Today’s Challenges vs Tomorrow’s Dreams: A Call for Defiant Optimism

On July 2, 1862, this nation was at war for its very existence. The Union Army was retreating from a campaign to capture Richmond. Victory was far from certain.

On that day, the United States Congress and President Lincoln had their eyes on a future clouded by massive uncertainty. Lincoln signed into law The Morrill Act launching a system of Land Grant Universities to meet the demands of a nation expanding westward.

The Morrill Act resulted in the greatest expansion of higher education the world had ever known. It was a striking achievement, a defiant act of optimism amid this nation’s greatest existential crisis.

Penn State exists because of that visionary act of defiant optimism. As we look at our moment of uncertainty and the issues of our Commonwealth Campuses, our problems seem small compared to the ones facing the founders of our mission. But their example should be a beacon of light on our path forward.

About a week ago I received an e-mail from a faculty/staff member at a Commonwealth Campus that was slated to be closed. The person talked about the types of students that were at his campus. The e-mail concluded with the story of one student.

The student comes from a tough background. Nothing is easy. Somedays she goes to bed hungry. Most days she walks several miles to and from campus and sometimes a friend may be able to give her a ride. She is a nursing major and if this campus closes it may close a semester or two before she finishes.

For many of us on Penn State’s Board, a college degree for our children was an expectation not a dream. When their commencements arrived it was a step in life that was taken for granted.

For others, for first-generation college students, or for Pell-eligible college students, attainment of a college degree is a dream that creates explosive possibilities they could only have imagined. We see them in the brightest smiles at every commencement ceremony.

Our foundational calling as a university and as Trustees is to make dreams possible. And for 170 years our mission has been rooted in the words of the Morrill Act:

“to teach such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and the mechanic arts, in such manner as the legislatures of the States may respectively prescribe, in order to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes in the several pursuits and professions in life”

We innovated along the way, always with an eye towards expanding educational access. In the early 1900s the Mont Alto Campus came into being. Penn State offered the first correspondence courses by mail to reach rural residents. The Commonwealth Campus system made us even more accessible. In the mid-1990s President Graham Spanier started the University on the idea of on-line education and that has been an incredible success.

Innovation at Penn State was always about making education more accessible. It was about thoughtful plans to charge forward and not beating a hasty retreat. Defiant optimism at every step.

Certainly, there are big challenges for everyone in higher education. No one is advocating an indefinite status quo.

But the two options presented to this board are the status quo or closing campuses. The status quo is not realistic, making the other option look more reasonable. Collecting new ideas, new visions and collaboration with the campuses and their communities was not offered as an option to us.

So, we’re left to vote for a drastic pullback from regions of the Commonwealth that can least afford more gut punches to their community. Many of their problems stemmed from decisions made by powerful people in faraway corporate boardrooms; people who never had to face those who bore the consequences of their corporate actions.

There is a human cost to the outcome of Thursday’s meeting. This decision will be the most important vote anyone on this board will ever make as a Penn State Trustee.

Do we have enough information? Have we taken enough time to consider what we can be, or how we can reshape the future in a positive way?

At a time when the Commonwealth is looking for solutions are we going to collaborate to find answers, or will we join the ranks of so many others who’ve walked away?

We are uniquely situated to find solutions, if we just invest our time in an act of defiant optimism.

There are proud people in these communities. They believe in themselves, they believe in their ability to respond to challenges. There are faculty members setting a path towards better tomorrows for the young people they reach in this Commonwealth. I’ve spent the last month just starting to hear their complete stories.

And make no mistake, these campuses serve the Commonwealth’s future. Of the seven campuses proposed for closure, 86% of the students are from Pennsylvania.

I understand the arguments being made for closure. They are rooted solely in data, in demographics. But data and analytics ignore our history, and they can’t anticipate where the intersection of vision and possibility alter what we can accomplish. Data cannot measure the passion or spirit or brain power of Penn State and Penn Staters that have lifted visionary leaders to the fore in past times of adversity.

Many of our past visionary leaders began their journeys humbly at Penn State because we extended the reach of higher education with a fierce advancement of our Land Grant mission.

Across the generations, leaders at this school continually bet on the future of this institution.

I think of that student above, walking alone on a long road each day. Her dreams carried in her backpack on sunny days and rainy days and dark days and cold days, her face set in defiant optimism’s determination to march step by step and day by day towards her goals. She’s walking towards a brighter future through a part of the state that has been through tough times. And her hopes rest with the faculty lifting her each day.

Her story is the Penn State Land Grant mission story.

And if we are the University that we say we are, our consciences and the history before us compel us to take the time to get this right. That student’s hopes and the hopes of many others now and in the future rest with us. It is our most solemn obligation.