From the Desk of:
Jeff Buchman
President

August 18, 2008

Dear Colleagues,

One of the great joys of summer is having time to read what we want to read rather than what we have to read.  Certainly we may have the daily necessity for the wall street journal or the New York Times.  These provide useful information that we use in our daily lives, such as Dr. Steele’s fabulous fashion bash or Professor Mincarelli’s preferences in workout attire. 

But I’m speaking about those books that we set aside for pure pleasure and eye all winter dreaming wistfully of languorous hours by the pool, beach or mountain stream; just you and me.  Or in my case, just Albert and me, since the book í had chosen was the splendid biography of Albert Einstein by Walter Isaacson. 

In reading about this great man, a person whose very name is synonymous with genius, it became clear to me that the personality traits which allowed Einstein to develop an entirely new and radical way of perceiving the universe, from the smallest subatomic particles to the fabric of space/time itself, was a willingness to question conventional wisdom and to challenge authority.

One pays a heavy price for questioning conventional wisdom and for challenging authority. As í read about the struggles Einstein faced in the early part of his career, both as a student and as a young professor, í thought of us, in this room.  We are all authorities in our fields.   To our students we represent wisdom, conventional or not.

How do we deal with student challenges to our own   analytical, technical and creative methodologies?  What are the important outcomes in the classroom beyond the accumulation of knowledge?

I noted that when asked by the New York state education department what schools should emphasize Einstein noted that “critical comments by students should be taken in a friendly spirit” and that “accumulation of knowledge should not stifle a student’s independence.”

Of course, we at fit pride ourselves on our creative and independent minded students.  We continually revise our curricula to meet the ever increasing demands of the global economy.  We are very aware of the fierce competition that awaits our students in the years to come. But is this enough?

This semester, I’m going to try harder than ever, to ask students to challenge conventional wisdom and to question authority.

After all, conventional wisdom is often just that, conventional.  And challenging authority is essential in a democracy. As Einstein noted, “the value of a college education is not the learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think.”

Thank you and have a wonderful semester.

Created by: Ari Vega ©