Welcome

Welcome. Glad you stopped in. As I get started here at William Paterson, I want to make sure there are plenty of opportunities to communicate about big issues facing public higher education. Yes, there will still be plenty of “official” e-mails and announcements. This place is designed for a little more informal discussion.

What do I want from this site? Simple yet important. The communication here is open to all members of the William Paterson University community. Ground rules? Again, simple yet important: I will post comments and questions; you can read and respond (or ignore) as you wish. My comments are NOT university policy (I can already see you shaking your head–how can anything the Provost says NOT be reflective of university policy)–they are comments about issues of importance to higher education. They are questions inviting responses. So, when you respond, please respond in the spirit of academic inquiry. We do not always agree, but we can always discuss, and we can do so civilly and respectfully (and model communication that demonstrates that we know the difference between opinion and statements that are supported by evidence and reasoning (and not that sharing opinion is a bad idea–we just need to know the difference, or how else will our students know the difference?) There are no guarantees–you may not like what you read, I may not agree with the responses (because we all know that our strongest desire may be anathema to someone else). But we can still talk about it.

So why use this forum? Well, for one, because there can be some feedback here, and there is the option for feedback from many, not just a few. Secondly, this can be a little more informal (I can even use a little less formality in my writing). Also, I think this can help model some uses of technology for our students. As a faculty member in communication, I know that it is important to have an audience, and to know that there is a public for what we communicate so that our communication is not lost in the vacuum. Finally–I think we need as many ways to communicate about what is happening in higher education as possible. There are so many challenges (and opportunities), so many obstacles and so many innovations.

So let’s talk.