ULecture Series - Quality Time with Quality Professors

Last night I attended the premier of a new student initiative, the ULecture series.
The series was born after freshman Michael Kaplan saw inspiration for the idea in a class he had during fall semester. The specific class was called “Books that Matter,” a freshman seminar geared at involving new students to the U with engaged discussions on, well, books that matter. Special to this class though was the fact that various faculty members from all across the university would act as guest lecturers from time to time in order to really bring the subjects alive.
Kaplan really liked the idea of having these much more personal scholarly discussions and wanted other students not in the class to have a chance at the same type of thing. So, working with administration he initiated a string of lectures given by top-faculty in departments all across campus, discussing topics of all kinds, in an environment centered on dynamic, intimate learning – and maybe a little bit of fun…
The series, which runs every Wednesday night at 7 from now through the end of April, kicked off with a lecture titled Crossing the Digital Divide: Lessons Learned from the New Media Generation by Professor Sam Grogg, Dean of the School of Communications.
An amiable man, Grogg is very down to earth and very casual, though not at all sloppy. He started his lecture by asking the audience to show hands if they had a cell phone. After everyone in the room raised his or her hand, he flashed his own cell phone number on the PowerPoint screen and asked us to write it down. Then if anyone had a question during lecture, they could simply text it to him and he’d do his best to answer it. It became immediately clear that despite looking like just another old-school professor, Grogg embraces the usefulness of technology – his lecture aimed to extrapolate on that idea.
He started off by showing a Youtube clip, A Vision of Students Today. The video was created and researched by actual college students and points out the many archaic qualities intrinsic to our current education system: the most poignant facts perhaps including, “I will read 8 books this year… 2300 web pages and 1281 Facebook profiles.”
Something here isn’t right. There is a conflict between the then and now. When the average age of a tenured college professor is 55, there is bound to be reluctance, resulting from either nostalgia or fear, to accept the high tech fast paced world we not only accept, but demand. Today’s students, Grogg says, want freedom in everything – they want choice. We want customization, personalization. We expect transparency of information, and have no problem using the technological resources we’ve been given to find it. We want integrity, in all things corporate, political, and plainly just human. We expect to have fun with life. And we constantly demand innovation – bigger, better, faster, go!

Grogg then delivered the crux of his argument: "I am the immigrant. You are the native - you are the indigenous culture of the new digital world.” Essentially he is saying that we, today’s college students, have grown up in a digital world, something his generation still reels to totally accept. Grogg’s generation had transistor radios and Boys Life magazine. We have iPods and the internet. That thought alone is mind-boggling. Simply by growing up with these technological influences around us has instilled in us an innate ability to work with the gadgets and software that make modern life so much simpler, so much faster. And yet despite these realities, we continue to find ourselves in lecture halls which resemble the 2000 year old Theater of Dionysus while we hack away at Wikipedia to see if half the things our professors say are true.


Looking at the way in which we as an emergent culture organize and operate with comparison to the way of the “old world,” Grogg finished his lecture with a summary of the lessons he’s learned for life in the digital age:

1. We must adapt continuously. Expect change and do not fear it.
2. Time travel to some extent is possible; at least when it comes to watching your favorite TV shows… (Way back when Grogg only got ONE CHANCE to catch Leave It to Beaver. If he missed the air date he couldn’t have gotten on Hulu.com to see it later.)
3. Brick by brick is the wrong way to build. Our world is too dynamic and there is not enough time to follow paradigms. You must see the context and the specific at the same time.
4. Ethics and etiquette will be dependable paradoxes. You know how there are some friends you would feel awkward calling just to talk, but would spend hours online instant messaging? That’s an example of how we redefine our perceptions of ethics and etiquette within a technologically influence social environment.
5. Being digitally savvy is not the same as being digitally wise. Just because we can do something with technology doesn’t mean it’s the best thing to do.
6. Natives MUST embrace the immigrants. We the tech-savvy kids of today absolutely need to help incorporate the old-timers.

He then thanked us for our time after about an hour of lecturing (even though lecture is probably a bad word to use, since its definition usually runs along the lines of: (n) a presentation in which most members of the intended audience invariably fall asleep) and then opened the floor for questions. All kinds of questions were asked about the presentation, his field of study, and even his opinions on out some outside matters. By the time it was over, I’d realized that another 40 minutes had gone by without my even noticing. I was completely impressed by how engaging, funny and generally enjoyable his presentation and subsequent discussion were. The guy was definitely having fun, and so were we.

All in all, the event matched perfectly with Kaplan’s original intention to create a comfortable, familiar environment for discussion. I was able to hear a presentation from a teacher I’d never even see within 100 paces of the engineering college, so in my opinion ULecture definitely met its goal of sharing otherwise unheard of topics with the general campus community. And I get the feeling that the UM faculty members involved aren’t there just to talk about points. They want to share their interests with kids who are willing to listen, and answer all the questions and follow all the tangents that arise along the way. It’s something I didn’t expect a school from a school so focused on big time research. I definitely plan on attending next installment of the ULecture series.