ENGAGED GRADUATE EDUCATION: SEEING WITH NEW EYES
by James L. Applegate

CONCLUSION
Much has been done in the last decade through the Preparing Future Faculty program, and that work will continue. I have tried to articulate a sense of what our new work must be about. It is about seeing with new eyes and helping our future colleagues to see with new eyes. It is about preparing future faculty to skate to where the puck will be in higher education. It is about our students being scholars of teaching and learning who can effectively serve a more diverse cohort of students inside and outside the academy. Future faculty must see with new eyes the more complex array of possibilities for their research and embrace a commitment to the common good and to their status as public intellectuals. They must develop an engaged vision of scholarship, pursue it with passion, commit to action, and have the courage to fail publicly, if that is what it takes to learn how to eventually serve the public successfully.

Let us see ourselves with new eyes and imagine the meaningful outcomes of our work. Imagine communities free of hate, where people have the cognitive and communicative capacities to embrace the rich opportunities of human diversity. Where a child of color is spared the toxic affects of racist attacks. Where young gay men are not beaten and left to die strapped to fence posts. Where African-American men are not dragged to horrible deaths behind pick-up trucks. Where the images of September 11 are replaced with the actions of an international community committed to justice for all and intolerant of hate and violence.

We need a vision of society where the power of the Internet reduces the isolation of senior citizens and opens up a world of possibilities to all children; a society where pornographic Internet sites and hate groups wither in the light of those possibilities. A new generation of faculty, apprenticed under a new model for doctoral education, can be committed to research and teaching that contributes to the goal of a civil, equitable, and humane society. The billions of dollars this country invests in higher education every year and the hundreds of thousands of students and faculty in the higher education community can be mobilized to efforts that improve public policy, elevate communities, and improve lives.
This is the vision that should feed our passion. This is the vision that should lead us to action as we move to improve doctoral education and all of higher education.