Campus Life

In Search of Community

Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Drew Moser, Todd C. Ream, Drew Moser, Todd C. Ream

• Publisher: IVP Academic
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780830865239
• Topic: Éducation
• Subtopic: Vie étudiante

In 1990, under the direction of Ernest Boyer, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching published a classic report on the loss of a meaningful basis for true community on college campuses—and in the nation. Now this expanded edition of Campus Life: In Search of Community reintroduces educational leaders to the Boyer report's proposals while offering up-to-date analysis and recommendations for Christian campuses today. Editors Drew Moser and Todd C. Ream have assembled pairs of academic and student-development leaders from top Christian colleges to offer a hopeful update on the practical contributions of Christian higher education to the practice of community. This volume includes new chapters, the long out-of-print Boyer report in its entirety, and a discussion guide to facilitate team conversations. Higher education now stands at a critical point, yet the contributors to this expanded edition of Campus Life see current challenges as an opportunity to revive Boyer's commitment to its formative power. Contributors include: - Mark L. Sargent and Edee Schulze of Westmont College- Randall Basinger and Kris Hansen-Kieffer of Messiah College- Brad Lau and Linda Samek of George Fox University- Stephen T. Beers and Edward Ericson III of John Brown University- Paul O. Chelsen and Margaret Diddams of Wheaton College- Doretha O'Quinn and Tim Young of Vanguard UniversityChristian higher education now stands at a critical point, yet the contributors to this expanded edition of Campus Life see current challenges as an opportunity to revive Boyer's commitment to understanding the formative power of Christian higher education.

Part One

. . .

Campus Life

. . .

A Recurring
Challenge or
Opportunity?

Prologue

In Search of Renewal (Again)

Drew Moser and Todd C. Ream

In our current climate, it is difficult to imagine a public intellectual who transcends partisanship and polarization.1 The names that come to mind tend to fall firmly into ideological camps, their popularity fueled by both support and disdain. In the 1980s and 1990s, Ernest L. Boyer (1928–1995) was a public intellectual on all matters of education, and was widely appreciated for his accessible wisdom and rhetorical flair. Democrats and Republicans, religious and nonreligious, all looked to him for guidance on the educational challenges of their day.

As a result, Boyer became a household name. His rise to prominence from chancellor of the State University of New York system (SUNY), to US Commissioner of Education under President Carter, to president of the Carnegie Foundation, is well known. In his latter and most popular role, Boyer led the production of an impressive slate of monumental reports on education, including A Quest for Common Learning: The Aims of General Education;2 High School: A Report on Secondary Education in America;3 College: The Undergraduate Experience in America;4 Campus Life: In Search of Community;5 Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate;6 Ready to Learn: A Mandate for the Nation;7 and The Basic School: A Community of Learning.8

Those that know the name Ernest Boyer are familiar with these roles and reports. What is lesser known is why and how he rose to prominence. To put it simply (but not simplistically), Boyer’s formative experiences in Christian higher education shaped him into the effective educational leader of his day.

A Christian College Beginning

Before Boyer rose to national and international prominence, he first served as a student and then eventually as a faculty member and administrator with several Christian colleges. Born to industrious, successful business owners in Dayton, Ohio, Boyer observed the value of hard work and lifelong learning.9 His greatest influence, his Grandfather William Boyer, was the founder and director of a Brethren in Christ–affiliated mission located in the heart of Dayton, Ohio.10 The Reverend William Boyer ran the mission for over thirty years. The Dayton mission became young Ernest’s second home. Together, his father’s success and his grandfather’s faithful service compelled Ernest to pursue excellence and service throughout his life.

He finished high school and received his two-year degree at Brethren in Christ Messiah College (1948), where he met his wife Kathryn (Kay) Tyson. He then attended Greenville College (IL), a Free Methodist institution. There he received his BA in 1950. After brief stints pastoring in Orlando, Florida, and pursuing graduate studies at Ohio State University, Boyer received a call from John Z. Martin, a senior administrator of the fledgling Brethren in Christ–affiliated Upland College in California.11 Martin offered him a full-time salary to teach half-time at Upland College and pursue his PhD in audiology at the University of Southern California (USC). Upland College would also cover his tuition. Upon earning a PhD, he would become the school’s academic dean.

