NGCSU President David L. Potter's convocation speech

Aug. 10, 2005

	President David Potter

Thank you Robert and Allison for your kind words. And thanks to all of you for your generosity of spirit in welcoming me to the university. It has been a rewarding seven months getting to know you, the institution and the community. I feel fortunate and grateful to be here, and excited about our prospects.

This is a special place, with talented people, a firm foundation and rich heritage, and many opportunities to flourish. It is an institution that deserves to be ambitious. I believe our goal should be to attain national standing as a university of academic excellence distinguished by our uniqueness.  Achieving that goal will require understanding our strengths and limitations as well as a clear strategy to guide us.

Shaping our agenda for the future is a mutual responsibility involving all our constituencies. We have already underway several processes that will enlist people’s involvement in creating that agenda. The Quality Enhancement Plan, a key part of the self-study for reaffirmation by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, will focus on a strategic issue.  The Institutional Identity Task Force will conduct a series of community dialogues about our essential and best qualities, our values and aspirations. The university advancement staff is working with our foundation board to articulate a case statement for the university’s first capital campaign. As a further catalyst to these conversations, I would like to offer some observations about the directions we might follow.

I believe our mission and vision statements, along with our core values, provide the ground and framework for strategic development. Especially valuable are the board’s designations of North Georgia as the Military College of Georgia and as a leadership institution. These identities, if fully realized, can build upon our deeply held traditions, capitalize on what we already do well, and illuminate our pathway to future success.

The leadership designation was initially based on our successful corps of cadets, and its explicit emphasis on creating military leaders. I believe that we should extend that model to encompass a broad program of leadership education, a program that can reach all students and inspire our work as professionals and as an institution. I want to focus on four aspects of leadership that can sharpen our identity, secure our national reputation, and fulfill our mission.

The first path to national standing for North Georgia centers on our ability to provide leadership in innovation for teaching and learning.  Teaching and learning is the heart and soul of our mission and our identity. We can take pride in the dedication of our faculty and staff to this cause. We can cite many instances of productive pedagogy and imaginative learning environments within our university. We have much to celebrate, and you will hear a few examples later today. But the real test of our capacity to claim leadership in this arena lies ahead.

The quest for national leadership in teaching and learning is timely because higher education is on the cusp of a new era. Colleges and universities must change teaching and learning theories and practices if they are to sustain their primacy in the advancement of human knowledge. This challenge is precipitated by three developments:

First, revolutionary inventions associated with information and communication technologies;

Second, growing insights into the nature of human learning; and

Third, by the emergence of private-sector competitors that offer advanced professional education and engage in sophisticated research and development.

The technological changes in our lifetime have come so swiftly and penetrated so powerfully that it is sometimes hard to recall their advent or their sequencing. They have, quite simply, altered our behavior patterns and transformed our world. I recommend to you Thomas Friedman’s book, The World Is Flat, if you want to recapture a memory of these inventions or to assess their global impact.

These technologies also have had significant effects on teaching and learning, some peripheral, some profound. We have responded to their availability in several ways. Presentational formats have moved from talking head lecturers to multi-media presenters. Communications between teachers and learners have progressed from podium and seminar to the use of e-mail, listservs, chat rooms, wiki’s and other technology-aided group interactions.

Information dissemination has extended beyond the words of a professor or materials in the library or bookstore to accessing worldwide networks of knowledge and people. And the locus of learning has gone far beyond a single classroom to include distant and virtual sites.

The widespread use of these new technologies by younger generations, at home and school, is affecting the ways in which future students will approach learning and the demands they will place on our teaching.

Most significantly, these technologies have enriched our understanding of how learning occurs. These discoveries bring into question the conventions of pedagogy and instructional design. They document the importance of active, contextualized learning experiences. They remind us that the human mind is, in the words of Jan Visser, an “embodied mind,” and that technologies extend the capacity of our bodies and minds to learn in ways that range from motor behavior to cognitive and affective functioning.

The scholarship and practice of teaching must also be infused by the remarkable expansion of knowledge related to human learning. In part, this explosion of insights has been triggered by findings associated with the new technologies. However, it also has benefited from theoretical advances and scholarly accomplishments in biological, physical, psychological and social scientific disciplines. The conditions of learning identified by these studies encompass a “learning landscape” that includes family, peers, communities, public and private sector venues, a vista extending far beyond the confines of formal classrooms and continuing throughout the lifespan.

In this respect, every human is a learner, and everyone a facilitator of others’ learning.

