Urban Universities - The New "Land Grants"
The urban universities have been called the new "land grants" because of their resemblance to the land grant institutions supported by the Morrill Act, signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln in 1862. The Morrill Act was not only a testament to the importance of higher education, having been signed into law at the peak of the Civil War, but it launched the development of large high-quality public universities that have been enormously important in our national success. The land grant institutions were designed to help people cope with their environments, particularly with respect to agriculture, veterinary medicine, and mechanical arts, or engineering as it is called today.
In the past half century, our national environment has changed. The population of the U.S. has become more concentrated in urban areas and a new range of national concerns has emerged. While such things as food production and distribution are still fundamentally important, and food science is one of the world's cutting-edge fields, the nation's attentions are also more focused on phenomena that are products of urban areas or more intensely focused in the urban environment -- matters such as race, gender, public health, social services, welfare, public affairs, and ecology. Also, economic challenges such as competing on a global basis, creating high value-added jobs, restructuring industries, and developing technology applications are more concentrated in urban areas. To address this evolving agenda, a new kind of urban institution has been emerging that can provide spirited, high-quality, engaged, relevant education and research for the 21st century, in parallel to the contribution of the land grants.
Urban universities are not only located in urban areas. Like the land grant institutions, they are energized by their engagement with their communities. They incorporate teaching, research, and service programs that are grounded in the society they serve. They help urban populations cope with the changing urban environment.
They concern themselves with public schools and educational conditions from prekindergarten (PK) to postdoctoral (PD). They prepare teachers for urban schools and try to address urban school issues through their research. They serve as the home for such organizations as the Indiana Urban Schools Association, which includes superintendents from 17 urban districts representing 30 percent of Indiana's school-age children; they create specific programs through collaborative efforts of their schools; their schools of education provide special educational opportunities such as IUPUI's program to allow Indianapolis Public Schools employees to become teachers, or the systemic math initiative led by President Brand for selected IPS middle schools.
Urban universities have a special capacity to reach out to underrepresented populations and foster fuller participation. In this respect, they will be increasingly important as the nation sorts out the complicated issues of race, gender, and affirmative action (IU has reaffirmed its commitment to affirmative action). Moreover, urban campuses can use the diversity of their communities as part of the educational process -- something that will be especially important as the nation seeks to be more open to people of all cultures and deals with the demographic fact that white people of European ancestry represent a relatively small and shrinking percentage of the world's population.
Urban universities have a special opportunity to plan educational programming and research to address the particular needs and opportunities of their communities in areas including the arts, neighborhoods, public affairs, welfare, poverty, health, aging, social conditions, or urban policy and governance. These urban university capacities can be especially important in encouraging economic growth. Urban universities can more easily become involved in workforce issues to prepare people for their careers, including educating professionals to strengthen their region's infrastructure. As the IU President's Committee on Distributed Education has suggested, continuing professional education may become a focal point of the Urban University. Many of the urban campuses have created cultures of excellence in critical fields that attract people and economic success. Some years ago, in the Atlanta Business Journal, a commentator on economic matters argued that concentrations of high-tech industries tended to attract related businesses and more and more talented people. After achieving a certain critical mass, high-tech companies attracted each other like metal filings on a magnet. Of course the magnet in Atlanta was charged by Georgia Tech and Georgia State universities. Universities provide an energy source, opportunities for renewal, and an intellectual magnet that attracts talented people to their regions. These forces seem to radiate with greater impact in large population centers than in small communities that are hosts to universities.
The proximity to large businesses and other organizations may yield benefits through collaboration in scientific or technological ventures, transfer and licensing of technology, joint projects, sharing facilities and personnel, and specially adapted educational programs offered in partnership. For example, at IUPUI Eli Lilly and Company has invested in research activities at the School of Medicine and most recently has made an investment of $17 million in an addition to the Adult Outpatient Center for purposes of conducting its clinical trials at the medical school -- something that will bring important benefits to Lilly, the university, and the general public.
Urban universities also have more opportunities to provide educational programs that are suited to today's students and their interests. This includes connecting academic activities to the world of work and making opportunities for service learning. Students seem more interested than ever in this type of connection between work, academic study, and service -- highlighting that people learn better when they are engaged and working to achieve some practical objective. Urban universities like IUPUI have an unusual opportunity to link teaching, research and service at the undergraduate as well as graduate levels, resulting in ever greater student learning outcomes.
This engagement of both students and faculty leads to another important, but intangible benefit. Engagement seems to encourage the continuation of institutional renewal and vitality. Of course, every academic community must remain connected with and compete for national leadership in its relevant academic disciplines, but engagement in their communities challenges urban universities in a way that militates against isolation -- that brings home to people the unmanageable, intractable problems of the real world. Connections with the community also keep universities in touch with the climate of change that is so prevalent in our era and help the academy accept change as a natural phenomena. Connections help our universities sustain a hard-working attitude and a willingness to accept the challenge to prove oneself every year, as people in the surrounding business and government must. Universities should be prepared to lay themselves on the line each year in an effort to improve. In a sense this represents the IUPUI spirit -- sometimes known as the Avis syndrome -- borne of our being second generation, not second class, trying harder, and staying more focused
Urban universities have a different kind of community support that should permit them to attract an increasing measure of private philanthropy. Urban campuses not only have the base of alumni who graduate from those campuses, but they also have at least one and perhaps two other types of donors who will play a role in strengthening these institutions. Some urban institutions include medical centers, which can attract private support from grateful patients for their academic programs. A related group is the leadership of the urban community of which they are a part. Engaged urban universities are seen as direct participants in the success of their cities. This brings forth a new and different type of donor, including those whose businesses are located in proximity to the urban university.
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