Reed's Ruminations: A Blog by Dan Reed

Higher Education in the 21st Century

N.B. In rapidly changing, global knowledge economy, social, cultural, and economic advantage accrues to those societies that cultivate, nurture, and empower all of their citizens via advanced education, freeing each person to pursue their individual dreams, to the mutual betterment of all. 

On May 12, 1780, John Adams, then in France as part of a diplomatic delegation for the still nascent United States, penned a poignant letter to his wife, Abigail, in which he described the manifold and beguiling beauties of Paris.  Anyone who has strolled down the Champs-Élysées or visited the Palace of Versailles knows instinctively and immediately why Adams was so impressed.  (Mind you, that other modern wonder, the Louvre Museum, did not open until 1793, long after Adams had sailed home.) 

In a forward nod to Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, Adams resignedly acknowledges that his duty and commitment to an aborning country then struggling for its very existence must take precedence over his personal interests and desires. No matter how much he might yearn for different circumstances, immediate necessity must triumph over the desired:

I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain.

Across more than two centuries, Adams’ lament still rings true, albeit with amendments to embrace equity for all. The luxuries of time and resources, made possible by the successes of previous generations, afford their blessed progeny to pursue intellectually and emotionally rewarding endeavors of all kinds – art, music, literature, science, engineering, medicine, business – beyond those dedicated to immediate sustenance and survival.

Adams elegant characterization of the seeming dichotomy between present exigencies and an imagined, better future is now manifestly and explicitly visible in our debates about higher education as a public good accessible to all or a private benefit to only those willing and able to pay, as a birthing place for thoughtful and discriminating citizens of a democratic society or a workforce training and skills delivery system in a globally competitive world.

In a perfect world, each child would be educationally empowered and free to live a life defined by the content of their character, the scope of their talent, the reach of their dreams, and their willingness to work. Sadly, we do not live in that perfect world.  We must do better and do so now.

The circumstances of birth, gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and a host of other factors all too often circumscribe a child’s future, with opportunity crushed and dreams stillborn. In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But in practice, there is.  We must do better and do so now.

Life’s Challenges and Exigencies

The students of our public research universities are neither socioeconomically, culturally, nor ethnically homogeneous. In that diversity lies both our strength – we all better when we both learn from others and respect and value our differences – and our educational challenge, for not all begin their educational journey on an equal footing.

For the sons and daughters of the rich and powerful, college is a place for maturation, exploration, and education. They have the freedom to stumble and recover, secure in the safety that societal status and money provide. The path for others is more narrow and difficult, even for the increasingly financially challenged middle class. Whether first generation, immigrant, underrepresented, or poor, college can be both a rare chance and a desperate struggle. As poor, first generation college student, on this I speak from some personal experience. (See Transforming Lives Via Public Higher Education and A Taste of Sherbet.)

Far greater than my own, students of color face compounded challenges alien to most and unimaginable to many. Biases – implicit and explicit – can and do make them feel marginalized and unwelcome, carrying social and cultural burdens that majority students neither see nor feel but sometimes themselves foster, whether intentionally or unintentionally. First generation students, regardless of background, often experience imposter syndrome and lack the social support networks common in families for whom college has been a multigenerational experience, with no familiar place to seek counsel and support when challenges arise.

Finally, life has a way of intruding in expected and unexpected ways. Despite our national angst over student debt and graduation rates, many students who fervently hope to finish a college degree never do, and an even larger fraction lack the opportunity to try. The reasons are myriad and diverse, including poor educational preparation from underfunded primary and secondary schools, lack of finances to pay tuition and housing, a multigenerational family needing support, feeling unwelcome and out of place, or simply not seeing curricular relevance to their personal objectives and needs. 

The American Dream was built on the shared principles of economic opportunity and upward mobility. The idea that everyone deserves a fair shot – not a guarantee, but a fair shot – to better their socioeconomic circumstances through hard work and determination is a central tenet of the American social contract.  Today, the lifeline of higher education and successful pursuit of the American Dream is increasingly out of reach for a growing fraction of the U.S. population.

Recognition of higher education’s importance to our nation’s future is not a partisan issue.  Multiple U.S. President’s from both parties have repeatedly convened august bodies to recommend ways to improve K-12 and post-secondary education, beginning with the 1946 Commission on Higher Education for American Democracy, commonly known as the Truman Report.  That report recommended expansion of federal financial aid for college students and the creation of a community college system, noting

If college opportunities are restricted to those in the higher income brackets, the way is open to the creation and perpetuation of a class society which has no place in the American way of life.

Despite these stentorian calls for action, a large fraction of children born in poverty still remain there, and less than 15 percent of students from the lowest socioeconomic bracket earn a bachelor’s degree by age twenty-four. No euphemistic intellectual legerdemain can hide the ugly truth of our current situation. It is neither unfortunate nor regrettable; it is morally and ethically wrong. Beyond educational opportunity as an ethical imperative, it has deep and profound justifications on economic and competitiveness grounds.  (See The Hopes of Parents and the Dreams of Children on the importance of giving every child a chance.)

Change in the Wind

Public research universities are in the business of helping people. This is especially true in times of accelerating and disruptive change.  Compounded by the consilience of globalization, each year now brings disruptions that once defined generations. In an earlier time of rapid change, the land-grant universities, authorized by the 1862 Morrill Act, were created to spread new agricultural and mechanical knowledge and “promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes in the several pursuits and professions in life.”  In modern parlance, the objective was to educate an underserved population, one whom extant higher education neither welcomed nor served.

Similarly, the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944 – the G.I. Bill – brought millions of veterans to college and university campuses, and it firmly rooted the graduates in the expanding middle class when many feared a post-war slide into recession. The G.I. Bill, along with post-World War II government investment in academic research, further expanded during the Cold War via the National Defense Education Act of 1958, reshaped academia and created the modern research university. Finally, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Higher Education Act of 1965, and Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 broke down further legal and economic barriers to educational access, though we have by no means eliminated those impediments.

Today, urbanization, global communications, artificial intelligence, talent mobility, and the global knowledge economy are reshaping social expectations. These changes are disrupting the historical web of interconnected economic sectors, while rendering some professions superfluous and creating demands for new skills in others.  A recent McKinsey report, The Future of Work in America, discusses regional economic stratification and the anticipated changes in workforce needs in the next decades.

The National Science Board, of which I am a member, recently issued two reports raising similar concerns.  The first of these, on The Skilled Technical Workforce, emphasizes the need for greater investment in community college technical training. The second, on The State of U.S. Science and Engineering, paints a worrisome picture of the position of the United States relative to its international competitors.

Our world is changing rapidly, and public higher education must adapt and engage as active and honest participants in renegotiating the societal compact.  Any compact reification begins with identifying the irreducible core – the essential values that define public research universities. Quite clearly, these are unfettered discovery (original scholarship and research), transference (student education and training) and fulfillment (societal engagement and services). Put another way, public research universities create new knowledge, transfer insights and ideas, and deliver solutions to societal problems. 

How universities do those things and in what measure are the subject of debate and negotiation. After all, the practices of a modern public research university span less than a single human lifetime. Some of the options will be new, and some will undoubtedly be philosophically challenging. (Remember that many feared the G.I. Bill would destroy U.S. higher education by bringing battle hardened veterans into academe.)

