^ J U ^ ^ s r THE NEW AMERICAN SCHOLAR

(jk*—- Ernest L. Boyer President

The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching

University of California, Davis Davis, California

May 23, 1990

This evening I've been asked to talk about the "scholar-teacher" in American

higher education, and I'd like to begin by taking a backward glance to review briefly

how the role of the professoriate has changed throughout the years.

When Harvard College was founded in 1636, the focus was on the student.

Teaching was a central, even sacred, function, and the highest accolade a professor

could receive was the famous one Chaucer extended to the clerk at Oxford: "Gladly

would he learn, and gladly teach." Educating "the whole student" was at the heart of

the colonial college experience, and for almost two centuries that's what scholarship in

America was all about.

Following the War of Independence, the focus of higher learning in this country

slowly shifted from the shaping of young lives to the building of a nation. In 1824,

RenssaLaer Polytechnic Institute was founded in Troy, New York. RPI, according to

historian Frederick Rudolph, was a constant reminder that America needed "railroad

builders, bridge builders, and builders of all kinds." The Land Grant Act of 1862

linked higher learning to the agricultural revolution. When Lincoln Steffens visited

Madison in 1909, he said, "In Wisconsin the university is as close to the intelligent

farmer as his pig-pen or his tool-house."

At the turn of the century, David Starr Jordan, president of Stanford, declared

that the entire university movement in this country is toward "reality" and

"practicality." To put it simply, the scholarship of teaching had been joined by the

scholarship of building. Meanwhile, another view of scholarship was emerging.

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In the late nineteenth century, American academics who studied at the

distinguished German universities of Heidelberg and Humboldt were profoundly

influenced by the emerging scholarship of science. Men like Daniel Coit Oilman, who

founded Johns Hopkins in 1876. were convinced we needed a "new" kind of university

in America. And this vision of scientific scholarship, which at first was the inspiration

of a few, soon became the imperative of the many.

After World War II, a veritable army of newly minted Ph.D.s invaded campuses

from coast to coast. They were determined to clone the research model they

themselves had experienced. Their success was summed up well by Talcott Parsons in

1968 when he wrote that the typical professor in America now resembles the scientist

more than the gentleman-scholar of an earlier tradition.

Thus, by the late twentieth century, higher education priorities in America had

profoundly shifted from the colonial college to the European university, and

increasingly the focus was not on the student but on the professor, not on general,

but on specialized knowledge, not on loyalty to the campus, but on loyalty to the guild.

During a Carnegie Foundation study of undergraduate education a few years ago, one

professor said: "My community is on the WATs line, not my colleagues down the hall."

Thus, in spite of the great diversity of American higher education, there were

only two models by which the prestige of a college and university might be measured.

First, "the Berkeley model," with its world-class research, and second, for smaller

colleges "the Amherst model," with top students and a faculty profile similar to

Berkeley's.

But the vast majority of campuses fell somewhere in between—with faculty

caught in the crossfire of two traditions. To put it simply, we had broadened the

mission of higher learning in America without broadening the dimensions by which

scholarship might be defined. And while academic hierarchy in this country has been

pulling in one direction, student diversity has been pulling in another,

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In the early 1960s, I was at Santa Barbara and watched a former teacher

training and home economics institution being folded into the University of California

system. It was a wrenching process, as faculty expectations of the old scholarship

were being dramatically redefined. I then joined the State University of New York,

where we struggled to protect diversity in a sixty-four campus system, at a time when

everything was "drifting upward," when research and publication became the single

yardstick of success, and when teaching was not highly prized.

THE NEW AMERICAN SCHOLAR

What do we do about all of this? Is it possible to strike a balance between the

old scholarship and the new? Recently at The Carnegie Foundation, we've been

working on a report called Scholarship Reassessed. In this study, we seek to move

beyond the tired old "teaching versus research" debate. We're asking what we think is

a more authentic question: "What does it mean to be a scholar?" And in response

we've identified four dimensions of scholarship that should, we believe, be the new

paradigm by which priorities of the professoriate are defined.

The Scholarship of Discovery

We begin by reaffirming the scholarship of discovery. We celebrate those who

are on the cutting edge of research, who ask penetrating questions, and who

experience the exhilaration that comes from advancing human knowledge. Vannevar

Bush, whose vision inspired the creation of the National Science Foundation, put it

this way: "Universities . . . are the wellsprings of knowledge and understanding. As

long as they are vigorous and healthy and their scientists are free to pursue the truth

wherever it may lead, there will be a flow of new scientific knowledge. . . ."

