[The Montana Professor 16.1, Fall 2005 <http://mtprof.msun.edu>]
Richard Walton
Philosophy
UM-Missoula
The Board of Directors of The Montana Professor, Inc., the publisher of The Montana Professor, held its annual meeting on the campus of Montana State University-Bozeman, April 23, 2005. A few items of interest to our readers came out of that meeting.
We are pleased to report that Alan Weltzien of The University of Montana-Western was elected Assistant Editor of the journal. TMP now has a member of the editorial staff on every campus of the Montana University System.
The Board agreed to shift the responsibility for distributing the journal from the Editorial Offices to the individual campuses. Your campus representative will now be the person to contact regarding distribution questions. At MSU-Bozeman that person is Bill Locke; at MSU-Billings, Keith Edgerton; at UM-Missoula the Editor; at Montana Tech, Henry Gonshak; at Western, Alan Weltzien, and at Northern, Steve Lockwood. The new system applies only to copies of the journal distributed through campus mail, or by direct means. Copies which must go via the USPS are still distributed by the Editorial Office at UM-Missoula.
The Board discussed a change of title for the journal, it having been suggested that perhaps the present title implied a narrower area of interest than what the journal has come to represent. No consensus was reached on the various possibilities considered, however. It was agreed instead that a subtitle would be added. Readers will by now have noticed this change in TMP's cover.
Finally, the Board approved the devotion of the fall issue of Volume XVII of the journal to the topic of academic responsibility, with the issue being guest edited by Presidents Dennison and Gamble. Since then it has become apparent that there will likely be more material gathered on this topic than would fit in a single issue, so present plans call for giving over the entire volume to it. Our guest editors have been hard at work and have already secured commitments from some nationally prominent authors. Please see the call for papers nearby.
Colleagues who have been in faculty positions for two decades or more often are of the opinion that there have been some changes in the student bodies of the various institutions of the MUS, changes generally not believed to be for the better. Bill Locke offers cogent evidence that such opinions are not mere expressions of the cynicism that sometimes comes with age and prolonged experience in his "Whither 'College'?"
David Schuldberg gives us a personal account of his encounter with the idea of "diversity" and its associated campus policy measures in "What Diversity Means to One UM Faculty Member." This article exemplifies particularly well a common characteristic of many of the articles published in TMP. While they are on topics of general interest in the academic community, they frequently derive from insights within the subject matter of the author's individual discipline, or they include such insights. The article provides guidance, then, for those charged with evaluating contributions to TMP for the purposes of faculty advancement.
We continue our profiles of outstanding teachers from the various faculties of the MUS with a profile by Richard Drake of his colleague Harry Fritz. Harry is Montana's CASE state professor of the year for 2004. We have identified faculty members who have won teaching awards on other MUS campuses, but have had difficulty in locating authors for those profiles. UM's faculty has enjoyed relative prominence in this series only because your editor has an unusual degree of willingness to twist his colleagues' arms. Other campus representatives are perhaps too gentle or too shy. Readers can readily obviate the need for editorial persuasion, however, by volunteering. We seek not only authors for profiles of faculty members already on our list, but suggestions of other subjects for profiles. Contact your campus representative or the Editor.
Our final article in this issue describes an organization for faculty retirees recently formed at MSU-Bozeman. It is a sad commentary on the state of our institutions that faculty retirees are often simply glad to be away from their former duties and the institutional environment. Yet the process of retirement is an unsatisfactory one for many of those leaving the traces; the break with the institution is relatively sudden and altogether too complete. The view of faculty retirement taken by some administrators is equally sad, and entirely short-sighted. As one of them put the position some years ago, "We take the money and run." The money he had in mind, of course, is the differential between senior and starting position salaries. Programs lose continuity when long serving faculty members leave, and valuable traditions and practices may be lost. This is particularly true when a large percentage of a program's faculty retire within a short period, as is--or will be--the case with many programs on the UM-Missoula campus, at least. Bob Swenson's article describes an organization dedicated to helping resolve some of the issues involved in faculty retirement. We hope that it inspires the creation of similar organizations elsewhere in the MUS.
Readers may notice that there is no "Hobby Corner" article in this issue. The reason for that is quite simple: we received no suitable submission for that feature. We encourage those of you with hobbies to write up an account and send it our way so that future issues will not suffer this lack.
