Author Archives: Robert Groves

Prior posts have discussed how the American public evaluates higher education; you can see last year’s commentary here. These posts presented the results of various surveys conducted either by the Pew Research Center or the Gallup Organization. The past few months have given us updates for this year.

For example, the surveys have asked the question, “Now I am going to read you a list of institutions in American society. Please tell me how much confidence you, yourself, have in each one — a great deal, quite a lot, some or very little?” One institution is labeled “higher education.”

As presented in the chart, these four surveys show growing lack of confidence in higher education over a relatively short period of time. In one year, there is a jump from 23% to 32% claiming no confidence or very little confidence. In 2024, as in earlier years, both Republicans and Independents tend to report they have “no confidence” or “very little” confidence in higher education, relative to those who self-report as Democrats. Although this year’s report doesn’t probe the reasons, earlier surveys show reasons for lack of confidence among Republicans is much more related to perceptions that “colleges are pushing liberal political agendas on students.” On the other hand, the lack of confidence among Democrats seems related to concerns about the cost of higher education.

Now, having seen the statistics showing lack of confidence in higher education, it’s important to note that the vast majority of institutions (e.g., large tech firms, the Supreme Court, K-12 education) also show declines in trust over the last few years. Higher education is not alone.

But the skepticism about higher education expressed in this question doesn’t seem to match answers to other questions. For example, when asked about, relative to 20 years ago, how important it is for people to have a 2 or 4 year degree in order to have a successful career, there is little change between 2021 and 2023. About 40% of respondents report that it’s more important now than 20 years ago. So, the perceived value of higher education to one’s individual career shows little change over time, not following the growing lack of confidence in the institution.

What about behavioral intentions? The surveys asked those not currently enrolled in a program whether they were considering enrolling in a program, the percentage is increasing over the 2021-2023 period, from 44% in 2021 to 59% in 2023. When asked about one’s own feelings of pursuit of higher education, very different findings emerge than questions about confidence in the institution. (The top reasons for higher education aspirations is the capturing of more attractive jobs and professional career advancement.)

What are reasons that are cited as impediments to the desired enrollment? The challenge of paying the costs of the education looms large; the demands of child care are mentioned; and concerns about stress and mental health are relevant for many. (This latter impediment appears more prominent this year.) Further, some report that their current job market does not require higher education certification, reducing the attraction of formal schooling. (It’s relevant to note that several states have recently removed bachelor’s degree requirements from their state jobs.)

So in short, relative to prior years, this year’s round of surveys show increasing loss of confidence, but, at the same time, increasing desire to seek out higher education. The impediments to enrollment in higher education show a new prominence of stress and mental health concerns, but a repeat of the concerns about the costs of higher education. Our work continues.

Every fall Georgetown holds a new student convocation. It is a wonderful ritual that is steeped in meaning — welcoming a new set of members into an intellectual community. There is a moment when the new (somewhat puzzled) students don their graduation robes as a symbolic integration into the academic life. The provost gives a welcoming address, but this year seems to require a new message, distinct from those of past years.

As always, the new students need to be reminded that almost all first-years are intimidated by how smart everyone appears to be at Georgetown, but that all of them will graduate if they put in the time. The families must be alerted that support systems outside of Georgetown will still be needed, especially in the first fall term.

But this year, especially, there are new observations that appear important to communicate. We live in a world bifurcated into clusters of ideology that are in conflict with one another. Several posts have this message; for example, here.

Faculty report declining student engagement in classes. Give and take among classmates appear atrophied. Topics of inequality, political beliefs, racial relations, gender-related roles appear to be too sensitive even to discuss in the confines of an academic course.

Universities’ value to society is the constant search for the truth – how is the natural world organized, how can art reveal a specific emotion, how do social norms develop, what causes wars, why do we exist?

This search for truth absolutely requires the presentation of alternative perspectives. Indeed, much of human progress derives from multiple minds disagreeing. Every field in academia is in the midst of disagreements about current theories and methods of seeking advance.

Universities, therefore, have the obligation to transmit to students the ability to interact with content that conflicts with their current understanding. That is what universities must do; not doing it cripples the mission. Learning necessarily requires that students expose themselves to new perspectives. Learning is the synthesis of the new content with the old content. That synthesis cannot occur unless alternative perspectives are engaged.

