Neuroscience

October 16, 2018 By B. Baylis 4 Comments

American Higher Education Has Lost Its Lodestar!

This post has been very difficult to write and has required multiple drafts. Image courtesy of Presenter Media.

American Higher Education (AHE) has lost its lodestar. This post has been a lot harder to write than I thought it would be. At first, I was extremely excited to write this post. However, as I began to compose it, I immediately hit a number of roadblocks.

The first roadblock related to the way I process thoughts and ideas. As many of you know, almost a decade ago two traumatic brain incidents drastically changed my life. After a burst aneurysm caused the implosion of a benign meningioma attached to my right temporal lobe, I started having trouble finding words. I found myself fighting a case of oral aphasia.

Nine months later, I experienced four tonic-clonic seizures within a thirty-minute timespan. When I awoke from a four-day coma, I found myself no longer thinking in terms of words. I was now processing thoughts and ideas in terms of pictures. Words became my second language. Visual images were now my first language. This meant that in order to communicate with people, I had to translate back and forth between pictures and words.

My mind was overflowing with pictures that spoke to this issue of American higher education. However, translating those visuals into words was much more difficult and slower than usual. If I was able to compose other posts, why had this particular post become so problematic?

During my struggles with this post, I had a eureka moment. In the deep recesses of my mind, I found a perfect word, LODESTAR, that covered four aspects of the topic I wanted to address.

First of all, a lodestar is a fixed point of reference, which can be used to describe the position or motion of one object relative to another object.

There have been dramatic changes in both American higher education and society during the past century. AHE needs a lodestar to position itself in relation to American society.

Secondly, as a fixed point, a lodestar can be used as the foundation of a guidance system to help individuals get from one point to another, particularly when they are lost. AHE has lost its way. It needs a GPS.

It is wandering aimlessly from one crisis to the next. Headline after headline decries its loss of effectiveness in serving the needs of American society, its declining support in public circles, and its strident and stubborn insularity.

In article after article, questions are raised about the declining confidence of American society in higher education, and the seeming indifference of AHE to the external demands for change. The internal conflicts among the primary actors within AHE are laid bare to the public, exposing all to criticism and contempt.

Comparisons between education for life and career education are plentiful. The philosophical and theoretical bases for liberal and professional education are made public for everyone to pick a side.

In analysis after analysis critics and proponents explore hypotheses about the rising cost of higher education, the short and long-term effects of the staggering debt load that students and institutions are accumulating, the commercialization of higher education, and the adjunctification of the faculty.

Thirdly, lodestars are models of propriety. They live by fixed values and principles, no matter what the cost to them or their institutions. Currently, it seems that every week brings another scandal to light in American higher education. No segment of AHE has escaped unscathed.

Finally, a lodestar is an inspirational leader. I challenge you to name one individual in educational circles today who inspires others to follow him or her.

Individual campuses may have local lodestars. However, where are the likes of Ernie Boyer, Lee Shulman, John Dewey, Mortimer Adler, Maria Montessori, Paulo Freire, Bertrand Russell, Maxine Greene, B. F. Skinner, James Conant, and Martin Buber? At this junction of time, the enterprise of American higher education has no one individual who stands out ahead of the rest of the field.

As I was pulling my thoughts together for this post, a political/media circus in America made the term lodestar a laughing matter and a joke. How could I seriously use it in this post about American higher education? I decided that I could use it, and must use it because it is the right word to use.

Having settled on the inclusion of the word lodestar, there were still two major stumbling blocks with respect to this post. The first related to the format I have used in all my recent posts. After I translated the pictures in my head into words, I took another step. Since I am not an artist and can’t draw an intelligible sketch of anything, I went and found free pictures that would duplicate as closely as possible the visions in my head. I did this to help my readers understand my thought processes.

In this case, I drew a complete blank. I found nothing that came close to communicating my thoughts. Thus, I have no visual robes to wrap around my verbal thoughts. I decided to go ahead and present the unadorned thoughts to my readers. I do have one question for my readers: Which style do you prefer? The verbal thoughts augmented with pictures, or the naked thoughts by themselves? Please tell me in the comment in the box below. I will use this rough survey to help me determine how I will proceed with my future posts. The second stumbling block was the 1,000-word limit. This will require multiple posts on this topic which will follow in future weeks.

