Clark plans innovations, new solutions
Editor’s Note: The following is an edited text of Uni
versity President Robert Clark’s address to the faculty
meeting held Wednesday. Due to space limitations, the
full speech is not reprinted. Approximately GO per cent
of the prepared text is included below, with no intent
to change the original meaning.
It may be useful to all of us if I comment on the
governing structure of the University and on some of
the problems to which we must attend in the coming
year.
I. Governance. Steeped in the traditions of the Uni
versity and practiced in its ways, I know that the charter
defines the president as a member of the faculty and
assigns to the faculty responsibility for the curriculum
and academic requirements, for student conduct and wel
fare—with final authority reserved to the regents, now
the Board of Higher Education. The system is well calcu
lated to temper the exuberance of a president by the
deliberations of a judicious faculty.
In the most marked change in recent years, and in
response to an urgency that would not be denied, you
have enlarged the governing circle to include students.
I concur with your judgment, heartily. Faculties, noting
the apathy of the mass or wary of the prospective irre
sponsibility of the few, are reluctant to give students
control. I share this uneasiness, not so much from fear
of what the students will do, or from sensitiveness to
public reaction, as from concern that we will take half
way measures, that we will not invent the way to involve
students where their judgment counts or to make them
truly responsible to their peers. The solution to this
thorny problem, I believe, is to extend, not retrench,
. . . let us enlarge student control ot
their own budgets . . .
their involvement, so that they will engage not only in
general University affairs but in the functions of their
own schools, colleges and departments—without the fac
ulty’s relinquishing its final, professional responsibility.
Let us encourage the students to make their government
more representative and more responsible to student
views, and let us enlarge student control of their own
budgets, with the condition that they either sustain
‘present programs for which long-time or necessary com
mitments have been made, find other funds to sustain
them, or if radical change is clearly mandated by the
students, find an orderly way to make it.
We may be on the point of losing something extra
ordinarily precious in the life of this University —
governance by a concerned faculty. It may be possible
to delegate more responsibility to the Academic Senate,
to preserve limited categories of issues for the general
faculty, to utilize the referendum, to schedule faculty
meetings less frequently without abandoning the right
to hold them every month.
Bigness and complexity have likewise made it more
difficult for the University to maintain responsible and
sensitive administration.
To achieve the delicate balance between personal in
volvement and delegation of authority, it will be necessary
1) to encourage a free flow of information so that pro
spective decisions will be influenced by those persons
most intimately affected and so that decisions already
taken may be subjected to scrutiny and review, 2) to dele
gate responsibility without severing communic; tion with
the President’s Office, 3) to provide a mechanism or pro
cedures for the review and possible reversal of a decision.
To effect these goals 1 propose to introduce some in
novations in administrative organization and to utilize
most of the traditional agencies.
First, I intend to reconstitute the President’s Staff. One
of my principal objectives in doing so will be to increase
administrative attention and focus on the University’s
primary mission—its academic programs. The primary
body for achieving this objective will be the Council
of Deans in which the Dean of Faculties and I shall both
be involved. I shall invite the several deans to come to
my office, to discuss their problems and aspirations, but
their business will be conducted with the Dean of
Faculties, who will take action or make recommendations
to me. I hope to meet with department heads and facul
... I share this uneasiness .. . that we will
take halfway measures . . .
ties for the purpose of communication, the business to
be transacted in the appropriate office. But I should add,
that communication is not to inform only, but to provide
the basis for action.
For the auxiliary functions of the University — the
housing program, the health service, student affairs and
others; and to coordinate and implement policies that
impinge upon more than one area of the University, I
shall meet regularly with an Administrative Committee
including the Dean of Faculties, the Dean of Administra
tion, and others.
I shall continue regular meetings with the Advisory
Council. I shall continue meeting regularly with the
Budget Committee and I shall rely upon the Committee
on Committees. 1 am hopeful that the role of the Aca
demic Senate can be enlarged, not only in the matters
to which I have alluded, but in functions of studying
and proposing or acting upon policy change. I shall, at
its request, meet with the ASUO Cabinet twice a month,
and hopefully at times yet to be determined with a
committee representing minority students, in both in
stances for communication, with policies and specific
proposals for action to be developed through the agents
of the administration.
Lest you may not have perceived my intent, let me
state that it is to share responsibility, and yet not let go
of the vital functions of the University.
I hope that this administrative pattern will be effective
for all of us. We shall have occasion to test it forthwith.
For the problems facing us are many and urgent.
One of them is to define our purpose as a University.
Periodically every University must re-examine and re
define its mission. In general terms one scarcely need
do more than restate Ortega. Roughly his propositions
are two: first, the function of the University is to transmit
culture, to teach the professions, and to advance knowl
edge (through research); and second, the organization of
the University should be based upon the student and not
upon the professor or upon knowledge.
I shall return to the second of these propositions later.
On the first, it may not be difficult, with careful exposi
tion of the meaning, to get faculty, students, and the
legislature to agree on Ortega’s statement of functions.
The problem arises in the distribution of limited re
sources, and creative energy among the three.
Our University was unprepared for the recent state
legislative action. It had assumed that its growth and
development were generally in accord with the prescrip
tion and assumptions of the Legislature and the Board.
Let me name several.
1) Areas of instruction and research in the liberal arts
and sciences, and specified professional fields, were pre
scribed by the Board and adhered to by the University.
2) It was generally assumed, as in most public univer
sities, that growth in each of the several instructional
departments would be determined in a large measure
by student demand. Heretofore, the public has not been
hospitable to the imposition of arbitrary limits on en
rollment, save in exceptional cases, as, for example, the
lack of laboratory space in one of the sciences. The areas
assigned to the University, particularly the arts and sci
ences, education and business, are those which experi
ence the greatest demands for advanced graduate study.
The very nature of this University, therefore, encourages
a larger percentage of graduate students than might be
expected in applied fields.
3) Our increasingly sophisticated society demands an
increasing number of highly prepared men and women.
It is doubtful that the University of Oregon, in its gradu
ate program, has kept pace either with the needs of
society, or with comparable public universities in other
states.
4) It has been assumed that the State of Oregon should
maintain a rough balance between non-resident students
and Oregon residents who seek higher education in other
states. The data suggest that in the State System as a
whole we have maintained that balance. But the curricula
assigned to the University are those which seem to attract
the more mobile students, and the University, having a
disproportionate share of non-residents, is the institution
most seriously affected by the new regulation. University
education ought not to be limited by state boundaries.
It is a part of a national, indeed of an international whole.
But when all of this is said, the mission of the Uni
versity must be defined not on educational terms alone,
but also on the basis of available resources.
We must, then, define our purpose. Department by de
partment, we must examine the assumptions on which
we operate. Our criterion ought not be how many stu
dents we can recruit, but. given our resources, what kind
of education can we offer them when they enroll. We
must review and justify the allocation of faculty to under
graduate and graduate functions, we must restudy and
adjust teaching loads, both to improve undergraduate in
struction and to protect the research function essential
to graduate studies.
B. Curriculum and Instruction.
We shall be well advised to experiment freely with
instructional methods and to foster innovative approaches
to the curriculum and to course content. I offer these com
ments and suggestions.
1. The University is large enough and sufficiently di
verse to experiment without destroying that which is
good. The present pattern of group requirements, with
improvement in course content, may well be the most
satisfactory approach to general education for the ma
jority of our students. The groups are an attempt to give
balance the professionalism that engages the attention of
most students. Without neglecting the sciences, they are
skewed toward the humanities, an emphasis appropriate
to our prescribed mission. And yet I suspect that far too
many of them are professionally oriented or that, ignor
ing Ortega’s injunction, they are based upon the abstract
requirements of the subject matter, and not upon the
concrete needs of the student.
2. We ought to consider whether or not it is feasible
to provide a small seminar, every year or every term for
every undergraduate student.
3. Professors should experiment with new, and even
radically different, methods of instruction.
