michigandaily.com
Ann Arbor, Michigan
Friday, September 15, 2017

ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-SIX YEARS OF EDITORIAL FREEDOM

It has now been mere months over 

200 years since the University of 
Michigan’s inception.

Two hundred years worth of 

innovation, academic renown and 
multidisciplinary 
excellence, 
as 
a 

nationwide example and world leader, 
and of student activists, up-and-
coming politicians, surgeons, CEOs, 
intellectuals 
and 
altruists. 
Two 

hundred years of those who have 
studied history and those who have 
helped make it.

So 
as 
administrators, 
faculty, 

staff, alumni and students celebrate 
the University’s Bicentennial, they 
also reflect on what will come in 
the next 200, particularly in terms 
of 
the 
University’s 
educational 

advances, 
outside-of-the-classroom 

opportunities and the community that 
makes up the University.

As an academic innovator:
University President Mark Schlissel 

has 
stressed 
the 
importance 
of 

academic 
innovation 
throughout 

his 
tenure. 
Schlissel’s 
Academic 

Innovation Initiative from fall 2016 has 
expanded from simpler massive online 
open courses in the Office of Digital 
Education to ultimately include more 
educational resources and a teach-out 
series on significant contemporary 
topics, just a few ways in which 
academics at the University are moving 
forward.

“The initiative will formally help us 

consider how U of M will lead the way 
through the information age,” Schlissel 

said last September.

James Hilton, vice provost for 

academic innovation, said there are 
several schools of thought regarding 
where the University will go with 
its 
educational 
programs 
next, 

particularly with an ever-changing 
technological landscape allowing for a 
number of possibilities.

“One of the things we’ve been talking 

a lot about in academic innovation is 
using this third century as a moment 
to stop and think about — particularly 
at the great public research university 
— where do we see education going 
forward?” Hilton said. “There is an 
opportunity to imagine again what an 
education at a great public research 
university should be for this century, 
this economy, this technology, this set 
of societal issues.”

Tools 
like 
eCoach, 
Gradecraft 

and hybrid-learning environments, 
Hilton stressed, are being improved 
to personalize learning; there are now 
also 112 massive open online courses 
that are in production and 6 million 
global learners engaged with those 
courses, numbers that grow on a daily 
basis.

“To the extent that we’re successful 

in diversifying the pool of students that 
come here, we also want to diversify 
the paths that they get to pursue when 
they get here,” Hilton said.

Hilton’s 
ideal 
version 
of 
the 

University is one where students are 
on campus more often throughout 
their lives, for shorter periods of time.

“I actually foresee a future of 

Michigan that is a future where we 
think about education really as a global 
and lifelong relationship,” Hilton said. 

“You’re never going to stop being 
in a relationship with educational 
institutions, you’re constantly going to 
be retraining, reimagining.”

Improving 
the 
richness 
and 

diversity of experiences students have 
and demonstrate later on in life has to 
be improved, Hilton said.

“We have to look at different ways 

of delivering learning experiences,” 
Hilton said. “We have to look at 
new ways of certifying those kind of 
experiences. We have to embrace in 
a critical and informed way the role 
that data and evidence can play in 
shaping how we design learning 
experiences.”

Campus 
Planner 
Sue 

Gott too believes there 
is a necessity to adjust 
learning and teaching 
environments as learning 
styles, technology and 
social norms change in 
order to remain globally 
competitive.

“Helping 
to 

expose life styles to 
students 
who 

may 
not 

have 
had 

certain opportunities or experiences 
so that we can help them go out in the 
world and be great leaders tomorrow, 
I think, makes this a revolving door 
for excellence in strengthening the 
incredibly 
brilliant 
students 
that 

arrive here to add greater dimensions 
to who they are and what they want 
to accomplish when they leave,” Gott 
said.

Gott foresees the campus remaining 

central to the future 

of the University, 
 

albeit a campus 

which is ever-

evolving. 

“I 
think 

campuses are certainly going to 
continue to need to exist and we 
may ebb and flow a bit to continue to 
respond to world changes,” Gott said. 
“But I see it as being critical to the 
transformation of young people into 
responsible citizens by enriching and 
diversifying their experiences and 
creating those growth opportunities.” 

Diversifying academic experiences 

is something LSA senior Anushka 
Sarkar, Central Student Government 
president, 
said 
should 
be 

more 
of a priority 

moving 

forward.

ALEXA ST. JOHN
Managing News Editor

As Bicentennial comes and goes, ‘U’ considers future of campus, academics

Read more at 
MichiganDaily.com

