Alumni Magazine 2001-2002 UNIVERSITYOFMICHIGAN - Rackham ...

From the
Dean
Welcome to the third annual issue of the Rackham Alumni
Magazine, and thank you for spending some of your
time with us. Our theme this year might be expressed as
“The Value of Academic Training Outside Academia,” and it goes
right to the heart of the current national debate about the need to
reform graduate education. There have been several reports over the
last decade or so that it takes too long, that it’s too expensive, that
it’s too narrow. However, when we do our job well, we train people
to become leaders, in whatever professional milieus they choose.
Here you will be introduced to several alumni and current students,
including Ingrid Sheldon, a former teacher who served four
terms as Mayor of Ann Arbor; David Wu, an accomplished musician
and graphic designer whose research focus is the retina;
Heather Wathington, who is parlaying her academic interests and
corporate experience into building support for the loftiest goals of
higher education; and Ted Tyler, whose activities on behalf of social
justice have paralleled his successful business career.
Corporations, government, and nonprofit agencies, as well as
academe, need people who are trained as linguists, social anthropologists,
literary critics, and historians. Quite honestly, there still
remains a tension inside of the academy. It has required a great
degree of soul-searching to say that if the only thing we’re doing is
training faculty, we have missed the opportunity to truly educate
beyond the baccalaureate level. Our mission is at least twofold: not
only to reproduce the next generation of university and college faculty,
but also to reproduce the next generation of social leaders, no
matter where they work.
Students have many different interests. It’s a disservice to try to
shoehorn them into following one, when what we should do is provide
them at an early stage with the means to learn that they can do
many things, and probably will. Those who pursue multiple careers,
inside and outside the academy, will tell you they are constantly
Photo by Lin Goings
learning. The completion of a degree is not the end but, in some
sense, the beginning of the learning process.
Those of us who are in mainline academic appointments must begin to realize we need more and more involvement with those
who are not. This is a symbiotic relationship. In engineering, a good proportion of the new faculty that we have hired in recent years
have come from research labs and industry. The same thing is true of the growth in the number of clinical professors both in law and
in medicine.
In recent years, the idea of learning for the sake of learning has been diminished, if not discouraged. The people profiled in this
magazine are ambassadors for the notion that there is indeed an intrinsic value to learning. Although sometimes specialized and even
esoteric, learning — in and of itself — is part of the process that equipped them to respond to the many challenges presented to them
over a lifetime.
A final word about Rackham. In the last few months, we have all reexamined our values and our priorities. What has emerged
from this period of reflection is the inspiring determination of our students to move forward, to complete their degrees, and to
use their considerable talents for the good of the larger world. Their work has just begun and carries with it the promise of a
brighter future.
Best Regards,
Earl Lewis