Boyer was passionate about educating Upland’s student body in terms of their sense of civic duty, devoting many chapel messages to inform them of current events and their responsibility to engage them. He created and coached a college debate team, passing on skills from his own experience at Greenville College.12 He created the nation’s first 4-1-4 academic calendar in 1953, devoting the first interterm to the subject of US-Soviet relations.

Nearing graduation from USC, he met with his faculty advisor, W. Charles Redding, to discuss next steps. Boyer proudly revealed he planned to continue to work for Upland College to help them achieve accreditation. Boyer’s advisor looked sternly at him and threatened to withhold the degree should he follow through with this plan. Proudly he boasted, “Our Ph.D.’s go to bigger jobs.”13 Boyer was distraught. He deeply valued the work of Upland College, and had no interest in landing one of his advisor’s “real jobs.” Boyer reluctantly took an adjunct position at Long Beach State teaching night classes to appease his advisor and keep his day job. He was still awarded his PhD in 1957.14 Boyer’s leadership was successful, as Upland College eventually received accreditation from the Western College Association. Boyer and Martin, eager to replicate their accreditation success, were then instrumental in the founding of the Council for the Advancement of Small Colleges (CASC), a group that helped small colleges navigate through the accreditation process. As a result of the CASC’s efforts, ninety small colleges received accreditation, including Boyer’s alma mater, Messiah College.

Boyer’s work in lobbying accrediting bodies on the merits of small-college higher education planted seeds for his landmark views on scholarship. Boyer’s most popular and influential work, Scholarship Reconsidered,15 was largely formed due to his experiences in helping Christian colleges gain accreditation. Time after time, he pleaded the case of Christian college to accreditors. He coached Christian presidents in how to communicate the unique aspects of their institutions. In so doing, he found that there was value in the things Christian colleges did that did not fall into traditional metrics.

Despite Boyer’s good work to cultivate a vibrant, quality academic community at Upland, the college was going bankrupt, and it became clear in the early 1960s that the college needed to close.16 Boyer helped the school through negotiations to send the college library and its seal to Fresno Pacific University. Messiah College would then absorb Upland’s remaining debt and officially become recognized as its merging partner in 1964.17

Much later in his career, when Boyer was president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, he sought to translate his small-college experience to the broader educational community. He challenged the publish-or-perish focus of the academy, arguing that it was pursued at teaching’s expense, neglecting students. This conviction led Boyer and the Carnegie Foundation to publish arguably two of the most important reports during his tenure: Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate,18 and the very report you now hold in your hands. He announced the pending release of these reports to a gathering of the American Association of Independent Colleges and Universities in February of 1990. This group was largely inspired from Boyer’s own work thirty years prior to his cofounding of the Council for the Advancement of Small Colleges. His experience in championing the benefits of the small-college experience was now coming to fruition, over thirty years later.

In this audience, Boyer knew he was among friends, friends who valued teaching and pursued the development of college students beyond the classroom. Boyer was very excited about the release of both reports, hoping they would help higher education return to where the small, independent colleges had been all along. To this audience, he said, “Your agenda is being legitimized because, I believe, it is absolutely right.”19 It was an affirmation that independent colleges (of which Christian institutions formed a significant part) were the exemplars of the very type of vibrant learning community and broadened, engaged scholarship that Boyer proposed.

In addition to his foundational work in the development of the American Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, his work in cofounding the CASC also influenced the founding of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU).20

Campus Life: A Report with Soul

In March 1990, the Carnegie Foundation, in cooperation with the American Council on Education (ACE), released Campus Life: In Search of Community. The study surveyed five hundred presidents all over the country, along with hundreds of other administrators, faculty, and students. The overall conclusion was generally optimistic: “Campuses are well managed, and we’ve built in the United States a system of higher learning that’s the envy of the world.”21 Yet the campus was not without perils. Student apathy, alcohol abuse, racial tension, and incivility were causes for concern. Boyer felt they were a reflection of the society at large. In the Campus Life report, he praised student personnel professionals (now widely referred to as student affairs professionals) for their superb response to the crises besetting the college campus. He also felt concern for these professionals, believing they were asked to carry too much of the responsibility for these issues.

