As Jeffrey Herbst prepares to step into his role as Colgate’s 16th president, he recently talked with The Post-Standard (Syracuse) about what attracted him to Colgate, his global affairs background, and the impact of new technology on higher education, among other things.
During the Q & A , published this week, Herbst said one of the biggest challenges facing today’s students “is how to integrate all the technology we see in our society with what I would consider the age-old values of a liberal arts education, which are unchanging.”
He went on to say that technology might change how faculty teach, but not what they teach. The fundamentals of a liberal arts education — such as critical thinking, putting things into context — will remain, added Herbst, who will leave his position as provost and executive vice president of academic affairs at Miami (OH) University.
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When asked about upstate New York weather, Herbst replied: “They told me it never got below 50 degrees. Is that not true? No, I’ve got a good feel for the weather. The campus is beautiful at any season. I think I might take up snowshoeing.”
Graham Hodges, George Dorland Langdon Jr. Professor of History and Africana & Latin American Studies, also was in the media spotlight this week.
The New York Times turned to Hodges, a former taxi cab driver and author of Taxi! A Social History of the New York City Cabdriver (2007), for his perspective on Manhattan’s share-a-cab program.
The experimental program allows up to four passengers to share a cab along preset routes. With strangers sitting in such close quarters, Hodges believes cabbies will have to be more attentive in order to ensure proper etiquette among passengers.
“A driver would have to pay more attention to the back seat, rather than the laissez-faire attitude that’s existed for about a century or so,” he told The Times.
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