Reed College Centennial ReunionsAlumni Home

 

Alumni College 2012

• Introduction
  
• Featured course
  
• Individual courses

 

INTRODUCTION

Continuing the tradition inaugurated by Centennial Reunions 2011, Alumni College for 2012 will be embedded within Reunions '12: Reedfayre instead of preceding it, with courses offered throughout the week. Participation in Alumni College is included in the overall registration fee; there are no additional charges except for any materials fees noted in individual course descriptions. This working document contains the featured course and individual courses, with indications of coordinator/course leader, schedule, and venue.

Alumni College in its present version is a combination of one featured course--which is an in-depth examination of a topic of great interest--with individual courses, which are volunteer efforts by the presenters. The featured course will be in two sessions on Thursday and Friday mornings. Participants who wish to take the featured course must sign up in advance; by signing up, you commit yourself to attend both sessions. The individual courses, generally an hour or 90 minutes long, are scheduled for Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday afternoons. You enroll for these courses with your feet--showing up early enough to get a place. We encourage, however, indications of interest for the individual courses; we may add duplicate sections for courses that people find most attractive. You may read the most up-to-date course details in the catalogue (pdf).

--Jim Kahan '64

 

FEATURED COURSE

THE FUTURE OF LIBERAL ARTS COLLEGES

The featured course for 2012 builds on last year’s highlighted program.  Last year, we examined highlights of Reed’s 100-year history.  This year, we look towards the future of liberal arts colleges in general and at Reed in particular.  The purpose of this featured course is to consider the role of liberal arts colleges in the mid-term (20-30 year) future.  Will they continue to exist? How will they look in light of advances in information and communications technology?  How will liberal arts education be delivered and financed?  What functions will liberal arts colleges serve in society?

The Future of Liberal Arts Colleges is in two sessions on Thursday and Friday mornings.  The first session is a set of lectures, with ample time for Q&A; the Friday session comprises a set of parallel conferences and a plenary session in which the conferences report the results of their discussions to each other.

Reed College was neither the first nor the last liberal arts college in the United States (Sheehy, 2012); such colleges appear to be a largely American phenomenon (Koblik and Graubard, 2000).  Reed's distinctive approach to a Bachelor of Arts combines elements of advanced secondary education in European systems that build a broad base of knowledge and skill in discourse with a scientific (logic and evidence-based) examination in depth of a discipline or interdiscipline that is more typically found in Master's programs both in the U.S. and in Europe. Other liberal arts colleges follow approaches more or less similar to Reed's; what they share is a curricular orientation to knowledge for the sake of knowledge. 

 

Readings
We present here a small set of readings.  While none of them are “required” for participation in this course, we do recommend that you try to read some of them.

--Steven Koblik and Stephen R. Graubard (2000), Distinctly American: The Residential Liberal Arts College. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.
--Clayton M. Christensen and Michael B. Horn, “Colleges in crisis.” Harvard Magazine, July-August 2011, pp. 40-43.
--Richard P. Chait and Zachary First, “On the enduring strengths of institutions of higher education.”  Harvard Magazine, November-December 2011, pp. 36-39. (Note: this is a rebuttal to the Christensen and Horn article.)
--Nannerl O. Keohane (2012), “The liberal arts as guideposts in the 21st century.”  The Chronicle of Higher Education,  Feb. 3, 2012, pp. A23-A24.
--Educause (2012) 2012 Horizon Report. Educause learning initiative
--Bryan Alexander (2012), “Imagining the Future of Higher Education.”  Educause Quarterly, Vol. 34, No. 4.
--Crystal (2012), “Stanford Has Free Classes?!” The Unofficial Stanford Blog, January 3-9, 2012.
--John P. Sheehy (2012), Comrades of the Quest.  Corvallis: Oregon State University Press.  (See especially Part Five: Radical Traditionalist 1989-2011.) This book is the result of more than a decade of oral history interviews of members of the Reed community by Reed alumni. If you haven’t already purchased the book, we urge you to do so as soon as you can. It is readily available during Reedfayre.

 

Presenters
We are fortunate to have four distinguished Reed community members who will give 30-minute presentations on Thursday morning.

• William Peck, professor of Philosophy at Reed from 1961 to 2002, will provide an overview of the development of liberal arts colleges, emphasizing their philosophical and epistemological foundation.
• Marianne Colgrove ’84 (psychology), deputy chief technology officer at Reed, will talk about how information and communications technology is currently employed at Reed and how innovations in the near-term future might affect education at Reed.
• Eduardo Ochoa ’73 (physics) retired from his position as provost at Sonoma State University in California to serve as assistant secretary for postsecondary education in the U.S. Department of Education, based in Washington DC.  He will talk about trends and fiscal challenges in higher education, and how these impact the role and future of liberal arts colleges.
• Katherine Anderson Radeka ’92 (chemistry) is the founder of Whittier Consulting Group, Inc., based in Camas, Washington, where she applies her scientific depth and business acumen to help firms create strategies for flexible ways of product development. She will talk about how a liberal arts education formed the basis of her unique career.

