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digital illustration:
Christina Ullman

Everyone benefits from the work of college and university faculty.
It is around you at this very moment.

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First Person
What Ivory Tower?

Elite intellectuals poring over dusty books, white-coated scientists toiling with Bunsen burners and test tubes, engineers at drafting tables with slide rules - these are stereotypes that have long outlived their usefulness, if they ever had any usefulness at all. Faculty in higher education indulge their curiosities, probe the unknown, all with a goal of learning something they didn't know before and sharing that new knowledge with others. Who knows where that knowledge could lead?

In some cases, the direction of such work is clear. The war against polio was waged with a vaccine developed at the University of Pittsburgh. Research by scientists at Florida State University led to the development of the cancer drug Taxol, which has helped thousands of people with cancer keep the disease in check. Scientists at Ohio State University developed vaccines to prevent the two most common diseases in cats, feline infectious peritonitis and feline leukemia. Television viewers around the globe scanned the surface of Mars through an imager designed by optical scientists at the University of Arizona. Scientists hoping to uncover the genetic causes of everything from Alzheimer's disease to high blood pressure welcomed technology invented at Ohio University that allowed the creation of transgenic mice and animal models for the study of human disease.

Theories in mathematics and such social sciences as economics, sociology, and political science are used to predict economic trends, help nations formulate international policy, and better understand the societal impact of today's global marketplace. John Nash was a young faculty member at MIT when he began the work that eventually would earn him a share of the 1994 Nobel Prize for economics. His research on game theory impacted everything from the field of economics to military planning.

Film, theater, dance, art, and literature enrich human life, giving it color and sound and texture. Boston University's Robert Pinsky served an unprecedented three terms as Poet Laureate of the United States, a tenure marked by the development of the "Favorite Poem Project," which brought increased national attention to this literary form. These and other works in the arts and humanities add depth to what otherwise would be a flat existence, perception that makes the degrees of purple in a sunset meaningful to a scientist studying atmospheric conditions, and to a couple walking hand in hand along a rocky coastline.

More and more, funding agencies want to know who will benefit from research and creative activity. The public wants to know. Our readers want to know.

So, I ask, "Who?" The answer: Everyone.

The work of college and university faculty is not done in an ivory tower, nor does the fruit of those labors remain tucked away, hidden from view. It is around you at this very moment.

And chances are, you are better off for it.

Kelli Whitlock —
Editor, Perspectives

E-mail the editor at whitlock@ohio.edu.