Prof. Bob Withycombe. Whitman College photo.

Bob Withycombe, a 29-year veteran Whitman College teacher and former debate coach, is the 2009 Washington Professor of the Year, award organizers announced today.

The U.S. Professors of the Year program, sponsored by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE), salutes extraordinary dedication to teaching as illustrated by involvement with students, scholarly approach to teaching and learning, contribution to education at the institution, and support from colleagues and current and former students. Only 38 such teachers were selected from across the country this year.

Withycombe is in Washington, D.C. today to receive his award and participate in an evening congressional reception sponsored by Phi Beta Kappa, the nation’s oldest academic honor society.

The Whitman news site has a full story about Withycombe and his work at the college.

Faculty members from Independent Colleges of Washington member institutions have won the last three Washington Professor of the Year Awards, and five of the last eight. We think that’s a result of the colleges’ emphasis on teaching. ICW member institutions share a commitment to high-quality, academically rigorous learning and to an education that emphasizes critical thinking, lifelong learning, ethics, leadership, and community service.

Congratulations to Withycombe, and thanks to all of the great professors who give great value to independent higher education.

Is liberal arts education dead? Today’s Chronicle of Higher Education has an article (subscription required) covering a plenary speech by Jonathan Kozol at the annual conference of the Society for College and University Planning.

Jonathan Kozol

In the article, Scott Carlson writes that Kozol feels his “audacity, tenacity, and interest in justice came from his college education, which was grounded in the liberal arts.” But Kozol adds that many of the college presidents he talks to are mourning the decline of liberal arts education.

They have had to cut out programs like art and literature for curricula perceived as more useful to the job market, and they have increasingly adopted a “get them in and get them out” mentality. “We want you down on bended knee to give us the workers we require,” Mr. Kozol said, in the voice of those business pressures. “We want technicians of efficiency.”

“My friends,” he said, “to me this spells the death of culture.”

So far Independent Colleges of Washington member institutions have been able to resist that pressure, and remain committed to high-quality, academically rigorous learning and to an education that emphasizes critical thinking, lifelong learning, ethics, leadership, and community service. Yet in Washington much of the policy discussion around higher education is focused on training and the needs of the workforce. Those things are important, and member colleges meet those demands, too. But ICW agrees with Kozol, who says that “education for utility and employability alone will not contribute to the soul of a real democracy.”

We’re often dismayed that when policy makers discuss higher education it’s usually in terms of “workforce development” and “high employer demand” fields. Engineering and computer science are important, and maybe teaching and nursing. But what are you going to do with that English degree?

Ryan Crocker, Whitman 1971. Former ambassador to Iraq, Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient, English lit. major. Whitman College photo.

That’s counter to what we hear from employers, who are looking for people who are critical thinkers, creative problem solvers, and effective communicators. Those are just the sorts of skills that students hone at ICW member colleges, which offer a broad-based education, grounded in the liberal arts and sciences, that emphasizes lifelong learning, ethcs, leadership, and community service.

George Bridges, the president of Whitman College, has a great example of this that he wrote about in a newspaper column last year. Bridges notes that Whitman alum Ryan Crocker, the former U.S. ambassador to Iraq and recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, got his first job with the Foreign Service in large part because he was a great communicator and was able to tell the interview panel how Edgar Allen Poe had influenced the French poet Charles Baudelaire. Crocker graduated from Whitman in 1971 with a degree in English literature, and has just retired after a 38-year career in foreign service.

I was reminded of this because Crocker was back on campus as Whitman’s commencement speaker last weekend. In his address, titled “Lessons From a Long War,” Crocker urged students to “march to the guns,” to seek out challenges and conflicts in a difficult world. Today’s Crosscut has a fine piece by Anthony B. Robinson about Crocker’s speech. You can watch a video of the speech on Whitman’s Web site. 

Pretty good stuff for an English major!