Our University and the Idea of Accountability

In a great university… this could probably be said for any great organization… individuals must feel responsibility for the future and that it rests with and on them. This creates a powerful kind of accountability. A deep sense of purpose in an organization develops rather than a self serving approach to the work carried out. This is not the residual accountability garnered from politically appointed boards who oversee the activities of various organizations of the state. That accountability has value too but it is a different kind. It is accountability about rule following rather than feeling responsible for making something great and being a part of something that is bigger than you are.

A sense of urgency and mission produces the accountability our university needs.

The Hawthorne Works in Cicero, Illinois, was a large factory built by Western Electric after the turn of the 20th century, during the adolescence of the industrial revolution, when the mechanization of production processes was new and little was tested. Our nation was at the dawn of an age of precision and productivity. During its busiest production years, the Hawthorne Works employed nearly 50 thousand people before it closed in 1983.

Experiments dubbed the “Hawthorne Experiments” were carried out to see how various changes in working conditions, including special treatment and the sense that the tasks assigned where especially important to the future of the company. The validity of the original Hawthorne Experiments has been questioned for years, with findings subject to a wide range of interpretation and criticism depending on one’s point of view. However, a common occurrence no one argues is that changes in environmental conditions will lead to changes in human behavior.
The Hawthorne effect has come to mean that people’s behavior and performance change when the person is subject to new workplace change. The earliest experiments varied lighting levels and the number of parts produced during a given interval of time. The researchers concluded that the changes were made in response to the changed environmental conditions and were little impacted by the amount of change in lighting levels.
This was confirmed when essentially the same results followed when light levels were decreased. Change produces change and change was the constant in the experiments. The results of the experiments were expressed to mean that when people are noticed or appreciated, their performance will improve.
At the Hawthorne plant, and in subsequent replications and further studies of similar types, it was found that after the subjects adjusted to the new working conditions, productivity levels returned to the levels experienced prior to the changed environment. The university, when it is successfully led, produces positive, life-long change in graduates, their thinking, and their behavior, but in order for that to happen there must be internal accountability of people to each other and the greater organization. People must be held accountable for growth and change, as agents of change. Accountability can produce that in a healthy environment. In an unhealthy environment accountability produces fear and calcification. Our university must be different.
Change and accountability are fueled in successful organizations by the belief that what I do can make a difference. This is a powerful concept to carry to work every morning. It makes work a mission, not a job. That is the way our university should be.

Our University- Some Hints for Students

Recently I was asked to address honors students in Union County regarding their futures.  I am taking the liberty of sharing a condensed version of those comments as hints that might be of value to highschoolers who are about to graduate.  Here goes.

 

First - Whatever happens, in any setting, under any circumstances, in school, or at work, at home be true to who you are, and the principles that have been at the core of your educational experience.  I know the values of the people in Southern Illinois and appreciate their power and purpose in shaping a persons future. 

 

Second – As you think about college consider every available means for financial support, scholarships, financial aid and work study.  Don’t work too much, but studies indicate that moderate work 10 -15 hours actually increases academic performance and success.

 

Third - Focus on becoming a servant leader.  There are far too few leaders who genuinely serve others, and far too many who primarily serve themselves.  It is the bane of a free society, a school, or a business concern.   

 

Fourth –  If you begin college is at a community college, you will never have to apologize for that.  This was my experience as one of six children of working people, my Mom a cook in my high school cafeteria, my Dad, a janitor in the same school.  It was community college for me, an excellent way to get started, then on to other places, some of the best in the world. 

 

Fifth - If you are not sure what you want to study, or where your vision for your own life will lead, don’t fret over that, not until you’re forty anyway.

 

Sixth - Make sure you get involved with other students in healthy activities, activities related to your faith, or your career interests.  College campuses provide an excellent place for people to gather, from many places, and walks of life, glued together by faith, nationality, life experience, and other common experiences that build interpersonal relationships. 

 

Seventh - Read, read, and read some more.  However much you read you are not reading enough.  It is rare to find someone who spends too much time reading.  Get off the internet and go to the library. 

 

Eighth –   Meet your faculty.  If you have some that seem distant, or are distant, work to cultivate a relationship with them.  Find others through referral that will visit with you about  your ideas and worldview.   

 

Ninth –   Never be lulled into thinking your personal views are not part of your intellectual development.  Unfortunately this happens with people’s faith life… it may be detached from your intellectual life.  How you think is a direct reflection of what you believe.  At some universities it appears that we are trying to separate these aspects of our lives.  Don’t let that happen to you. 

 

Tenth - Keep your eye on the ball.  Look ahead as far as you can.  Have a dream and pursue it vigorously every day.  Treat it like a favorite picture.  Put it in your wallet and pull it out every now and then and see what makes you like it so much. 

 

Remember that being a good student makes you a leader, whether you want to be or not, and carries responsibilities.  Once you gain respect and trust, you must use it wisely.  If you want people to take you seriously, you must give them a reason to.

