Future Shock

SO HERE WE ARE, SAME OLD story, stuck waiting for our NBA and NCAA colleagues to fly in to O'Hare for our planned press conference on a dreary winter afternoon in Chicago.

Flagship is defined as a ship in a fleet that carries the commanding admiral, the best or most important thing owned or produced by a particular organization, according to <em>The New Oxford American Dictionary,</em> (2nd ed.). How does it apply to state colleges today?

IN HIS POEM "MENDING WALL," Robert Frost declares, "Before I built a wall I'd ask to know/What I was walling in or walling out."

BACK IN THE ICONOCLASTIC '60s, a time when baby boomers were coming of age, schools of social work attracted starry-eyed social activists looking to hook their star to a worthy cause.

So there we were, stuck in another endless focus group, listening to faculty colleagues go on and on about how unfair life is. As proof, virtually all institutions have to play the rankings game or they'll be left out in the cold come fall semester student enrollment and orientation.

Last summer, my (Samels') daughter Gabrielle chided me for coming up empty-handed after a morning of fishing on Lake Cochituate near our home in Natick, Mass. "Skunked again, Dad?"

For all of the human suffering and economic pain inflicted by the Middle East wars and the skyrocketing petroleum costs around the world, there is a glimmer of hope on America's energy horizon-that is, America's colleges and universities are increasingly joining the race to explore renewable and alternative energy sources.

It's the summer of 1987, and the scene is the venerable Tam Bar and Restaurant on Beacon Street in Brookline, Mass. In walk Drs. Martin and Samels for an evening of banter, ideation, and reinvention of higher education.