Ernest L. Boyer

Description

Having served as chancellor of the State University of New York, the United States commissioner of education, and president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Ernest L. Boyer (1928–1995) was one of the most prominent leaders in the history of American higher education. Arguably more aware of the challenges facing colleges and universities than any of his peers, the administrative decisions and the writings he left behind provide a wealth of possibilities for subsequent generations of administrators and faculty members. In this book noted higher education scholars examine some of the most pressing crises in higher education today, pairing their thoughts with relevant selections from Boyer's important writings—some published here for the first time. The volume provides answers to questions perceived to be plaguing academe, while reintroducing readers to the optimistic and insightful wisdom of Ernest L. Boyer.
Foreword
Shaping the Debate: A Reflection on Ernest L. Boyer’s Approach to Education Policy
Mary Taylor Huber

Acknowledgments

Introduction
Facing Not So New Realities
Todd C. Ream and John M. Braxton

1. The Financial Crisis
John J. Cheslock

Thinking About the Unthinkable: Tuition and Student Fees in Public Higher Education
Financing Higher Education: Reshaping National Priorities

2. General Education and the Quest for Purpose
Cynthia A. Wells

The Core of Learning
The Core Curriculum: A Critique of Uncriticized Assumptions
General Education: The Integrated Core

3. Leading Academic
David S. Guthrie

Leadership: A Clear and Vital Mission
Academic Leadership: Some Personal Reflections
Reflections on Higher Education in the 1980s
Rebirth of Leadership from the Ashes of Bureaucracy

4. (Re)Defining Scholarship
Claire Howell Major

Naumburg Memorial Lecture
The New American Scholar
Assessing Scholarship

5. Crisis in Student Community
Robert D. Reason, Ezekiel W. Kimball, and Jessica Bennett

Education 2000: New Wine, New Bottles
The Greatness of a University
The Educated Heart: The Social and Moral Imperatives of Education

6. Access to College is About Equality of Opportunity
Vasti Torres

Boyer Calls for Equity in Five-Point Strategy
Higher Education: Access and Excellence
Celebrating Diversity: Building Community
Foreword: History of Empire State College
Excellence and Equity

7. Which Public to Serve
Kelly Ward

Higher Education: Priorities for the Future
The Engaged Scholar

Conclusion: Inspiring Hope
Todd C. Ream and John M. Braxton

Afterword: Education for the Common Good
Marty Kaplan

Bibliography
Contributors
Index

Sujets

• History of education
• Tertiary education

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 16 mars 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438455662
• Langue: English

Extrait

Ernest L. Boyer
Ernest L. Boyer
Hope for Today’s Universities
Edited by
Todd C. Ream
and
John M. Braxton
Cover image of Ernest L. Boyer courtesy of the Boyer Center Archives at Messiah College
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2015 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY www.sunypress.edu
Production, Ryan Morris Marketing, Fran Keneston
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ernest L. Boyer: hope for today’s universities / edited by Todd C. Ream and John M. Braxton.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4384-5565-5 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-4384-5566-2 (ebook)
1. Education, Higher—Aims and objectives—United States. 2. Universities and colleges—United States. 3. College teaching—United States. 4. Learning and scholarship—United States. 5. Boyer, Ernest L. I. Ream, Todd C., editor of compilation. II. Braxton, John M., editor of compilation. LA227.4.C727 2015 378'.01—dc23 2014015530
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
~ To Kathryn Boyer ~
With grace and dignity, she worked beside her husband, Ernest L. Boyer, to expand the aspirations that educators everywhere afford the next generation.
Contents
F OREWORD
Shaping the Debate: A Reflection on Ernest L. Boyer’s Approach to Education Policy
Mary Taylor Huber
A CKNOWLEDGMENTS
I NTRODUCTION
Facing Not So New Realities
Todd C. Ream and John M. Braxton
C HAPTER O NE
The Financial Crisis
John J. Cheslock
Thinking About the Unthinkable: Tuition and Student Fees in Public Higher Education
Financing Higher Education: Reshaping National Priorities
C HAPTER T WO
General Education and the Quest for Purpose
Cynthia A. Wells
The Core of Learning
The Core Curriculum: A Critique of Uncriticized Assumptions
General Education: The Integrated Core
C HAPTER T HREE
Leading Academe
David S. Guthrie
Leadership: A Clear and Vital Mission
Academic Leadership: Some Personal Reflections
Reflections on Higher Education in the 1980s
Rebirth of Leadership from the Ashes of Bureaucracy
C HAPTER F OUR
(Re)Defining Scholarship
Claire Howell Major
Naumburg Memorial Lecture
The New American Scholar
Assessing Scholarship
C HAPTER F IVE
Crisis in Student Community
Robert D. Reason, Ezekiel W. Kimball, and Jessica Bennett
Education 2000: New Wine, New Bottles
The Greatness of a University
The Educated Heart: The Social and Moral Imperatives of Education
C HAPTER S IX
Access to College Is About Equality of Opportunity
Vasti Torres
Boyer Calls for Equity in Five-Point Strategy
Higher Education: Access and Excellence
Celebrating Diversity: Building Community
Foreword: History of Empire State College
Excellence and Equity: Black Issues in Higher Education
C HAPTER S EVEN
Which Public to Serve
Kelly Ward
Higher Education: Priorities for the Future
The Engaged Scholar
C ONCLUSION
Inspiring Hope
Todd C. Ream and John M. Braxton
A FTERWORD
Education for the Common Good
Marty Kaplan
B IBLIOGRAPHY
C ONTRIBUTORS
I NDEX
F OREWORD