While protecting the irreducible core – the defining verities of academia – I believe we must be more organizationally nimble and flexible, more financially accountable and economically savvy, more societally engaged and responsive, more collaborative and transdisciplinary, and more team oriented. 

We face deep societal challenges – poverty, inequality, injustice, health and wellness, environmental sustainability, and economic uncertainty – and it is tempting to embrace a psychology of diminished expectations. But we also have unprecedented opportunities to unleash the creativity and talent of our citizens.  A university frees successive generations of human minds to realize their potential. We must not waiver in our commitment to the future of our students and our society.

Educational Futures: Beyond Degrees

The intellectual dichotomy between lifelong knowledge and near term skills is a canard, patently and demonstrably false, but the economic and social dilemma is very real. Our students arrive with manifestly different constraints and needs, and we must meet each of them where they are and respond accordingly. Put another way, one educational model and approach does not fit all.

I believe we must move beyond undergraduate degree completion as the sole, simplistic, and arbitrary metric of educational success. Degrees matter, but all education is valuable. It is neither a simple, linear process with a single terminus nor is it synonymous with an immediate continuation beyond secondary school. Degrees matter, but only insofar as they are talismans – social currency and indicators of our true objective, which is bettering the lives of our students.

If a student completes a single course and comes away with a deeper perspective on our world, we have added value to their life.  If another completes a certificate, gains a demonstrated competence, and achieves meaningful new employment, we have changed their economic circumstances for the better.  If we have informed and enlightened a community group, we have enriched our society, even if it were just a weekend seminar and discussion.

I believe we in academia must step back, and live up to our intellectual principals and ideals, remembering that no matter how high the academic ivory tower, its foundation and that of all public higher education, rest on a repeatedly renegotiated societal compact. The history of U.S. higher education is one of punctuated equilibria, with long periods of stability separated by brief interregna of extraordinary change, each coincident with shifting societal norms and expectations for broader access.

We must be more flexible in responding to the heterogeneity of student expectations and needs, while concurrently disintermediating knowledge delivery, certification of completion, and socialization across time and space. (See Pinball, War Games, and Universities.) I believe this means offering a smorgasbord of educational delivery modalities, content packages, and success models, each tailored to differing needs and constraints:

• Traditional degrees. The traditional undergraduate degree is the sine qua non of higher education, tested and proven, but adapting and adaptable to a rapidly changing world, preparing students for careers that do not yet exist, and educating them as critical thinkers and thoughtful communicators steeped in knowledge and wisdom.

• Stackable certificates. Not all students learn the same way, nor do they have similar motivations and objectives. Certificates, both credit and non-credit, organize a coherent body of knowledge with a demonstrable applicability and outcome, ranging from perspective on one of the liberal arts to concrete technical skills. If organized wisely, a combination of credit-bearing certificates can lead to a degree, though the certificates need not be completed sequentially, and they may be delivered either online or via traditional classroom modalities.

• Credit, non-credit, and convertible credit. The goal of educational delivery is the transfer of knowledge and recognized certification of that knowledge. Traditional credit with a transcript grade, earned on completion of an academic course, is the internationally recognized metric of accomplishment. It need not be and increasingly is not the only one. What matters is trusted validation of knowledge and competence. Non-credit certificates and badges are rising in importance as alternative validations.  Today, non-credit programs are often viewed as ancillary, second class activities on most campus; this must change. More importantly, students who acquire skills via non-credit mechanisms and later decide to pursue certificates or degrees may want to convert those accomplishments into academic credit.  We need more flexible mechanisms to establish knowledge and recognize that knowledge as credit.

• Competency certification. Not all knowledge is acquired in the virtual or physical classroom, nor is course completion fully synonymous with demonstrated competence. Life and work are themselves valued teachers. There are a variety of ways to prove and accept competence in lieu of course credit, ranging from academic and professional service testing through probationary credit to work experience

• Mixed online and placed-based education. Synchronous cohort learning on academic campuses will remain part of the educational ecosystem, both for student socialization and access to specific facilities and instrumentation, but it will be complemented by and in some cases replaced by online content delivery that is asynchronous from academic calendars. Online, asynchronous content delivery both allows students to participate based on personal schedules and also allows them to begin classes when the need arises. (See Online Higher Education for some lessons from the history of technology mediated education.)

• Lifelong/lifewide and just-in-time education. The time has long past when the knowledge and skills acquired before age twenty-five could serve one for a lifetime. Today’s worker can expect technological and economic shifts to render many of their skills obsolete every few years. The persistent skills are reasoning and communication, coupled with a desire to learn and relearn throughout life. We must move from a model of “education then life” to lifelong and just-in-time education that delivers new knowledge and skills as needed, via a variety of modalities and mechanisms, recognizing that many will be unable study in situ on an academic campus. For a few, this education will result in new degrees, but for most it will be by securing new credentials, badges, and certificates.

Some might say many of these educational roles and responsibilities are the proper function of community colleges and comprehensive universities.  That is true, in part.  Higher education is a system, with differentiated and overlapping, but complementary roles for community and technical colleges, comprehensive universities, and public research universities. 

However, in a rapidly changing world, public research universities are the critical incubators of intellectual discovery and translation, with national and international stature and partnerships.  They also attract a faculty and student talent base in part distinct from all others. As such, they bear unique responsibility as educational thought leaders and innovators, with the resources and capability to conduct educational experiments at scale. They are also charged with ensuring the economic competitiveness of our citizens and industry in a global knowledge economy.

University of Utah Analysis and Actions

As a flagship public research university and a member of the Association of American Universities (AAU), the University of Utah is a leader in basic research, knowledge creation, and scholarship.  It is also unwaveringly committed to educational access, broad-based liberal arts education, workforce skills training, and economic development.  

A University of Utah Student Success and Educational Futures Taskforce, composed of seventy five students, faculty, and staff members, assessed the current state and future needs of higher education in Utah, based on a charge to consider our changing world and the needs of Utah’s citizens.  Composed of six working groups – facilities and infrastructure; financial analysis; enrollment management, marketing and communications; student success and services; educational delivery and partnerships; and graduate student success – the taskforce outlined a series of recommendations intended to reduce student costs, expand educational access, and deliver targeted, just-in-time training. Common themes from the recommendations include:

• Diversifying pathways to student success by developing alternative credentialing options, improved pathways for transfer students, expanding undergraduate student experience roadmaps, improving support for graduate students and programs, and developing strategic partnerships with employers.
• Expanding online offerings and, where appropriate, using technology to increase educational accessibility, affordability, and inclusiveness.
• Utilizing the University’s physical infrastructure to its fullest by increasing student and mixed-use housing, improving transportation options, and optimizing the allocation of classrooms and teaching facilities.
• Ensuring students have a sense of belonging through individualized attention and support, deeply engaged learning experiences, a robust and inclusive campus community, on-campus career opportunities, and coordinated health and wellness programs.
• Continually revising and adapting initiatives to ensure consistency with the University’s core values: student success and engagement, research and teaching excellence, diversity, sustainability, global vision and strategy, community, and leadership.

In response to the taskforce recommendations, the University is launching several initiatives, including:

• For Utah The For Utah Scholarship creates a fully funded path to a University of Utah degree by covering four years of tuition and fees for Pell Grant-eligible Utah residents. As a result, the fall 2020 entering class was the most diverse in the University’s history, though we still have far to go to ensure broad access.

