New Course in United States History
Spring 2013
HIUS 3559 (1)
New Course in United States History
"U.Va. Crisis in Historical Perspective"
Phyllis Leffler
The events of June 2012, culminating in the ouster and then reinstatement of President Teresa Sullivan, reveal the deep divisions over the future of higher education. The spotlight is now on U.Va., but our university is not alone in confronting the intense challenges that relate to educating the citizenry. State universities are particularly embattled as traditional funding sources erode.
This course explores the reasons for the events of June 2012 from a contemporary and historical perspective. Issues like the university’s mission, the meaning and value of higher education, institutional governance and leadership, the funding of higher education, the place of professional education, the nature of learning (applied vs. theoretical; on-line initiatives), and the difference between strategic planning and strategic dynamism form the topical structure for the course. Readings and discussion focus on the national issues of higher education today, and on key moments in the history of U.Va. when these issues have been salient.
Students will review the extensive collection of documents and publications related to the specific events at U.Va., -- both internal documents, news releases, local and national newspaper articles, and journal essays. They include Andrew Rice, “How Teresa Sullivan was Fired,” The New York Times Mazagine; “17 Days in June: From Resignation to Reinstatement,” The University of Virginia Magazine (Fall 2012); websites with collected documents of the Faculty Senate and by the Special Collections Library. In addition, we will read broadly in materials that explore the state of higher education in the late twentieth and twenty-first century. They include sections of Martha Nussbaum’s Not For Profit, Philip Altbach, et.al, American Higher Education in the Twenty-First Century: Social, Political, and Economic Challenges, Burton Weisbrod et.al, Mission and Money, David Kirp’s Shakespeare, Einstein, and the Bottom Line, Clark Kerr’s The Uses of the University, and other relevant articles.
Students will maintain analytic journals and submit discussion questions based on the readings on a weekly basis. These journal entries will be submitted weekly, and will be evaluated twice during the semester. In addition, students will document through original research some of the historic moments in U.Va.’s history related to the core themes, and will also help build the oral history record of events between June 2012 and the present.
