COMMENTS FROM 100 cc
Washington DC
February 22nd 2010
Meetings with Legislators
From: norman olsen <nlolsen62@hotmail.com>
Date: March 3, 2010 3:46:42 AM PST
To: Bruce Shepard <Bruce.Shepard@wwu.edu>
Cc: Stephanie Bowers <Stephanie.Bowers@wwu.edu>
Subject: Community Conversations
Dr. Bruce Sheppard
President Western Washington University
Old Main 430 , 516 High Street
Bellingham Washington 98225-9034
(360)650-2055
Bruce.Shepard@wwu.edu
3/7/2010
Dear Bruce,
It was a pleasure to meet you at the recent community conversation at the US House of
Representatives. This email is in response to your invitation to dialogue over the vision of
Western for the next decade or two.
By way of background, I graduated from Western in June, 1962, in political science and joined
the Peace Corps in the fall. I believe I am the first Western graduate to serve in the Peace Corps--in my case, in Colombia in a physical education project.
Following the Peace Corps, I earned a MA in political science at American University and then
joined USAID to serve in Vietnam in 1966. I worked with USAID for 30 years, on economic
and democratic development programs mainly in Africa, retiring in 1996. Since then I have
continued to engage in foreign work – in Afghanistan, Cambodia, Indonesia, and several African
and Pacific island states.
I am intrigued by your call for Western to be best in class. When I attended Western, we were
best in class for all of the US in teacher education. Hopefully we still are. Apparently, our
closest competitors were Colombia and Stanford. In terms of undergraduate programs in other
disciplines, I suspect we ranked above Central and Eastern but behind the UW, perhaps at the
Cal State - Fullerton level. I say this with little knowledge of the methodology of determining
these rankings.
In my last USAID post in Uganda in 1994, the Dean of the Oregon State graduate school, Tom
Maresh, visited Uganda to select students for the ATLAS program. (ATLAS was a USAID
funded program for elite level African students to pursue advanced degrees in the US.) Dean
Maresh told me he thought, in terms of under graduate education, that Western did a better job
than most of the schools in the PAC – 10.
In terms of vision, I see Western continuing to strive for excellence at three levels: one,
continuing to take in mid-level high school students; two, offering specialized programs such as
Education, Ecology, Automobile Design, etc; three, offering elite level students an honors
program.
In terms of next steps, my experience as a manager suggests that a commitment to consistent
incremental improvement against specific metrics works better than attempts at a great leap
forward. In the case of Western, my suggestion is aiming at a 3% to 5% improvement each
year while decreasing costs by 2%. Clearly in the case of higher education, agreeing on relevant
metrics is difficult. A faculty, student, and community exercise to identify those metrics might
be a positive next step following conclusion of the 100-community conversations, starting with
determining what class it is we wish to be best in, and how to determine when we reach that
goal.
I do have some specific steps to suggest.
1) Stick to our natural recruiting base of Washington state. Do address the issue you raised
in your talk that Washington state ranks 48th in the percentage of Washington state high
school graduates earning Bachelor degrees.
2) 14,000 FTE is about the right size, big enough to allow for excellent facilities and
faculty (which we have) and small enough to offer reasonable student faculty contact.
3) Emphasize pedagogical improvement with the objective of ensuring that Western
graduates are prepared to enter the work force at the level required to maintain the
economic competitiveness of Washington state. Emphasize not flunking out the
unprepared, but raising the achievement level of the diligent and well behaved to that of
perhaps, more naturally gifted scholars.
4) We are not going to compete with Cal Berkley, UCLA and the UW as research
universities. We can offer undergraduate education to the students of the Pacific
Northwest that is equal or better than those schools. Do be clearly superior to Eastern,
Central, Cal State Sacramento, etc. Do compete with William and Mary, USMA, and
the UW in the achievement levels of your undergraduates.
5) Per your presentation, foresters do need to understand the morphology of wood, just as
political scientists should be literate in political theory. Similarly, we all need to know
how to network, collect data, write clear papers and persuasively present the results.
Provide concrete practice in networking and all types of live interviewing. Based on
professional experience if I were teaching a course in Promoting Democracy in the
developing world I wouldn’t have a final exam. I would have several papers that
involved the students seeking out live information by relating to the community,
developing cogent arguments based on the data, and finally delivering persuasive oral
presentations of their conclusions. This type of examination for upper division students
is likely to be more relevant to the needs of the world of work.
6) Mathematics for the social sciences. Quantification advances relentlessly. Even we
social scientists need to deal with it. Thus, establish mathematics for social scientists
program. not as a graduation requirement but as a self-paced interactive two to four year
process leading to those of us who are not naturally talented in mathematics being able to
handle college level calculus and reasonably advanced statistics.
7) I am very pro-sports with an emphasis on the participant level. Of the multitude of
things I value about Western, my absolutely most enjoyable time was on the track team.
(Note: Coach Harris with his emphasis on participation is doing an excellent job with the
current track team) In my foreign service career, I always coached on the side and eight
of my African players played division I basketball. I also coached two world record
holders/world champions in track. However, in terms of sports, Western has no place in
Division I. First, to be competitive at least in football or basketball one has to engage in
what euphemistically called “extra legal activities. ” (A recent example of the difficulties
is SUNY - Binghamton, a school roughly in Western’s academic class that attempted to
make the jump to Division I.) Second, big time sports is a money loser for 60% of the
schools involved, or so says the New York Times. Western should be using that money
to increase participation in a range of activities including sports, ensuring we are still
number one in teacher education, and winning the prize for the first 100 mpg car. Third,
do offer the opportunity for legitimate students to compete at the Division II level, and
even make provisions for those with the talent and interest to develop to the elite level--for example, our two Olympians, Herman Nelson, and Allen James.
8) Presidential fellows. There is a program I am involved with as a mentor at the Center for
the Study of the Presidency and Congress that could be of interest to Western. Students
from around the US, coming from institutions as diverse as Harvard to Georgia State, are
selected by their Universities, come to Washington DC twice, for about a week each time
during the academic year, once in the fall and once in the spring. They meet a range of
upper level policy officials. They are required to write a paper on some aspect of the
presidency. The better papers are published in the Presidential Quarterly. Each student is
assigned a mentor, typically a senior level federal official, to assist with the paper and to
provide some career advice. I have been a mentor for several years and find the
students, whether from Harvard or Georgia State, uniformly excellent. They also
greatly benefit from the program, both from exposure to similarly excellent students,
drafting a paper evaluated by professional standards, and exposure to the workings of the
federal government. Call Alex Douville, Director of Education Projects, Center for the
Study of the Presidency and Congress, at (202) 872-9800 for details.
(adouville@thepresidency)
If any of my suggestions are useful I would be happy to elaborate.
Sincerely yours,
Norman L. Olsen
6309 Lee Highway
Arlington VA 22205
(703)237-0526
nlolsen62@hotmail.com
cc. Stephanie C. Bowers
Vice President for University Advancement
Old Main 430 , 516 High Street
Bellingham Washington 98225-9034
(360)650-2055
Stephanie.Bowers@wwu.edu