Watching the ceremonies of all our undergraduates, our law students, and our adult students, I’m touched by the range of people that we reach. A university has a chance to be as close to an ideal community as exists in the world these days, a community unified by the purpose of helping people build foundations for their lives. To see that purpose come to culmination every year is always meaningful.
In your public remarks, you’re talking a lot about First-Year Seminars and UR Summer Fellowships. Why focus on those in particular?The creation of FYS under The Richmond Promise is the change that best embodies the idea that we’re one university. Faculty from all five schools take shared responsibility for our first-year students, and every first-year student has a chance to benefit from faculty from all five schools.
The UR Summer Fellowships are like the First-Year Seminars in that they provide a common purpose but with many options. Both programs are coherent but filled with possibilities. The Summer Fellowships also give our alumni the chance to help build and strengthen the network of opportunities for students, something that is satisfying to everyone involved.
Let’s talk about access and affordability. They’re often framed as moral obligations, but you talk about them as something colleges need to pay attention to for their own sakes. Why?When all is said and done, we come together here to educate one another. And the fact is that we educate each other better when we are able to share knowledge and experiences other people don’t have. Different forms of diversity help create different forms of mutual education. Because so much of the learning in colleges takes place among peers, the greater embrace we have of the broadest range of people the more we can teach each other. That’s why access and affordability are good for everybody. Economic diversity is not as visible as ethnic diversity, but it is too rare in top colleges and universities; we are fortunate to be able to foster it at UR.
Do you have a bucket list of things you’d like to do before your term ends?Well, I’ve never sunk a three from the baseline in the corner in the Robins Center, and I’d bet I could if you gave me enough chances and no one was watching.
But, in all honesty, I’ve had many opportunities to do cool things for eight years, and now I’m looking forward to making a good handoff to my successor and keeping our momentum going.
In your own profession, history, you’re chairing a national committee for the American Historical Association about the future of digital scholarship.As a profession, we don’t really yet know how to account for new forms of scholarship enabled by digital technology. Historians are very much book people, but I’m eager to make sure that scholarship takes full advantage of the most profound social change of our time: the creation of instantaneous networks of free information exchange around the world. I’m proud that the University of Richmond, thanks to the Digital Scholarship Lab in particular, is helping to lead the national conversation about creating new forms of scholarly knowledge.
What’s your frame of mind as your term ends?I couldn’t be more pleased with the state of the University. Everywhere I look, I see great allies and advocates for the things that are important to our future. These colleagues will make sure we continue to welcome people of all backgrounds, to integrate our schools in unique ways, and to connect with the city and region where we live.
I know that I will really miss this job, which is so much fun and so satisfying. One day after the next, I find myself doing something for the last time. And, to be honest, I get a little choked up at surprising moments along the way. I take that to be a good sign, a sign that Abby and I have been so happy here that I am already nostalgic for things that have not yet completely passed.