• Inexpensive all online degree completion. The University of Utah offers lower cost tuition for students taking all classes online as part of a qualifying online undergraduate degree program. This special all-online tuition rate help students who have started college finish their degrees and graduate, even if they cannot return to the campus. (Sadly, we were forced to temporarily defer this program during the COVID-19 pandemic.)

• Expanded credit and non-credit certificates. The University is rapidly expanding its suite of both non-credit and for credit certificates, targeting domains with where there are critical job shortages across Utah. Examples include software development, data science, and entrepreneurship.

• Integrating continuing education and online learning. Reflecting the continuum of learning objectives and the need for fluid transition between non-credit and for credit learning processes, this integration is enabling coordinated management of all aspects of non-traditional education, under the supervision of an Assistant Vice President/Dean.

• Predictive intervention and support. The best time to help students is before they fail, allowing time for recovery from early academic missteps. While protecting and respecting privacy, data can support powerful analytic and predictive interventions, allowing advisors and instructors to work with students while there is still time to recover, both in individual courses and in certificates and majors. This will rely on a combination of commercial software (e.g., Civitas) and local software and data.

• Storefront and electronic services. A large and growing fraction of students are “non-traditional” – they have lives, jobs, and families outside academe, and many lack the flexibility to visit academic support offices during normal business officers. Moreover, the born digital generation expects anywhere, anytime access.  The University of Utah plans to offer advising and consulting services at multiple sites.

• Skill and aptitude assessment. Accurate assessment of student knowledge and skills, via leading edge measurement tools can help students understand their aptitudes and preparations for study emphases and reduce the time needed to complete degrees and certificates by validating extant competencies. The University seeks to adopt and adapt assessment tools that can maximize student success.

• Enhanced student support. A sense of community and belonging is key to student success, enabling students persevere in the face the inevitable challenges students face.  Among many other programs, the University of Utah has created Student Ambassadors who share their experiences with prospective students and parents, Student Success Advocates who serve as peer mentors and advisors, Living Learning and Theme Communities where students share common courses and deeply engaged learning experiences that offer practical and collaborative opportunities to engage communities and the world.

• Faculty mentoring and inclusion. Expanded faculty onboarding and training are essential to preparing new faculty and new administrators to respond effectively to shifting student needs.  These services include (a) training search committees in best practices for recruiting and hiring a diverse faculty, (b) sharing best practices for student mentoring and advising, (c) and support and training for new faculty and new administrators in culture and processes – leadership, education, research and scholarship, and service.

• Corporate and business partnerships. Regularly upgrading the skills and degrees of employees is in the best interests of employers, as it provides the insights, training, and perspectives that allows employees to grow and adapt to changing business circumstances. The University seeks to partner with Utah and national companies on certificate and degree programs for employee and corporate benefit.

Coda

In the Christian tradition, the New Testament (Acts 16:9-10) says a vision appeared to the Apostle Paul  in the night, “A man of Macedonia stood and pleaded with him, saying, ‘Come over to Macedonia and help us.’ Now after he had seen the vision, immediately we sought to go to Macedonia, concluding that the Lord had called us to preach the gospel to them.”

The world gospel is an Old English translation of the original Greek word, εὐαγγέλιον, meaning “good news.” The preservation, creation, and transmission of knowledge are defining attributes of our civilization, and our educational system is an embodiment of the ever-expanding 21^st century “good news.” Education transforms lives, lifts generations out of poverty, nurtures our democracy, fuels innovation, and creates our future.

Our citizens are pleading; we must come help them, without judgment and in partnership. All education, regardless of scale or scope, is valuable. There is no dichotomy between knowledge and skills, but the guilt of our dilemma and our failure to act are very real.

The Endless Frontier and the National Science Board

N.B. I am pleased that the White House has announced that I am being appointed to the National Science Board (NSB), which provides advice and oversight for the National Science Foundation (NSF). In recognition of this honor and responsibility, I have been reflecting on how much the NSF has shaped my career over the past thirty-five years, and how much I owe the Foundation in return.

Anxious Proposal Writing

As a new, assistant professor in the fall of 1983, armed with a thin NSF proposal guide, I labored to write my first proposal. Like all young and inexperienced proposal writers, I struggled, searching for a lede that was both novel and compelling.  I wrote and rewrote, agonizing over each paragraph, late into the nights.  Sleep deprived, with the submission window at hand, I decamped to the local post office with a postage meter, where I mailed a set of proposal copies to NSF’s old Washington, DC. address at 1800 G St. NW, near the International Monetary Fund. 

Mind you, this was before electronic proposal routing, with far fewer certifications and checklists.  Paper forms were simply duplicated and stapled for mailing. The World Wide Web did not exist, the NSF supercomputer centers (including the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA)) had not been created, and NCSA’s Mosaic web browser not yet been released.  It was a time when a daily dialup CSNET connection was the state of the art among most computer science departments, and I knew a non-trivial percentage of the electronic world’s denizens blessed with an email address. (See Remembering Internet Dogs.) 

My first NSF proposal was about a then radical idea, one I had explored in my Purdue Ph.D. thesis, that supercomputers could and should be built from large collections of microprocessors. When I began that work, the Intel 8086 was still a new and novel product, and the IBM PC had not been released. Doubling down on this crazy idea, my friend and colleague, Richard Fujimoto, and I later wrote an MIT Press book about this approach. Fortunately, time has shown that we – and others – were right about microprocessor clusters.

A few months after submitting my first proposal, I mustered my courage and called the NSF program officer, hoping for good news. To my great joy, he kindly related that the proposal, entitled Performance Directed Design of Multimicrocomputer Systems, would be funded in the fall of 1984, with the munificent sum of $55,825. Although many tens of millions of research dollars have since followed, I will always be grateful for NSF’s initial investment in my future.

A Lifetime of NSF Connections

At the time of that first NSF proposal, I had no idea what arc my career might follow, nor how intimately I would be involved in computing’s future and its myriad connections to NSF.  These have included serving as computer science department head at Illinois, as NCSA director, as founding director of the Renaissance Computing Institute (RENCI) at North Carolina, and as the leader of the eXtreme Computing Group (XCG) at Microsoft. Throughout, I have been fortunate to be involved in building advanced computing infrastructure for scientific research (clusters, GPUs, and the NSF TeraGrid, now XSEDE), advancing high-speed networking, ensuring access to cloud services for science, and engaging in research collaborations of many forms.

When I wrote that first proposal, neither could I have then foreseen how much the world would change due to computing’s now ubiquitous influence. For a few musings on these effects, see NCSA@30: The Revolution Continues, Microsoft/NSF Cloud Research Partnership, and Reluctant Revolutionaries, the Trolley Paradox, and Ender’s Game. 

