ACADEMIC PHILOSOPHY
Eduardo M. Ochoa
August 2003
This document describes how I have sought to develop meaning and purpose for my professional life. After a review of my educational and professional background, it outlines my commitment to the mission of the comprehensive university, and the impact of Ernest Boyer's work on my understanding of that mission. It then outlines my approach to the implementation of the mission by covering the role played by strategic planning, active learning and assessment, faculty development and scholarship, information technology, service learning and community engagement, external partnerships and support, and an institutional commitment to excellence and shared governance. Finally, it reviews how I have implemented this approach as Dean of the College of Business at Cal Poly Pomona.
My educational background spans multiple disciplines and is a function of my evolving interests in the course of my intellectual development. My undergraduate degree was completed at a liberal arts college (Reed). My Reed experience was transformational, and the foundation of all my subsequent intellectual development. Given my original interest in philosophy of science, I chose to do a double major in physics and philosophy. However, over the course of that program my focus shifted from epistemology to issues in social and political philosophy. At that time (the 70's), social and political developments in my native country of Argentina led me to pursue a Masters in engineering at Columbia University, with a view to returning to contribute to its development along progressive socio-economic lines. However, by the time I graduated from the engineering program at Columbia, Argentina had plunged into a period of repression and dictatorship that made my plan inoperative. After working in industry for some time, I returned to higher education to pursue my original interests in social issues in a Ph.D. program in economics. Given my point of entry into the field and my intellectual interests at the time, the Graduate Faculty at New School University was a natural choice for the latter.
My areas of interest in economics have been political economy, macroeconomics, and industrial organization, and most of my publications and other scholarly activities have been in those areas. However, the next formative experiences came to me through my teaching. Starting at Fresno State University and continuing at California State University-Los Angeles, I faced a situation that many fresh Ph.D.'s face upon their first appointment at a teaching institution. This was the wide gap between the world that our doctoral programs implicitly prepared us for, and the realities of a comprehensive university. I became aware of the divergence between what my department rewarded and what we were actually in business to do. These initially fragmentary insights became more fleshed out when I became department chair, and I started to interact with the other departments in the College (of Business) for which my department did most of its service teaching. Eventually, I discovered the work of Ernest Boyer, particularly his book Scholarship Reconsidered.
Boyer's work was both a revelation and a validation of many of my own perceptions. It was a revelation in that it tied together many of the latter (and more) into a comprehensive, articulated conceptual framework. This framework not only increased my understanding, but also provided a guide to action in higher education. Boyer's analysis of the three originating traditions of the contemporary American higher education system (the moral development of British religious colleges, the expansion of disciplinary knowledge by German research universities, and the community service of US land-grant institutions) made intelligible the cross-currents still at play in that system. With that analysis as a context, his categorization of research universities, comprehensive universities, and community colleges led naturally to the notion of distinct missions for each of these equally vital segments of the overall higher education system. It also led naturally to the notion that each distinct mission implies its own distinct canon of excellence for which institutions must strive. Finally, it identifies the pressing need to align rewards and incentives with the activities and outcomes required by those missions.
In the course of my twenty-one years in the CSU and through the formative experiences outlined above, I have developed an abiding commitment to the comprehensive universities' mission of providing broad access to bachelor's and master's level education, particularly to first-generation college students. Our institutions play a critical role in American society, first by preparing our graduates for successful and productive careers, but second-and just as importantly-by providing them with the broad education that will enrich their lives and enhance their contributions to the civic life of our communities. I am proud of being a part of such a critically important segment of our system of higher education. At the same time, my own formative experiences as an undergraduate at Reed convinced me of the great value and practicality of a liberal-arts education with a strong and rigorous general education component. Sonoma State University, as a public liberal-arts university combines both of these critically needed components: access and a liberal-arts orientation.
In my academic experience to date, I have found strategic planning to be a process that effectively ties resource allocation to clearly articulated objectives in support of an organization's mission. It provides a discipline to the task of prioritizing among the many worthwhile activities and initiatives available to a complex organization. By involving all key stakeholders in a meaningful way, it promotes engagement and familiarity with the organization's objectives, and legitimates the outcome of the process.
Each school or campus has its unique characteristics, mission, and objectives. However, some elements will be an integral part of any university's strategy, particularly a comprehensive university.
A central strategy for fulfillment of such a university's mission will be a commitment to active learning. Our students today require active engagement in a learning process, rather than passive absorption of content delivery. We must continually strive to develop curriculum, bring the latest advances in pedagogy to our classrooms, assess outcomes, and start the cycle again in order to maximize the fulfillment of our students' potential.
To introduce such a high-performance or continuous-quality-improvement culture to our universities effectively, faculty and staff need to be supported by providing them with the development opportunities that they need. A focus on learning entails that the faculty be provided the necessary tools, and should be a high priority when allocating resources. In this regard, faculty scholarship is also not a competing good to quality teaching, but a necessary complement. Scholarly activity by faculty maintains currency in the field, enriches the classroom experience, and makes the impact of the material on the student fresher and more vivid.
Campus-based institutions will always provide compelling value to our students through face-to-face interaction in a university environment. However, Internet-based tools such as Web portals, chat rooms, and e-mail will be increasingly used to complement and enrich the traditional delivery mode. A hybrid model of learning and instruction is emerging that uses the latter tools for some activities and reserves the classroom time for its best use in highly interactive activities. To implement this vision fully presupposes that a campus has a sophisticated information technology infrastructure, and that faculty and staff are supported in their efforts to access and effectively use this technology.
Comprehensive universities share a commitment to engage in the community as part of their missions. The university represents considerable human and physical resources that can be put to work to address community needs and concerns. It can do this by making service learning a key part of the educational experience of its students, and by encouraging the development of applied research agendas by its faculty that are inspired by issues and needs in the community. Doing so not only contributes to the community-thereby increasing goodwill toward the university-but it also leads in many instances to better, more significant scholarship.
A university thus committed to successful learning outcomes and engaged with its community is ideally positioned to approach alumni, business, and government stakeholders to form alliances and partnerships that advance joint goals through contracts and through their financial and in-kind support. As we enter a new period of tight fiscal constraints in government support of higher education, this strategy will become increasingly important for both private and public universities.
All of the above strategies both support and require a commitment to excellence to become deeply embedded in the culture of the university. However, excellence needs to be understood in the context of the university's mission. It needs to be defined by rigorous thinking and with the intellectual self-confidence needed to avoid mimicking the canons of excellence of elite universities with albeit very different missions.
The kind of deliberate, purposeful institutional transformation described above cannot possibly occur in an organization of highly skilled professionals such as a university without a process of shared governance. Such a process recognizes that the university has a dual character: it is an organization created to accomplish certain goals and objectives, and it is an intellectual civic community, a polis. Its first dimension means that the university must be mindful of efficiency considerations when allocating its resources. Its second dimension means that the members of the community qua members have a right to participate in the decision-making process. To some extent, there is an inevitable tension between the need for efficient outcomes and the need for participatory processes. However, that tension is at the heart of the nature of the university, and the fulfillment of the university's promise lies in its successful stewardship.