Boyer introduced the results of the Campus Life report to the annual gathering of the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators (NASPA) in March 1990.22 Rather than simply trying to curb bad behavior on college campuses, Boyer cast a larger vision, outlining six principles that captured the essence of higher education. His goal was to provide a framework for the development of a community of learning.

First, Boyer argued that a college campus was a purposeful community, where faculty and students work together. To Boyer, such a community was one where the academic and the cocurricular are integrated: “I’m convinced that the academic and nonacademic cannot be divided and if students do not become intellectually engaged—if they do not take seriously the educational mission of the institution, then all talk about community will be simply a diversion.”23 He encouraged both faculty and student personnel professionals to be viewed as teachers, common educators for a common cause.

Second, Boyer argued that the college campus is a just community, where dignity is affirmed and equality is pursued. Boyer firmly believed that America’s colleges could be a shining example to the country of how to bridge what he felt was a widening gap between rich and poor. Third, the college is an open community, where freedom of thought and expression is protected. On this point Boyer reveled in the power of language to exchange ideas. He referred to it as a “sacred trust.”24 Fourth, the college campus was a disciplined community, where governance promotes and protects the common good. Boyer, in spite of his conservative Brethren upbringing, advocated for a more open and inclusive campus. However, he strongly argued that all colleges follow the likes of his alma maters Messiah and Greenville and have some sort of clear code of conduct developed by the campus community. Fifth, the college is a caring community, where members are supported and service is embraced. Boyer felt that a college committed to service would allow students the valuable opportunity for engagement across the generations. Finally, the college campus is a celebrative community. Tradition and heritage are remembered. He quipped that a “community of learning must be held together by something more than a common grievance over parking.”25

Boyer sent a copy of the report his friend and colleague John W. Gardner, who was then the Mirian and Peter Hass Centennial Professor in Public Service at Stanford University. Gardner then wrote a letter thanking him for the gift and praising the report: “Not only does it cover all aspects of the subject with clarity and wisdom, but it is a wonderfully humane report. It has soul, which is in such short supply these days that I suspect you of having access to some secret source.”26 A reading of the Campus Life report does indeed reveal a soul.

The Search for Renewal (Again)

Nearly thirty years since the release of Campus Life, Christian higher education stands at a critical point in its history. Many institutions face declining enrollments, escalating discount rates, fractured faculties, rises in the mental health needs of student bodies, and ideological clashes over theology, politics, and culture. These colleges and universities, once considered bastions of evangelicalism, are emerging as battlegrounds in a new chapter of the long-standing culture wars, a tension that proved particularly palpable during the 2016 US presidential election.

An unfortunate casualty of such tumult is the peaceful campus life many institutions took for granted. Racial tensions, financial troubles, and theological diversity now continue to threaten the social fabric of these historically small, tight-knit institutions. For such a time, leaders of Christian colleges and universities must reflect on what led their institutions to this precipice and, in turn, cast a new vision for campus life.

In many ways, Boyer devoted his career to translating the formative power of Christian higher education to a wider audience. The concepts championed by Boyer and his associates in Campus Life, coupled with the many challenges facing today’s campuses, present an opportunity to reconsider and translate those concepts to current and future generations of leaders in Christian higher education.

The communal fabric that long defined Christian colleges and universities is fraying. While many of the virtues once woven into that fabric are timeless and worthy of reinvestment in the present context, some scholars rightfully contend that a number of topics were precluded from taking their place among ones deemed acceptable.

For example, Stanley Hauerwas argued that many Christians allowed the vice of sentimentality to parade as a virtue to the point of precluding conversations to take place that, while needing to be part public discourse, were deemed inadmissible.27 Underlying that compulsion is t...