So, how does this relate to new student convocation? Students need to be alerted that they will be uncomfortable at times at Georgetown in and outside their classes. They will be presented with facts, beliefs, and other content quite different from their prior positions. This discomfort is not “a bug, but a feature” of a university education. We need to set that expectation at new student convocation and throughout their first fall on campus.

No university can achieve its mission without students listening and entertaining diverse perspectives, even when some might be offensive to them. So, we as stewards of a university, have an obligation to model the behavior of discourse across differences.

Recently, we’ve been blessed with philanthropy that is helping us improve such modeling inside the classroom. The Georgetown Dialogues Initiative is offering incentives for faculty to introduce such modeling of discourse across differences into their courses. For example, a cohort of faculty teaching first-year seminars will be working with CNDLS this fall on effective ways to incorporate the promotion of dialogue into their seminars. While the seminars may vary in their substantive focus, the faculty teaching them have committed to a common goal of teaching students about how dialogue across differences enhances our learning. [If you are interested in participating in this cohort, please contact Vice Provost for Education David Edelstein (David.Edelstein@georgetown.edu)].

Effective leaders of this century need skills in empathetic engagement with conflicting viewpoints. It is critical that Georgetown nurture such leaders.

Over the last few decades, evidence accumulated that understanding human well-being and health requires multiple perspectives. While biology, biochemistry, genetics, and microbiology remain cornerstones, focusing on individual humans isolated from their context seems increasingly myopic. Humans live in groups. Groups affect their members in myriad ways, including health.

Groups build social norms; those norms affect health-related behaviors. Over time, the norms evolve into ethical frameworks within a subpopulation. Strictures on what is proper and improper behavior are correlated with personal health.

At a macro-level, nation-states implement diverse health care delivery systems, often producing disparities in access to preventive care resources. These disparities tend to be a function of urbanicity and income. Understanding the mechanisms producing these differences challenges the assumption of a uniform human body. For example, traditional practices based on studies involving only male subjects are challenged.

As a small-ish research university, with a medical center within feet of professional schools and a college of arts and sciences, Georgetown has an advantage in assembling interdisciplinary teams to tackle unanswered questions involving human well-being.

Even domains of knowledge seemingly conceptually far away from the biomedical sciences may have relevance. Since ethical frameworks of subgroups affect health care delivery, the field of bioethics emerging out of philosophy is helpful. The growing field of the medical humanities has alerted practice to the power of patient narratives, which may reveal health attributes in a manner embedded in subcultures of a population. The lesson of empathy arising from careful observation and listening to these narratives appears to be a useful complement to the science underlying physical health.

There are many faculty in several Georgetown schools whose research focus is health outcomes. Some are social scientists; some are humanists, as befits this more holistic understanding of human health. The establishment of the new School of Health has defined a hub to which many of these faculty can be linked.

But most closely related to the biomedical sciences are the basic sciences in the College of Arts & Sciences — chemistry, physics, and biology. Admittedly, they often investigate phenomena quite distant from human well-being. However, repeatedly over time, it has been demonstrated that the basic sciences findings, with a bit of a lag, produce new applied knowledge, affecting practice in the biomedical domain.

For some years, funders have imagined a world in which more and more collaboration across fields within universities may inform the future of what we formerly thought of as solely the domain of medical schools. For example, the National Institutes of Health have recognized the role of the basic sciences as well as the social and behavioral sciences in unlocking advances in well-being.

But working across fields is always difficult. In this case, the difficulty is exacerbated. The different fields mentioned above lie in different positions in the pecking order of funding priorities. Because of this, the development of mutual respect within interdisciplinary teams often requires years of relationship building.

Georgetown has deliberately worked on all of the areas above, but perhaps most intentionally in the last year on building supportive environments for collaboration between the basic sciences and the biomedical sciences. The strategic thrust was motivated by the advantage of physical proximity of scientists in both domains, and proven payoffs of existing collaborations. It also was related to the aspiration to renew the Reiss building by remodeling floors devoted to collaborative scientific research.

Last year, a joint faculty committee of scientists from GUMC and the main campus deliberated on research thrusts that could enhance collaboration between the basic sciences and the biomedical sciences. First, they identified existing collaborations that were bearing fruit. Then, over several months they developed a set of ideas involving work ongoing on both campuses, which might be combined in new groups of collaborators.

