate? I suggested creating a document, analogous to the documented plan I knew would have to created for Intercollegiate Athletics, that would describe in detail the proposed changes including budgetary commitments and expected benefits for academics. Such a document for athletics is prepared in the application process for a conference invitation and it does include details about the academic integrity and productivity of the institution. But just as we ought to be able to say in detail what we expect the costs and benefits for athletics would be when moving to Division I, we ought to be able to say the same for academic affairs. While the Athletic Council was kept informed about the process all along the way (our relationship with Athletics and the administration is very strong and positive), this level of documentation regarding academics was never available to the Council or the faculty. I personally regret not being more persistent, though it is not too late.

My suggestion for a plan to outline Division I academics was initially met with some interest, which eventuated only in a change in public rhetoric. It seems we already are a Division I academic institution and athletics is lagging behind. So what does it mean to be Division I academically?

1. Excellence. Division I connotes something better than Division II. In athletics it is about skill and athletic ability, a higher level of competition, and so connotes something like a four-star rating; but that is not to say it is intrinsically better. For one division or one conference to be better than another you need to specify the relevant dimensions. Division II or III might be better for certain schools with certain missions or values or objectives. If you are only concerned about the level of competition, that's one thing. But there are other dimensions along which an athletic program can excel. There are outstanding DII and DIII athletic programs. (NKU, for example, has had an outstanding DII program for years.)

What about academics? Specifically, what are those dimensions along which we measure academic excellence? The idea is to point to something like high academic achievement, faculty expertise or quality programs. We need to be able to say more, however, and to say how it is measured. But more specificity here still leaves open the question of how academic excellence is related to athletic excellence. Is it possible for a school to be considered DI academically without being DI athletically? Is DI athletics required for DI academics? Is this the only way to fund quality or inspire a campus and community to academic greatness? I doubt it, but we haven't explored these questions fully as an institution.

2. Profile. Mostly the rhetoric has been that we already do or aspire to resemble other DI schools (in our preferred conference). Resemble how? Publicly the president is pointing to breadth of curriculum, size and quality of student body, stature of faculty, centers for research and creative excellence, community engagement, and our impact on region. This is our "Division I profile." It's not clear why this is not consistent with a Division II profile.

What about academic values like performance? Workload? Expectations? Achievement? We need to look closely at these. And before we rush to become part of the DI academic profile we should remember the other side, which is a less than flattering picture in which academic integrity and performance takes a back seat to athletic success. We currently have a graduation rate of 34%. We would leave the GLVC with its average graduation rate of 54%. Would moving to the OVC, with an average graduation rate of 44%, better fit our own profile, or establish a better aspirational model? So we say we want to fit a Division I academic profile, but we should be careful what we wish for.

Thinking critically, we should be asking whether those DI schools acquired their dreamy academic profiles by being DI athletically? Do we know? Don't some DII and DIII schools also have dreamy academic profiles? I would point out that trying to be like someone else means we are looking backward: they got where they are from past endeavors in past environments. How do we chart our way into the future? How do we anticipate future changes in the higher education landscape? Is Division I athletics (and the branding it brings) the best path to realize our aspirations in today's or tomorrow's economic and educational environment? For example, is the DI branding argument still as viable today as it was yesterday? Even if we grant that in the past going DI has resulting in rich branding opportunities for universities (like ours) and improved retention and recruitment, will this be the case in the future? Increased public and legislative scrutiny on the relationship between education and athletics suggests we should think about this carefully. I think a key question is whether there are ways to become DI academically without becoming DI athletically? Are there alternative branding options that would fit our mission and values but require a different kind of investment? Some schools even move from DII to DIII to better serve their mission.

I have confidence that the key people involved in implementing our move to Division I have the desire and competence to get it done right. We are fortunate to have an administration and an athletic staff with a lot of integrity, a strong work ethic, and a wealth of competence. Still, it would be a shame if faculty sat back and watched, only to look up once in a while, and just long enough, to complain.

I've raised lots of questions and I'm not ready to argue that we should not go Division I. Perhaps we should. I would argue that we--as a faculty, as an institution--should define what it means to be DI academically before others, or unforeseen circumstances, define it for us.

After returning from my Galapagos trip I learned the following interesting fact. I traveled on the mid-size motor yacht, the Yolita II. It was 115 feet long, 26 feet wide and carried 16 passengers, 7 crew members and a naturalist guide. I wouldn't call it roomy but it was quite comfortable, notably better than the 75-foot Floreana, which we traveled aboard two years ago when we first visited the Galapagos.

The HMS Beagle, which was the vessel Darwin traveled aboard on his five year voyage around the world and through the Galapagos Islands, was smaller than the Yolita II and carried around 65-74 passengers. The Beagle was 90 feet long and 25 feet wide. It also carried 6-10 guns and seven smaller boats for surveying expeditions.

Of course the Yolita II needed room for two diesel engines, a hot water heater, a bar with leather couches, and lots of deck chairs. Take away all that and I suppose you could fit another fifty crew members on board.

I spent the day mapping past and future trips to the Galapagos Islands. First, I tracked Darwin's journey through the Islands aboard the Beagle in 1835. Darwin only set foot on four of the islands.


View Galapagos 1835 Darwin in a larger map

You an find out more about Darwin's voyage through the Galapagos in Estes, G., Grant, K. T., & Grant, P. R. (2000). Darwin in Galápagos: His Footsteps through the Archipelago. Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, 54(3), 343-368. Darwin's diary entries for that part of the Beagle's voyage are also online.


Next is the trip I took in June of 2009.


