Our University – The Mathematics of Jack Graham

Organizations are frequently in debt to quiet people.  Servants who lead.  Jack Graham was such a person and his death last week reminds of our responsibility to remember. There was an era at SIU in which a forceful, visionary, charismatic, thoughtful, intelligent academic leader, a faculty member who knew universities and rose through the ranks to guide one to near greatness.  Delyte Morris.  Rare in any age and deeply appreciated by the quiet men and women who worked at his side to get the job done. 

 

Men like Jack.

 

Not too many years ago Barbara Bush was asked what she thought the greatest challenge for America was.  What is our biggest problem?  In word one she decisively articulated it.

 

Greed.

 

Greedy people can’t get much done.  They are too concerned with how they are perceived, too focused on how they will be regarded, too determined to make themselves right, rather than build the organizations they serve. 

 

Inappropriate focus, regard and determination are the arithmetic of greed. 

 

A man like President Morris knew that his concern for the university, indeed the region, had to be such that the needs of the people served, in this case the students, faculty and staff of the university, had to be elevated above his own.  He also knew that in order to do this, he must associate with people that were likewise willing and able to see the seeking of the “good of the order” as a high calling.  Even at times with a big ego to bridle… a nearly inescapable form of human frailty… men like Morris get things done, but never without servant leaders like Jack Graham at their side.

 

The simple cause of effectiveness is perfectly expressed in a single word.

 

Generosity.

 

On many occasions I had the opportunity to ask Professor Graham about our university, its’ role fifty years ago, and its’ current role.  He always offered the same answer that revealed his deep generosity and his love for the place and its purpose.  We must challenge and serve students, to make them think, to present them with excellent thought, and clarity of concept, in short, to provide the possibility for them to secure an education from Southern.

I found this out most vividly when meeting with a group of retirees with whom I would visit on the first Monday of each month, drinking coffee, and talking about the transition of the university from what it was to what it could be.  As the old admonition suggests “You can never step in the same stream twice”. 

 

These were excellent men and women who realized what had been created here and what needed to happen to make the future brighter than the past. 

 

Jack was a person who could transition from one generation to the next.  It was his generosity that did this, driven by an abiding faith that I saw evidence of on numerous occasions, a faith that creates a servants heart, and a faith that transformed a right hand man into a servant leader.

 

Our university always needs people of this caliber, people loved by family, friends, and associates alike for the simple principles they exercise in their daily work.  Jack lived it through his great testimony to a most humble concept.

 

Appropriate focus, regard and determination are the arithmetic of generosity. 

 

Jack was a master mathematician.

Our University – Tenure

 

Tenure has changed markedly since its inception as an academic concept. It is often confused with the idea of sinecure.  Tenure protects a faculty member from a board of trustees or, in public universities, an elected official who might not like his ideas.  Tenure is a further specification of the concept of free speech in that open expression is protected, however early tenure constructs directed that academic expression be focused upon a scholars area of interest.

 

There are a number of assumptions built into this equation.  Firstly, that the faculty member has an idea with the potency or originality to actually cause someone to notice. 

 

Thankfully this occurs from time to time. 

 

Secondly, it assumes that a board of trustees has ideas that have intellectual merit and substance, and that they pronounce them in such a way as they may be openly held and responded to. 

 

Thankfully this occurs from time to time. 

 

In both cases the hypothesis is that ideas have merit and value in the community.  Sinecure on the other hand is the notion that a particular office requires no labor, service, or responsibility.  Some monasteries and most political machines hold to this notion. Frequently used to describe patronage posts in public service, and a few have used it to describe faculty life, sinecure should be vastly different from tenure.

 

Thankfully this occurs from time to time.

 

With alarming persistence these two concepts have drifted together in the past 75 years implying safe, low risk employment.  However, I have a general postulate: the better the university the more distance there is between the ideas of tenure and sinecure. 

 

The best universities take on challenging subjects providing fodder for a free society to replicate while simultaneously improving.  Weaker universities don’t challenge much and replicate with marginal or no improvement.

 

Historically tenure in the United States is the child of 19^th century German polytechnics.  But there is a significant difference.  The German polytechnics operated off two fundamental and delicately balanced principles. 

 

Lernfreiheit and lehrfreiheit. 

 

These ideas are closely linked, but significantly and powerfully different, not only to an academic person, but to an aficionado of the intellectual free market.

 

I am both.

 

Lernfreiheit connotes the lack or absence of administrative coercion or control in the learning situation.  The “leaning situation” is the classroom and it only has two components, a teacher and a student.  The student chooses to be there or the value of the construct falls apart.  A student cannot be coerced into the classroom, or directed by anyone but the professor upon entering.  Market principles must be tightly knit into this idea.

 

Lehrfreiheit implies the freedom of the professor to pursue, publish, pronounce, and profess findings and determinations that are important to her scholarly life.

We see immediately the implications from the perspective of the faculty member, and for better or worse, the board, and the state all stay out of the classroom. This creates a good deal of risk, but when it works its changes the world.

 

Tenure is necessary for free thinking, but I like to ask about the other side of the equation.

 

Do students have the right to choose under what conditions and whose tutelage they sit?

 

Our university should balance on the fulcrum of excellence and expression by faculty and student.

 

One without the other creates a vacuous environment.

