Time Passages

Welcome back a couple weeks in. Welcome first of all to our new faculty. To 2019-2020. It will be (just about) twenty years for me at FIU. I am of course not alone. In my home department there are, I believe, still four colleagues who preceded me at this point.

I have been thinking a lot lately about time. And not only because my second child is off to college. And not only because I am keenly aware of the passing of each day, hour, minute even. Or even that I am finishing my book about Time in Modern Russia. I am thinking about time, the ticking of the clock, the passing of each year, the measurements of speed in our collective context, in the world of universities and of FIU. Time. Time to graduation. Excess hours. Time to change classes. Time to switch majors. Deadlines and grant submissions. Time passages.

Now, it is the start of term and so there are lots of meetings. Meetings that take up much of our time. Lots and lots and lots. In the past couple weeks, I have been to a Chairs’ Retreat, a Deans’ Retreat, and the New Faculty Orientation. And I have talked with many of you and heard the university leaders speak at and to one another. And they are, I assure you, thinking a whole lot about time: Time to degree; course hours; the five-year strategic plan; appointments with advisors and always the discussion of where in time we are as a society; as a university; and what our responsibilities are to our students, communities, to each other and to ourselves. And how best we can work as a team to coordinate our efforts and give our students all of what we got. How can we efficiently and effectively promote student success?

As you must know by now, my field is history. And as such, colleagues and I are trained to think about both large-scale change and the everyday and their multitude of interrelationships. So, I tell you, when I first heard our university leaders discuss the ways in which we at FIU – and indeed all universities – are in the middle of rapid and unprecedented transformation, let’s just say, I was at times somewhat skeptical. (I think to myself, oh come on now, those in charge, in every era, believe theirs is an epoch where everything is more, faster or fastest even, more urgent, uniquely so, and the rest). The leaders at FIU, here, are talking about the ways in which we, as a society and as a university, are experiencing the flow of time like never before. We are in the middle of a revolution. A revolution impacting education, the job force and the ways in which we teach, and our students learn.

Today, we are told, we are in the midst of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (we have moved through mechanization; to mass production; to computers and automation; and now to cyber physical systems). Our President and Provost have discussed with many of us, in venues large and small, what this is and what it means for us as educators, researchers and mentors of future generations. At the recent New Faculty Orientation, for instance, our Provost discussed the ways in which education is transforming all over the United States and the world, how Artificial Intelligence (AI) is quickly becoming the norm and all at a speed we would not recognize. He explained that: “Within ten years one third of all current jobs will no longer exist and two thirds of S&P 500 companies have yet to be created – many by our graduates.” Artificial Intelligence will mean things flow more quickly, work more efficiently and compress time. [I am gratified to hear that Humanities and humanistic values and learning are becoming even more crucial amidst this turn to Artificial Intelligence, as we can do what machines cannot with our empathy and our EQ.]

This discussion, too, presumes that our primary responsibility is readying our students for the world outside of college; a place where they must get a job and be guaranteed a paycheck, ideally using all that we taught them and all that they learned. This very notion, I am aware, will ruffle a few faculty feathers. I know I myself had the tremendous privilege (loans and all) to spend four years finding my “intellectual self” (among other parts of self). Is that very notion a thing of the past? What has changed? Anything? Or are we denying our students the privileges some of us were granted (or grabbed ourselves)? Or have there always been complex divisions of access and attitude and purpose and this is just the perpetuating (and deepening?) of that? And what does it mean for our students and our society at large? Now, some of you might think that this all seems very unfair to our students. Some will think that all of this effort framed as a way to support and help and ensure bright futures is simply a kind of corporatist impulse to provide skills and get them out and into the capitalistic marketplace of employment. What happened to the emphasis on a well-rounded, liberal arts education that I mentioned I got? Well, this is something I hope we can discuss. One argument that I have heard made, is that the Harvards of this world will continue to serve smaller and smaller proportions of the student population and their impact will diminish with their numbers. Ultimately, Harvard, Princeton and the rest will become, as my twelve-year old would say, “irrelevant”. Over time. It is always about time.

Regardless of how you respond to the particulars of these arguments, our goals as a university have accelerated. Rapid. Fast. Speed. The Provost likes to use the analogy of the two second pitstop (now 1.88 seconds) to describe the way in which his team – which includes all of us, by the way – must be light on our feet, understand our roles and execute those roles as quickly, efficiently and effectively as possible. We must all work together and fast.

Similarly, the Nexthorizon2025 strategic plan mission statement emphasizes not only the ambition of our collective goals, but their speed: “FIU will achieve exceptional student-centered learning and upward economic mobility, produce meaningful research and creative activities, and lead transformative innovations locally and globally, resulting in recognition as a Top-50 public university.” All of this in the next five years. Tic Toc. Tic Toc.

What do you think?

Rebecca