The one constant in all of my experiences has been the National Science Foundation. Over the years, I have been fortunate to engage NSF on many levels:

• As a researcher and an early Presidential Young Investigator (PYI) awardee, which made possible long-standing industry collaborations with Intel, IBM, and other companies
• As a member of many multi-institution research projects (e.g., on scalable I/O, virtual grids, and mesoscale weather forecasting)
• As a member of the Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) advisory committee
• As a proposal reviewer, workshop organizer, report writer, informal advisor, distinguished lecturer, member of National Academy studies, and member of both the President’s Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC) and the President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology (PCAST)
• As a witness in Congressional hearings about computing, science, and technology futures (e.g., this House Science Committee hearing)
• As a leader of a Major Research Equipment and Facility Construction (MREFC) project – the Distributed Terascale Facility (DTF) and Extended Terascale Facility (ETF) that were the TeraGrid
• As an industry partner – the Microsoft/NSF Cloud Research Partnership

All of that built on a long legacy of NSF innovation.

The Endless Frontier: Looking Forward

In July 1945, Vannevar Bush responded to a request from President Roosevelt with a prescient and insightful report, one whose significance and import echo across the decades.  In that report, entitled, Science: The Endless Frontier, Bush noted, “…without scientific progress no amount of achievement in other directions can insure our health, prosperity, and security as a nation in the modern world.” He further notes, 

… since health, well-being, and security are proper concerns of Government, scientific progress is, and must be, of vital interest to Government. Without scientific progress the national health would deteriorate; without scientific progress we could not hope for improvement in our standard of living or for an increased number of jobs for our citizens; and without scientific progress we could not have maintained our liberties against tyranny.

Bush’s seminal report, still worth reading, resulted in what we now know as the National Science Foundation, charged to both develop new knowledge and to train new generations of scholars.

I, along with many of you, have been blessed beneficiaries of that wisdom and foresight. I have also been fortunate to count many CISE leaders and NSF directors as friends and advisers.   It is in that spirit, that I am now pleased that I am being appointed to the National Science Board, where I hope to help the NSF continue to support and sustain scholars – young and old – and to advance scientific research and ensure national competitiveness.

Libraries: Arms Too Short to Feed the Mind

N.B. This essay was motivated by a conversation with Alberta Comer, Dean and Director of the University of Utah's Marriott Library.

From my earliest days, I have sought to plumb its great depths, gleaning knowledge here, seeking meaning there, and always, encountering fellow explorers on their own intrepid quests. I speak, of course, of that extraordinary thing we so prosaically call the "public library." Beyond mere edifice, a library is the embodiment of an ancient idea – that knowledge and its representations can and must be protected, preserved, and transmitted to future generations, that access to knowledge is not limited to merely the rich or the powerful, but available to all who seek insight and understanding.

This simple notion of knowledge preservation and transmission is a noble idea for which many a person has given their very life to defend. The burning of the great Library at Alexandria is an enduring lesson on the dangers of cultural loss. More recently, Ray Bradbury's dystopian account of book burning in Fahrenheit 451 is itself a cautionary tale of censorship and the dangers that lurk when the free exchange of ideas is suppressed, something we would do well to remember today.

Books have always been my friends. From my earliest days, my parents read to me, as I nestled in their laps. Then, when I could read myself, they took me to the local library. In our case, it was a humble, small town, Arkansas library with just a few thousand books. Nevertheless, for me, it was a magical place, filled with extraordinary things.

My new University of Utah colleague, Alberta Comer, the Marriott librarian, tells a similar story of her rural Oklahoma childhood and the transformative power of the library. Alberta's parents drove her many miles to reach the traveling bookmobile, where she discovered a world unknown. Decades later, her eyes still glisten with the memory as she tells the tale. My own eyes moisten, as I too remember and understand.

As a young boy, I remember staggering up to the library's checkout counter, arms filled with all the books I could carry. Looking up at the library clerk, I struggled mightily to set the stack on a counter that was above my head. In turn, the clerk looked down at me, smiled, and asked in the adult voice every child instinctively knows, "Are you sure you can read all of these?"

The implication of the library clerk's interrogative being, of course, that I had selected more books than a young boy could possibly read in the allotted time. I thought, but dared not say, for even children sometimes understand the power and importance of deference and discretion, that I was limited by the length of my arms, not by my reading ability. Given the choice – and longer arms – I would have taken twice as many books. Instead, I simply smiled and said, "Yes, I can."

I knew what the librarian did not. I had already set myself on a book a day habit that was both highly addictive and in equal measure, emotionally and intellectually satisfying. I neither knew the pronunciation nor the etymology of the word autodidact, but I intuitively understood its meaning. I could not delay; fierce urgency drove my actions. I had to hurry – there were so many books, so many things worth knowing, and so, so little time.

In that small town's store of humankind's intellectual treasure, I found transformative ideas. In those books, I felt the warp and woof of history; I saw the power of scientific revolutions; and I marveled at the extraordinary experiences of individuals both living and dead. I read of people, places, and things that once were and are no more, of those that never were but could be, and of those that lived only in the fecund imagination of others.

Like an idea-driven junkie craving an endorphin high, I read omnivorously – books, dictionaries, and encyclopedias. From aardvark to zyzzyva (I still haven't seen either one in the flesh), I read it all. I devoured popular books, some fluffy intellectual cotton candy, momentarily satisfying, but of little import. I read tomes that were as intellectually deep as they were physically weighty, laboring over each page. In that sense, Francis Bacon was right: "Some books should be tasted, some devoured, but only a few should be chewed and digested thoroughly."

I read books whose content was well beyond my years – poetry, literature, history, economics, and science – some of which I fully understood – and others whose full import exceeded the capacity of my limited life experience to appreciate. (Reading books on the My Lai massacre at age thirteen comes to mind.) Asimov, Bradbury, Ellison, Heinlein, and Browning, Chaucer, Doyle, Golding, Lewis, Shakespeare, I savored them and many others, an intellectual cornucopia that filled me with both knowledge and wonder.

In time, I came to recognize both the wisdom and the practical truth of Desiderius Erasmus' words, "When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes." At times in my life, I have unhesitatingly made that explicit choice – spending my last dollar on education – then subsisting on canned vegetables until my job provided enough to purchase a more varied diet. One can live for weeks or months on a meager diet, but a life without books, without ideas, is unimaginable.

From impassioned and zealous acolyte, I finally came full circle, having belatedly learned the most important lesson of all – I truly know nothing – having realized that true knowledge begins with the humility of ignorance. We are all ignorant, each in different ways. Recognizing that, we approach new opportunities as humble supplicants, seeking knowledge and insights from any who would teach.

Make no mistake, books have power, for they contain both knowledge and ideas. Knowledge transforms society; ideas change minds. And it all happens in a library, for books are still the best way to upload new ideas into the wetware of willing minds.

As Plutarch noted, "A mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled." Libraries blaze, but not, I pray, with the burning of books. Rather, libraries set minds afire, and those minds illuminate the darkness that is our collective ignorance.

The future is always burning with possibilities; it begins with each enlightened mind. Books and libraries are the kindling.

The Hopes of Parents and the Dreams of Children

N.B. Dakota State University President, José-Marie Griffiths, recently asked if I would deliver the university's December commencement address. José-Marie is a long-time friend and a former collaborator and colleague at UNC Chapel Hill. She and I also served together on the U.S. President's Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC). It was, as they say, a "no brainer" to gladly accept the invitation. I was also humbled to be recognized with an honorary doctorate.

In the past, I have offered advice on the art of giving commencement addresses. See, for example, my commentary in the Chronicle of Higher Education,  Commencement Speakers: Be Cool. You can judge whether I honored my own advice. And yes, that is me at my own college graduation.

