WVU English professor pens book on future of higher education

Morgantown, W.Va., January 18, 2008: A West Virginia University professor has tackled a timely topic with his latest book—the challenges facing higher education in the 21st century.

Donald E. Hall, Jackson Distinguished Professor and chair of the Department of English in the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences at WVU, has published “The Academic Community: A Manual for Change.”

The book offers concrete strategies for revitalizing college and university classes and campuses in the United States. It confronts the most pressing issues in higher education today, including the goals of undergraduate instruction, priorities in graduate training, public awareness of college and universities and the bond within departments and institutions.

“I chose this particular project to work on because I found that so many people in higher education today are pessimistic about the state of our profession, about funding for higher education in the United States at this moment, and about the relevance of what we do in the classroom,” Hall said.

Hall’s book calls for renewed optimism, energy and focus confronting higher education’s complex problems. The WVU professor urges his readers to become agents of change within their institution and political area.
Among the topics he addresses are undergraduate training in public intellectualism, graduate training in institutional service, and institutional commitments to public outreach and community service.

“My motivation was to counter that pessimism with an optimistic and energetic call to embrace the most exciting thing about college campuses—the conversations that we have in our undergraduate classes, in our graduate programs, in our departments and in our surrounding communities,” Hall said. “The academic community is about the transformative potential of dialogue.”

Hall received his doctorate from the University of Maryland in 1991, joining the WVU faculty in 2004 after serving as department chair and teaching for thirteen years at California State University, Northridge. He is an award-winning teacher and an internationally known lecturer who has received Fulbright awards to Austria and Finland. “The Academic Community” is Hall’s ninth book, available from the Ohio State University Press at http://www.ohiostatepress.org.

“I worked on this book for almost five years,” Hall said. “I loved every minute of that work because I love higher education and care deeply about the work we do with students, the community and each other. I feel blessed because after almost twenty years in my career, I still love it,” Hall said.

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