This is not the same thing as having a native speaker teach a small class, of course, but here too there are tradeoffs. When I teach my class on Israeli politics in the spring it is a wonderful resource to have each day's editorials from Israeli newspapers in my office when I arrive, and it is even more incredible that I can communicate with colleagues in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Amman, or the West Bank in real time, writing them notes and getting responses back in literally minutes, that I can then share with students. We now have the technological capacity to take classes to students, where such was simply not possible in the past. Some educational institutions, including some in the GLCA, have made decisions to invest significant resources in this undertaking. These are just a few examples of ways in which technology serves the liberal arts on campus.
Technology can serve the liberal arts off campus, too, in our many off-campus programs.
We' re developing a new program now that will help to bring back some of the foreign study experience to campus that will use the web and e-mail, having students interacting with classes from overseas. My personal challenge at Provost, of course, is to work to see that funds are available so that we can have as many of these wonderful resources for our students and faculty as possible, to make the educative process as effective as possible. First, though, I have to work to hire outstanding faculty. It is the faculty who instruct and motivate our students, serve as role models, help them to imagine possibilities, and prepare them to discover on their own, and I'm pleased to say that even if we haven't reached the point where we'd like to be in terms of technology budgets at Kalamazoo, we have a faculty that offers our students outstanding educational opportunities. I appreciate the opportunity to share some of these ideas with you, and look forward to further discussion later.