The University of New Hampshire and the Future of its State 
C. Peter Magrath
Academic Convocation
November 21, 2002
You are bold risk takers in inviting an alum to speak at this convocation. Why? Because alumni, especially when they are a few years out as I obviously am, are prone to romanticizing their years at the dear old U, reminiscing at length, and telling stories that may not pass the test of flinty-eyed academic accuracy and analysis. I commend you for your boldness.
True to form, I must take a couple of minutes to note the year 1951. I came to Durham from a truly tiny high school operated for military dependent children in what was then occupied Germany. I was awed and intimidated by the huge size of this school with its enrollment of about 3,000 students, and faithfully wore my beanie hat during the first semester. (For the many of you who do not know what a beanie hat is I will not describe it, except to note that it has no relationship to the more recent beanie babies!) And I also witnessed early on a phenomenon of that period known as the panty raids—at a great distance from all those immature male students with raging hormones.
What I really took away from my four years at UNH was a superb education at what was somewhat patronizingly referred to as a "good undergraduate college," though there were those who used somewhat more earthy language in describing my university as a "cow college." (I have, by the way, never understood the derision implied in that term, since not only are cows considered sacred in another culture, but they are extraordinarily useful and productive animals.)
That was then, and this is now: The University of New Hampshire continues to be in fact and aspiration an outstanding university for undergraduate students. It is now both that and a significant center for graduate education and research—the discovery and application of knowledge for social purposes in ways that fulfill its mission as a land-grant university.
I want to comment on these matters, and learn from a dialogue with your distinguished faculty panelists and a discussion with all of you. The central issue is the role of the University of New Hampshire as a national land-grant university that serves its state, region, nation, and the world, by doing three things—three things that all are about education. These are teaching and learning which go together; discovery or research—the quest for new knowledge whether or not it is to be immediately applied in ways deemed practical. The third is engagement with communities and others in genuine partnership ways out of the knowledge and skills that we bring to the table. (I have no ideological opposition to the use of the term "service," but it has come, I fear, to have the implication of being some kind of obligatory drudge work that we have to do as opposed to being part of our mainstream obligation as providers of education.)
I will return to these three exciting responsibilities and opportunities that are both a part of the history of this and other land-grant universities, but are also their mandate for the future. But before going further I want to say a few words about the land-grant concept—especially its meaning in this, the 21st century. As a student here I absorbed a reality that there is absolutely no conflict between the pursuit of knowledge and ideas for their own sake—how wonderful that is! —and the discovery of things new both to the student and to the faculty researcher, along with the application at times of those "things" that are useful and beneficial to our society and its economy. Walking around this campus I learned that there was a seamless web between chickens and roosters and things that grew out of the ground as there was between engineering education or the study of English and History and what we then called "Government" in the College of Liberal Arts. The purpose of all of these pursuits is to serve society. That, ladies and gentleman, is the land-grant mission. It includes the traditional food related work, but it includes just as much everything else that this and all other public universities, large or small, and regardless of whether or not they are technically "land-grant" are about.
Your concern and your focus must be on New Hampshire and New England because if you do not do the work needed here, you are not meeting your national and international obligations. I have read some of the material about your academic plan for the next five years as well as draft statements as to how various goals and themes will be implemented. I applaud them, even as I am profoundly grateful that I am not going to be responsible for implementing what will be close to 50 action items. We will come back to that.
Let me indicate what is going on nationally in public and land-grant higher education. It will confirm that the general thrust and vision that you as faculty, students, staff, and academic leaders, including your enthusiastic new president and her colleagues, are examining and pursuing is on the right track. A few years ago, working with others, I participated in a project called the Kellogg Commission on the Future of State and Land-Grant Universities. We believed that America’s great state and land-grant universities were good enough and strong enough—and therefore secure enough—to examine themselves, point out where they were perhaps deficient or needed to make changes, and could reaffirm, in a new and changing context, their historic and future obligation to serve society. The Commission consisted of men and women on the front lines of leadership as university presidents, though we were wisely advised by provosts from our schools. We had the benefit of working with an advisory committee of lay leaders who had no hesitation in telling us in plain, non academic English when we got just a little too highfaluting and arcane in our discussions.