The draft report was reviewed by the chairs of science departments on both campuses. New ideas were added. The next step is the identification of one or more of the ideas that might be further developed into a proposal for funding that would involve remodeling a floor of the Reiss building to house the new collaborative team.

Georgetown has all the ingredients to assemble effective interdisciplinary teams to tackle important biomedical problems. Efforts like these are the way forward.

Over the past few years, there has been great dynamism in US education. Some of it was induced by technological changes, some by demographics, some by behaviors of youth, some by the pandemic.

Some changes are notable. Men are investing in higher education at falling rates; college campuses dominated by women are the norm. The cost of higher education, because of its dependence on human delivery, grows at rates exceeding other costs. Lower fertility rates of decades ago produce smaller entering cohorts of college students. As a result, small liberal arts colleges, with small classes, residential campuses, and limited endowments, face budget pressures. Acquisitions, mergers, and closures result.

But there is another phenomenon that seems less noticed. There are activities that are challenging the traditional boundaries of elementary schools, high schools, colleges, universities, and continuing education. Junior high students are taking high school courses. High school students are taking college courses. Undergraduates are taking graduate courses. Further, some degree programs for working adults are granting academic credit for life experiences that deliver competencies relevant to degrees.

By and large, however, our academic degree structures have not recognized the permeating of the traditional membranes among levels of education. Accreditation processes are conservative. Faculty are accustomed to traditional boundaries. Tuition is linked to course enrollments; granting credit for courses taken earlier may reduce revenue to the next level of education.

For example, it is typical that colleges limit the amount of credit transfers to count for completion of the undergraduate degree. One purpose is to eliminate granting credit from inferior educational experiences. It controls the uniformity of the curricular experiences of those granted a degree. But these policies also limit the amount of tuition foregone for each degree.

From the student (and their family’s) perspective, however, another question arises. If a high school student successfully completes college courses of similar content and sophistication as requirements to their college degree, why shouldn’t that be fully recognized in their bachelor’s degree?

Well, one reason proffered is more social than educational – a concern that a truncated (less than four-year) bachelor’s program harms the student. The four-year experience of an undergraduate, it is argued, nurtures the formation of character, values, and maturation not possible in a shorter time in college. In any case, the maturing brain of an 18-22 year old is ripe for experiences that can shape a lifetime. Giving more time in college might aid that development.

Let’s accept that argument for the moment. That proffered reason, however, doesn’t address why the college student shouldn’t be rewarded for graduate courses taken during their four years at a university. There are many first-year graduate courses that are taken by advanced undergraduates. Indeed, from a family perspective, could their financial investment in their child’s future be enhanced by acknowledging the porous membrane between undergraduate and graduate curricula?

These thoughts starts a train of thought about roles of different levels of education. What would happen if Georgetown increased its offering of undergraduate courses to high school students with the capacity to absorb their content? What would happen if we offered more flexible 4-year residential experiences for moving from undergraduate to graduate programs?

Could such redesigns offer undergraduates both a liberal education foundation and professional education of enhanced lifelong value? Would families be interested in investing the same amount of money but obtaining both a bachelor’s and master’s degree for their student? How disruptive would this idea become for the finances of bachelor’s and master’s programs? How would the job market react to such Master’s graduates?

The scene: a rural community college in the Southern US.

The activity: a visiting delegation of academics on a listening tour seeking methods to increase training for technicians in STEM fields.

In the briefing, a community college instructor exudes enthusiasm for her work. She describes building a coalition of automobile dealerships in the area around the school. The coalition has funded and completed a new training facility that will house a program training new auto mechanics, skilled in diagnostics and repair of the current computer-rich automobiles. The dealerships seek to employ graduates with the skills that they find in scarce supply in the region.

She noted that most of her students either dropped out of high school or struggled with the traditional reading and mathematics education of secondary education. For years, the school had insisted that the program’s students first demonstrate basic competency in reading comprehension and mathematics before they began the training program. In that sense, remedial courses became prerequisites before the students could work on cars.

Drop-out rates were high. The remedial education reminded the students of similar courses that demotivated them in high school. It seemed stigmatizing to be forced to go back a step before going forward. So, the result was that potential good auto mechanics were being lost. Further, those who dropped out wasted time and yielded no benefit for themselves.

So the school reconceptualized the curriculum.

From the very first day of the redesigned program, students were working on cars. But they were deliberately presented with auto problems that required them to read diagnostic and repair manuals. In that sense, the reading remediation was a seamless feature of what the students really wanted to learn. To achieve their personal goal, they had to improve their reading skills. It worked.

