W. Howe – July 16, 2014
You Can’t Go Home Again – so said Thomas Wolfe in the title of his famous novel and so have said many thinkers before and since Wolfe. But I’ve come “home” to CIBU after a hiatus of four years. I served at CIBU from 2004-2010, went to another university in Los Angeles, and now I’m back – home again.
The place has changed to be sure. There is a new President, all new staff members, and even new owners. The number of students has changed too, as have some policies and procedures. If not being able to come home again means having to confront the inevitability of change and difference, then I have been unable to come home.
As the French say, however, plus ca change c’est le meme chose – the more things change the more they remain the same. So perhaps I have been able to come home again. Most of the 2010 faculty – good friends and “family” members, many — are still with us and remain fiercely loyal to their “home.” The names of the classrooms – Taipei, Paris, Seoul, Berlin, Istanbul – are still noted on the walls, while the offices still display the same floor-to-ceiling murals (tropical beach scenes, a golf hole at Pebble Beach) and Jorge Reinoza’s paintings continue to decorate hallways. The “family” feeling is still in evidence too: During my two weeks now as Dean, for example, I have engaged in extensive discussions with other administrators and faculty about specific students and how we can best meet their needs – a scenario that would rarely if ever occur at a larger, less personalized university.
And so I forge on at CIBU, appreciating what it has always had – a warm, caring feeling among everyone in the “family” for each other; an international flavor that is hard to find in such a small setting; dedicated faculty who have remained at “home” over many years; students who value the university but also appreciate its beautiful setting – sunny San Diego, “America’s finest city.” Nevertheless, I come back “home” knowing that there is much we can all do to improve this special place and much that we can all accomplish in the years ahead, such that anyone who might leave “home” today will come back years hence – say 10 years from now — to find it transformed in what we all hope will be some remarkable ways, including:
- Significant enrollment growth that brings greater credibility, increased stability, enhanced flexibility, and augmented diversity to the institution;
- Significant growth in numbers of faculty and staff, many of whom will add immeasurably to the well-being of the university and to the education we offer students;
- Significantly improved resources and services – from new brick and mortar facilities, to advanced technologies for use in the classrooms and elsewhere, to funds to develop new programs and services;
- Implementation of online education, making the provision of international business far more accessible to diverse people around the globe;
- Accreditation by both the current national council (ACICS) and the regional commission (WASC), as well as perhaps by a specifically business-grounded accrediting entity – e.g., ACBSP, AACSB;
- A much tightened ship, with clear policies and procedures and academic assessment processes that lead to continuous quality improvement;
- Implementation of a strategic plan that will make CIBU one of the leading and most compelling international business schools in the world – perhaps through experiential learning and uses of technologies that erode the boundaries between university and community, theory and practice, learning and application of learning; perhaps through the incorporation of “mindfulness” and other Eastern practices now being introduced at Harvard and some other business schools; perhaps through the development of a new business paradigm based upon international cooperation rather than, or in addition to, present competitive practices; perhaps through greater attention to the “whole person” – social and cultural intelligence as well as cognitive intelligence, interpersonal and intrapersonal skills, intuitive capabilities as well as rational, logical skills; ….
- An increasingly larger alumni base wherein alumni are contributing to the university and the university maintains a close, giving relationship with them.
To be sure, such changes cannot happen overnight; they will take years to realize fully and will require much dedicated work by all members of the CIBU “family.”
One day in the future, we can hope, CIBU will be a place to which alumni can come “home” again and still see the same personalized, individualized, caring education the university offers, even though they may also recognize that the place has grown so substantially and changed so significantly that coming “home” again to what they knew is impossible. Frankly, I see such a scenario as displaying the best of both worlds – the CIBU that will always be “home” for those who experienced it, but also a CIBU that has moved on to new, exciting educational possibilities and has evolved into an enhanced “home” that is, like the setting sun in California, shimmering on the horizon, ready to arise again to another quite different day.
lish confidence he has now attained, and he and Esraa felt a little lost. To this day, they thank CIBU staff members for driving them around and helping them find a home.
