The Dean's Blog

Let's Hear it for the Profs

It's easy to say nasty things about professors (I should know), but without outstanding faculty members we would not have a successful Honors College and Honors programs. Over the past three years 365 professors have taught honors classes and supervised honors theses! They represent every college and school on the campus and constitute about half of the fulltime faculty. Yesterday most of them packed the Alumni House for a reception in their honor. Chancellor White, Provost Smith, and I had a chance to thank them for what they are doing. We wanted everybody to know that the University’s administration, at all levels, values their efforts.

The most important thing about these professors’ engagement with Honors students and other highly motivated undergraduates is that they are inviting these young people into their own world of research and creative endeavor as junior colleagues and are introducing them to the big ideas and challenging problems of their fields.

Most of us who teach and conduct research in a university setting can think back to a moment when we first encountered the subject that got us hooked and drew us into the profession that we love. This process is being repeated here at Arkansas every day in the interaction between professors and undergraduates. In the year that I’ve been here I have come to realize just how good our faculty is and how routinely professors share their enthusiasm about discovery and creativity with students.

As the Chancellor is fond of saying, the University of Arkansas aspires to be “a nationally competitive student-centered research university serving Arkansas and the world.” Many fine universities are trying to be student-centered and research-focused at the same time, but few are doing both at a high level. The trick is to integrate the two goals. The University of Arkansas is accomplishing just that, and in my opinion this is what will distinguish us as one of the nation’s premier universities.

Hats off to the professors who are making it happen!

Posted September 13, 2006 at 8:21 AM by Robert McMath

Freshmen, then and now

Classes start next week, and the campus is coming back to life. Some of the new freshmen are already here, and you see them with their families carrying more stuff than can possibly fit into half a dorm room. They look a little nervous. This reminds me of my first day of classes as a new assistant professor (don’t ask when). I arrived at Georgia Tech with a brand new PhD, excited but a little nervous. Was this really what I wanted to do for the rest of my life? The students I taught that fall convinced me that it was. Many were freshmen, some from small towns and the first person in their families to go to college. After just a few weeks with them I knew this was the life for me. One of the courses I taught was U.S. history since the Civil War, a required course. It is one of the most challenging courses for someone in my field to teach well, but one of the most important. I’m teaching it this fall, my first time to offer it here at Arkansas. The hardest part about preparing for the course is deciding what to leave out so you have time for the most important stuff. The course stretches from Reconstruction after our Civil War to the reconstruction of Iraq amidst what looks like another civil war, from steam-powered industrialization to RFID and nanomanufacturing, from religious camp meetings in the countryside to suburban megachurches. My number one goal is to make room in the course for serious discussion of the history that is being made during our students’ own lifetime (remember that most of this year’s freshmen were barely out of diapers when Bill Clinton was inaugurated). If my students leave with a sense of how past and present interact and with confidence that they can make their own history I’ll be happy. If they decide the class is helpful to them they should thank those Yellow Jacket freshmen from the dim and distant past.

Posted August 15, 2006 at 8:23 AM by Robert McMath

Saving (a part of) the world

Like a good many of our professors and students, Tom Soerens is off campus these days—way off. Soerens, an associate professor of civil engineering, is on the upper reaches of the Amazon River in Columbia, where he is working with villagers to design and build safe and sustainable water system. This project, now in its third years, has involved graduate students and a senior design team who designed a system that local people could build and maintain using readily available materials. Yesterday I had coffee with Danis Copenhaver and Drew Cogbill, who will be leaving for Belize in two weeks. Danis and Drew graduated in May and will be spending next year in Dangriga, Belize, where they will lay the groundwork for a U. of A. international service learning program. Through this faculty-led program students will assist community members in addressing issues of health and education, and also further their own education in ways that just can’t happen in a regular classroom. As soon as Danis and Drew are settled, we’ll have a link to their blog. Tom, Danis, and Drew are representative of scores of Arkansas faculty and students who are putting their skill and commitment to work addressing fundamental problems that effect over a billion of the world’s poorest people. They are not alone. Students and professors are joining in a worldwide effort focused on a common goal of helping the poorest of the poor gain a foothold on the ladder of wellbeing. The economist Jeffrey Sachs, author of THE END OF POVERTY, says volunteers like this are creating “weapons of mass salvation.” Not a bad way to describe what these razorbacks abroad are up to, and there is room for more.

Posted July 26, 2006 at 5:30 PM by Robert McMath

Mix and Match

Check out this comment from a blogger named David Warlick: "My son sits in his bedroom with a TV, VCR, DVD player, video game system, a small video camera, a digital camera, a computer, and a Video iPod. Each product was initially designed to perform a specific task, allowing us to be entertained or to record images and sound. My son, however, spends his time mixing them together, drawing audio and video from his video games and from movies, and mixing them with video and still images that he and his friends make to produce a different and entertaining product. Information, to him, is never finished. It’s just a raw material with which he can make something new. It is important, I believe, that we look at a curriculum in the same way, that it is raw material, something we can mix in different ways to produce learning experiences that help our students teach themselves." What if professors and students approached education in this way? How would it change our relationship? What would the "finished product" look like? Do you know folks at the U of A who are thinking this way?

Posted July 11, 2006 at 4:13 PM by Robert McMath