Reflections

Thank you, President Griffiths, for that kind and gracious introduction. It is both a pleasure and an honor to be here today.

I am very mindful of the cardinal rule of speaking to a captive and restive audience – be funny and be brief, and when lacking in humor, by all means, be brief.

In that spirit, let me begin with two simple questions. Why are we here today? What are we celebrating?

Outstanding achievement? Yes, of course! Anticipation for the future? Absolutely! Celebratory photographs with family and friends? That too!

Looking back on those photographs, you will marvel at the youth of everyone in the photo, your parents and yourself. Then you will shudder at your attire. Trust me on this. In my case, neither the plaid, polyester suit in my commencement photo, nor my long, curly hair, have stood the test of time. Especially my hair! My wife now leaves the engine running when I dash in to get a haircut.

Humor aside, we are here today to celebrate something extraordinary, something that defines our very humanity – the hopes of parents and the dreams of children – shaped by public education and the dedication of teachers and scholars.

The Dangers of Knowledge Loss

Let's go back, way back, to the beginning. Two great inventions – agriculture and writing – have defined our civilization. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that writing created history. For the first time, knowledge could accumulate and be passed from generation to generation by more than oral tradition.

Today, it seems inconceivable that accumulated knowledge and insight could be lost. Yet knowledge and learning have always been at risk, and that remains true today.

While the United States continues to disinvest in education and scholarship, other countries are increasing their investment. Why? Because they know their country's most precious asset is an educated citizenry. It is both the best defense of democracy and the powerful engine that drives a knowledge economy. We need to remember that too.

That history I mentioned earlier has something to teach us on this topic.

With the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, a thousand years of intellectual darkness fell across Europe. During that time, it was the Arab world that preserved and extended science and mathematics. Our word "algebra" is a Latin variant of an old Arabic word. In these days of global fear and strife, it's worth remembering that we are united by common intellectual history.

Here's another illustration of the dangers of intellectual loss, one near to my heart as an amateur astronomer. In 1902, archeologists discovered a curious and puzzling device in an ancient shipwreck near the Greek island of Antikythera. Over 2000 years old, it was a gear-driven analog computer of astonishing mechanical and intellectual complexity, capable of predicting planetary motions. It took over 1500 years – 60 generations – and the Renaissance – for European engineering skill and astronomical knowledge to equal and then exceed that of the ancient Greeks.

The recurring moral of these and countless other tales – when we waver in our commitment to the pursuit of knowledge, even for a moment, the consequences can be grave. Why? Because each of us – graduates, faculty, citizens, and parents -- is connected by a chain of discovery and creativity that stretches beyond the dawn of history.

An Idea Embodied in a Place

As graduates, your place in that chain is what we celebrate here today, as both beneficiaries of the past and stewards of the future. Though a few of you may feel burdened by student debt, you all leave here today intellectually wealthy beyond measure, having dipped deeply into the well of human knowledge.

The precious contents of that well are preserved, expanded, and shared by teachers and scholars at public universities like this one. As professors, the thrill of adding a small piece to the great mosaic of human knowledge is extraordinary. One can live a lifetime in the moment of insight. But any teacher will tell you that thrill is equaled by the joy of sharing one's knowledge with others.

From them, you learned to teach yourself new things – to solve complex, ill-defined problems. This perhaps the most important skill you take with you today.

As citizens, our support for institutions of learning is a defining attribute of our culture and our civilization. A great university is an idea embodied in a people and a place – connected to the past by knowledge and wisdom – and connected to the future by society's commitment to the dreams of our children.

The Hopes of Parents and the Dreams of Children

As parents, you know an ancient truth, one held deeply in every heart. Every child deserves a chance – a chance to live a life defined by the content of their character, the scope of their talent, the reach of their dreams, and their willingness to work.

If you remember nothing else I say today, remember this. All too often, the circumstances of birth limit the future, with opportunity crushed and children's' dreams stillborn. This is wrong.

On this, I speak from sad personal experience. I grew up in poverty. Too young, you learn some ugly lessons about not wishing for what can never be, about being hungry and cold.

Yet even among the poor, there is a hierarchy. Kathy, one of my grade school classmates, occupied the bottom rung. She was dressed in handed down, hand-me-downs – a sweater that had seen better days before she was born – and worn out shoes.

Kathy lived just up the hill. In the third grade, she and I sat in adjacent seats.

One day, our teacher told Kathy, "I will not grade your homework. You erase and reuse your paper." It was a casual reprimand; it was a life changing moment, for both of us.

I knew the painful truth. I had watched Kathy practice her multiplication tables in the winter cold, using the only flat writing surface she had – the unpainted siding of her weather-beaten house.

I watched Kathy's face, and I saw her shame. I saw the light fade in her eyes; I saw hope disappear. I knew, with childhood certainty, that there was sin in the classroom.

I see Kathy still, practicing her multiplication tables in the cold, the dying dream of a little girl.

Kathy was lost, but I was found. I was a poor, unknown boy from the Arkansas hills, the son of a father with a fifth-grade education. This country invested in me, as a scholarship boy. It was a gift and societal act of faith that still beggars my imagination. It is a debt I can never repay, for reality has exceeded my dreams.

I've preached this message the world over. Talent knows no social or economic boundaries. The nurtured dreams of our children are our most precious asset. When we sacrifice investment in their future in the name of expediency, our hands are red with the blood of children's dreams. Kathy's dreams.

Education pays bountiful dividends, pressed down, shaken together, and running over. It connects us to the past, and it is our bridge to the future. All of you are powerful witnesses to that enduring truth.

The hopes of parents and the dreams of children – that is what we celebrate here today.

Looking Forward

As graduates, you leave here empowered by a valuable education, facing a world awash in change. As your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man wryly noted, "With great power comes great responsibility."

Here is my advice.

Meet and engage people unlike yourself. Learn to see the world through their eyes. It is both humbling and illuminating. Dare to take some risks. Make new and original mistakes – life's more interesting that way. Be involved in issues that matter. Make a difference in the world. Do good things for others, especially when no one is watching.

Pay your blessings forward. Someday, you too will harbor the hopes of parents and nurture the dreams of children.

Finally, remember what I told you about commencement photographs. If you want to borrow a plaid, polyester jacket, I'll be here by the podium. You are on your own when it comes to hairstyle; I have none to spare.

Congratulations! Thank you!

On Cognitive Loading and Intellectual Hierophany

Lately, I have been thinking, and I have been thinking about thinking. Fear not, there is no infinite regress nor Münchhausen trilemma, for I am not thinking about thinking about thinking ad infinitum, Rather, I am writing about both thinking and thinking about thinking.

Thinking is an increasingly difficult task in a world where a torrent of invasive stimuli, each tailored for maximum emotional and cognitive addiction, overwhelms one's sensorium. Even under the best of circumstances, cogitation – the focused concentration of an educated intellect – is an all-consuming endeavor. To become one with a set of ideas, to examine them from multiple perspectives, to explore their interrelationships, and to understand their implications, is neither a task for the fainthearted nor for those given to momentary reflection betwixt the churning froth of daily life. To think deeply, to appreciate subtlety, and to understand nuance requires uninterrupted time. By uninterrupted, I mean many contiguous hours, a luxury rarely vouchsafed unsought.