 

Conferences
On Friday morning from 9 to 10:45 a.m., the presenters will each lead parallel conference sections to discuss a common set of questions. We anticipate that the previous day’s lectures, any suggested readings, and—most importantly—the experience and expertise of all of the conference participants will lead to productive discussions covering the following topics:

• Will liberal arts colleges continue to exist?  As has been argued for more 50 years, this orientation puts liberal arts colleges at risk in an era where tertiary education is viewed as the acquisition of career skills. Reed president Richard Sullivan (1957-1968) argued in his address celebrating Reed’s 50th anniversary that liberal arts colleges were on the way out, and that Reed needed to expand its degrees and offerings in order to survive. After another half-century, announcements of Reed’s demise have been greatly exaggerated.  The question then becomes, “Will there be a Reed College for today’s students’ children to attend, and if so, what will it look like?”
• How will we interact socially in the coming decades, and how will this affect how we are educated? The princess phone was succeeded by the mobile telephone, which was in turn succeeded by generations of increasingly “smart” phones and now “tablets.” Along the way, talking has given way at least in part to texting, hanging out to social media, and expertise to cloudsourcing. How will each of these trends develop, and what are the consequences for how we obtain postsecondary education?
• Value for money: what functions will liberal arts college serve in society, and can these be sustained in light of increasingly tight cost-benefit criteria? The only thing in American society whose cost, adjusted for inflation, is increasing faster than health care is education. If trends were to continue (which they cannot), then tuition at places such as Reed would be millions of dollars per year by our second centennial. Can the cost of obtaining knowledge for the sake of knowledge be justified, and if so, how? If not, is there a possible reframing of the quest for knowledge that makes the endeavor economically feasible?
• Liberal arts education for 21st-century careers: in what ways do liberal arts colleges prepare a person for the realities of today's workplace and where are the gaps? Rapid technological change, globalization, greater workforce diversity and a shift towards "knowledge work" has reshaped traditional models of the career path. People graduating from college today can expect to change careers three to five times before they retire, and even the people who stay within one profession must have the ability to adapt to change. How does a liberal arts education prepare someone to survive—and even thrive—in the 21st-century workplace? What can we learn from career-oriented degree programs without losing our core values? What can they learn from us?

Following the parallel conferences, we will meet once more in plenary session from 11 a.m. to noon on Friday, where the points developed in the conferences will be presented to all.  From here, we will engage in a discussion (recorded by a rapporteur) to see what consensus has developed as a result of the two-day exercise. We hope that this consensus can form the basis of an article on the future of liberal arts colleges (and Reed in particular) that is publishable. If so, authorship will be attributed to the collectivity of people attending the course.

 

INDIVIDUAL COURSES

The individual offerings are 90-minute sessions (unless otherwise indicated) touching on a topic of traditional Reed interest. No pre-registration is required. Simply follow your fancy.

Note: complete descriptions can be found in the schedule.

Wednesday afternoon, May 30, 1 to 2:30 p.m.
Wonderful, Wonderful Copenhagen. Course leader: Emma Weitkamp ’87 (plus possibly one other)

Wednesday afternoon, May 30, 2:45 to 4:15 p.m.
Perfect Paideia Planning. Course leader: Rory Bowman ‘90

Thursday afternoon, May 31, 1 to 4 p.m.
Beginning Calligraphy. Course instructors: Father Robert Palladino (professor of Calligraphy, 1969-1984) and [TBD]
There is a materials fee of $10 for this course, payable in cash when you arrive at the classroom.

Thursday afternoon, May 31, 1 to 2:15 p.m.
Not Just Academe. Course leader: Alex Stein ’98 (also possibly Katherine Hamer ’93)
Soon to Be Unmarried, With Kids. Course leader: Rose L. Hubbard ’83

Thursday afternoon, May 31, 2:45 to 4:15 p.m.
The Ladd and Reed Legacy. Course leader: Richard Ross ‘69
This course is presented under the auspices of the Dorothy Johansen History of Reed Club.

Friday afternoon, June 1, 1 to 2:30 p.m.
Robotic and Automated Telescopes: Past, Present, & Future. Course leader: Peter Abrahams ‘7
Hand Over Faust. Course leader: James Banko ‘81

Saturday morning, June 2, 10 to 11:30 a.m.
The Presidents of Reed College. Course leader: John Sheehy ‘82
This course is presented under the auspices of the Dorothy Johansen History of Reed Club.