Shaping the Debate
A Reflection on Ernest L. Boyer’s Approach to Education Policy
Mary Taylor Huber
It’s an honor to write the foreword to this unique tribute to the legacy of Ernest Boyer, one of the most influential educators of the late twentieth century. Taking advantage of the newly digitized Boyer archive at Messiah College, the contributors to this volume have chosen a selection of Boyer’s speeches and interviews from his years as chancellor of the State University of New York, U.S. Commissioner of Education under President Jimmy Carter, and president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. They have also explored how his approach to the education debates of those times remains relevant today.
What a great pleasure it’s been to read these selections from Boyer’s work, to remember the stories they tell, revisit the arguments they offer, and hear again the voices of the distinguished men and women they quote! Those of us who enjoyed the good fortune to work with Ernest Boyer, as I did during his last decade at the Carnegie Foundation in Princeton, New Jersey, will recall this rich repertoire of stories, arguments, and quotes as a familiar feature of our office culture. Readers of Boyer’s formal writing, too, will recognize in the speeches and interviews published here the lively narrative, vivid imagery, and compelling appeal to higher values that were signatures of his thinking and presentational style.
Yet there are reasons to engage with Boyer today beyond the delight of discovering, or rediscovering, a fine speaker, elegant writer, and keen observer of the educational scene. Certainly his goals for the Carnegie Foundation, where he served as president from 1979 until his death in 1995, were ambitious. Boyer often told his staff that he wanted Carnegie’s work to “shape the debate.” The 1980s and early1990s were an era of reform at all levels of education, but also a time that was ideologically fraught, and Boyer achieved prominence through his skill at balancing competing interests and perspectives, reconceptualizing problems, and keeping the big picture in view.
Boyer believed deeply in this approach. When undergraduates in the public policy seminars he and I taught at Princeton University were planning position papers, Boyer would advise them to look beyond what seemed politically possible at the moment. Because the political climate could change so quickly, he explained, the sounder base for policy is what is desirable in the long term. It’s wise, he would say, to keep larger goals in sight.
This bias toward the long term is one reason why Boyer’s legacy resonates still. Yes, he was skillful at addressing contemporary policy problems. But he always connected them to questions about the nature and role of education in individual and community lives. Thus, while Boyer’s work can be read as a window into the educational issues of his own day, it also looks forward in time and can be read, as the contributors to this volume do, for its continuing relevance. Indeed, the premise of this volume is that Boyer’s general approach to shaping the debate and his “hopeful spirit” (as editors Todd Ream and John Braxton put it) are very much worth bringing back into our educational discourse today.
To illustrate, let’s examine a corner of the academy where Boyer’s contributions are not a distant memory, but a still potent source of inspiration. Consider the discussion about the nature and breadth of faculty scholarship, in particular as it pertains to the scholarship of teaching and learning. Claire Howell Major touches on this area in chapter 4 on “ (Re)Defining Scholarship .” What I’d like to add is a sense of how Boyer’s idea of a “scholarship of teaching” has been elaborated over the years since its introduction in one his most important reports, Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate (1990).
Scholarship Reconsidered was published during a time of transition for U.S. colleges and universities. “Challenges on the campus and in society have grown,” Boyer stated, “and there is a deepening conviction that the role of higher education, as well as the priorities of the professoriate, must be redefined to reflect new realities” (1990, p. 3). How could higher education recognize faculty efforts to bring the results of specialized research together and make them speak to a broader audience, to address pressing social and environmental problems, and to improve teaching effectiveness, especially with regard to the increasingly diverse students who were now coming to college? The answer, according to Boyer, was to identify, evaluate, and reward the intellectual demands of this work as scholarship, along with basic research. In his formulation, the scholarships of discovery, integration, application, and teaching should be seen as “four separate, yet overlapping functions” of the professoriate (p. 16). As Russell Edgerton, then president of the American Association for Higher Education explained in endorsing this argument: “The problem is not simply one of ‘balance’—of adjusting the weights we attach to teaching, research, and service—but of reclaiming the common ground of scholarship that underlies all these activities.”
The notion of a “scholarship of teaching” initiated a vigorous debate about college pedagogy that has traveled far in the past twenty-some years. As my colleagues and I explained in our recent book (Hutchings, Huber, and Ciccone, 2011, p. 2):

In concert with a broad shift in focus from teaching to learning among thoughtful educators, “the scholarship of teaching” has become “the schola