Cognitive psychologists have long studied cognitive load, the total effort used in the working memory. To think deeply about any topic, one must first fill one's memory with the relevant information. Because each of us has a finite working memory, each distraction or interruption consumes a portion of that memory, displacing previously internalized information. We need time to fill our working memories, and the more complex the intellectual endeavor, the larger the cognitive load. To create new insights can require weeks, months, and sometimes years of focused contemplation. To have something worth saying, one must first truly understand, having traced the complete graph of causal chains, the intellectual Feynman diagrams glowing softly in the dark of the still unknown.

Seeking a Metaphor

Despite use of such terms as working memory and interrupts, I am not suggesting humans are biological computers; that lure of ill-advised analogies and metaphors has ensnared too many unwary embracers. However, the analogy is not without relevance, even if only as a cautionary tale. On this, I speak from personal experience.

One morning many years ago, a computer science colleague remarked that I looked tired. I replied that I had slept poorly, consumed by a dream-cum-nightmare. I then elaborated, explaining that I had dreamed I was a hard disk under heavy load, exhausted from seeking in response to random requests. My colleague laughed and then nodded sagely, recognizing my suffering from the consequences of Little's Law, frequent interrupts, and a long work queue. Beyond irretrievably confirming me as a geek, I leave any Freudian interpretation of my dreamy incarnation as an active, though inanimate object as an exercise for the reader, noting only that my nighttime dream embodied my frustration with the day.

Quiet, I Need to Think

We all know the importance of time and reflection; our social commentary and behavior embody it. The phrases "I need some time to think," and "I will work on it tonight when I have quiet time," all capture an intuitive understanding of the need for cognitive loading.

In an age when too much discourse has the enduring substance of cotton candy, the opportunity to speak does not imbue one with the responsibility to do so. Quiet is a virtue with many facets, as the perils of pontificating pundits and instant political and social commentary illustrate. There is undeniable value in reflection before acting or opining, however learned, wise, and experienced one may be. (See Contemplative Reflection and Instantaneous Communication.)

One of the lions of early 20^th century business, Thomas Watson, Sr. captured that ethos in IBM's simple motto, "THINK." In that same spirit, the corporate embrace of shared workspaces to stimulate collaboration and, collaterally, to reduce office space requirements, has been tempered by the realization that the increased interaction is not without cost, namely the displacement of critical working memory by office minutiae. The human guinea pigs in these corporate social experiments long ago recognized this intellectual tension, as demonstrated by the proliferation of office headphones to reduce extrinsic stimuli.

Personal Perspectives

For me, thinking deeply, whether creating complex software, writing extended documents, or pondering theorems, requires long hours to internalize relationships and dependencies. I need time to load my working memory, and free my mind from other concerns. Any distraction or interruption consumes precious time to recover, and the recompense for any discontinuity, however brief, can be ten-fold in lost time. Conversely, the rewards of cognitive continuity are emotionally extraordinary; it is an intellectual and emotional bliss sustainable until physiology demandingly intrudes and Morpheus takes me away. When truly engaged, I can work, fully immersed, for ten or more hours without pause.

I am not unique in my love of long form thinking, but all too often, even those who of us who treasure both the experience and its rewards, forget how daily life conspires to prevent it. We fritter time away in inconsequential tasks of no lasting value. Like most things of great worth, long form thinking requires commitment and dedication before its rewards are manifest in insight and in substantive and learned discourse.

Coda

As we grapple with the evolving and uncertain future of the American experiment, the stunning disavowal of fact-based argument, and the seeming repudiation of public higher education as a common good, the criticality of extended thinking – assiduously, diligently, cogently – has never been clearer.

Come now, let us reason together. Learned, shared insight is the true hierophany.

The Utility of Uselessness: Freeing Minds

Abraham Flexner's 1939 article on the "Usefulness of Useless Knowledge" in Harper's magazine opens with the following paragraph:

Is it not a curious fact that in a world steeped in irrational hatreds, which threaten civilization itself, men and women-old and young-detach themselves wholly or partly from the angry current of daily life to devote themselves to the cultivation of beauty, to the extension of knowledge, to the cure of disease, to the amelioration of suffering, just as though fanatics were not simultaneously engaged in spreading pain, ugliness and suffering? The world has always been a sorry and confused sort of place-yet poets and artists and scientists have ignored the factors that would, if attended to, paralyze them. From a practical point of view, intellectual and spiritual life is, on the surface, a useless form of activity in which men indulge because they procure for themselves greater satisfactions than are otherwise obtainable. In this paper, I shall concern myself with the question of the extent to which the pursuit of these useless satisfactions proves unexpectedly the source from which undreamed-of utility is derived.

(I note in passing that the only monthly magazine whose continuous publication exceeds that of Harper's is Scientific American. Perhaps the greatest gift I ever received as a child was a discarded set of twenty years of Scientific American back issues. I read and reread them all – cover to cover – with religious fervor and spent many an hour attempting to replicate the experiments reported in the Amateur Scientist columns. It was a life changing experience, for I could not, then nor now, imagine a greater sobriquet than scientific American. It was first magazine to which I ever subscribed, and after forty years, I remain an avid and loyal Scientific American reader.)

Flexner was perhaps best known for the 1910 Carnegie Foundation-funded and eponymously named "Flexner Report," which rooted American medical education in germ theory and the scientific method. (One can read the original, book length report here.) He was also the founding director of Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study (IAS). It was in this role that he penned the Harper's article. The IAS hosts a copy of the original article here, and Princeton's press has recently republished the article, along with a commentary by the IAS's current director.

Almost eighty years later, the opening paragraph of Flexner's article seems both timely and prescient. We remain "steeped in a world of irrational hatreds" and as anti-intellectualism rises and support for higher education and basic research and scholarship declines, we are again questioning the "extent to which the pursuit of these useless satisfactions proves unexpectedly the source from which undreamed-of utility is derived."

From Curiosity to Utility

Our science and culture rest on the foundational discoveries and insights from 5000 years of recorded history. That same history tells a woeful tale of those societies that abandoned exploration. Yet still we question the importance of untrammeled curiosity as the sustaining rivulets that feed the life-giving stream that is innovation and discovery.

Prospective stories of discovery utility are often fiction, but retrospective ones are rooted in undeniable facts. Your cellphone's operation depends on both quantum theory insights and the explorations of the self-consistency of mathematics from nearly a hundred years ago. At the time, neither had any conceivable practical application. Your cancer immunotherapy rests on basic biological discoveries whose antecedents stretch back nearly as long. Today's curiosity and irrelevancy is tomorrow's enabler. Is there waste and failure? Yes, of course, but no seer can predict which ideas are transformative.

In his Harper's article, Flexner notes that discovery is precisely what happens when gifted minds are free to explore the unexpected and the unknown. Tellingly, he makes equally passionate arguments for both the sciences and the arts and humanities. In what is undoubtedly the article's most poignant paragraph, Flexner writes emphatically:

An institution which sets free successive generations of human souls is amply justified whether or not this graduate or that makes a so-called useful contribution to human knowledge. A poem, a symphony, a painting, a mathematical truth, a new scientific fact, all bear in themselves all the justification that universities, colleges, and institutes of research need or require.

