Fall Convocation 1995Santa Clara University Introduction: Santa Clara has launched a planning effort which will shape our future. I have been reflecting on this as I jog around the neighborhood "by dawn's early light." What we are doing is more like a fitness program than going on a diet. In the early nineties the university faced budget cuts that forced us to go on a collective diet. We not only tightened belts, we trimmed down by reducing costs across the board. Now we have a new challenge--not to diet but to embark on a collective fitness plan. Like any good fitness plan it seeks to make us more vibrant and vital by building strength, increasing flexibility, and increasing vitality. If this planning effort were to produce only a blue print it would be as useless as the rowing machines and Nordictracks gathering dust in a million closets across America. The university will become more vibrant and vital only by using our talents, by exercising our imagination, commitment, and scarce resources to strengthen our distinctive mission, by creating a culture of innovation and continuous efforts at excellence. The administration cannot be a personal fitness trainer to cajole and nag us all into shape. Building our strength, increasing our flexibility, and improving our long range endurance can only come if we take on the collective responsibility to strengthen the university even more. Planning 1990-95: The University is currently in good shape thanks largely to you and the 1990-95 Plan whose central purposes have been realized. Let me outline just a few examples of accomplishments from that Plan:
There are many other examples. The evidence is clear and compelling -- planning works. Our current effort will be driven by the new University Planning Council chaired by Steve Privett and coordinated by Don Dodson. This effort needs to capture the momentum of the 1990-1995 Plan in deciding where we will go over the next decade. My remarks today will address how we can shape our future. I look to the future with confidence, and I am committed to doing my part toward getting us in vibrant and vital shape: by encouraging staff to simplify administrative processes and improve services, and by encouraging faculty to use their time and energy primarily for learning, teaching and scholarly activities, not bureaucratic tasks. Change: A word about our rapidly changing, at times hostile, environment. Contrary to what some believe, higher education is not locked in the past or dangling in the "winds of change" -- though these winds have often blown through the halls of academe. They blew powerfully at the turn of the 20th century when American higher education adopted the European research university model at Johns Hopkins, Harvard and Chicago. Santa Clara has its own history of change. Founded by two Italian Jesuits, Santa Clara is the realization of a dream to establish a college in the new frontier of the California Gold Rush. At the heart of that dream was a deeply rooted commitment to promoting Christian faith and Jesuit tradition. You might find this statement by the noted historian, Herbert Bolton, amusing. "Not every Black Robe was fit for service in the missions. Some lacked the temperament or the physical stamina, some could not learn the Indian languages. Such were given employment of a different sort. More than one Jesuit who found himself unsuited for the frontier was sent to be professor or president in some college, amid softer surroundings." Santa Clara grew from fragile beginnings into a modern university. At its centennial on March 19, 1951, even with its schools of business, engineering and law, Santa Clara was still seen more as a college than a university. Time magazine called it "a place apart from the rest of the brash and bustling state." Over the past five decades (and there are a dozen or so current faculty who have served in each of those decades) we have transformed Santa Clara from a small "college-like" university into a complex, modern university. Just as Santa Clara is not the same as it was in 1851 or 1951, neither will it be the same university in 2001 when we celebrate 150 years of Jesuit education. As Peter Drucker in his book, Post-Capitalist Society, says: over the next few years, we are in for a sharp transformation. For us, this "transformation" means changing shape, shaping up or down so that we are more fit, more vibrant and more vital as a distinctive educational body. We need to raise new questions about what Jesuit education means. Today we continue a conversation which has been addressed in past convocations as well as departmental and faculty/staff fora. I am convinced that clarity about what we do as a Jesuit university will produce a much better Santa Clara. Jesuit Education We can advance our conversation by asking: What is Jesuit education at Santa Clara? How is it distinctive? And, what is it intended to do? Jesuit education is not a univocal concept or a timeless blueprint. It is a cluster of ideas and ideals which direct academics towards humane living. This clustering is characterized best by what one scholar called "the genius of the AND." Today, I want to touch on only three of the "ANDs" of Jesuit education.