Our Spring 2005 editorial urged restraint by the Regents in the exercise of their constitutional function. Since that time the Regents have handed down a mandate requiring that all institutions of the MUS employ a plus-minus grading system, designated C- as the minimum grade acceptable for general education transfers, revised the "MUS Core" general education requirement, and are in the process of establishing a system-wide committee to oversee general education. We cannot escape the conclusion that the logical next steps in the process of enforcing the Regents' concept of general education must be the dictation of syllabi for the courses which make up their "MUS Core" and the enforcement of grading standards in an effort to assure that the C- grade has the same meaning across the system. In short, in the area of general education, Regential rule would appear to be moving us inexorably toward the mode of academic administration long characteristic of American public high schools.
Readers of Bill Locke's "Whither 'College'?" will readily see that the paths of development in the administration of the MUS and of the demographics of the student body are approaching a point of confluence. Our own thinking in response to the provocative questions Professor Locke asks in his penultimate paragraph has a somewhat cynical cast, perhaps because of being steeped in the language of the documents surrounding the 1994 reorganization of the MUS and the Regents' subsequent efforts to realize the aims of their "Mission" and "Vision" statements. We offer those thoughts here in the form of a parable.
Let us imagine an industrious Scotsman--call him Andrew McGregor Wallis--who settles in northern Wisconsin in 1887. A cobbler by trade, Wallis begins to make boots and shoes for the lumberman of the area, and soon has a thriving business. When the Wisconsin woods peter out around 1900 he follows his market to the Pacific Northwest, moving household and cobbler shop westward on Jim Hill's new transcontinental railroad. He re-establishes his business in a small Oregon town where it continues to grow, prompting him to send home to Scotland for brothers and cousins to join him. Soon there are sons, daughters, nephews and nieces, all part of the family enterprise. The family's boots and shoes are prized for their fit, durability and craftsmanship by the loggers and millworkers of this rugged land. In Wisconsin A.M. had been proud to say that he knew every man who wore a pair of his boots. The expansion of his business has required modification of that lofty claim: now he says that every owner of a pair of his boots knows some craftsman in the company.
The Wallis Boot Company is the pride of the community in which it is located. The members of the Wallis family are highly respected by their fellow citizens and are often called upon to serve on boards, councils and committees. One of A.M.'s nephews has served several terms in the State Legislature, and a granddaughter has been elected to Congress.
By 1930 when A.M. retires the Wallis Boot Company employs more than a hundred persons and yet cannot keep up with its orders. So it continues for nearly two more generations of the family.
Then in 1985 A.M. Wallis's great-grandson, Andrew McGregor Wallis IV (who soon becomes known simply as Four) returns to Oregon to assume control of the company from his father. He had remained in the East after completing his business training, and taken a position with a multi-national corporation. Since then he has worked for several such business entities, rising to a mid-level management position. As his first step as Wallis CEO he analyzes the family business and concludes that its most valuable asset by far is its sterling reputation, and it is an asset that is not producing a proportionate return. "A company is an instrument whose purpose is to make money for its owners," he tells the Wallis's principals. Thus, he convinces them that in order to survive they must adopt modern management practices and principles that will "bring the company into the 21st Century."
The new managers Four hires close the A.M. Wallis factory, discharging all its employees. They replace the factory, successor to the old cobbler's shop, with a marketing department. The boots and shoes they sell under the Wallis name they now obtain by contract from factories in China, arranged through Hong Kong brokers. The marketing department devises clever advertising campaigns based on the company's tradition of craftsmanship and its honored place in the life of the picturesque Northwest. Models of the boots and shoes the company sells are given catchy names, like The Gypo, The Cross-Cut and The Stump Jumper. Advertising campaigns feature a caricature of A.M. Wallis which trades on the Scottish reputation for parsimony. "Affordable excellence" is the company's new motto.
Prior to Four's assumption of control Wallis boots had been sold only through the factory store. Now they are available at stores throughout the nation, and in many foreign countries; in fact, they are available almost everywhere because they can be purchased via the Internet. Four tells a meeting of the company's principals that with the establishment of the Internet marking operation anyone, anywhere who wants an item of Wallis footwear now has the opportunity to acquire it.
But the footwear that now bears the Wallis trademark is shoddy merchandise. It has the appearance of the old products, but lacks their substance. They seldom last more than a year or two, especially if put to hard use. Old A.M. Wallis would be deeply ashamed to see his name on such goods. Profits derive in important part from the exploitation of Chinese labor, and sales depend upon the public's belief in the value of Wallis footwear, a belief cultivated and nurtured by a carefully constructed tissue of images and outright lies. There are no craftsmen; there are no crafts or arts, properly so-called, essential to the new corporation's operations. The old company, its treasured traditions, and its valuable products no longer exist.
[The Montana Professor 16.1, Fall 2005 <http://mtprof.msun.edu>]