If we are to claim a leadership role in teaching and learning, we must take advantage of this new knowledge of human learning to reshape our perception of our roles, our scholarship, and our pedagogies. Faculty members are expected to track innovations in their own discipline. Increasingly, they will be asked to master another body of knowledge-- the interdisciplinary field of human learning. Faculty and other educators also will be asked to transform that knowledge into pedagogies that have the potential to increase student learning. They will be expected to assess and document the extent to which students learn when these teaching techniques are employed.

If those within higher education fail to seize the leadership of this learning revolution, others will. In fact, some already have, including the military, business and industry, and for-profit educational companies. Knowledge is too valuable a resource in the information-based economy to be a monopoly of universities. Its commoditization is proceeding at an aggressive pace. We would do well to recall the fate of the medieval monastery, once the center of learning for the civilized world, eventually superceded by the university. The future of any social institution is not secured unless it adapts and evolves.

Our times also call out for a second kind of leadership, and that is leadership in educating influential citizens. We live in a highly individualistic society, at a level of affluence unprecedented in history. Under these circumstances, the temptation to lead self-centered, self-indulgent lives is pervasive. The threat is the loss of commitment both to others and to values that transcend personal preferences. If this threat is realized, we are deprived of the common bonds and community that reflect our interdependence as a species.

I believe that an essential feature of undergraduate education in the 21^st century should challenge students to embrace citizenship, to seek common cause with others on behalf of human values. In doing so, this education should be cognizant of the contexts for citizenship that today range from the local to the national to the global.

Again, North Georgia can lay claim to being an institution where service to and with others is a cherished tradition. Our corps of cadets has secured a deserved reputation for service to our nation as exceptional military leaders and, in collaboration with our other academic departments, by graduating students who have become leaders in other sectors of our society. Our non-corps graduates in programs across the university have pursued lives of service and achieved success as leaders in their fields.

Our current students demonstrate a commitment to service through volunteerism, charitable contributions, service learning and community activism.  We are blessed with students who seem to me unusually devoted to the greater good.

I believe we can become a national model for leadership education if we adopt a more holistic and all-encompassing educational strategy to give our students the skills and knowledge to become influential citizens. If we do so, we will contribute to a movement to promote student engagement that has been embraced nationally by advocates for liberal education.

We also will be joining advocates for change in military education. A recent article by Carter Phipps describes the military’s response to new challenges in global conflict, war and post-war situations. The result has been a redefinition of what constitutes effective leadership education for officers. The goal, in Phipps’ terms, is to train “individuals who can think on their feet, be both forceful and diplomatic as necessary, and respond to the local environment…with some measure of real autonomy, who can handle themselves amid the contradictions of a complex global society.” Further evidence of this change is reflected in the army’s recent announcement that it intends to require future lieutenants to speak a second language-- and by the Department of Defense’s endorsement of federal legislation to create a national center to promote knowledge of other languages and cultures.

The Phipps article describes a new Cadet Leadership Development Program at West Point that is based on the work of psychologists who posit models of lifelong growth and progression. Their work offers evidence that individuals mature and evolve toward higher levels of consciousness.

The West Point plan involves helping cadets transition from one stage of awareness to another, and to achieve cognitive and affective competencies that mark their progress. The program focuses specifically on progressions from self-centered adolescence to subordinating personal desires to the values and ideals of a larger group-- and on going beyond this stage to reach independent conclusions based on self-governed judgments tied to solidly rooted personal values.

What is fascinating about the West Point story is the convergence it suggests between military and liberal education. That represents an exciting opportunity for North Georgia, a university founded on these two traditions. We have the chance to integrate military and liberal education, to gain synergies by infusing the best of each with the other. If we do so, we can create learning opportunities for all our students that will enable them to become truly influential citizens.

The call for effective citizenship is not limited to students. We have a responsibility as a university to practice good citizenship within our home community. This obligation represents a third dimension of leadership.

Selfishly, we must practice successful institutional citizenship to protect the quality of life that is an essential element of our attractiveness. We also must continue to reap the benefit of interactions with the community that provide experiential learning for students, professional development for faculty who conduct applied scholarship or provide consultation or technical assistance, and opportunities for faculty and staff service.

Beyond selfish motives, we must seek to be good citizens because the role of the university in our society is changing significantly. The traditional image of an ivory tower institution, divorced from the complexities of everyday life, has been under siege. Our students are no longer simply young people seeking a bucolic experience. Our faculties often are engaged in research and development intimately linked with private and public enterprise. Our institutions are active participants in civic, social and cultural life. And universities are recruited as brokers to bring together on safe ground interest groups seeking to negotiate conflicts or establish a common cause.