This redesign was part of a larger movement in community colleges between 2005-2010, where the notion of “corequisites” was launched. These courses transmit competencies needed to absorb the content of the full program in a manner that’s more integrated into program courses. Rather than prerequisites that must be taken before one enters the program curriculum, they’re designed to provide “just-in-time” guidance to provide skills needed for program content. For example, this might alter the content of a mathematics course away from algebra and pre-calculus thinking to the mathematical concepts key to the given program (e.g., data visualization from a variety of sensors or meters as the measurements are presented in a diagnostics course).

All this sounded promising in the 2010’s, but a recent report from Georgetown’s Future Ed notes that nationwide progress toward such “co-requisites” is slowing or even reversing.

Why is reform slowing? One reason is the fragmentation of the governance of higher education. While within a single state, one community college adopts the reform, there is no implication that another will. Further, as with much of higher education, community college faculty are given discretion in the pedagogy and academic program design they implement. Redesigning remediation courses to tailored corequisite courses is hard work. Further, there are revenue implications of moving to corequisites also – remediation classes used as gateways into all programs have higher enrollments and generate more net revenue for the schools.

The harm of the paused reform is that students with disadvantaged secondary education are most likely to drop out of traditional programs that require several remediation courses prior to entering. With job-market demand for technical skills growing, this pause in innovation threatens the nation’s future.

Every year the Marino family sponsors the visit of an author of a book read by all Georgetown incoming first-year students. One of the set of questions posed to the author is often about work routines. Do you get up early in the morning to work? What happens if you find it hard to write on a given day? Do you plan out the entire book before you write it or does it evolve on its own during the writing? The answers are quite diverse but never fail to be interesting.

I recently encountered an interesting book, The Work of Art: How Something Comes from Nothing, by Adam Moss, addressing how artists produce their works. The focus includes visual artists, fiction writers, playwrights, chefs, and others.

Reading in-depth interviews with over 40 different creators, one gets a sense of how an idea begins to form, often quite distant from the final product. An architect draws four or five lines suggesting curves of a building. After many iterations, one can compare the final form to the simple curves. A fiction writer learns about a murder that happened long ago, which becomes the seed of a whole series of imagined alternative versions of the real event. The memory of particular smells from a childhood kitchen motivates a whole menu of novel food creations by a chef, spawning a popular restaurant.

Some interviewed describe the act of creation as subconscious, mystical, divinely inspired, or even “demanded” by the object being constructed. Most agree that giving access to one’s imagination is key, but what happens next is described in quite varied terms. A novelist asserts that the characters spoke to them, and the characters demanded that the novelist write their stories. Or, more subconsciously cognitive, by putting the work aside for a while and doing other activities, the full vision of the work suddenly became clear and the creator felt a burst of activity to capture the vision. (This reminds us of Einstein’s claim that the theory of relativity came clear to him while he was playing the violin.)

A consistent theme of the stories is how long it takes to create work of some impact, cohesion, and meaning. Some begin with explicit designs in mind; for example, a novelistic device taking the characters through a 300 year time period. But then after a few pages of writing come to the judgment that it was a bad idea. Then later, the author goes back to the original idea repeatedly, succeeding only after many tries years later.

The artists sometime noted that the work process was often torture, but they couldn’t stop doing it, the work itself was a passion even when the product did not meet their standards. For example, what ended up as a novel might have begun as a short story or a play, left in a drawer, never to see the light of day. But the idea kept re-occurring to them over time. They couldn’t permanently avoid thinking about it.

While the book is focused on the creative arts, broadly defined, it seems that the “doing” of art often resembles the work of much scholarship in academia. Academic ideas generally don’t arise fully formed, ready for the world to acknowledge their brilliance. They are unpolished stones, filled with imperfections that obscure their real beauty. And so the work of scholarship is constantly trying to find the truth in an idea – shedding what is a distraction, constructing connections among subparts, inventing the new ideas that fill gaps.

And so editing, fixing, adjusting, dropping features, are part of the work of research as they are part of the work of art. Many ideas fizzle out upon inspection. It is common for scholars to have incomplete manuscripts that pile up over the years – ideas that just didn’t achieve enough novelty to merit dissemination. For both groups, however, there is evidence that unsuccessful attempts at one point never really exit the creative mind. The threads of earlier “failures” can be found in the successful later products.