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In the Carnegie report, we conclude that sustaining this creative process,

affirming the centrality of research, is absolutely crucial if scholarship is to be

vigorously advanced.

The Integration of Knowledge

In addition to the scholarship of discovery, we also need the scholarship of

integration. We need academics who go beyond the isolated facts, who make

connections across the disciplines, and who help shape a more coherent view of

knowledge and a more integrated, more authentic view of life.

The work of geneticist Barbara McClintock, the Nobel laureate, illustrates that

everything is one, that there is no way to draw a line between things. McClintock's

research confirms the absolute dependence and relationship of variables on each

other.

Frank Press, former president of the National Academy of Sciences, has

suggested that the scientist is, in some respects, an artist, too. He has observed that

the magnificent double helix which broke the genetic code, is not only rational, but

beautiful as well. These comments reminded me of watching the lift-offs from Cape

Kennedy on television. When the spacecraft lifts successfully into orbit, the scientists

and engineers don't say, Well, our formulas worked again!" Most frequently they

respond, almost in unison, "Beautiful!" They choose an aesthetic term to describe a

technological achievement. And the world-renowned physicist Victor Weisskopf, when

asked. What gives you hope in troubled times?" replied, "Mozart and quantum

mechanics,"

Anthropologist Clifford Geertz, of the Institute for Advanced Study, in his essay

"Blurred Genres," suggests that the old categories of knowledge are becoming obsolete.

"It is a phenomenon general enough and distinctive enough to suggest that what we

are seeing is not just another redrawing of the cultural map . . . but an alteration of

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the principles of mapping. Something is happening," Geertz says, "to the way we think

about the way we think."

I'm convinced the most exciting scholarship going on today is in the new

"hyphenated" disciplines, in psycho-linguistics, in nuclear medicine, bio-engineering,

and the like—in what Michael Polanyi, of the University of Chicago, calls the

"overlapping [academic] neighborhoods."

Over thirty years ago, Mark Van Daren wrote that the "connectedness of things

is what the educator contemplates to the limit of his capacity." Van Doren concludes

by saying that "the student who can begin early in his life to think of things as

connected . . . has begun the life of learning." And this, it seems to me, is an

authentic dimension of scholarship that also must be vigorously pursued.

The Application of Knowledge

Beyond the discovery of knowledge and its integration, we also need the

scholarship of application. We need professors who can creatively relate the theory of

the discipline to the realities of life. This uniquely American dimension of

scholarship—the usefulness of knowledge—is rooted in the land-grant colleges, in the

polytechnic institutes, in the normal schools—institutions that in the nineteenth

century were, as Woodrow Wilson put it, "in the nation's service."

Today, our shorelines are polluted, the ozone layer is depleted, schools are

dangerously deficient, our cities are imperiled. Scholars urgently need to confront the

crises of this century, just as they responded so imaginatively to the needs of

agriculture and industry a century ago.

In the end, theory cannot be divorced from practice. And the good news is that

professional schools—from architecture, to education, to medicine—increasingly are

linking scholarship to real life. They re demonstrating on city streets, in classrooms.

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and in clinics that new knowledge not only can be applied, but new knowledge also

can emerge from practice.

Donald Schon, of MIT. writes about what he calls the "reflective practitioner."

And in defining the role of the professoriate today, we must give full dignity and full

status to the scholarship of application.

Teaching

Finally, our study affirms the scholarship of teaching. In the Prairie School in

Racine, Wisconsin, there's a poster in each classroom that reads: 'This room is a

magic place. We are making tomorrow," Sentimental, perhaps, but in the end

scholarship in its richest, fullest sense also is reflected in great teachers whose

influence is enduring. And this influence surely starts long before a student comes to

college.

Several years ago, I couldn't sleep one night, and instead of counting sheep 1

thought about all the teachers I'd had. I recalled my firs^grade teacher, who on the

first day of school said, "Good morning, class. Today we leam to read." I was taught,

very early, that language is the centerpiece of learning. And fifty years later, when I

wrote a book on the college experience in America, I included a chapter entitled,

"Language: The First Requirement." Great teachers live forever!