Richard Florida’s seminal work, The Rise of the Creative Class, vividly shows the close relationship between success in the knowledge-based economy and a university presence. He further documents the regional nature of this economy, and the demands it places on universities and communities to provide the social and cultural amenities required by knowledge workers who drive the economy.

North Georgia is not, and should not be, a research university. But we are a university, and therefore our mission includes scholarship and service. We can be influential citizens of this region if we contribute our expertise and our time to its development, through applied research and development and through community engagement.

Although many of our faculty and staff have a strong record of involvement in our community, North Georgia has not yet fully assumed this role as a university. It is timely to do so. This region is faced with challenges associated with the metropolitanization of Atlanta. Growth is inexorably moving north, impinging on our mountain town. The region is searching for an economic strategy that will provide a niche in the new economy and ensure economic vitality. The population that is migrating to the region is affluent and educated, interested in cultural enrichment and further education.  What a great opportunity for our university. If we seize it, we can enrich our students’ educational experiences, strengthen our faculty scholarship and service, and enhance the quality of life in this region.

Our ability to discharge the university’s leadership mission ultimately depends on our commitment to practice what we preach. If we teach students that effectual leadership is founded on principles and values, we must manage ourselves on this basis. If we ask others to live by high standards of service to others, we must do so as well. To meet these requirements, we must pursue a fourth aspect of leadership, that is modeling leadership principles in our internal organizational culture. 

We are not alone in seeking to replace an outworn model of organizational conduct. We have already discussed changes in military education aimed at altering its organizational patterns. Corporations likewise are examining past leadership and organizational practices and creating new models of interaction between employers and employees.

Much of this change is driven by the emergence of the knowledge economy, which is, of course, built on brainpower. Each professional in this economy carries within himself or herself the creative ideas and specialized expertise that adds value. Each must be treated with respect if the organization is to get the maximum out of their skills and knowledge. Each must be given incentives that release their entrepreneurial talents.

In addition, knowledge workers depend on the brains of others. Advances are often the result of collaborations, connecting groups of specialists, each tapping into the unique know-how of the others to create collective innovations. These groups work best as democracies rather than as bureaucracies operating under command and control conditions. Democratic workplaces feature shifting and temporary leadership roles, minimize status differences, and capitalize on the contributions of individuals and localized work groups.

The values of organizational cultures appropriate for knowledge-based enterprises are notably similar to the traditions of collegiality within universities. Our commitment to academic freedom affirms the individual faculty member’s rights. We call each other colleagues in recognition that all of us are educators whether faculty or staff.

Ironically, though, universities—the dominant knowledge-based enterprises of modern times -- have not led the movement toward new forms of organization. Instead, institutions of higher education too often reveal vestiges of the old command structures and cultures. They can be preoccupied with status differences, both within the professoriate and between faculty and staff. They sometimes impose unnecessary controls under the guise of policy, or establish bureaucratic systems that stifle innovation and entrepreneurship. And people within these institutions do not always treat each other as well as they maintain.

North Georgia is a university that prides itself on strong and positive human relationships. For a newcomer, the first impressions about the institution conveyed by its members stress the community’s intimacy and closeness. We appreciate our small scale for the interpersonal bonds it encourages. Thanks to these values, we have the prospect of being an institution that lives by the leadership principles suitable for our time, and that conveys to others our determination to live by those values.

To claim this leadership role, however, we must be vigilant. We must liberate people from excessive hierarchical power and develop governance mechanisms that give voice to varied faculty, staff and student perspectives. We must empower departments and schools, increasing the potential for individual professional growth and teamwork. We must appropriately decentralize decision-making responsibility, authority and accountability, enlisting institution-wide participation in pursuit of mutual organizational goals. We must develop transparent processes for sharing and communicating information. And we must insist that each of us be accorded civility, dignity and respect.

These are the organizational qualities that make me eager to come to work every day. I hope you share my enthusiasm for them. Working together we will make North Georgia a model for humane leadership. I hope too that you share my passion for building a nationally known university, and that you will join the conversation to shape our institutional strategies. Weigh in with your ideas and concerns, critique these proposals, add your own insights and refinements, offer alternatives. Find a way to contribute your unique professional talents as part of a learning-centered, knowledge-based organization for the 21st century.

This page last modified on: Tuesday, 30 May 2006 18:25:01 -0400 by University Relations    

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