There is another stage of the work of art that resembles the work of an academic scholar – deciding when the work is completed, or “good enough,” or “the best I can do.” Of course, history is filled with examples of levels of self-criticism so severe that the creator doesn’t ever expose others to the work. They never judge it good enough. There is always more to do. In the extreme, this is one reason for “starving artists” who never show their work and failed academics who never submit their work for publication.

For those of us in higher education, there are lessons here. All of this reminds us that most of the time of advancing knowledge or creating the new is devoted to self-criticism of the work, refining, editing, doing intermediate tasks over and over again. Hence, original scholarship produces final products that are only a small piece of the total labor involved. Most of the time of the author/creator is spent revising. Unfortunately most students are exposed only to the final products, the canon of a given area. They are cheated by never knowing about the 99% of the labor of the field that doesn’t make it to the level of accepted new knowledge or new forms.

On the other hand, what’s hopeful about the future of higher education is that we are increasingly moving to experience-based and research-based learning. The students want to learn by doing. The doing inevitably exposes them to the act of creation. Only through living the frustrations of revising, editing, supplementing, cutting, can we provide our students with the intense joy of the creation of something new — lessons never forgotten.

Being in Washington, close to federal government educational and research agencies, it is common to hear novel language related to budget proposals of federal research and development institutions. New directors of agencies feel the need to increase their budgets by proposing important new initiatives. Building new narratives, using new words, is one way forward.

One multi-decade trend asserts that innovation could be advanced by collaboration across fields. And so, directors preach the value of combining — “multidisciplinary,” “interdisciplinary,” “transdisciplinary,” “convergent.” Sometimes this combination involves the importation of research tools from one domain to another. For example, the world dominance of the US in political science, sociology, and economics was greatly aided by the importation of statistical research designs and analysis. Now, we see importation of machine learning and large language models into many fields. Other examples are combinations of theories from two different fields (behavioral economics’ mix of cognitive psychology and economic decision-making under uncertainty).

The relatively new word above is “convergence.” It is used most in the language of the National Science Foundation (NSF), which defines convergence as having two characteristics : “it is driven by a specific and compelling problem” and “it shows deep integration across disciplines.” “As experts from different disciplines pursue a common research challenge, their knowledge, theories, methods, data and research communities increasingly intermingle. New frameworks, paradigms or even disciplines can emerge from convergence research, as research communities adopt common frameworks and a new scientific language. In this sense, convergence research is similar to transdisciplinary research, which is seen as the pinnacle of integration across disciplines.”

(One can see this also as a logical extension of Stokes’ Pasteur’s Quadrant, which notes the value of a focus on use or problem-solving as a catalyst for basic research breakthroughs.)

So how does this word, “convergence,” relate to others? Well, it’s not exactly clear. As NSF notes, an alternative, ”transdisciplinarity,” describes “the desirability of the integration of knowledge into some meaningful whole,” which emerged as a perspective in educational research in the end of the last century.

Sounds pretty similar. The notion of transdisciplinarity has also gained popularity within biomedical research. In that domain, transdisciplinary also includes the perspective of the human subject participating in biomedical research. In this use, the alternative perspectives need not arise from different academic disciplines, but from nonresearcher viewpoints. Thus, transdisciplinarity might be more expansive than NSF’s “convergence.”

Some of this also evokes memories of E.O. Wilson’s notion of “consilience,” which asserts that when multiple approaches to the same issue yield the same conclusions, that they earn greater credibility. In contrast to the NSF notion of convergence limited to scientists and engineers (consistent with its mission), Wilson includes intersections of the arts and the sciences.

In contrast to “multidisciplinary” and “interdisciplinary,” both “convergence” and “transdisciplinary” add more explicit reference to the emergence of integrated knowledge. While “interdisciplinary” is used to describe multi-functional teams, “convergence” explicitly conveys the idea that the multiple functions become synthesized into a new body of knowledge that is distinct from prior constituent parts.

Collaboration does not always yield convergence, but when it does it can create whole new theory, research paradigms, educational programs, and professions. The challenge of universities is to discern at what point on the collaboration continuum each activity lies — when is it time to codify new knowledge into new degree programs and permanent research centers.

