'At UB, Urgency Defines Students' Ambition'
April 29, 2014
Contact: University Relations
Phone: 410.837.5739
William G. Durden, president emeritus of Dickinson College, newly appointed research professor in the Johns Hopkins School of Education and operating partner at Sterling Partners, praises the University of Baltimore in an op-ed in Inside Higher Education, saying that UB is intent on helping students who are impatient to enter their chosen career fields.
Noting that UB's Yale Gordon College of Arts and Sciences has undertaken an intense self-study of its academic offerings and its methods of encouraging students' degree completion, Durden says the institution is maintaining its historical commitment to higher learning while also meeting the changing needs of its population.
"The goal [of student success] is to provide students the academic and non-academic interventions that help them complete a career-oriented college-level course of study at a reasonably low cost and in a reasonable amount of time," Durden writes. "These students didn't grow up believing that they have all the time in the world to mature. They were not told every day that they are 'great.' Many are first generation college students and come from nontraditional pathways to the university. There is a mix of ages. Urgency defines these students' ambition."
Durden visited UB on April 16, when he served as the College of Arts and Sciences' Distinguished Speaker and delivered a talk that touched on many of the same points as his op-ed.
Read the Inside Higher Education piece.
Read Durden's speech at UB.