What is the role of the University?

1. What is the role of the University? • The marriage of marketing and good science can be generated from the universities. • Concerns about a lack of passion in the new generation • Universities have to decide what we need to be advocates for in a world of competing interests. The university has to high bright people who teach the issues but the issues may not be best taken up by the institution as a whole. • There was a time when universities did take controversial positions.

2. Cont. • Students pick up on a sense of hopelessness in how bad the situation is and what can be done. • Students need to be directed toward what can be done. • Book recommendation: Red Tide of Dawn • Universities have become the “corporate” university and they have become attached to getting grants as a mission, not teaching, service or outreach.

3. Cont. • How can organizations like the Sierra Club attract the same kind of enthusiasm there is for, say, a football team? • Service learning is offered through UNF and it gets students into the community, gets them engaged. • In education the idea of sustainability has to be integrated multidisciplinary teaching (should be part of math, science, social studies, etc.) The linkage needs to be shown. • Book Recommendation: Blessed Unrest

4. Cont. • The problem in universities is that interdisciplinary teaching threatens individual budgets which is a disincentive to departments. • We need a tradition of real scholarship which is very different than what is currently happening. • We need to restructure main stream courses to include a multidisciplinary approach. • Book recommendation: The Weapon Makers; The Omnivore’s Dilemma; Mirage; Stumbling on Happiness; Desert Solitaire; the speeches of Robert Kennedy Jr.; Food Not Lawns