ACADEMIC REMODELING AND RENEWAL
by
Steadman Upham, President
Claremont Graduate University
April 24, 2000
The ideas contained in this essay enlarge upon the public remarks I made at Claremont
Graduate University’s recent retreat. The retreat was a marvelously enriching experience
for our academic community, and it has produced substantial new dialogue on campus
about key issues facing the university. As a result of this dialogue, I offer a few
additional thoughts in these pages to help focus our collective thinking. I look forward to
discussing these issues with you and your colleagues.
Let me begin by saying the obvious—during the last two years, Claremont Graduate
University has literally remade itself. Organizational remodeling has touched nearly
every administrative aspect of the university. Collectively, faculty and staff have created
a new administrative structure, one that is built around a decentralized budget and schools
led by academic deans. The annual budget process has been utterly transformed so that
CGU’s fiscal management is responsibility-centered. A division of executive and
extended learning, also led by a dean, has been inaugurated to help CGU create an
interface with the world beyond the walls of the university. Importantly, the university is
nearly done with the initial implementation of PeopleSoft, an administrative software
system that will streamline services to students. PeopleSoft will also allow CGU to be
accessed via the Web for admission, registration, and portal services. Web access is the
first step in making CGU ubiquitously available to all of its students. These and many
other important achievements of the last two years have brought CGU into the twentyfirst century as a university, and have positioned it to begin to address its most difficult
challenge.
With the completion of Claremont Graduate University’s second all-community retreat,
the university has entered a new and critical phase of its development. Following the
retreat, I am more convinced than ever that we have a common understanding about
operating the institution, and that we share the same values of commitment, focus, and
dedication to our prime strategy—building strong and robust faculty-student relationships
in the academic process. Commitment to our prime strategy continues CGU’s quiet
revolution and distinguishes us from other graduate universities.
With these shared aspirations and goals in mind, it is now time to think about Claremont
Graduate University as a preeminent center of learning and knowledge. It is now time to
focus on the structure and organization of our teaching and research, on the big ideas that
will differentiate us from other graduate universities. During the next few years we must
devote the same energy to academic remodeling and renewal that has been given to
administrative restructuring at CGU.
Academic Remodeling and Renewal
I know from the lunch meetings I have had with you in my conference room during the
last two years that many CGU faculty think about and research the same kinds of
problems, albeit from very different perspectives and with markedly different classes of
data. Despite such overlap and complementarity, I have been amazed how low our
awareness is about what each of us does. In some cases, long-time members of CGU’s
faculty were first introduced to each other over lunch in my conference room! During
conversation, they realized they held similar scholarly interests and could benefit further
from additional discussion and interaction. I truly hope some of these initial
conversations have spawned longer-term scholarly collaborations.
Members of CGU’s staff have had similar experiences, recognizing that their work
influences and is affected by colleagues employed in many other areas of the university.
This complementarity of interest, action, and pursuit is a vast reservoir of energy that can
fuel our academic enterprise in the future. It is this complementarity that also provides a
platform for academic remodeling and renewal. We have an unparalleled opportunity to
focus all of our collective energies on our academic future—on the talented students,
transformative ideas, academic programs, and community outreach that will build
Claremont Graduate University’s strength and reputation. From this point forward,
academic remodeling and renewal must occupy the lion’s share of our collective thought
and action.
What academic vision do we have for Claremont Graduate University? What domains of
expertise shall we become known for in the future? Which areas of our current endeavor
hold the greatest promise to grow to national prominence alongside other preeminent
centers of learning and knowledge? How shall we recruit new faculty to Claremont
Graduate University who complement and synergize existing expertise and enable CGU
to transcend the academic disciplines?
Quite understandably, CGU prides itself on interdisciplinary teaching and research. Over
the years, interdisciplinarity has been a point of distinction for us and has contributed to
our national standing, status, and reputation as an academic institution. Because of
decentralization, however, we have struggled as an institution to keep faith with our
commitment to interdisciplinary teaching. Worries about counting credit hours and the
administrative complexities of dual and interfield degrees have created barriers to
interdisciplinary collaborations. We need to do better, and I am confident that we can.