In my next post, scheduled for publication on Tuesday, October 23, I return to my roots as a mathematician and an institutional researcher. I will introduce a new Key Performance Indicator (KPI) that I developed. I call it the Admissions Multiplier Effect. I believe it provides important information that is not otherwise available and should be featured on the dashboard of every institution of higher education.

November 2, 2015 By B. Baylis 2 Comments

My Plan for Digging Myself Out of a Deep Hole

This post has been in the works for a long time. My blog posting pen has been essentially silent for a year. I apologize for the great delay. The delay was essentially due to ongoing medical problems, which were beyond my ability to remediate. Even my doctors didn’t really know what was going on. They refer to me as “Their special case!” Once during an extended EEG, I had a series of sensory dysfunction events. I asked my neurologist if they saw something in the EEG results. He replied, “Sort of! There was a lot of spurious activity going on in your head.” I asked him what he meant by that. He replied, “There was a great deal of brain wave activity recorded. However, it was occurring in parts of the brain where we weren’t expecting to see that kind of activity.”

During my long year’s absence from the blogging scene, I have generated a list of more than 300 blog posts which I want to write. I have committed to myself to knock off at least three of these posts per month for as long as I am able to write. If I add no more potential posts to my To Write List (UNLIKELY!)), it would only take me eight years to dig myself out of the hole that I am in. If I could dig myself out, I would be one happy little groundhog. With God’s help that is what I will be endeavoring to do.

Why only three per month? It could be more. I chose to allow myself the option of succumbing to the tyranny of the urgent, and writing no more than one emergency post per month. These would be topics that come up at the last minute and have a sense of urgency in terms of the timeliness of their publication. I would write these posts to put out small fires.This post is an example of such an urgent topic.

Almost all of my fires of the past six plus years have been health related. Even in the face of seemingly unrelenting illnesses, I know that God still cares for me and has a job for me to do. I know this because I serve the same God as King David and the Disciple Peter, These men of God urged everyone to rely completely and only on God.

²And he [David] said, The Lord is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; ³The God of my rock; in him will I trust: he is my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my high tower, and my refuge, my saviour; thou savest me from violence. ⁴I will call on the Lord, who is worthy to be praised: so shall I be saved from mine enemies. (2 Samuel 22:2 – 4, KJV)

Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you. (I Peter 5:7, KJV)

Jesus speaking to all His disciples shortly before His crucifixion, summarized the source of the power and joy that He was offering to them.

⁴Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me. ⁵I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing. ⁶If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned. ⁷If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you. ⁸Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; so shall ye be my disciples. ⁹As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you: continue ye in my love. ¹⁰If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father’s commandments, and abide in his love. ¹¹These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full. (John 15: 4-11, KJV)

Note the stark contrast in verse 5, “He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing.” Please pray with me that both you and I can abide in Christ. If we do, then He will abide in us, and we will be able to do much for Him. If we don’t abide in Christ, we risk being pruned and casted aside. What will it be? Abide or Aside?

In my November 2014 post ” Which would you find more acceptable in your back yard: A toxic waste dump or a murder of crows? ” I indicated that a post entitled Who is my Neighbor? was to be the next post in the series of posts on neighbors and the NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) debate. I am announcing that I am finally getting around to writing that post which will be published next week. Please pray with me that God will give me the power and insight to answer the question: “Who is my neighbor?”

October 20, 2015 By B. Baylis Leave a Comment

VIsual Story Board for Manuscript Title, Part IV – Biblical?

This post is the next to the last in a series on the development of the title of my manuscript, An Explorer’s Guide to Biblical Life Planning: Student Version. In the series I have illustrated the application of a visual approach to thinking through a pictorial story board. In this post, I concentrate on the adjective Biblical, and some questions surrounding it. Since there are so many Life Planning processes, I wanted an adjective that would specify the type of process I was developing.