Looking Forward

Today, debate rages about the value proposition of college degrees, the need for liberal arts education, and the importance of skills training. Others are questioning the return on investment from research and scholarship and the balance of investment in basic and applied work. Across this milieu, immigration policy and the international flow of students and scholars are hotly contested.

There are indeed practical socioeconomic considerations and competing investment priorities – civil infrastructure, social services, and national security; such is the nature of realpolitick. Yet there is something deeper, something intrinsic, something definitional – the ethos of a free  society that values knowledge and creativity for their own sake.

Each day, I am privileged to see the wonder of discovery; I witness the transfiguration of minds; I hear the music of the sublime; I see emotions caught on canvas. At universities, we free human souls; we give minds wings to fly. This is, as Flexner said, all the justification anyone needs. I will defend it to my last breath.

Research, Education, Engagement and Bovine Transport

It's been said many times. The accelerating pace of change is challenging extant social structures, economic mobility in the United States is declining, and many millennials may never experience the economic success of their parents. Globalization and automation are increasing manufacturing efficiency and output while requiring fewer workers with different skills. We face continuing global population growth and demographic shifts; sectarian forces are creating a global diaspora; environmental sustainability and climate change are existential threats; health care costs continue climbing while accessibility recedes; and social justice and equality remain elusive. Unsurprisingly, people are deeply worried about their future and that of their families, regardless of political persuasion. In turn, this stress has stirred the cauldron of political rhetoric, while reasoned debate, political compromise, and purposeful, strategic action have become ever more difficult.

As states continue to grapple with revenue shortfalls and mandatory spending commitments, others are publicly questioning the value of higher education as an essential public good. Meanwhile, the great recession has accelerated the decline in state funding for public universities, limiting their ability to respond, and forcing rises in tuition to help offset declining state support. Given these challenges, how do we in academe address the wicked problems now facing our global village?

Public University Roles and the Social Compact

By analogy with William Jevons' four functions of money, let me suggest that we in research universities have three functions, each of which matters in equal measure. First, we create new knowledge; that is the essence of research and scholarship, the defining attribute of a research university, one that distinguishes it from institutions focused solely on teaching. Second, we transmit knowledge and skills to a new generation; we educate and inform, not just with long-known facts but also with fresh insights from recent scholarship. Finally, we engage society with our knowledge and expertise; at our best, we address societal issues and challenges with new found capability that enlightens, empowers and improves the lives of others.

Though basic research, by definition, often lacks immediate or obvious applications, when we fail to communicate and demonstrate the importance of research via clear and telling examples of past success or future possibility, we abrogate our support. (That indispensable smartphone rests on decades of basic research in physics and computer science.) When we fail to connect education to the needs and opportunities of our citizens, we lose our relevance. (Those pharmacists, nurses, dentists and medical doctors trained by universities serve our communities.) Most dangerously, when we fail to engage society in times of need, we sacrifice our place of honor and respect. (Our partnerships on flood management and our support for business startups help ensure the well-being and economic success of our communities.)

And the Horse You Rode in On

Polls show that professors still rank far ahead of used car salespeople and members of Congress in both respect and trust, but we have slipped a few notches in the public's eye. Sometimes, our language and mien often give credence to those who believe academics are the very embodiment of the Ben Franklin adage, "He was so learned that he could name a horse in nine languages; so ignorant that he bought a cow to ride on."

When we take umbrage (a fine academic phrase, but one not commonly heard on any street non-adjacent to a university) at public questions and criticism, denigrating it as uninformed pique, we often confirm Franklin's caricature of one possessing knowledge but lacking wisdom. We must be willing to reflect on the reasons for criticism, engage in thoughtful discussion with our critics, and respond appropriately. As that old Scot, Rabbie Burns put it,

O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae mony a blunder free us,
An' foolish notion:
What airs in dress an' gait wad lea'e us,
An' ev'n devotion!

Collaborative Partnership: The Future

As academics, we must engage our stakeholders and partners in their context and address their legitimate problems and concerns, and we must do so honestly, humbly and thoughtfully. In so doing, we will help them and also help ourselves, educating one another. Solution to complex, wicked problems requires many insights, diverse perspectives, new ideas, and determined commitment. We in academia do not have all the answers, but we do have knowledge, skills and insights that are of value.

We begin by knowing ourselves, as Alexander Pope's timeless opening couplet from his Essay on Man suggests:

Know then thyself, presume not God to scan
The proper study of mankind is Man

We abandon academic hubris and a sense of entitlement. We talk less and listen more. We roll up our sleeves, get our hands dirty, and engage society. When we do, the true conversation begins.

Now excuse me, while I go mount my bovine steed, er horse, and head into town.

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Shaping the Message, Using the Medium

N.B. This essay also appeared on the University of Iowa's Next Generation Humanities PhD blog.

Marshall McLuhan's famous aphorism, "The medium is the message," has taken on new poignancy in a world of tweet storms, Snapchat imagery, cellphone videos, 24 hour cable news, and ubiquitous digital communication. Within this dizzying cacophony, Paul Simon's prescient lyrics from The Sound of Silence, which found a new audience in Disturbed's recent cover, ring ever more true:

And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people, maybe more
People talking without speaking
People hearing without listening

How does one gain mindshare and precipitate reflective analysis when Andy Warhol's fifteen minutes of fame seems so quaint, a Q rating window both languorous and prolix? If you have braved my prose to this point, you have already followed a cognitive causal chain that spans five decades of cultural referents, something increasingly rare as attention spans in our hyperkinetic echo chamber asymptotically approach the de minimis.

Thus, it is no surprise that by today's standard of truncated discourse, the long form, reasoned and buttressed scholarship of a Ph.D. dissertation may seem an anachronism, an obsession that Cap'n Ahab would recognize as his own. All too often the dissertation is an embodied variant of Twain's classic book, praised but not read. This "write only" attribute is one of the biggest challenges we face in academia. Increasingly, we are writing only to one another, and all too often, to almost no one, using a vernacular and style both learned and discipline idiosyncratic.

Let's begin with the fundamental question. As scholars, why do we write? We seek to preserve the insights from our scholarship and add a new tile to the great mosaic of human knowledge, an entirely secular but consecrated goal whose motivations can be traced to the birth of writing itself. Equally importantly, we seek to energize others with the power of our ideas, shaping and reshaping social and intellectual discourse. Simply put, we want to be remembered, and we want to make a difference.

Laid bare, these laudable, twin goals of knowledge preservation and transmission need not be pursued via the same media or mechanisms. In this sense, McLuhan was absolutely right; the medium and the message are inextricably intertwined, mutually shaped by evolving culture and technology. We ignore these shifts at our peril, as the demise of many daily newspapers and news magazines has shown.

Let me be clear; I am not suggesting we abandon the long form dissertation. (See my comments in an earlier blog post on reflective communication.) Rather, I am positing that we remember our elemental objectives and disaggregate the historically convolved elements of academic scholarship: chronicling and archiving (dissertation writing); provenance and attribution (dissertation committee approval); and dissemination and engagement (publication and communication).

A book length dissertation has long been the permanent chronicle of the new scholar's research. However, this is mere tradition, derived from 19^th century German academic practice. Like the man's legs in Lincoln's story, a dissertation needs to be only long enough to reach the ground (i.e., cogently encapsulate the research), and it can – and should – take whatever form and length are most appropriate to the task. Choose a medium appropriate to the message.