There was an interesting article recently that illustrated the mismatch between the standard indicators of the health of the economy and public beliefs about the economy.
My favorite example was the consistently documented low unemployment rate now present in the United States, contrasted with the widespread public belief that unemployment is high. There are obviously multiple hypotheses about this: impact of news media that emphasize negative stories rather than positive stories (they get more clicks). The media may emphasize layoffs and technological disruptions in occupations more frequently that job growth.

Another reason is that the public’s perception of employment problems is not spurred by the unemployment rate but the very low participation in the labor force. The unemployment rate is a ratio of those not employed to those who are actively seeking work or currently employed. But not since the turn of the millennium have we experienced such high percentages of “discouraged workers” who have opted out of seeking employment because of failure to get a job. When the public is asked about unemployment, they may be thinking about those without jobs, whether or not they are actively looking for work. Thus, there may be a mismatch between the intention of the survey question and the interpretation of the survey question.

A similar mismatch seems to be occurring for attitudes toward higher education.

For some time now, we have been alerted to the financial payoff of a college education. For example, the typical college graduate earns over their lifetime 75% more than those with only a high school diploma. This is over a million dollar benefit in their lives. (The gap may actually be increasing over time.)

A recent set of data from the Pew Research Center reports that only 22% of adults judged that the cost of getting a four-year college degree is worth it even if someone has to take out loans. (About half say the cost is worth it if one doesn’t have to take out loans.). About 40% say that it’s not at all important or not too important to have a college degree to get a well-paying job in today’s economy.

On the other hand, we are reminded almost daily about the cumulative amount of debt that attendees of institutions of higher education carry in the United States.The media and political discourse has focused on that negative outcome. So the clear evidence of financial benefits of a college degree must compete for the attention of the media for the debt load of those who attended college.

It seems like the debt load story triumphs over the story on the financial benefits of a college education.
Once again, there are mismatches between what is measured about the facts of the matter and reports from the public in surveys. Of course, it is possible to hold the belief that a college degree is not necessary to get a high-paying job and also believe the result that the average college graduate earns 75% more than a high school graduate over a lifetime. But other data also suggest that the perceived financial value of a college degree is out of alignment with the measured financial value.

Both of these cases lead to the interpretation that the shaping of attitudes is affected by the tendency of media to emphasize the bad news as a tool to build audience. The good news of a low unemployment rate and stories about important financial gains of a college education are overwhelmed by the news of the harms experienced by the jobless and the debt from higher education.

One of my favorite lines from this year’s many Georgetown commencement ceremonies was given as part of the ROTC commissioning service, early one morning. It was delivered to the set of newly commissioned second lieutenants by a retired noncommissioned officer, a veteran of many battles, now devoting his life to a nonprofit helping other veterans. My memory of the moment was his looking directly at the new lieutenants and saying something like, “All of you will hold positions of leadership” and then after a dramatic pause, “but not all of you will be leaders.” An attention-getting sentence, in that moment.

He then elaborated on what leadership means in the military – complete devotion to those under your command, doing yourself everything you call on them to do, sometimes before you directly ask them to do it, sacrificing one’s own life for the lives of the team under your command. He said that some of them will leave the military because they will find themselves reporting to a bad leader. He urge them to consider the “serving” part of leadership rather than the “prestige” part of leadership.

While the message was most dramatically provided at that event, the theme seemed to be repeated in various ways throughout other ceremonies. Several speakers reflected on life lessons they’ve experienced. But the leadership message was implicit in many speeches.

Some speakers noted that they learned that no matter how many people reported to them, that if they didn’t understand the work that each was doing, they could not achieve legitimacy in their leadership position.

Some noted that successful startups require diverse teams containing complementary skills. Such teams share many hours together, late nights, and trials and tribulations as initial plans fail and adaptations must be created quickly. Respect for alternative perspectives becomes the glue that empowers the team to use its collective talent. Upon reflection, in one speaker’s view, the shared passion for finding a solution breeds a shared love among team members. Leadership that nurtures that love over the many hours yields success.

Others noted the need to take risks to advance a career. The risk-taking decisions require courage to imagine oneself in a position with more leadership responsibilities. So sometimes, in their view, leadership requires assertion that one is ready for leadership. Several speakers noted how they rely on others to help them make these risk-taking decisions. Sometimes the others are former bosses; other times they were peers in former organizations who knew them well. The lesson to the graduates was to be kind to others, both to be a good colleague but also to maintain the ability to seek their guidance in the future. Leaders always need advice.