We need new ideas to move forward. Let me offer a few for you to ponder:
First, we need to distinguish between our administrative structures (schools, decentralized
budgets, etc.) and the way we pursue scholarly ideas in the university. Ideally, our
teaching and research at CGU should be conducted independently of the administrative
structures we use to manage the university and balance its budgets. Naturally, there are
effects produced by these latter structures, but they should not impede faculty and
students from working and learning together even if the individuals reside in different
schools or academic programs. To advance, we must follow the ideas, not the
administrative structures.
Second, trustee Dr. George Kozmetsky presciently observed at the March Board of
Fellow’s meeting that the term “interdisciplinary” was outmoded. He suggested that the
growing interconnections among academic disciplines and the explosion of knowledge
emanating from the integration of information technology have transcended specific
academic fields. Dr. Kozmetsky suggested that we discard the term interdisciplinary and
instead use the term transdisciplinary to organize and pursue our scholarly interests
within the university. What this means in my view is that we begin to think about the
university as a place of ideas, not as an organization of academic disciplines. This should
not be difficult to accomplish since most of our teaching and research already revolves
around big ideas and broad domains of learning and knowledge that transcend traditional
academic fields. Transdisciplinary thinking forces us to think across, beyond, and
through the academic disciplines represented at Claremont Graduate University to
encompass all types of learning and knowledge about an idea, issue, or subject. A
transdisciplinary perspective forces us to rise above and go beyond the limits imposed by
related or cognate academic fields found in “mere” interdisciplinary thinking.
Third, although each of us shall need to make adjustments in the way we engage faculty
colleagues, teach students, and pursue our scholarly interests, the important work is not
entirely for us alone to accomplish. One of our best means of advancing on our
institutional goals will be through the hiring of new faculty. In my remarks at CGU’s
second all-community retreat in March 2000, I described a plan for the recruitment of
new faculty based on a model of cluster hiring. This strategy holds enormous promise for
Claremont Graduate University because it allows us to create rapidly a scholarly
community of interests and critical mass around ideas and knowledge domains. I know
that the FEC will be discussing the merits of this proposal, and I look forward to their
deliberations.
The real challenge for Claremont Graduate University is to build a scholarly community
of interests and critical mass around ideas that matter, around ideas that will help to
explain the past, interpret the present, and define the future. In this respect, Dr.
Kozmetsky’s suggestions about transdisciplinarity need to be taken seriously. Defining a
few broad knowledge domains that encompass teaching and research across, beyond, and
through the academic disciplines can make CGU unique as a learning environment.
Every time we hire a new faculty member, regardless of the specialization, we need to
ask if the specialization we seek is related to any other intellectual pursuit at the
university. If the answer to this question is no, then a very serious public discussion
needs to occur about whether CGU should proceed to fill the position. On the other hand,
if the answer to this question is yes, then we should seek to define clearly all of the points
of intellectual connection. We should then make certain that every search committee is
appropriately constituted to maximize transdisciplinary understanding.
This model demands that faculty hiring becomes a public and collective process of our
academic community. Let me hasten to point out that I do not know what exact process
we should follow, nor would I proscriptively impose one. I ask, however, that the FEC
enter this issue onto its agenda for discussion early in the next academic year. Provost
Hart and I will be consulting closely with new FEC Chair, Professor Richard Ellsworth,
about this matter.
We want each new faculty to augment the scholarly community of interests and critical
mass around the ideas for which we are known, and for which we seek to become
known. As I said at the retreat, we need to recruit academic “rate busters” to help us with
this task. With a relatively small core faculty, we do not have a single position to waste
on a disciplinary “silo” or an isolated, unconnected academic interest.
What is proposed here will not be easy, but it can be accomplished by Claremont
Graduate University. We can identify a process to recruit new faculty to CGU that is
publicly discussed, collectively motivated, self-consciously designed, and explicitly
intended to improve the academic quality and impact of our already outstanding learning
environment.
We have truly remarkable opportunities ahead. We can improve rapidly if we are
thoughtful, creative, and bold. I know we are capable of greatness as an academic
community. Together we can accomplish our goals.