Georgetown faculty generally love teaching our undergraduates. They find them on the whole as smart, well-mannered, and devoted to their studies. It’s common to hear that the students tend to be good writers and to be able to frame arguments cogently. They’re involved in their own education.
A complaint from faculty that I’ve heard more than once, however, is that the students are not risk-takers. The argument goes that they play it safe. They seek to learn what the rules of a class are, then tailor all their behavior to maximize their success within those rules. One faculty member finds our undergrads “well-rounded” young adults, but he would like to find the “angular” young adult inside. Some faculty are disappointed that students won’t question or critique the lectures or the instructor’s point of view.
I’m not sure how widespread this faculty viewpoint is, but I’ve heard it enough that I suspect there’s some truth to it.
Many writers have commented on the US society’s devotion to success, as well as its misconceptions regarding how to measure success. We’ve heard a million times how all young soccer players receive trophies at the end of the season, regardless of how well their teams have performed. At the same time, we hear commentators focusing on resilience — the ability to re-engage after a setback.
I really don’t know whether what the faculty observe about Georgetown students is related to these societal features. I do know that the university is the safest environment to take risks. It’s the best time to discover the deep, lasting interests that one has. That discovery sometimes surprises.
While I once aspired to be a poet, my career was devoted to social statistics. My discovery of this was entirely out of my comfort zone, and I never regretted it. I remember the inner conversation of knowing that my grade point average would decline and that I would struggle to compete with others. I can still remember the conflict I felt.
All of us as faculty need to encourage our well-rounded, bright students to take risks by stretching beyond their comfort level. When their initial efforts fail, they need to know we’ll be there for them. Stretching hurts at first, but it makes us flexible in the long run.
Successful students often have received praise through high grades and awards all their life. But the optimal university experience needs to build resilience as well as demonstrations of high performance. We must do anything we can do to disabuse students of the belief that a perfect record is the only route to success. Long-run success is most often built on a history of some failure. Georgetown ought be a safe-zone for failures connected to honest inquiry and exploration.
Here here! Universities are indeed the best environment for risk taking and I’m an alum that counts Georgetown as teaching me how to be comfortable with risk and the unknown. Georgetown’s focus on educating the whole person had a profound effect on me; it taught me to dive in to topics and conversations that were unfamiliar without trepidation and to enjoy the ride from ignorance to knowledge.
As a Jewish/Non-religious kid from Michigan, I was a bit concerned before starting my Freshman year that the Catholic & Jesuit aspects of Georgetown would be conservative or stifling. Those fears were completely wrong, my Georgetown experience was the exact opposite. I found Faculty and peers who encouraged my curiosity, challenged me in ways I never expected and left me with a life-long love of investing in the “whole person”. Georgetown truly lives the motto of “cura personalis.”
I enjoyed this post. I very much miss the opportunity to be questioned by my students. In my seminars, it is common to see one student expressing an opinion and others being silent or agreeing, even if they differed in their opinion prior to coming in. It is a very rare experience in my courses to see students debating me or each other. I believe that this has to do with what was rewarded and selected for in high school. Angular students may not do well enough there to make it to GU. As an institution, we may benefit from considering whether we do enough to reward and foster it here. One way may be to use multiple methods to evaluate teaching, as taking students out of their comfort zone may not be immediately popular with them.
Great point, Yulia. I’d also add that the structures and attitudes at GU that support (or discourage) angularity and risk taking in faculty are likely to set examples for students.
Provost Groves, I frankly observe the same issue as regards the general Georgetown community and this blog. You have created what should be, and I hope will yet prove to be, a valuable tool for the discussion and debate this University needs to have if it is going to chart an effective course amid the challenges presently confronting higher education. I have been surprised and disappointed by the small number of people who offer comments, and the even smaller number among those who offer alternative ideas and constructive criticism.
I’m unsure as to why your observation and mine might be the case. I suspect they are related, and perhaps result at least in part from the distinct institutional fabric of this particular University. Compared to other schools and institutions with which I am familiar, I sense a rather strong “play it safe” mentality among all Georgetown’s stakeholder groups: faculty, administrators, students, and, as regards their interactions with the University, even alumni.
Having had a strict and traditional Catholic upbringing, I’d venture a guess that this state of affairs is to some extent the product of the University’s Catholic heritage. I observe an aspect of “command and control” and “obedience expected” in the way things are done here, again more so than in other universities and institutions with which I am familiar.
I do not wish to overstate the matter. Georgetown today is clearly not the Georgetown of fifty or even twenty years ago. What I’m referring to is less potent and more subtle, but nevertheless operative in the institutional environment. It is my observation that people who speak up here can be made to feel “out of line” or “in the way.” And I sense in some a fear, well-founded or not, that disagreement or challenge to the status quo may indeed be met with negative consequences; that when all is said and done, there is no such “safety net,” or an inadequate one.
This is easy for me to say. I’m at a stage in life where I no longer have to worry about grades, employment or career advancement. Which is exactly why I’ve bothered to take the time to say it. To the extent people feel comfortable addressing the issue, I’d be most interested to hear what others think, both in agreement and in disagreement.
I love Georgetown’s Catholic and Jesuit heritage. It is the reason I enrolled in the program I take here. It greatly enhances that program and this University. Georgetown’s fundamental values of “service,” “the whole person,” and the like should remain the central principles around which it organizes itself as it faces the challenges of the new century, and indeed emphasized even more so that now. They are what make this University special. Other schools would do well to emulate them.
I only point out that everything in life inevitably comes with costs as well benefits. As an old song from my father’s generation wisely counseled, we must continually work to “accentuate the positive” and “eliminate the negative.”
I hope going forward that both those in this University who would express ideas and opinions, and those who would receive them, might make the adjustments needed to improve the quality of discourse–in classrooms, on this blog, and in the various initiatives which Georgetown is presently undertaking to reorganize for the future. Robust debate in all these arenas–and making meaningful change based on what is learned from that debate–will be needed for this University to thrive in the coming decades. Given the great good will I’ve found in so many I’ve met here, I am optimistic of the prospects for eventual success.
William A Kuncik
Georgetown MALS Program
I completely agree with this and am so glad you wrote about it!
I really love this post. Science and art take leaps through many failed experiments. I think there are several structural barriers at Georgetown to encouraging student risk/failure; this post mentions the overall success-and-praise soaked culture of the US.
Another, specific to Georgetown, is the crushing course load. Five courses a semester is just too many to do real justice to all subjects, which pressures students to figure out the “game” of each class just to get through it. If our less wealthy students also work, they’ll have little time for staring into space, pondering, or trying a less-traveled road.
It is hard to encourage a contemplative life in a culture of extreme busy-ness.
Thanks for this post, Prof. Groves. The encouragement to take intellectual risks is one of the things that I most valued about my undergraduate experience at Georgetown. It is one of the key reasons that I decided to come back to the hilltop for my graduate education. For what it’s worth, I can tell you that the Georgetown faculty members who continue to be my greatest mentors have most certainly NOT grown weary of imparting the value of intellectual risk-taking. Nor will I.
~Maureen Russo (COL ’06, PhD Candidate 2014)