4. The most important innovation that we can under
take, in my judgment, is the development of several small,
relatively autonomous groups of students and professors
who, within their academic communities, may depart in
radical ways from the traditional curriculum. It is pos
sible that one or more of these groups might develop a
sattelite or residential college.
5. We should consider the feasibility of giving selected
students—largely self-selected—the discretion of deter
mining, within broadly defined areas, the content of their
own education and the means of acquiring it, through
attendance at lectures or independent study.
6. We should recognize that it is the function of the
University not only to conserve and transmit but to act
as an agent of change — so long as the University is
faithful to its own character. I believe that it is a viola
tion of the University’s integrity to yield to the student’s
demand that he be given credit for community work,
however noble that work may be, or to his demand that
the University as University engage directly in social or
political conflict. But it is proper for the University to
teach its students the processes of social change, to
study their efforts to apply what they have learned, and
University purpose rests not upon "how
many students we can recruit."
to give them credit for their attempt to conceptualize
what they have experienced. Thus, in history, literature,
and the social sciences, and even the sciences, we can
make the curriculum relevant, make the subject matter,
without our compromising its integrity, serve the needs
of the student.
Equally urgent, and likewise of concern to all of us
is the need for the University, as an agent of the general
society, to meet the special needs of students from
minority groups. In our technological society the labor
of the unskilled is an embarrassment. The only way up,
the only way open to an integration into the larger so
ciety, is through the acquition of skills and knowledge.
Society must take positive and highly creative steps to
accelerate the acquisition of skills and knowledge, and
the University must do its part. Business has undertaken
a massive effort, through the National Alliance of Busi
nessmen (NAB) and the Urban Coalition. The program
has worked remarkably well, though fhe prospective de
cline in employment opportunities is a foreboding note.
The operating principles are, with modification, appli
cable to higher education. If we are to accelerate the
education of minority students, as I believe we should,
we must continue to enlarge the program of special ad
missions (without, however, recruiting young people to
the certain and bitter experience of failure); we must
improve our assistance programs, both instructional and
financial; we must provide time for these disadvantaged
students to establish themselves without their being for
ever freighted down with sub standard GPA’s; we must
reach out not so much to help them as to give them the
chance to help themselves. But once we have made these
concessions to their need, we must expect them to hold
their own, to make their way on the basis of ability and
performance.
Finally, I should like to speak to the problem of stu
dent unrest and disruption. We can do much to reduce
conflict if we move vigorously on the issues I have already
discussed. Two of the great assets of the University in
meeting the current crisis are 1) the long-standing and
proud tradition of a campus open to the free discussion
of opposing and divergent ideas; the University faculty’s
sense of responsibility, assigned by the charter, for stu
dent conduct and welfare.
In the immediate crisis, two distinctions must be made
clear, both for ourselves and for the better understanding
of the public: 1) argument, demonstration, protest, even
. . . The problems . . . are many
and urgent . . .
One of them is to define our purpose
bad manners, ought not to be confused with disruptive
and coercive behavior.
2) Oftentimes student demands are made not so much
to effect change on the campus as to dramatize an issue
of more general concern. There is small reason, there
fore, for the administrator to feel frustrated or angry
when students demand changes that he cannot effect The
problem, however, is that students themselves, or many
of them, do not always perceive the distinction—with the
result that the president’s failure to yield to an unreason
able demand generates frustration and anger that can be
inflamed into violence.
Added to these is the fact that some students are so
persuaded of the moral rightness of their cause that they
are intolerant of all other views. It is now a widely
enunciated dogma that there are limits to tolerance that
only those who judge themselves to be right are qualified
to speak or act for the people, that the right to speak or
L ,hHt_°r offer, or t0 take certain curricula—must be
withdrawn from the majority or from certain segments
of the society or the University. "Liberating tolerance ”
and I quote from a prophet of the Left. "Liberating toler
theVeht1 Tfain 'ftoler?nce against movements from
the Right, and toleration of movements from the Left
1 Continued on page 8)