Our University and Significant Debt

  

My mother worked as a riveter sewing sheet metal to plane wings in a defense plant on Long Island during the big war.  Countless others did too.  My in laws worked at Grumman on Long Island for a combined total of 60 years.  They retired 20 years ago.  They held the nation and its’ need with esteem approaching that of their reverence for their Maker. 

 

Sometimes when watching a movie with my father in law we would see an aircraft and he would say, with great pride, we built those.  But in all of that passion they didn’t view their relationship to Grumman the way our retirees view their relationship to our university.

 

Why is that?

 

Adam Smith would tell us that we are in the business of producing human capital. Human capital development demands a strong sense of purpose.   We watch those in our charge become something they might have never thought possible.  This is true for everyone who works here, not just faculty. And our students belong not to the university but to us…all of us. 

 

Our work on the “product” is never finished.  A graduate with certificate of attendance and capability in hand continues to grow.  We planted seeds and built foundations, but the real work of excellent education never stops.  Knowing that may have a powerful impact on the connection to those before us who contributed, and continue to contribute, to the ongoing process of education. The growth of pride only increases over time.  

 

Building an F6F Hellcat, the fighter that accounted for 55% of all aircraft downed by the Marines and the Navy in WWII instills sense of purpose and accomplishment. 

 

That was Grumman. 

 

In addition Grumman was instrumental in helping the nation realize JFK’s preposterous proposal to put a man on the moon within the decade. They built the Lunar Lander.  Justifiable pride accompanies participation in something bigger than you. 

 

That too was Grumman.

 

An engineer, working on a team, designed, calculated, prototyped and assembled that Lunar Lander.  One of our living, breathing, contributing “products”.  Parts of the Lander are still on the Moon, but the engineers and intellectual workers we nurtured are still here, still contributing, and still bringing a sense of accomplishment for those who nourished the ingenuity and creativity of the students that became the engineers. 

 

That is Southern.

 

More reason to honor and hold in the highest esteem our predecessors in our important work is absolutely unnecessary.

 

But as our graduates never stop contributing to the social good, all of us from plumber to president, with a significant contribution from faculty in between, retirees and emeriti should likewise never stop contributing. 

 

With Grumman as long as the retirement benefits keep flowing, and the health insurance is in tact, retirees are pleased and proud of their association, and the products they helped produce.  A university is different. 

 

It is the gift that must keep on giving in both directions. 

 

We need to appreciate those before us as whatever good we accomplish is always on their shoulders.  We stop appreciating and exploiting their passion for the place, its work and purpose, at our peril.

 

A retiree from our university is not a Grumman retiree, and we must be mindful of that, and demonstrate that mindfulness, or the future will be less bright.

 

The answer to “Why is that?” is simple. 

 

Students are not Hellcats.

Our University and Alcohol Consumption

 

Any good university is concerned first and foremost, now and always, with academic excellence.  That is our purpose.

 

128 university presidents signed onto The Amethyst Initiative, a recent effort suggesting the drinking age should be lowered to 18. The primary argument is that we can teach the students how to drink.  Would the classes be part of the core curriculum?  If a student receives an “A” would the faculty member be complicit if the student injured himself or someone else while driving under the influence? 

 

Here are some facts. 

 

Approximately 85% of college students drink according to the American Medical Association. “According to a Harvard School of Public Health Study, nearly half of all college students who abused alcohol during the 1993 academic year experiences five or more serious problems including missing class, physical injury, arguing with friends and engaging in unprotected sex which could lead to HIV infection.” From “Binge Drinking on America’s College Campuses,” Harvard School of Public Health, Henry Wechsler, Ph.D.

 

There is almost a 100% correlation with the number of drinks a college student consumes per week and their academic performance, in plain language, the more you drink, the lower your GPA.  This is not a casual relationship.  It is profoundly frightening to understand the implications of alcohol consumption on intellectual acuity and academic performance.

 

While death is the ultimate price to pay for out-of-control college alcohol consumption, the price can also be high day in and day out.  Students that drink miss class, get in fights, engage in illegal activity and are more likely to be involved in date rape. 

 

All of these factors influence academic standing, academic progress and graduation itself.  The culture of drinking continues past college and can also affect life-long achievements.  The country loses top thinkers, creative talent and productive members of society when alcohol becomes a problem.  Ultimately the public pays more to support those who suffer from alcoholism.

 

Headlines from national newspapers reflect the fear that drinking and binge drinking create for parents. An Associated Press article (Aug. 29, 2001) begins “Just the accounts of how they died should be sobering.”  The report goes on to chronicle case after case of deaths on college campuses related to drinking.  Drinking is also associated with many hazing incidents. 

 

Alcohol problems strike even the best schools like Princeton University, Rutgers, Morehouse College, the University of Iowa, the University of Texas (Austin), the University of Pittsburgh, Frostburg State, the University of Michigan, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Louisiana State University, the University of Colorado at Boulder and regrettably, Southern, have all had students die as a result of inappropriate alcohol consumption.

 

I have a friend, a college president, who had a simple quiet policy, which went like this.  “At university events, where students are present, I will not serve alcohol to anyone”.  He never really explained it to me, only said that was his policy.  I was flat footed enough to fully appreciate it. 

 

Modeling professional behavior for students may be the most sincere form of teaching, and allowing students to see that people can enjoy themselves, be smart, humorous, thoughtful, engaging, and at-ease in a clear-headed social setting is a great teachable moment,  consistent with the purpose of the university, and the most socially responsible position to uphold. 

 

At our university modeling professional behavior should be the core curriculum.