Likewise, writing a dissertation should not be a consensual and extended, sadomasochistic partnership between advisor and advisee. The goal is not to solve one of life or nature's most vexing problems nor to include a reference to every possible prior insight. Rather, it is to demonstrate competence to conduct independent scholarship and record sufficient evidence of having done so. It should not be a decade long, soul enervating experience.

The key role of a dissertation committee is assuring the originality and sufficient intellectual contribution of an aspiring scholar's work. This certification of provenance and attribution is the committee's affirmation of scholarly worthiness, as documented in the dissertation.

Finally, successful scholarship gains currency in the marketplace of ideas. As academics, we teach and prize artful and effective communication, yet all too often we fail to practice what we preach. Yes, plumbing the depths of a novel idea often requires extended and subtle explication, but that is not the place to start. It begins with engagement and meeting others on their literal, intellectual, and emotional territory, not our own. Why might the idea matter to others? How can it advantage them? What is the attraction and the excitement? How to we reach an audience, both in academia and broader society?

The Three Minute Thesis competition captures the essence of this idea, as do public speeches and popular articles. In this light, a tweet isn't such a bad idea after all. All these are the beginning of a conversation, not an extended colloquy. In the spirit of an aphorism attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, "Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication."

And no one dared
Disturb the sound of silence

Make some noise; use all the available media; rise above the cacophony; make a difference.

Remembering Joel: A Teacher’s Impact

N.B. In memoriam: Joel Martin, a man who changed my life. It is also an homage to all who teach.

I grew up in a small town – a very small town – in the foothills of the Arkansas Ozarks. Of all the things a young boy from the backwoods might aspire to be, a scientist would have been an unlikely choice, and an even more unlikely outcome. It's no exaggeration to say that an amazing teacher named Joel Martin is a major reason why I've been privileged to spend my life as a researcher, working at the intersection of computing and the sciences. Though I mourn Joel's recent passing with a heavy heart, I celebrate the life he lived and the students he touched. (Joel's obituary is here.)

Over forty years ago, he was my science teacher for five years, from junior high school through high school. (I told you the town was small). He was *the* science teacher, and I took every course he taught. Along the way, we taught one another many other things, about imagination, about belief in the possible, about the power of observation, and about the importance of critical thinking when resources were few and precious.

Laboratory Conversations

My senior year of high school, I worked as Joel's laboratory assistant. It was his "play time," his only hour of non-classroom time during the school day. By that point, we were close, as much friends as student and teacher. We devised laboratory experiments for his classes using our meager, irreplaceable supplies. With no budget for equipment or chemicals, sometimes that meant using twenty-year-old supplies in rusted containers and hoping for the best. They were empirical experiments in a literal sense. Substituting similar compounds, based on the periodic table, almost always led to fizzle rather than a student engaging chemistry demonstration. I soon came to appreciate Marvin the Martian's lament about the lack of a kaboom.

More than the often errant experiment preparation, though, we talked about science, philosophy, life and the joy of discovery. It was during one of those conversations that he did something extraordinary, something that remains burned in my memory after over forty years. In response to a scientific question, he said, "You know more about that than I do." He knew many things I did not, but in this case, it was the truth.

That small gesture of intellectual respect meant so much to me. It was a bond of trust and an expression of his faith in my knowledge and my capability. Beyond that, he shared my passion and enthusiasm, and he savored my excitement when I was teaching myself differential calculus – limits and derivatives were cool, even if nobody else in school shared that particular intellectual thrill. All I knew was that scientists knew calculus, so I'd best get started.  (At the time, the school was too small to offer any mathematics classes beyond algebra and plane geometry.)

As we worked in the classroom, I talked about my dreams of being a scientist, of living a life of the mind. Of course, I had never met a practicing scientist, and it seemed farfetched that anyone from our little town could become such a thing. Along the way, I realized this had been Joel's dream too, one cut short by circumstances and family obligations. This I could understand, for the wildest dream my parents harbored for me was that I might get a college education, where someday I might find happier economic circumstances. Joel gave me hope; he believed in my dream, even when I was filled with doubts. He knew implicitly what Plutarch, the Greek essayist, meant when he wrote, "A mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be lighted."

And Yet It Moves!

I took two biology courses from Joel, the standard one required of all students and the advanced course with just a handful of fellow classmates. I noticed that there were entire chapters of our textbook, all on evolution, that he skipped with nary a classroom reference. I asked him one day, when other students were not around, "Why aren't we talking about evolution? We both know it is the critical underpinning of all of biology." With a wan smile, Joel answered, "Of course it is. But if I teach that, I will lose my job."

It took some courage on my part to even ask the question, because my family and I, and most of the community, were conservative, evangelical Christians. Yet I found myself facing the age old conundrum, one encountered by so many, of belief system and obviously contradictory scientific facts. Or in the apocryphal words of Galileo, "E pur si muove" (And yet it moves). Whether evolution or climate change, I have learned to never fear the questions, and always follow the facts, wherever they may lead.

This was also my first introduction to the power of social forces to stifle intellectual inquiry and reject overwhelming scientific evidence. It also made me realize the difficult choices some teachers must make, then and now. Joel was right; he would have lost his job, and we would all have been the less for it. That conversation has remained our mutual secret until now. Parenthetically, it is why academic tenure matters so much.

Science Fair Road Trip

Perhaps no expression of Joel's faith was greater than his support for my science fair experiment. The little school had never had a science fair before, but he decided we should, and I wanted to make him proud. In a forward nod to biomass production, my project was entitled, "Hormonal growth stimulation of unicellular and colonial algae." Joel helped me order the algae and gibberellins from a research supply company, and I built a controlled light apparatus, then measured the growth of Chlorella and Volvox in response to various gibberellin doses using our only good microscope. (My father was not happy that the experimental apparatus sat in our living room for six weeks. But, it was the only heated room in the house, and I needed something approximating a controlled environment. Fortunately, my mother intervened, as only mothers can.)

After I was fortunate enough to win the biochemistry division of the regional science fair, Joel packed my display in the school's driver's education car and drove all night to take me to the state science fair, which was held that year in Magnolia, Arkansas, on the state's southern border. There, I was surprised (and thrilled) to take first prize in biochemistry,  and I just missed a trip to the national science fair. When we returned, Joel insisted that I set up my little display at the PTA meeting. He then  embarrassed me by calling me to the front of the auditorium to present a medallion for science excellence. I will never forget how he beamed at me like a proud father.

Thank You, My Friend

I believe each child is born a scientist, with an innate curiosity about all things. Nurturing, supporting, and shaping this most fragile of things, unbounded curiosity, is the privilege and sacred duty of teachers. This is not mere epistemological sophistry; it is the quintessence of our humanity. Joel lived this philosophy.

In the spirit of Chaucer's cleric, Joel was the embodiment of the adage "Gladly would he teach, and gladly learn." In my mind's eye, I see him walking into school with his briefcase filled to overflowing with books and papers; I hear him explaining ecosystem dynamics, covalent bonds, and mitosis; but most of all, I remember the passion and excitement in his voice.

Joel, my friend and mentor, yours was a life well lived. On behalf of generations of students, thank you for believing in our dreams.

Because of you, I am a scientist. I will always be in your debt.

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