View Galapagos 2009 in a larger map

Finally, below is the itinerary for our May 2011 trip.


View Galapagos 2011 in a larger map

Computer science exposed two generations of young people to the rigors of logic and rhetoric that have disappeared from far too many curricula in the humanities. Those students learned to speak to the machines with which the future of humanity will be increasingly intertwined. They discovered the virtue of understanding the instructions that lie at the heart of things, of realizing the danger of misplaced semicolons, of learning to labor until what you have built is good enough to do what it is supposed to do.

I like the idea of learning to "speak to the machine" as a call to not only learn to write code but to also consider carefully how we interact (communicate) with technologies generally.

Carey, K. (2010, November 7). Decoding the Value of Computer Science. The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved from http://chronicle.com/article/Decoding-the-Value-of-Computer/125266/

VOTRUBRIX™ now comes in chewable tablets that are no less easy to swallow. Newly discovered side effects include scurvy, loss of vision and constipation. Ask your doctor if VOTRUBRIX™ is right for you.

This year's Convocation speech is available online and below is the Wordle word cloud.



What I should like about this talk is the obvious emphasis on "students". Of course, word clouds are primarily about words and only indirectly about the things the words refer to. So, what about students? Votruba does acknowledge our mission to provide for "our students and their education" and the importance of enhancing the student experience. But it's mostly about numbers now: graduation rates, credit hour generation, pricing.

In this Convocation speech references to quantity far out-strip any references to quality. Part of that is a sign of dire economic stress. Part of it is exhaustion and a lack of new ideas.

I welcomed the reference to a "New Era," though it is really a look back to how bad things have gotten. Higher education is a mess. It looks be to an even worse mess in the new era. American higher education is not so much unrivaled as it is unraveling. Votruba's response I found to be completely uninspiring: lacking any new strategies for attack, we are retreating, though the retreat is not quite back to ideal or even safe ground.

Thirteen years ago we aspired to be "learner-centered." This went beyond the activity of learning to a broader concern for the individuals who engaged in education and its activities. It went beyond students to include faculty, staff and community members who were also learners engaged in multi-faceted, lifelong pursuits of improvement. It was always people engaged in learning who were foregrounded. You don't hear much about being learner-centered anymore. The unwelcome turn came about five years ago, IMHO, when the rhetoric shifted to "talent development," which can lead to only one driving, mission-critical question, "Who stole my cheese?"

Now what? We are back to a narrow reading of "learner" (though the word "learner" doesn't even appear in this Convocation speech) and, though students are presumed to have experiences we will hire consultants to care about, they're quantified. Faculty are back to being teachers, members of the production line, grant winners, managers, where professional development and the pursuit of new knowledge barely deserve mention. It's not about the life of the mind; it's about life in the mine.

Harsh realities. Yes. Sweet Dreams? Not so much.

This Convocation message is about an administration on its death bed. Even President Boothe is praying for them. There is no light at the end of the tunnel and we're down to counting the heartbeats. Votruba would like us to look ahead but all he can do is reminisce about the thirteen years that led him to be the university's longest serving president.

F*cking awesome.

I posted some of my Beijing pictures at my Picasa site. Over the next few days I'll try to add some titles and descriptions.

It took over 24 hours to travel from CVG to Beijing, inconveniently broken into three legs and an early morning cab ride. We left CVG around 1:30 PM Thursday for MSP and worked our way through a three hour layover until we left for SEA. (Kevin actually made some progress on the Powerpoint presentation for our paper.) In SEA our flight was delayed an hour, returned to the original time, and then delayed again, but we managed grab a beer and a bite to eat. We were all carded! Huh? I suspect she wanted to see our AARP cards but our passports did the job. The 11-hour flight to PEK was actually a 12-hour flight. The plane wasn't crowded but it was an old 767, lacking the room and amenities I was hoping for. It was 1:00 am Saturday morning PEK-time when we finally arrived. I lost a Friday somewhere. We got through customs remarkably fast and took a 40-minute cab ride to our hotel, which turns out not to have been our hotel since they had no record of our reservations. Yikes! They passed us off to another business hotel around the corner. Fine, but they didn't speak any English and accepted only cash (CNY). Fine, but we only speak English and we don't carry much cash. So here we are for two days in this hotel while we figure out what we should do for the rest of the week. Part of that figuring-out process is on today's agenda, along with a reception for the conference tonight. If they handle the reception as well as they handled our hotel reservations, we'll be eating at Kentucky Fried Chicken.

It's raining here. 6:30 on the morning Beijing-time; 6:30 in the evening Rudy-time.

Just did a Google Trends analysis on 'trival' v. 'important'. You know this has got to be revealing. Turns out that 'important' consistently ranks higher than 'trivial'. This is certainly true in the US. In Spain and Portugal we see notable exceptions to the trend and I have nothing to say about that except, "Good for them." Generally speaking, 'important' is trending upward and 'trivial' downward, but despite the increasing divergence it is worth nothing that the two search terms seem to meet up every year around New Years Day, though not so much in recent times. Are we becoming more serious? A Google Trends analysis suggests we are (except in Spain).

Saw/heard amazing Bill Kirchen show at the Southgate House last night. Kirchen is best known as the guitarist for Commander Cody and the Lost Planet Airmen and the Titan of the Telecaster. I'll be downloading his new album, Word to the Wise, today.

The quality of the video is poor, but I was there and that's all I care about.

That learning is predominantly informal and social is something I need to keep in mind as I prepare courses and syllabi for the fall. I need to leave more time for play and discussion. Found this over at Jane Knight's web site.