1. Catholic and Jesuit tradition. Jesuit education integrates tradition and transformation. The absence of integration perpetuates a problem identified by the late novelist, Wallace Stegner. In his novel, Where The Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs, Stegner penned a portrait of the people who settled the West. I quote:
The settlers were driven by dreams but rootless. They had a thirst for the new but were hindered from becoming a people of communities and traditions. Higher education today faces problems identified by Stegner. Often too many universities are a collection of specialists without a common purpose, a shopping mall of competing vendors, not a community united by common memories and committed to a common future. To achieve its greatest potential, Santa Clara must unite around a common purpose and build its sense of community: we must be a community driven by dreams and rooted in human experience. We must be individuals with an abiding thirst for the new and a people of community and tradition. Real transformation begins by remembering and celebrating our Jesuit and Catholic intellectual tradition. Recently, Margaret Steinfels, editor of Commonweal magazine, defined tradition as "a locus for questioning, a framework for ordering inquiry, a standard for preferring some sets of ideas over others; tradition is a record of a community's conversation over time about its meaning and direction." Tradition is different from traditionalism. Tradition is the living voice of the dead while traditionalism is the dead voice of the living. Our Catholic and Jesuit tradition means that we continue the questioning and inquiring of great intellectuals like Augustine and Thomas, artists like Flannery O'Connor and Shusaku Endo, and creative theologians like Karl Rahner and our own graduate, Lisa Sowle Cahill. They listened attentively to the living voices of those who had gone before them. They were not overwhelmed by the cultural wars of their times because they knew what had created their culture. They experienced the hopes and fears of their day but they did not get lost because they had the compass of tradition to chart new paths to hope. A critical appreciation of tradition gets us out of Whitehead's "parochialism of time." We are not the first generation to struggle with freedom and commitment, personal growth and social responsibility, power and innocence. The university should ensure that we will not be the last generation to draw on the long memory of Western and other traditions. Getting out of the parochialism of space and time is what transcendence means. Jesuit education does not seek a transcendence that is abstract and remote, but the life pulse of humanity everywhere. It seeks to study tradition so that we come to share "a sense of transcendence that opens us to universal values." Where traditionalism is defensive about and intolerant of new questions, tradition thrives on challenges. The dialectic between faith and culture does not happen simply because we have a department of religious studies or liturgies in the Mission church. It happens in every discipline where fundamental questions are asked, questions that touch the life-pulse of humanity. The dialectic between faith and culture breaks down when narrow academic specialization silences any questions about meaning, truth, and value. Santa Clara will be "catholic" (small "c") in the true sense when it refuses to let academic specialties become sectarian but encourages everyone to be open to every question. Inevitably, some of those questions will be religious, probing the origin and destiny of humanity and the planet. Santa Clara would fail to be "Catholic" (with both a small and capital "C") if it did not encourage respectful dialogue between people of different faiths, and no faith, since no tradition has a monopoly on wisdom or grace. It would fail to be a genuine university if it did not encourage those questions to be raised and addressed with the utmost seriousness. 2. Intellectual Rigor and Humanistic Values. The Catholic and Jesuit intellectual tradition can be found in the development of the curriculum which must be shaped by intellectual rigor and humanistic values. From the very beginning, the Jesuit curriculum has been associated with humane letters. Ignatius' 16th century innovation was to extend the notion of humanistic studies to include mathematics and the natural sciences, particularly astronomy and physics. Jesuit schools were also among the first to introduce music, theater, dance, opera and even sports into the curriculum. Jesuit scholars from these new universities brought science, mathematics, literature, and arts, from the halls of the academy to the market place of the world. Jesuits in Southern France began the world's first chain of theaters in the seventeenth century, and Matteo Ricci brought Western science and mathematics to the Emperor's court at Beijing. Jesuit scholars began interreligious dialogue with Hinduism and Buddhism. In Jesuit education, intellectual rigor is a given; being shaped by humanistic values is a requirement. The last four centuries have witnessed the explosion of new knowledge and of new academic disciplines. Santa Clara's history is one of incorporating professional disciplines like engineering and law into the curriculum, its challenge has been to shape that part of the curriculum by a genuine ethical and moral humanism. The great challenge for contemporary university education, public and private, is to assist the student to integrate this knowledge and these disciplines into a coherent whole. The new Santa Clara Core Curriculum structures this quest around four questions: Who am I? What is the world like? What is my relationship to the world? and How should I act? The Santa Clara Core, then, is not a series of disconnected courses to "get out of the way" on the way to a major, but an instrument for integrating learning, both old and new. The curriculum builds on its traditional strengths and adds World and United States cultures and technology. The rationale for the Curriculum is rooted in our Statement of Purpose, Guiding Principles and Goals, and exemplifies the Ignatian ideal of "educating the whole person." Educating the whole person means that a Santa Clara education is student-centered. It does not mean that the institution does something to the student; rather the student learns how to learn and acquires a passion and skills for lifelong learning. Here, faculty mentor as well as teach, counsel as well as collaborate with students in scholarship. All staff, especially student development, provide educational programs and services that develop personal responsibility and leadership skills to serve the community. Educating the whole person demands not fragmented but integrated learning; it means, as we say in Goal number four, students will learn best by integrating rigorous inquiry, creative imagination, reflective & intelligent engagement with society and a commitment to fashioning a more humane and just global society. This interdisciplinary emphasis best prepares our graduates for the demands of a rapidly changing world. The undergraduate Core Curriculum -- marked by intellectual rigor and humanistic orientation, and rooted in our distinctive mission -- can serve as a model for the development of departmental and graduate curricula. 