This adjective needed to convey a number of things. I wanted it to indicate something about the audience to whom I was addressing the book. The first adjective that I selected was the word Christian. I experimented with this word because I developed this process in conjunction with my work at four different Christian colleges. In those contexts, the students whom I was counseling and mentoring were almost exclusively Christian students. The few who were not Christians had made a conscious choice to attend a Christian college and knew the kind of education in which they were participating.

Yet I hesitated to use the adjective Christian. Why was I exhibiting this uncertainty? The main reason for my uncertainty came from the fact that there are many different forms of Christianity. Each form has its own nuances. In some of those branches of Christianity there is a strict exclusivity: “You are only a Christian if you belong to our group. We are the only group that has the truth.” Christianity does have an exclusivity. Christ is the only way, truth and life. No one can come to God except through Christ. In the Gospel of John, we read:

Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. (John 14:6 KJV)

However, there is a wide-open invitation to all to come to Christ. There is no set of restrictive rituals that one must perform to come to Christ. You must just believe that you are a sinner, that Christ died for your sin, and you must accept his free offer of salvation. Christ did not save us to enslave us. He died to make us free, as he spoke to a group of Pharisees and other Jews,

³⁰As he spake these words, many believed on him. ³¹Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; ³²And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.³³They answered him, We be Abraham’s seed, and were never in bondage to any man: how sayest thou, Ye shall be made free? ³⁴Jesus answered them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin. ³⁵And the servant abideth not in the house for ever: but the Son abideth ever. ³⁶If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed. (John 8:30-36, KJV)

In Paul’s letter to the Galatian church he wrote

Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage. (Gal 6:1 KJV)

I have had my own life journey in Christianity. I have been a Christian for more than 60 years. I spent 40 of those years as a faculty member or administrator at four different Christian colleges, of various denominational and theological stripes. Over those 40 years I witnessed many arguments about whether a particular college should have the right to call itself a Christian college. These arguments arose mainly due to the sectarianism, parochialism, or pettiness of legalists, who have infiltrated the ranks of churches. My personal views are built upon many years of personal studies of the scriptures, theology and the history of the church. I believe in a richness and breadth of Christianity. I did not want to limit the appeal or application of my work to a narrow segment of the universal church, a segment which would force Christians into a small box of man’s making.

In my projected manuscript I didn’t want to restrict my audience to a particular portion of Christians desiring to find God’s plan for their lives. However, I know that not all who call the Lord, “Lord” are of the House of God.

⁴³For a good tree bringeth not forth corrupt fruit; neither doth a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. ⁴⁴For every tree is known by his own fruit. For of thorns men do not gather figs, nor of a bramble bush gather they grapes. ⁴⁵A good man out of the good treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is evil: for of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaketh. ⁴⁶And why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say? ⁴⁷Whosoever cometh to me, and heareth my sayings, and doeth them, I will shew you to whom he is like: ⁴⁸He is like a man which built an house, and digged deep, and laid the foundation on a rock: and when the flood arose, the stream beat vehemently upon that house, and could not shake it: for it was founded upon a rock. ⁴⁹But he that heareth, and doeth not, is like a man that without a foundation built an house upon the earth; against which the stream did beat vehemently, and immediately it fell; and the ruin of that house was great. (Luke 6:43-49, KJV)

If we come to Christ and do the things he has said, we will be shown to be like Christ, and worthy to carry the label Christian. Where do we find the things that Christ has said? I do not deny that in the past God has spoken directly to individuals, and even today he may still speak directly to some individuals. The word of the Lord may not necessarily come audibly, but rather through the work of the Holy Spirit in our hearts and minds. However, our primary source of the words of the Lord today are the Scriptures. When individuals believe that God has spoken directly to them, those individuals, and anyone who listens to them, have the responsibility to test the words they believe came from God against what God has said elsewhere.

Since we know and believe that God is our primary authority, we must look to our current main source of his instructions, which is the Bible. That thought tipped the balance in my thinking toward the use of the word Biblical in the title of my manuscript.

