"Visions of the 21^st Century"

Recently I was asked by the editors of The Enterprise, the region's daily newspaper, to offer my thoughts on Southeastern Massachusetts in the 21^st century. Since my response included topics of interest to our alumni, parents and friends, I am pleased to offer the following highlights to you:

Education — especially higher education — in the 21^st century will be shaped here in Southeastern Massachusetts by three major forces:

1. Increasing numbers of people of all ages will turn to the area's colleges and universities to earn degrees or seek additional training to update their skills;
2. The rapid growth of information technology in schools and colleges will accelerate quickly in the years ahead; and
3. Greater public demand to hold institutions accountable for student learning through testing to assess learning outcomes.

Educated workers
In terms of population, Southeastern Massachusetts is part of the fastest-growing region in the northeastern United States.

Nearly a million people already live within its 48 cities and towns, and the opening of Route 495 and the resumption of public commuter rail are among the factors that are drawing more people here every year.

As Southeastern Massachusetts continues to grow, so too will the need to attract more business and industry. Across the country, the regions most successful at drawing new businesses are those located around college and university campuses, and the reason is simple: skilled, educated workers are much in demand.

Because of our location in the heart of Southeastern Massachusetts, we at Bridgewater — with 9,000 full-and-part-time students, the largest state college in Massachusetts — anticipate a sharply growing demand for the kinds of learning experiences the college offers.

Beyond those seeking bachelor's degrees, we expect a rising interest in graduate and continuing education as people of all ages seek to update their skills and knowledge. For this reason, plans are moving ahead at Bridgewater to add post-baccalaureate certificate and graduate degrees related to the economic needs of this region. In particular, we expect to be adding to current offerings in management, business administration and criminal justice.

The growth of information technology
"The technological revolution is an avalanche that will change virtually everything in its path," wrote newspaper columnist John Ellis recently.

On the college level, Bridgewater and its sister colleges and universities devote increasing amounts of time and resources to developing technology resources. At BSC, for example, all academic, administrative and student residence halls are connected to the Internet and students, faculty and staff are offered technology training through workshops and seminars. State-of-the-art technology equipment is available in computer laboratories strategically placed across the campus.

While traditionally-aged students will not, in the main, want to earn their degree over the Internet, increasingly they are going to expect that their course work and perhaps even some of their classroom time will be supplemented by material that professors make available to them on the World Wide Web.

At Bridgewater, where a number of initiatives are underway to connect teaching and technology, we were very encouraged to receive recently a $148,000 grant from the Davis Educational Foundation to create a series of courses to be offered eighty percent on the World Wide Web and twenty percent in traditional classroom settings. That foundation was established by Stanton and Elizabeth Davis after his retirement as chairman of Shaw's Supermarkets, Inc.

Educational accountability
The third force that will be shaping the state's public schools, colleges and universities is increasing demand for accountability.

At the college level, the Massachusetts Educator Certification Tests, first administered to prospective teachers in April, 1998, are another example of the public desire to hold institutions accountable for student learning — and to demonstrate the results. While many continue to believe there are some problems with this particular test, the notion of testing teachers is here to stay, and at Bridgewater we welcome this because we believe it will strengthen the curriculum we provide to our teacher education students.

But teacher education students are not the only students whose learning needs to be documented. We at Bridgewater believe it is necessary to provide better evidence of the learning of all students at the undergraduate level, whatever their major. Consequently, we are exploring ways to enhance our current assessment efforts, including the possibility of establishing an exit test at the college level.

The Future
Because of the region's potential for continued growth, and the opportunities we have to continue strengthening our schools and colleges, we at Bridgewater State College are very optimistic that the best is yet to come for this region of the state.

As the above essay indicates, I think the future of the college and the region are extraordinarily promising. For members of our campus family, I want to add that — as you will read elsewhere in this publication — we have something else of significance to celebrate. Mr. Louis Ricciardi, '81, chairman, Bridgewater State College Foundation, announced at the Chairmen's Dinner on May 21^st that our endowment campaign is achieving great success, and has now passed the $5 million mark. My sincere thanks and congratulations to everyone who made this possible.