What Is This Life?

What Is This Life?
11/5/09 at 12:55:00 PM

—Rich Kott, Academic Adviser
Department of History

Registration season is upon us again. Available appointment times and walk-in slots are fast becoming a thing of the past. Students are clamoring for answers and reassurance that they are on track with their plans. Faculty are trying to get the word out about their courses and to increase enrollments in them. It is during this time of tumult and confusion that I try to step back and look at the life of the department, the college, and the University.

What is this life? It is the research, teaching, and outreach that is being done by the faculty, staff, and students that make up the University. I see new life in the re-designed courses that make up our core curriculum; in the publications that our faculty, staff, and students produce; the topics courses that are the experimental growth ("little green shoots" to borrow from the economy these days) in new directions; the research projects leading to new discoveries in all the diverse fields of endeavor that make up the University; and the seminars/lectures given by guests on campus.

I feel as if I am surrounded by the change, growth, challenge, and excitement of the discovery of and passing on of new insights and knowledge. I am thrilled by the whirlwind created by all these new ideas. The issue for me, as an adviser, is how to translate this sense of the University as a living, breathing entity to my students.

Most of my students are in the department for two, maybe three, years. For most of them, their time here is short enough that they do not see the change that is inherent in a University. For them, the curriculum (and thus their choice of classes) is stable and consistent—unalterable—passed on from generation to generation. I take it as my task during registration periods to expand students' sense of the possibilities available to them. To try to get them to see the living processes involved in knowing and learning. To see themselves as a part of a process that is growing and developing and that will lead them to an unknown and, at this point, still undreamt future.

To me, this is the excitement of working at the U. It comes back to me every registration period. I hope my students feel some of this also.

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