However, as I thought more about this choice. I studied applications where the term Biblical has been used, such as Biblical counseling. There I found significant discussions about the use of the term Biblical, particulary in that context. The primary criticism of the use of the term Biblical Counseling seems to be related to the use of the Bible as the only source of knowledge and methodologies related to counseling, and the exclusion of other sources such as psychology and psychiatry. Thus we have two pictures. The picture to the left includes only the Bible and no other sources. While the picture to the right includes another source of knowledge, but does put the Bible on top in the place of ultimate prominence. I believe that God has given us brains and expects us to use them for His honor and glory. So my thinking leans toward the picture to the right.

Back to my question of this post: “What adjective do I use to describe the process that I am proposing?” May I ask for your help? What adjective should I use? I welcome my readers input.

October 12, 2015 By B. Baylis Leave a Comment

Visual Story Board for Manuscript Title, Part III – Life Planning

Life Planning: What do I do now?

This phrase is very different from the other phrases or words in my manuscript title in one very distinctive way. I have had the phrase Life Planning firmly fixed in my mind for many years. I started working on the idea of Life Planning a number of years before I had my traumatic brain incidents. During my years at Indiana Wesleyan University, in working with and supervising the staff of the IWU Life Calling and Leadership Center, I developed a five step process outlining how I believed God works in the lives of Christians. I labeled this process Life Planning because it helped individuals answer the question: “Which way do I go now?” My proposed manuscript explains this process and helps individuals work through the details in their own lives.

When individuals face the question “Which way do I go now?” they are really facing a multitude of questions. It is a time of challenge trying to balance many questions at once. There are so many choices and so many opportunities in an individual’s future. It can literally have a person’s head spinning.

As individuals face this challenge, they can be overwhelmed and find themselves buried under the weight of many questions.

At this point in their lives, they may have reached a point where they really can’t dig out on their own and they definitely need help extricating themselves from this tangled mess. The first place to find help is another person who can lend a helping hand. This person can be a parent, friend, teacher, pastor, or professional counselor. I believe that a second source of help could be my book, if the person is willing to spend the necessary time working through the book.

What is my five-step program? In words from before my TBI, the LIfe Planning process begins with God reaching out to individuals and inviting them to enter into a personal relationship with Him. It continues with those individuals responding to God, and then looking inward to satisfy their own inner questions, needs and desires. It concludes with individuals reaching out to other people.The five steps may be summarized in the following manner:

CALLING is God’s summoning individuals to enjoy the benefits of His grace, and then empowering them to participate in His grand plan for the universe.
MINISTRY is God’s assignment of an individual to a particular function, office or area of service.
VOCATION can be seen as the means of fulfilling God’s assignment. It is giving voice and hands to God’s calling and one’s inner self. It is the means of fulfilling one’s inner spiritual need to follow God’s summons and assignment.
PREPARATION is the individual’s personal response as the best way to equip one’s self for one’s vocation.
ENGAGEMENT is the final step, as an individual takes action in one’s ministry and vocation to fullfill God’s plan in his or her life. It almost always involves reaching out to others.

At this point in this post I diverge from the prepared script written prior to my TBIs and rejoin the battle between verbal and visual thinking. In the above discussion, I have given a short outline of my understanding of the process of life planning. I really have not defined life planning. So I ask the question: “What is life planning?” I have already hinted that life planning is a multi-faceted process. Some of the facets include setting a goal and racing toward it, defining success and measuring it, and navigating the maze of life

It involves investigating all the opportunities available to any individual and the open doors before that individual:

It involves balancing work and life, setting the bar high and striving to vault over it, and climbing to the summit and planting one’s flag on it.

Sometimes it involves an individual search for and finding the missing piece that fits right into the open slot of a pie, or the right key to open one’s mind to what lies in front of the individual

Finding the adjective Biblical may have been the most difficult aspect of constructing the manuscript title. In my next post I will explain how I decided to use the term Biblical. I will also discuss some of the implications of using the term Biblical to describe my Life Planning process.