Some noted that the most important question one should be asking is what relationships one is building through their life. Are they people of all stations in life? Are they people of good will? Are they people of integrity? Do they offer you diverse input from varied life experiences? Do they care for you? Do they have your best interests at heart; do you, theirs? Leaders are greatly assisted by those who themselves are honorable.

One described an encounter early in their career, during which they were kind to a person of lower status who was seeking assistance. Little did they know that the person they helped would pass the information about their kindness to those at the top of the institution. That little act of kindness led to their being recruited for higher and higher levels of leadership. The moral — kindness and empathy are not just good in themselves but are demonstrative of important leadership prerequisites.

Finally, there were several notes of the role of persistence, singular focus, and determination for successful leaders. The need to repeat over and over a vision to all the stakeholders, to take a stand and keep it. This appeared most salient when the goal of the leader seems distant to those who are enmeshed in the current processes and practices. Leadership, they said, requires the ability to communicate future changes especially when they seem remote to the current lives of the subordinates. The communication must be repeated over and over again.

So, there was much to hear over the commencement days about what makes for good leadership. But, while many spoke about characteristics of good leaders, only one delivered the shocking, attention-riveting phrase, “… not all of you will be leaders.” All of us can profit from that as a prompt to reflection about our own behaviors.

This is commencement week at Georgetown, during which there are scores of celebratory events. There are award sessions for graduates of individual programs, department-level gatherings of majors who have completed the programs, multicultural ceremonies, Lavender graduation for LGBTQ+ graduates, a ceremony (“DisCO”) for the disability community, and big commencement ceremonies with honorary degree speakers.

This week always reawakens memories of the scores of end of spring semester and commencement events I have witnessed.

It begins during examination period. A few flashbacks:

As the examination period transpires, roller-board suitcases pulled across campus, with increasing volume. Boxes packed up for residence halls, storage crews hauling them to facilities for the summer. Move-out is ongoing, with some parents loading up their student, who is still running on adrenalin from the week of final projects and exams. They’ll sleep for many hours over the next few days.

The last-minute updating of paint and garden beds by grounds crews, helping the campus look its best for graduates and their supporters. One gets the feeling that the lawns, gardens, flowers, and trees know what’s coming up. Time to get ready for a large set of visitors; got to look good.

Setting up the tents throughout the campus for receptions and group ceremonies. They’re respites from heat and rain. A large amount of food is scheduled for preparation, delivery, and consumption in these tents and buildings throughout campus over the next few days.

Time for the award and group ceremonies, more than different events, with most held between Tuesday and Sunday. A blur of setup, processions, speeches, and joyful noise. Less ritual, more emotion.

Memories…
A multicultural ceremony, run primarily by students, filled with shouting of names of friends, jokes about shared memories of four years. The unmistakable feeling of being with a family, a community that supported one another through good times and bad, as each graduate made their way through an institution with few people who looked like them.

A tropaia event with a young alumnus delivering the message that the Georgetown lessons and values equipped them for their entry into the “real world.” They report that in their early days at Georgetown, they struggled and grappled with imposter-syndrome thoughts. But they succeeded. Now, they held on to a set of ways of thinking and ways of treating others and again, they are succeeding.

Time for the school-level big commencements, sometimes separate events for undergraduates and graduates, school by school, planned for Healy lawn.

Memories…
Constant monitoring of the weather forecast. Two big enemies – rain (forcing quick use of a gym and multiplied but smaller commencement groups) and heat/humidity.

A view from the podium: A young BA graduate in black robes on a hot, sunny mid-day commencement, swaying back and forth in her seat, bouncing back and forth against her adjacent seat mates. She seems deeply tired, probably hung-over. At a certain point, she falls asleep on the shoulder of her seatmate, awakening only much later in the ceremony.

A PhD hooding ceremony. The PhD candidate mounts the stage with a young baby in their arms. The baby is adorned in a little black graduation robe and a little hand-made cap just like his Dad. The crowd goes wild.

The shouting and cheering of large families when their first-gen graduate’s name is called and they walk on stage to receive their diploma scroll. The sense that the graduate has uplifted the entire family by their singular accomplishment.

The president shaking thousands of hands over three days. A tall bachelor’s graduate, so happy on stage, hugging the president and lifting him into the air.

There are few times in work of the university as joyful as these days. It’s a treasure of our work that we can experience them.