3. Transcendent and Pragmatic. Jesuit education also integrates the transcendent and the pragmatic, particularly in its distinctive orientation towards faith and justice. Jesuits did not seek to transcend the problems of the world by flight to a monastery but sought to change the world by going into the marketplace and the city square. They looked for the transcendence that echoed in the pulse beat of humanity. Their response to transcendence was pragmatic: what could be done to remedy ignorance, liberate the oppressed, and confirm wavering faith? Today we capture the relation of transcendence and pragmatic action in the language of faith and justice. A faith that loves and redeems the world must struggle against the forces that systematically oppress women and men, that keep them from the full life that God intends for them. Four centuries ago, Ignatius planted the seed for this focus when he wanted graduates of Jesuit colleges to use their knowledge to improve society ... that they might vigorously and intelligently leaven their social environment with the doctrine and spirit of the Reign of God. That Reign is not exclusive since its core values of compassion, truth, justice and peace are fundamental human values embraced by all persons of good will. In the early 1960's, the Second Vatican Council called on all Catholics to make their own "the joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the people in this age, especially those who are poor or afflicted." The Catholic intellectual tradition was challenged by the Council to be in "solidarity with the entire human family...." by addressing the global problems of "hunger, poverty, illiteracy, oppression, war, international rivalries, and the whole purpose and meaning of human existence." That remains our challenge. For over 20 years and most recently in March, the Jesuit Order has affirmed its contemporary mission to be the service of faith and the promotion of justice which embodies God's love and mercy. This orientation is to be realized by all Jesuits and their institutions, including universities. Our task is to incorporate this orientation into a Santa Clara education. First and foremost, we must address the question of faith and justice as a university. What does this mean for Santa Clara in these last years of the twentieth century? Let me reflect on one great challenge in our country which the university ought to address. In the past year we have witnessed a revolution in the national consensus about the responsibilities of society to its poor and marginal members. The cry has been raised "to end welfare as we now know it." Contemporary debates over medical care, affirmative action, environmental protection, aid to education and public housing, may reflect an historical shift of the nation's conscience. We may be witnessing the end of a national consensus that society has a responsibility to future generations of children and to help the poor and marginated. The principles that have guided the past sixty years of social programs are under intense scrutiny. Many seem to be convinced that entitlement programs create the dependence they were supposed to eliminate. Many wonder whether a free market can teach them virtues that government assistance has undermined: personal responsibility, self-esteem, initiative, and independence. The university should continue to be a forum for this great national debate, lest our students and society be shaped by TV soundbites and the facile slogans of politicians who win elections by making scapegoats. Reasoned discourse about justice must begin with dispelling myths. Have social programs unbalanced the national budget or caused the widespread economic insecurity of the average American? Why did the economic gains of the 1980's go to the top twenty percent of Americans while the middle class shrank and the bottom twenty percent got markedly poorer? Scholarly inquiry needs to discover and present the facts: Have affirmative action programs actually benefitted the groups they were intended to serve? Have they in fact caused extensive reverse discrimination against white males? What impact have immigrants had on the economic life of California? How does that compare with the impact of moving away from massive defense production? Have state governments been any more efficient in administering social programs than the national government? And what are criteria for assessing "efficiency" in such cases? A university driven by a transcendent pragmatism would ask whether it is right and just to move toward a more polarized society: those who have technology and those who don't, those who are in service jobs and those who expect to be served, those whose children go to exclusive prep schools and those whose children are locked into inner-city decay. Beyond learning how to ask these kinds of questions, we need to develop in our students the habits of mind and heart to do something about these issues. Transcendent principles direct pragmatic action. These efforts need to be driven not by self-interest but by the faith which believes that we are all valuable and that we all share common aspirations, dignity and promise. When it listens to the pulse beat of humanity, the quest for justice will not be divisive or vindictive but will rediscover the common ground of civil life that most Americans once held. Santa Clara has a proud tradition of graduating women and men who have dedicated their lives to public service and non-profit enterprises, and others in the private sector who have contributed time and talent to their communities. How can we continue to promote the conscience and compassion that have nurtured these competent graduates who have given so much back to their society? How do we help our students learn to use their gifts to