College President’s
Series
Queens College:
President James L. Muyskens
By Joan Baum, Ph.D
Needless to say Dr. James L. Muyskens, who will have been
president of Queens College for three years this July, is delighted
with the just-released Princeton Revie annual report
on the Top Ten Best Value Colleges in the country for 2006,
a list that includes Queens and Brooklyn, and is based on an
evaluation of academics, tuition, financial aid and student
borrowing. Queens has been high in other rankings as well,
including those that take into account diversity and graduation
rates. The articulate, reflective and measured-toned president
is anything but complacent, however, as he carefully considers
Queens’s strengths as a 70-year-old liberal arts college
and his vision for the next few years. He notes that for him
the college’s motto – “global education,
great campus, real community” – is not a collection
of nice-sounding watchwords. “Global,” he explains,
refers not just to the 40% of freshmen who come to the college
from other countries but to a curriculum that is interdisciplinary,
collaborative, and responsive to effective technology. Indeed
his membership on the board of the Multimedia Educational Resource
for Learning and Online Teaching signifies his particular interest
in how “blended learning” (hybrid courses) can
enhance particular kinds of instruction. By “great campus” he
means a commuter school with a residential feel, space for
students to linger, hang out, check in with each other, by
way of the laptops and wireless technology. And by “real
community” he indicates his desire to have the college
always an essential presence in the borough, using its spectacular
performance spaces for music, theatre and other public programs.
Of course, President
Muyskens knows that many institutions of higher education
have missions that sound alike, and he ought to know. Before
taking up the presidency of the college, he served in numerous
high-level administrative roles at the Gwinnett University
Center /University System of Georgia and the University of
Kansas in Lawrence. A graduate of Central College in Iowa,
he went on to earn a Master’s of Divinity
from Princeton Theological Seminary and a Ph.D. in Philosophy
from the University of Michigan. In the `80s he took his expertise
to Hunter College, where his positions included Associate Provost,
Acting Provost, Chair of the Department of Philosophy, and
Director of the Religion Program – at the same time that
he was writing books focused on ethics, especially in regard
to health care. This fall, this extraordinary president will
put his background in the foreground when he teaches an introductory
philosophy course in ethics for freshmen that will include
not just classical but contemporary problems, such as those
that swirled around Terry Sciavo. The course will meet on Fridays
but the President will be meeting with students often by way
of Blackboard, the computer management system the college has
adopted.
His studies in religion
have also made him particularly eager to explore ways to
bring diverse cultures together, especially when the issues
are challenging, even explosive. He points out that the student
body president is a young man who is an Orthodox Jew and
that the vice president is Pakistani Muslim. And he takes
great pride - and “joy” - in the success
of Professor Mark Rosenblum’s course, “The Middle East and America: Clash of Civilizations
or Meeting of the Minds,” with its requirement that each
student learn about and be able to express opposing views.
He also notes that the second floor of the Student Union is
deliberately structured so that Hillel is across from the Muslim
Club and the Newman Center is right down the hall. The world
is complex, students must have the capacity to think critically
and the will to communicate clearly and fairly, he says.
The President is also,
obviously, an activist. Though he’s
waiting for the conclusion of a national search for a director,
he’s already instituted an Institute to Nurture New York’s
Nature, a research center dedicated to promote sound management
of the city’s natural resources and serve as a nucleus
for scientists and government officials. The Institute will
also welcome school children and their projects and develop
appropriate-level online courses for different educational
and public policy constituencies. “I just love this place,” he
says and is delighted that the place is growing. With the arts
and humanities Townsend Harris High School already on campus,
John Bowne nearby, the college is moving with Gates funding
to establish an “early college high school” for
average students and then move them through accelerated programs
in math and science. He would go on but one senses that the
teacher and the researcher in him—as much as the administrator—are
reclaiming his interview time.#