I recalled Mr. Wittlinger, a high school history teacher, who through exciting

classroom discussions and projects, taught me about democracy in action. And I

recalled Prof. Joseph Smith, who read Shakespeare aloud in class and taught me that

great literature is not only about the majesty of words, it's also about the deepest

yearnings of the human spirit. Great teachers live forever?

I then asked myself what made these teachers truly great, and four common

characteristics came to mind. First, each outstanding teacher in my life was

knowledgeable and well informed. There was something there to teach. Second, the

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truly great teachers could relate their knowledge to the readiness of students. Third,

the great teachers in my life promoted creative, independent thinking. They

encouraged students to leam on their own. Finally, the outstanding teachers were

open, authentic human beings who not only taught their subjects, but also taught

themselves. There is, in fact, a moral dimension to great teaching, as students leam

from mentors to think critically, to be honest, to be carefully reflective, to

communicate with care, to shape values. When teachers go into a class, they teach

not only what they know, but who they are.

For several years, I've been teaching undergraduates at the Woodrow Wilson

School in Princeton This is a public policy school. Students there are expected to

work together on a common project, I've been enormously impressed by the creativity

of this approach to learning, and I've been delighted to see students track down new

sources and reach their own creative new conclusions. Today's undergraduates will

live in a world that is being politically, economically, technologically, and economically

transformed. Old ideologies and traditions are dramatically breaking down. And the

task of the new scholar-teacher is to empower students to think boldly, challenge old

assumptions, and dare to go beyond the propositions and the prejudices of their

professors.

The world is forever changing. In the days ahead we will need scholar-teachers

who encourage active, not passive, learning in the classroom, teachers who help

students to become creative rather than to conform, and teachers who also help

undergraduates leam to cooperate rather than compete, since these are the

characteristics that will be required for human survival in the year 2000 and beyond.

Robert Oppenheimer, at the 200th anniversary of Columbia University, in an

address on the scholarship of teaching, concluded that "it is proper to the role of the

scientist that he not merely find new truth and communicate it to his fellows, but that

he teach, that he try to bring the most honest and intelligible account of new

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knowledge to all who will try to learn," And surely this means inspiring Juture scholars

in the classroom.

There are, in school, four interlocking dimensions of scholarship, beginning

with the scholarship of discovery. Research must continue to be the centerpiece of the

intellectual life, and our commitment to research must expand, not diminish. But to

avoid pedantry, we also must affirm the scholarship of integrating knowledge. To

avoid irrelevance, we must support the scholarship of applying knowledge. And

finally, let's give new dignity and new status to the essential act of teaching, to keep

the flame of scholarship alive.

This new paradigm of scholarship has meaning for the faculty. Could we

embrace the full range of faculty talent, make creative use of the diversity of the

faculty, and create on campus a reward system in which all forms of scholarship

would be defined and appropriately rewarded?

But this new paradigm of scholarship has significant implications for colleges

and universities as they seek to clarify their mission. With this broader definition, a

campus could describe with more confidence and courage its own distinctive mission,

working out the formulas and the relationships between the various forms of

scholarship to fit uniquely their own resources and traditions.

And could we also celebrate diversity over a professional lifetime? In our report

Scholarship Reconsidered, we suggest something called "creativity contracts," in which

some faculty might decide that over the next three to five years, for example, they

would focus on the scholarship of discovery, doing less teaching, Then for the next

several years, they might engage in the scholarship of applying knowledge. An

individual professor would shift the focus several times over many years, allowing for

great renewal and growth along the way. Across a lifetime, intellectual interests may

shift, and we need to allow for this natural, creative process.

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Finally, this new approach to scholarship might even relate to the work

students do. In fact, the term scholarship throughout history was most often used for

students, not for teachers, It occurred to me that if students were seen as scholars,

we might organize the undergraduate experience with these four dimensions of

scholarship as the goal. Could all students engage in the discovery, integration,

application, and transmission of knowledge—achieving standards of excellence?

John Gardner wrote that a nation is never finished. You cannot build it and

leave it standing as the pharaohs did the pyramids. It has to be rebuilt with each new

generation. It seems to me that this unfinished agenda is true for colleges and

universities as well. The challenge for our generation is to define scholarly work in a

more compelling, more efficacious way, one that affirms the full range of academic

talent on the campus.

DAVIS-T4.DOC. (SPC ELB.JH/Ib.i. June 13. 1995