Universities have the mission of the formation of young people, of assuring support for the original inquiries and scholarship of their faculty, and of contributing to the global common good. These three goals are achieved by the design of educational programs, the recruitment and retention of the best faculty, and structuring an environment in which faculty and students can interact to exchange and expand knowledge for the betterment of the world.
As universities evolved, some features of the institutions favored a removal from the day-to-day affairs of commerce and its related professions. Those features seem to be best accomplished by intense concentration on fundamental questions in a domain of knowledge. Indeed, a continuous tension in university intellectual life concerns striking the right balance between “theory” (concepts and principles useful to understand many phenomena) and “applications” (the solving of practical problems). There are fields with strong boundaries between theory and applications.
Further, in their early days, universities rather quickly organized into groups of scholars with shared expertise, the germs of the disciplines and fields that we have now. A continuous tension in universities today is how many scholars with similar interests are necessary for multiplier effects on the scholarship of those faculty. As human knowledge expands at very increasing rates, specialty areas seemed to become more and more narrowly defined. Some disciplines place strong boundaries around their domain.
The boundaries between theory and applications and the boundaries among disciplines are strong forces in the organization of universities. So too are the aspects of university culture that seek distance from or boundaries separating them from the world of commerce, government, and other institutions.
At this moment in history, however, it’s appropriate to question whether progress on some issues might be better served by crossing those boundaries. At Georgetown, we have already moved to support the crossing of disciplinary boundaries and some theory-applied boundaries. The reorganization of the Graduate School, to nurture interdisciplinary graduate programs that focus on large unsolved problems facing the world is one example. The recent call for proposals for tenure-line joint appointments across units, schools, and campuses is another.
A further move could be imagined regarding the boundary between Georgetown and the “real” world, especially the various institutions in the DC area. Our Washington location makes us neighbors to one of the world’s largest collection of PhD-trained researchers in almost every field imaginable. This includes the health scientists at the National Institutes of Health; the physicists and chemists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology; the environmental scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; the astrophysicists and other scientists at the National Aeronautical and Space Administration; the large numbers of PhD economists at the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the Federal economic statistics agencies and others; the historians at the Smithsonian; the art and art history scholars at diverse museums; the performing arts professionals at the many institutions in town; the social scientists in think tanks throughout the area. I left out other disciplines, but you get the point.
Many of these scholars are in full-time pursuit of their passions in their particular field. But many miss the chance to have impact on young students’ lives. Some teach a course now and then at Georgetown. Few have real joint appointments at Georgetown.
It’s worth imagining how Georgetown might take advantage of these unique local resources, creating more permanent appointments with such scholars. Could this expand the opportunities of our students working as interns in those environments? Could their faculty status permit us to integrate the internship more fully into the education program? Could this improve the bridge between theory and practice by integrating more fully such scholars into the Georgetown community? Could this be an efficient way to increase the breadth of our faculty talent? Could adding such faculty increase the possibility of Georgetown contributing to the common good through problem-motivated scholarship and practice?
Georgetown would be well served by the program Provost Groves suggests in his blog this week. Our Washington D.C. location, if (but only if) we can fully and effectively capitalize upon it, might well be worth the functional equivalent of a billion or two in endowment.
As to Dr. Roepe’s comments, the state of affairs which he reports regarding Georgetown’s natural science departments is very troubling, particularly coming from someone of his stature and achievements. What he says is consistent with what I generally hear about our reputation in those fields.
This situation should be of great concern to the entire Georgetown community. We cannot remain a great university without reasonably strong departments in physics, chemistry and biology. We need to get them back up to par.
Bill Kuncik
Georgetown MALS
Well said but not forgetting for the main campus sciences needing to collaborate with the medical school and its collaborators in the Washington area.
Bill makes a good point. Collaborations with NIH in particular have a long and rich history in various GU science depts., particularly those at GUMC. They can be truly awesome. Talking with those few brave souls that have made such things work well (and then following at least some of their recommendations) would be a good idea. One concept that would crop up from such discussion is that at the institutional level our thinking cannot be “what can we get from them”. The thinking must be “what do we need to do in order to collaborate better”. Anything successful is a two way street. The interactions, internships, collaborative teaching, etc. do not work well unless scholars at each institution are on roughly equal footing with regard to their scholarship. Knowing that, it’s not lack of will or ideas from faculty or students that hold us back, it is Georgetown’s long term, chronic neglect of science and scientific research that holds these collaborations back. GUMC has not be able to recruit junior faculty at any meaningful pace for over a decade. The problem of shrinking numbers of research active GUMC faculty is not being addressed. Similarly, for 30 years, no new tenure line faculty were added to basic science depts on the main campus, even when faculty across the entire main campus increased by approximately 400. NIH, NIST, NOAA, NASA methodically endeavor to remain at the cutting edge. At Georgetown, stubborn entrepreneurs do as well, but the institution as a whole does not. Our chronic inattention to appropriate science faculty recruitment needs on both the main and med campuses (along with continued roadblocks to collaboration across the two campuses) shackles our ability to stay on the cutting edge. So one-on-one interactions between a given scholar at GU and a given scholar at an area institution can be great, and a number of them exist. A few lucky students benefit from them in ways that any University anywhere cannot duplicate. If done even just a bit more successfully, this sort of thing should be, could be, something that puts Georgetown at the very top. But until the larger institutional attitude changes, why would area science or technology institutions in particular want to engage with our institution beyond a token level ? This concept is not new, it has of course been discussed for decades at Georgetown, in numerous formats. So the real question is, why is it taking us so long to see the obvious ? What are we afraid of ? What is it about Georgetown that more actively promotes status quo and neglect of the amazing opportunities all around us ?
Best
Paul
Using local excellent practioners as a model is already being done a lot at the medical school. The clinical faculty provides much of the clinical teaching of medical students and residents. They have much practical experience which provides a very important balance with the academic full time faculty’s input to students. There are also many cooperative efforts in research with individuals, other research endeavors and even private research enterprises. Maybe those could be looked at as models for the kind of collaboration you are discussing.