We prepared six reports or letters on these topics. One was on what we labeled The Student Experience; another was on Student Access; another on The Learning Society; one was on seeking a Coherent Campus Culture; and there was one labeled The Engaged Institution. And we had a summary report charting some specific objectives for further activity by our state and land-grant community. We did not argue that we needed more money to do the wonderful things we do, not that we opposed more resources. But we wanted to discuss what we believed were our obligations, and how, if properly understood and implemented, they would help us attract the support needed to do our public-serving work. Although we fundamentally represented research-intensive universities, we did not say that the research function was our defining mantra—even as it was clear in all of our statements and recommendations that what does make us unique is the fact that we not only promote learning but we ceaselessly work on discovering new ideas and new things.
This last point deserves emphasis. We need knowledge of the past and the knowledge of today, but we must have new knowledge and new ideas. That is the discovery function—research. It has been one of the defining, essential, characteristics of a university—if it is to serve the economic and social needs of its state and nation.
The Kellogg Commission reports speak perfectly to the aspirations and plans of the University of New Hampshire that are before you, and I want to comment more fully on two of our letters of advice. The first one, The Student Experience, was premised on the argument that unless we put students first we have no reason for being. We talked about learning communities:
Our institutions must become genuine learning communities, supporting and inspiring faculty, staff, and learners of all kinds.
Our learning communities should be student centered, committed to excellence in teaching and to meeting the legitimate needs of learners, wherever they are, whatever they need, whenever they need it.
Our learning communities should emphasize the importance of a healthy learning environment that provides students, faculty, and staff with the facilities, support, and resources they need to make this vision a reality.
Those three objectives ought not be seen as lofty, unattainable goals, but are ideals that represent our firm expectations and, whether or not we fall short of these aims, is not the point. The point, we argued, is to pursue them relentlessly. We gave examples and illustrations of how some of our institutions were trying to do these kinds of things, even though we were not satisfied that we did them as well as we wanted to. We spoke of strengthening links between education and careers. We hit hard on the notion, that we must "strengthen the link between discovery and learning by providing more opportunities for hands-on learning, including undergraduate research."
The second report I want to highlight turned out to be our "best seller" in terms of requests and hits on our website. It was labeled, Retuning To Our Roots: The Engaged Institution.
Giving specific examples and illustrations the Commission insisted that a mainstream—not a nice sideline activity—for the leading universities of the new century would be this: how we can better serve, partner and link with all kinds of organizations, communities and businesses as part of the fundamental mission of the 21st century public university. We described the changing nature of engagement, a term that has now become widely used by colleges and universities throughout our country. We stated:
Engagement must be organized to respond to the needs of today’s students and tomorrows, not yesterday’s.
Engagement must enrich student’s experiences by bringing research and engagement into the curriculum and offering practical opportunities for students to prepare for the world they will enter.
Engagement must put its critical resources (knowledge and expertise) to work on the problems its community faces.
Let me emphasize something. Engaged universities—indeed smart universities—are not foolish. They do not seek to be, and your planning documents say this, all things to all men and women. But they articulate a vision and plan that enables them to be some important things to many men and women and their communities—in ways that fit with local circumstances, strengths, and needs. The leading universities of the years ahead are going to be ones that are both focused—and engaged. They are not Ivory Towers, and I note that ivory has been banned from international trade. They are learning communities involved with their communities and the world.
Engaged universities understand that continuous, up-to-date, relevant knowledge and information is the only currency for success in our new world. This reminds me of an anecdote about a hyper active American lawyer who is visiting Dublin, where it is said, many Irish tend to be laid back and casual in a rather friendly way. The lawyer rushes into an Irish pub and asks for a newspaper. The person tending the pub says, "Do you want yesterday’s or today’s?" The American responds, "I want today’s paper." The bartender replies "In that case you will have to come back tomorrow." That, unfortunately, is simply not good enough for engaged universities in today’s world. Their vision, which should be our vision and our job, is to make the most current information and its application available now, today, and for tomorrow. Yesterday’s newspaper—yesterday’s information and education—is not good enough for the world we must serve.
