Dear PASSHE Colleagues:
Last week, I had the opportunity to visit Millersville University with Dr. Khalid Mumin, Pennsylvania’s secretary of education; Dr. Kate Shaw, deputy secretary and commissioner for postsecondary and higher education; and Dr. Daniel Wubah, Millersville’s president. Meeting with students pursuing various majors in the College of Science and Technology, we saw first-hand how the university partners with high schools, community colleges, and regional employers to develop degree pathways that lead to jobs in high demand in and around central Pennsylvania.
Students spoke about their experiences — reflecting on internships and other work-based learning opportunities. Faculty spoke about the innovations they were introducing to support students traveling along these pathways. Employers spoke to the critical role Millersville plays in helping them to recruit and keep talent in Pennsylvania. And we saw from their perspectives the value of degrees grounded in a general education. It was a fantastic day because it shone a bright light on the energy and dynamism that is apparent across all of our PASSHE universities. We are relevant, we are current, we are energetic, entrepreneurial, and focused on quality, and yes, we are open for business!
We also know change isn’t easy. We realize this from many perspectives, but here I will focus on our work lives and the tectonic shifts they have undergone. I think about the significant shifts that have occurred just in my career and am gobsmacked by the breadth of areas in academe that have seen transformation. Thirty-five years ago, when I started as a newly minted faculty member at Glasgow University in Scotland, I was working at a 573-year-old university teaching in a field that focused on the past. Student grades were expressed as Greek letters for which there were no numerical equivalents (to what would you equate a “beta double minus” or even more problematically an “alpha gamma” – perhaps connoting flashes of brilliance but sloppily presented?).
The World Wide Web was a year or two away from being created, the library was accessible via a card catalog, and while email existed, access to it from home required a noisy (and scarce) dial-up modem. There was “remote connectivity” (it was called a phone). And there were biofuels (known quaintly as “wood”).
Work life was idyllic. It was simple.
Yet, my interest in understanding how systems-thinking can catalyze learning would lead me to undertake very different roles that I had never imagined before, things like building data archives and digital libraries, investing in nationwide higher education reforms to improve higher education access and outcomes for historically underserved people, and leveraging the connective and collective power of systems to help all students. Soon, I found myself as a scholar of history — one who studied the immutable and settled (if still vigorously debated) — now focused on the future and the changes it brings.
Work life got more complicated.
Amid change, we ask how we can be resilient without becoming cynical. How can we empathize with those involved or impacted by the work? How can we share reflections with and learn from peers making similar journeys — giving voice to uncertainty and doubt — without undermining standing? How can we do this without denying our physical, psychological, and emotional health?
At our recent Board of Governors meeting, our West Chester colleague Dr. Tina Chiarelli Helminiak — Tina serves as the faculty liaison to our Board by virtue of her role as chair of the PASSHE Faculty Council — spoke about the importance of acknowledging the hard work everyone has done to cope with the transformational changes we are seeing in higher education nationally and here at home in our State System. And she is right.
I hit on the same set of themes in my remarks to the Board, drawing from my inaugural address in January 2019, in which I reflected on what I had learned from my first 14-campus PASSHE tour. Here’s what I said then:
I found an amazing collection of institutions populated by incredible people — students, faculty, and staff who take quite seriously why they are there and have immense pride in our mission.
I found universities that provide engaging experiences you see at the best liberal arts colleges, only at a public university price.
I found universities that are unique in the educational programs they offer. Their distinctiveness stands out in quiet, confident defiance of a misguided, inaccurate public narrative that we are somehow all the same.
I found universities that are responsive to changing societal needs. Again, defying a different public narrative, they offer a broad array of educational opportunities, focused increasingly on those aligned with employer needs — in healthcare, business, STEM, and other areas.
I found universities that house some of the most innovative practices I have seen in higher education. I’ve seen a lot in a 35-year career self-consciously located on the leading edge.
And above all, I found a profound sense of optimism amongst people – our faculty and staff who had at that stage experienced deep cumulative budget cuts for over a decade — but who nonetheless had a desire to hope and to create our future—not only to survive, but to thrive.
Five years and many more campus tours later — through all the shift, change, pandemic and recovery, and integration — I find the very same things to be true. I feel the very same way.
And at the same time, I recognize and won’t ignore the fact that the level and pace of change we have experienced and that you have managed through also brings exhaustion, burnout, and some level of fear. That is real and will undoubtedly re-surface as conversations initiated by Governor Shapiro take place about how public higher education evolves in the state. (You can read more about his proposals for higher education HERE.)
In case it is helpful, here is what I plan to do as those conversations unfold: remain focused on two things — 1) what is best for the students of Pennsylvania, and 2) how can I best support you — my colleagues, our faculty and staff — in the work. These two objectives work hand-in-glove and will remain at the forefront for me as the commonwealth considers the future framework for public higher education.
The Governor has said this is the start of the discussion, which could take quite a while because this scale of change does not happen quickly. Let’s remember this is a marathon, not a sprint.
One further point I must add. In speaking to a new vision for public higher education in Pennsylvania, references have been made to the commonwealth’s broader higher education system as being broken. I don’t need to have a point of view on that, but what I know for a fact is that you — the people who have built our universities and our system and who run them and who work in them in service to our students, their communities, and employers are not broken. You are underserved, maybe, with regard to public investment, but you a not broken. Not by a long shot. You are tremendous, and today, I am as proud and admiring of what you do as I was the first time I had the privilege of touring our campuses.
We do not live in an acknowledgment culture. I regret that, but I won’t bend to it.
Thank you for everything you do, for the commitment you show to your university, our system, our students, and this commonwealth — each of you plays a critical role in shaping our future.
With much appreciation and the deepest gratitude,
Dan