 

These attributes will prepare you well for Our University, and every university in the nation.

Moral Perspective at Our University

Moral perspective is the legitimate work of a university for without it there is no possibility of intellectual fulfillment, advancement, achievement, or satisfaction.  Intellect and morality are like inhaling and exhaling, one without the other is of no real utility but moral perspective will draw lines in the sand which are loved and hated.  Loved because they provide clarity about how things should be and hated for the clarity provided.   

 

Public universities have tried moral abstinence for over half a century. It is not working.

 

We make rules and regulations to determine our moral perspective. It is profoundly debilitating to have a code that changes annually determine morality.   Morality comes through developed human understanding.  Someone once said that you do not become ethical by studying comparative ethics, but by living within a moral framework.  Difficult and challenging though it may be personal responsibility and accountability, in a word morality, are critical to healthy learning organizations                                                                                                                                                                 and we must hold high the idea of moral perspective, discuss it, deliberate it, and work to encourage it in our students all the while being respectful of differences.

 

In a graduate seminar recently we had a discussion about morality on the campus.  It grew from a series of readings that addressed the issue of engaging the whole student.  This subject fell into the pot of characteristics that should be part of the aspirational leadership of the university.  Thankfully all of the students held that a good leader needed firm and well pronounced moral perspective as it allowed a triangulation of leadership and university mission.  I was impressed that two of the members of the class were Eagle Scouts, and a thorough discussion of the Boy Scout Law, introduced by my cohort ensued. The Scout Law in summary says that a Scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent. 

 

While the whole of the Scout Law generated a great deal of dialog, most interesting to me was the seriousness with which these advanced graduate students treated the ideas that make up this often quoted, better-than-so-much-else-remembered string of ideas from our youth, was prolonged dialog regarding reverence and its place in Our University.  We tried to figure out why modern society elevates tolerance to a virtue, when reverence for each other is so much more powerful, positive, and uplifting.  Universities get it wrong.  Boy Scouts get it right. The Scout Law it says “A Scout is reverent toward God. He is faithful in his religious duties. He respects the beliefs of others.”  Reverence is elegant.  Tolerance is acceptance.

 

While the university has a complex job to do teaching the skills and attributes of professional life and a thoughtful, meaningful, existence there is no possibility that this good work can be accomplished in a moral vacuum. The university needs moral perspective.  We will never be the economic development engine that we should be for Southern Illinois if we are unwilling to ponder moral perspective.

 

Richard Burdon (Viscount) Haldane, British Statesman and Chancellor, University of Bristol said, “It is in universities that…the soul of a people mirrors itself.”

 

We should be proud of what we see in the mirror.  We should be proud of Southern – after all – it reflects us and it is Our University.

Student Work jobs help students succeed

Work is a four letter word, but not the kind our mothers and fathers used to scold us for using. The people of Southern Illinois are not afraid to work. And hard work will always produce results and fruit does not fall far from the tree. I see it every day.

I have witnessed the way students work from two perspectives, the first is developed from data. Our University spends about 3.00% of total State-appropriated staff pay on student workers. That sounds small, but it is 3 times the State average for universities. We lead the state in student worker spending, top of the heap. We have a tradition of it and it should be doubled.

Our students clean floors, assist with accounting processes and help with public relations. They design and build, file and type, write and count, keep track of things, and see to it that the university goes. They become part of the community through this paid employment that contributes to the well being of Our University, and most importantly, they contribute to the culmination of their own education. This is a great way to go through school. What a one-two punch.

The second perspective is a personal one. A student told me the other day that they felt a bit stressed because they said, “I have to work while going to school.” I agreed, it’s challenging, but told them to take a different view of the matter. Think to yourself, “I get to work while I am going to school. This allows me to build life skills to understand the importance of cooperation and teamwork, to become part of something that is bigger than me . . . to know how to work.”

Some people don’t know how to work. The special power of working on campus, even if the pay may not be as good in some cases as off campus employment, is the student becomes part of the university team. I have watched for years as clerical and administrative staff have encouraged students to do well in class, motivated them to commit themselves to their studies, asked to see there grades, on some occasions witnessed university employees help students with assignments–to my great joy.

I am not talking about faculty and advisers, or technical staff whose job it is or might be. I am talking about what an old man like me would call a secretary or a receptionist becoming part of a student’s life, part of a student’s educational team, and in so doing, part of the solution to Our University’s ability to retain students.

And if the students are part of the student worker budget, not only do they help themselves, they help other students by helping the university. This is not differential equations, or rocket science; rather, this is Our University at work, in a region of people that work, and know how to work well.

Studies show over and over again that working 12 to 15 hours a week actually increases the quality of the student experience and their ability to do succeed in school. Our University would be well served to reinforce the importance of hard work as a positive extension of service and education, not a burden. High personal expectations and toil make us, those around us, and the places we inhabit, better.