Our Academic Master Plan: A Message from the Office of the Provost

TAKE THE ACADEMIC MASTER PLAN SURVEY

Dear NJCU Community,

This week marks the beginning of the collective work of our academic master plan that was called for and outlined by Interim President Andrés Acebo to the university in late Spring in the "Recovery and Revitalization Plan: A Framework for Long-Term Financial Sustainability, Mission Focus, and Student Success". The collective charge is to anchor our university to our community with an unrelenting focus to drive student success with an unyielding and uncompromising foundation of inclusive and service-driven pedagogy. This is our opportunity to focus on purpose – on larger ideals that bind us and drive our collective efforts.

This work is essential. This work is critical. And it will proceed in tandem with the work that has been underway to strengthen shared governance that will map our mission refresh and long-term strategic plan for our university.

I spent the first two decades of my academic career teaching others to consider the purpose of education. These considerations originally motivated me to get my Ph.D. in curriculum studies instead of educational leadership as I originally planned. When I was finishing my certification in leadership, I put off the curriculum course until the end of the program. I’d envisioned writing lesson plans or making flannel boards. My soon-to-be mentor, Dr. George Stansbury, taught the course and opened my eyes to the significance of curriculum. He assigned Herb Kliebard’s book, Forging the American Curriculum. Kliebard identified four key forces within curriculum thought from 1893-1958: humanism, social efficiency, developmentalism, and social meliorism. He demonstrated how these forces were always at play. He compared them to currents within a brook that, depending upon environmental conditions, would gain or lose force. This helped me see how curriculum is so much more – it is the whole of our shared lived experiences, and as educators, we have an awesome responsibility shaping that experience.

Later, I would use Kliebard’s work when teaching graduate students, who would break into pairs and select a decade since industrialization. They would be responsible for creating a timeline that included what was happening in society as well as what was happening in schools. In those early days, we’d use chart paper, colored pencils, and markers. They would then use different colors to represent Kliebard’s four forces and cover their chart paper in “currents” that they felt reflected the decade. Next, we would arrange the charts, side-by-side, by decade, where they would see how the forces waxed and waned. This exercise would span several weeks, and the full timeline was a compelling image for teachers and administrators who may have previously considered curriculum simply a series of lesson plans or a syllabus.

Curriculum is shaped by society, but curriculum also helps shape society.

Many of us who teach may do so without explicitly considering the purpose of education. We have motivations or beliefs that may have influenced our decision to teach, and we may have assumptions that impact the choices regarding what and how we teach. For some, our beliefs about the purpose of education may shift as we continuously grow within our profession.

As an undergraduate student, I vividly recall the first moments in my Introduction to Sociology course with Dr. Brad Stone. It was the fall of my freshman year. Dr. Stone stood before us and introduced us to the class with the following: “The purpose of education is education, and education for any other purpose serves no purpose at all.” I was enthralled. I became a self-proclaimed neo-Aristotelian and read things like Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue in my free time – seeing educational pursuits for their own sake as the highest form of social practices. Looking back, I recognize the level of privilege I possessed to make such claims. I was from an upper-middle class family with many safety nets. Many of my classmates were equally privileged. Many could major in whatever interested them as they would ultimately go and work for a family business.

Over the years, I’ve had many lessons in humility. I’ve taught children, young adults, and adults without safety nets. I’ve seen how education can transform the lives of individuals and their families. I have also seen how narrow views of curriculum can be equally as damaging as privileged images of education.

When I first became a school administrator in Georgia, we attended new administrator orientation before the school year began. As part of this orientation, the superintendent came to offer inspiration. His mantra – in the speech and throughout his communications across the district was “World class standards! Measured student achievement!” This mantra drove the narrative of the county, but it lacked substance.

After his speech, each new administrator was then asked to come to the microphone, introduce ourselves, tell him the name of the school where we were to serve and what our vision for the school was. Each new administrator tried to say, “world class standards” and “measured student achievement” differently as they introduced themselves.

“Hello, my name is Sue Perleader. I’m the assistant principal at Happy Elementary School where our students will meet standards that are better than other countries and get high scores on all their tests.” For each iteration, the superintendent smiled.

It was my turn. “Hello, my name is Donna, and I am the assistant principal at Dyer Elementary School where our students will work to esteem something greater than themselves.” Have you ever seen the commercial for a credit card where things are running smoothly until someone pulls out a checkbook? The response was similar. There was an awkward pause. The superintendent was not smiling, but then the next new administrator came to the podium and the rhythm of the exercise resumed.

What we teach matters. Why we teach what we teach matters even more. An academic master plan helps us think about why we teach what we teach. In The School and Society, John Dewey argues the following:

What the best and wisest parent wants for his own child, that must the community want for all its children. Any other ideal for our schools is narrow and unlovely; acted upon, it destroys our democracy. (p.7)

I cannot think of a single parent whose hopes and dreams for a child is a “measured achievement.” Much of what a parent wants for his or her child cannot be measured on a test. How do our aims reflect the aims of our students’ families? How do they reflect the hopes of the community?

Through our work with the academic master plan, we get to question and collectively determine what drives our academic identity. Please participate in the varied ways we will be collecting your thoughts.

First, you will have the opportunity to complete a survey. This survey provides 11 goals for our academic master plan, and you can identify the degree to which each goal should be a priority. You also can provide additional feedback related to each goal.

Second, you will be invited to participate in an asynchronous town hall. This town hall will provide opportunities for you to add content related to each goal: videos, white papers, commentary, etc.

Third, you will be invited to a gallery walk in October. This experience will include two steps: identifying key objectives and performance measures for each goal and then prioritizing those objectives and indicators.

Finally, you will be invited to participate in a workshop. During this event you can work with others focused on specific goals to finalize the plan.

Thank you, in advance, for helping us develop this academic master plan for our students and for the NJCU community.

Sincerely,

Donna Adair Breault, Ph.D.
Interim Provost and Executive Vice President of Academic Affairs
New Jersey City University