Dear Friends and Colleagues,
I’ve been thinking, sometimes out loud and sometimes not, about our culture. I say this because after eight months here, and almost a whole school year, I’m still not certain. I know what some of the elements are, and we can probably agree on many of them, but I’m still working to piece together the gestalt of the place and what we mean when we say that we love it. I’ll have more to say—or, more likely, ask—about that in the coming weeks and months, and I hope that you’ll engage in this exercise with me as a community. So let’s talk. Please pull me aside in the hallway or the coffee shop or Tisch Park and let me know what you think. What do most of us have in common? Are those things distinctly WashU? Distinctly Midwest or St. Louis? Do we have multiple cultures? Should we?
Instead of trying to tell you what I think our culture is, which seems like a ridiculous exercise for a relative newcomer, I’d like to start a discussion. So let me begin here: One thing that defines, or should define, our culture, is that this is a place in which faculty thrive—they thrive because we create the conditions for them to do so and because we encourage it together as a collaborative exercise. Perhaps this is how many of you experience the world; perhaps it is more aspirational. But even if it’s the latter, there is value in determining whether the thing that we might aspire to be is actually what we want to be. We should examine our values and beliefs from time to time.
I’m interested in a longer conversation, which I’ve begun with some of you, about what “excellence” is. We use the term a lot, but I’m not sure we all agree on what it is or what the world would look like if we were always in that place of true excellence—and I’m now conscious of the fact that the “true” before excellence is probably doing some obfuscatory work so that I don’t have to define it here either. Excellence (or success, or whatever word we choose) is a slightly different animal from thriving. It’s even harder to measure, more personal, and maybe a little messier. (I personally find “messy” very interesting, despite the fact that a senior scholar told me years ago that my job as an academic was to simplify things for an audience. That’s part of it, but not the best part.) But it’s foundational to what we do, and I’d like to take a step back and think about what it means—with the recognition that it means different things to different people.
So, in the spirit of sharing work-in-progress thinking (my usual mode of thought), here are five aspects of faculty thriving that I have in mind when I discuss it and attempt to create the conditions that support it:
1. We owe it to one another to create the conditions for success.
I’m starting the list with a statement of mutual obligation—not to step away from my part in creating it, but to suggest that we all carry a responsibility to each other. I suppose there are several ways of looking at this. First, even though at times much of our work can feel solitary (but not all, and some of you would probably prefer to be a bit more solitary), we can’t thrive in isolation. Departments, collaborators, mentors, and leaders all play a role in shaping whether faculty feel supported and able to grow. This is collective work, and it requires us to be intentional, not just about what we expect from one another, but about how we support each other along the way. Second, and here I’m confident that I’m on academically sound ground but far less sure about our cultural ground: Subtle competition can motivate. “Competition” is probably not quite the right word, as I’m not talking about besting one another or some other nebulous form of “winning.” What I’m talking about is more nuanced—a kind of shared belief that we collectively are striving to meet high standards, it takes all of us, and we want you to join us. Many faculty can thrive without this dynamic, but sometimes it helps.
2. Plateaus are not enough to thrive.
We’re fortunate to work in an environment that offers intellectual freedom, time to think, and talented colleagues. But over time, those same features can make it easy to settle into familiar patterns. Sometimes that’s good; we probably are more confident in the classroom when some basic elements that once took lots of work become a bit more routine. But generally, plateauing isn’t conducive to thriving. Thriving requires trying new things, asking different questions, finding new passions, revisiting old assumptions, and being willing to be told—often very publicly and often by people who weren’t necessarily even part of the conversation—that we’re completely wrong. I hope we can find joy in those efforts.
3. The work we do is hard. And that’s part of the appeal.
Lately I’ve had a paraphrased version of a JFK line in my head: “We [go to the moon] not because it is easy but because it is hard.” (I’m almost certain that JFK didn’t actually write that. Special Counsel Ted Sorensen did. I can’t drop a lot of names, but I did have the privilege of working with Ted long enough in another life—the 1990s—to know his handiwork. I feel mildly compelled to disclose this after someone told me that in my most recent letter to faculty I misattributed a quotation to Mark Twain. This allegation is probably true, but in my defense, disproving a quotation is trickier than attributing one.) Do we choose academic pursuits (and there’s an interesting word) because they are hard? I suspect there is substantial variation in those answers across our campuses, and let’s be honest: There are many very difficult jobs out there. So while I don’t pretend that academia is uniquely difficult, I think we do ourselves a disservice if we don’t acknowledge that our passions in academia ask much of us: sustained attention, creativity, resilience, and a willingness to wrestle with problems the answers to which can be complex or nonexistent. There’s something deeply satisfying about doing work that is genuinely challenging and, at its best, also deeply meaningful, deeply moving, deeply impactful, deeply important. Thriving means it is worth it.
4. We don’t thrive if we view academia as a zero-sum game.
We’re pretty good at breaking things down into their component parts, and if we do so at a university, it can sometimes feel like a zero-sum game as schools, departments, and individuals pursue the resources required to thrive. But the world is a much bigger, much messier (yay!) place. We create and disseminate knowledge, and knowledge expands when more people are doing meaningful work, in more places, in more ways. We serve not only our students, not only WashU, not even the entire academic community, but the world. When we at WashU contribute generously to the broader ecosystem, we are experiencing one aspect of what it means to thrive.
5. Our students experience us as we are.
I’ve always enjoyed comparing classroom teaching personas and “real life” personas, if such a thing truly exists. I’ve caught myself more than once verbalizing a stray thought that passed over my brain while teaching; I think I justify such things by saying that that’s what the “real life” me would do, though I have no doubt that some students perceived those moments as performative and profoundly not “real.” For better or worse, that’s who I am; I try to show up as a complete human and not as a representation of my CV, the latter of which is shockingly easy to pull off but usually not as effective. The point isn’t that I get it right; I often don’t. The point is that students learn from the faculty who show up, not from the faculty they wish would show up. This gives all of us the opportunity and the responsibility to be our most curious, energized, and engaged selves—and if that’s not quite your personality, I’m sure that you have more appropriate adjectives to fill in. When we show students our excitement in how we experience the world, they feel it (and I’m positive that the reverse is equally true if not more so). Thriving isn’t just good for us; it’s essential to being the kind of educators we want to be.
I don’t have a neat conclusion here. (I rarely do.) But I do think this is a conversation worth continuing. What does “thriving” look like in different disciplines and career stages? What can we do, individually and collectively, to make it more possible? What role does all of this play in our particular culture—who are we?
As always, this isn’t rhetorical. I welcome your thoughts.
Best,
Mark
Mark D. West
Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs