Pepperdine University Provost Spoke at PI Westwood
Pepperdine University Provost Darryl Tippens spoke at the PI Westwood Luncheon Forum about ferment and change in the modern university.
During the speech and Q&A, Darryl Tippens emphasized the importance of the higher education and stressed that long distance learning or internet is not an exact substitute with the higher education. The face – to – face interaction and the university residential life makes this education a unique experience.
Provost Tippens shared with the audience that the universities might enter a dire strait due to the decrease in the reported enrollments in some universities. He later added that because most of the education is serviced to the people between 18-30 years of age, he said maybe there needs to be more outreach to middle aged and elders so that they be involved in the learning process.
Provost Tippens said that there is the University of Al-Karaouine which was founded in 859 well over a millennium year old in Morocco and Al-Azhar in Egypt is another example of a very old university founded in 975. These universities are the oldest and still functional to this day and the Renaissance in Europe greatly benefited from the enlightened circles of these universities.
He said that the founder of Pepperdine University George Pepperdine started the university in 1937 with the purpose not only to educate the mind but the heart as well. Then he added in front of one the oldest library recorded in history, the library of Celsus, which was built in Ephesus in 2nd AD, there stands four statues which symbolize WISDOM (SOPHIA), KNOWLEDGE (EPISTEME), INTELLIGENCE ( ENNOIA) and VIRTUE (ARETE) . Provost Tippens went on to say that these four principles or virtues are very important to a holistic, ethically based education today.
The provost finished by quoting the Turkish intellectual and thinker Fethullah Gulen who called for a new style of education “fusing religious and scientific knowledge with morality and spirituality [to produce] genuinely enlightened people.”