earn a living and to be compassionate towards others especially children and those in need. This is the reason Jesuits founded and continue to work in educational institutions. As Ignatius put it: "for the improvement in learning and living ...for the greater glory of God" and the common good of society. Then, learning will shape living; scholarship will make that learning well informed of the new realities of our world. These high ideals in educating the whole person are not often held together in American higher education: religious faith and academic rigor; technological acumen and humanistic values; economic analysis and ethical policy development; transcendent ideals and pragmatic effectiveness. When we (staff and faculty, alums and parents) work together with our students, they will learn better to live richer lives as persons, as neighbors and as citizens of this global community. That is what truly gives glory to God. The Future of Santa Clara: If we anchor the process of transformation in our Jesuit tradition, our planning efforts will not merely tinker with the status quo. We have an opportunity to refresh the distinctive concerns that make Santa Clara unique. We should not underestimate the effort it will take to overcome the inertia bred by our relative prosperity and success over the past twenty years, nor should we underestimate the rewards of revitalizing our community to respond to and meet today's challenges. Our constant questions cannot simply be "What is our market?" or "How can we do well measured by current academic conventions?" but more importantly "How can we be a community of life-long learners?" And, "How can we make Santa Clara University better tomorrow than it is today?" And, "How can Santa Clara help make society more humane and just tomorrow than it is today?" These are the questions the University Planning Council will help us collectively respond to. In my own response to these questions, let me suggest some goals for us to achieve by our 150th anniversary in 2001: three transcendent and two pragmatic ones. 1. Santa Clara will be marked by greater distinction, recognized because of our academic quality and personal attention to students and for setting the pace in educating men and women of competence, conscience, and compassion. Our graduates will understand the ever-changing environment and know how to leaven society intelligently and ethically for the common good. And, academic quality will be measured primarily by the quality of student learning, teaching and scholarship. 2. Santa Clara will transform itself. Our planning will not merely help prepare Santa Clara to adapt to an increasingly challenging environment, but will transform it into the best 21st century university it can be. At both the University and departmental levels, planning means linking -- learning, resources, performance and future directions -- both to our Statement of Purpose and to the world beyond our campus. It means aligning College and School planning with University planning. This is a process and culture of thinking and acting more than the drafting of lengthy plans. It is ensuring consistency between what we say about ourselves and who we are and what we do at every level of the university. Quality of learning and service will be the principal objectives throughout the university. 3. Santa Clara will be a community of scholars in which every person embraces the best of Jesuit education: where students integrate the love for learning with living a life of faith that fashions a more just and humane global community; where faculty and staff teach as much by example as by the content of their courses and their jobs. An essential dimension of being a community of scholars, of striving for quality, means Santa Clara must re-double its efforts to increase ethnic diversity in the entire community (faculty, students and staff). And, now two pragmatic goals: 4. Santa Clara will establish a merit scholarship endowment of $3M to enable us to increase the quality of our student body at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. 5. Santa Clara will increase its overall endowment from the current $180M to around $300M. The increases will primarily focus on strengthening the academic core, particularly funds for professorships and student financial aid. My closing remarks are some introductions and a brief story. Today, we welcome the leadership of the Alumni Association: Judge John McInerny, Marte Formico, and Marie Barry; and we welcome Pat Callan, Executive Director of The California Higher Education Policy Center and an alumnis of Santa Clara. You might recall that Pat opened last year's convocation. Now the story. Part of my optimism and hope in our future comes because of a gift that was received two weeks ago today. I thought it was to be a "social" lunch with Mike and Linda Markkula who without any fanfare put a letter on the table as they came into the Faculty Club. Thinking it was a note about Kristi's wedding (Kristi, their daughter, graduated from Santa Clara in 1990) which was to take place the following Saturday, I did not pick it up until part way through the meal. I was surprised and speechless. Linda and Mike had that morning transferred stock worth more than $5M to Santa Clara. It was the largest single, cash gift ever received by Santa Clara. The gift is an endowment for the Ethics Center and a new major academic facility. The endowment reflects a special interest of the Markkula family in ethics in the curriculum and programs that help the community think through ethical dilemmas. A quote from Mike speaks well of Santa Clara: Linda and I have always believed in the importance of people with different backgrounds coming together to work toward common goals. Combining individual knowledge and commitment, people really can make a difference in the world. That's what Santa Clara is all about - encouraging and training students to become competent, compassionate, committed leaders, and lifelong learners. My hope is that the clustering of friends -- like the Markkulas, alums, all of you -- the ideals of our Jesuit education, and the goals to be developed by the University Planning Council will help Santa Clara become a refutation of Stegner's image of the West and a reflection of the genius of the AND. My hope is that Santa Clara will be "in motion, driven by dreams.." and rooted. Santa Clara will be "filled with energy and a thirst for the new and a people of communities and traditions...." Thank you. Paul Locatelli, S.J. |
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