The Commission’s Engaged Institutions report argued strenuously on behalf of interdisciplinary work and urged university leaders and faculty to "find new ways of encouraging interdisciplinary research, teaching and learning as part of the engagement agenda." You already do that at UNH in the marine sciences and countless other areas. It is the path to pursue. The real world, even though we value specific disciplines, is not made up of academic departments but of problems and opportunities, whether they deal with the environment, the enormous needs of children in our society, the imperative of working and partnering with the public schools together so that we can try to improve education for all children, the scourge of drugs, and countless other issues and challenges that we face. Learning and discovery and engagement have to be multi and interdisciplinary if we want to do the job we ought to do.
Another point needs to be made. The Kellogg commissioners were not naïve and understood that developing a true culture of engagement involves the difficult path of developing incentives that really reward those faculty and staff that pursue it. Wonderful lip serve about the importance of teaching and engagement is nice, but not good enough if we want to develop a system of rewarding faculty and staff for those key missions and activities that a university such as this one determines to be among its primary obligations. All cultures, including ours, change slowly, but change is coming. It must, and all of us can help bring it about deliberately and gradually, even if not overnight.
Here we are in Durham, New Hampshire at the public serving land-grant university of this state. I know enough about this state and higher education to know that you have difficult challenges and problems. Yet there is a sense of hope based on past accomplishments and the resolution of difficulties that you have faced in recent years. You are part of a university system, and that is good, not bad. In addition to your UNH colleagues at the Manchester Center, you also have valued colleagues at The College for Life Long Learning, and at Plymouth and Keene and State colleges. They are all valuable partners for you and for the leaders of the university system whose objective is to promote the ability of all components of the University System of New Hampshire to serve—with understanding and better resources—your state. This means, if I can preach just a bit more, being, yes, resourceful and entrepreneurial and collaborative and demonstrating over and over the value of what you do.
Your academic plan is an excellent start. I hope, knowing how difficult it is, that all of you who are participants in this process can address the topics you have correctly identified: teaching and learning; inquiry and research; engagement and outreach, and, if I may put it this way, the endless struggle for resources. This is much easier said then done, for priorities must be set. Not everything that is part of UNH’s history needs to be a part of its future; choices need to be made. I firmly believe they need to be made by you, the faculty and students, and leaders and staff of this university, because if the choices are not made by you they will be made, willy nilly, by external forces, by resource constraints, or by those who may not have a sensitive understanding of what a university is about and how it can best accomplish its people-serving mission.
This University of New Hampshire is as vibrant and exciting in a different way as the place I first experienced half a century ago. It is part of a great national network of state and land-grant universities. It—and all universities—face both enormous challenges and opportunities. There are large demands for university services in an environment where resources will always be less than needs—fused with the absolute imperative that if our society is to prosper all men and women and children regardless of age, ethnicity, gender, race must have the opportunity to grow, to learn, and to contribute.
Why does this matter? Because it is in the best selfish interest of the American society and, indeed, of the world. It is also morally the only ideal worth living and pursuing. For universities this means understanding that we are in a continuous learning environment in which knowledge is the passport both to personal and professional fulfillment and to a strengthened economy that benefits all. It also means that the prestigious, most respected and needed universities in the century ahead will not necessarily be a limited number of so-called elite universities, some of which are even here in the northeast of our country! The truly leading universities are going to be, whether private or public, those that are fully engaged—with their students, their communities, and their world. That is why the University of New Hampshire, significant and vital as it is now, will be even more engaged and more recognized ten or fifteen years from today.
Earlier in my talk I referred to the ideals we must pursue. I have no problem being labeled "an idealist," though I would like to qualify that by labeling myself as a realistic idealist. I remember, going back to my student days, one of my professors who in a sly, quiet, and ultimately witty way pointed out the origin of that sometimes derided term "idealist" or "idealism." He gently suggested that the word "idealist" had its root in the word idea. Think about that: Is that not what universities are about—ideas and, eventually, their application?
