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A successful undergraduate college is characterized by its
history of significant achievements, but its future achievements
require the constant renewal and extension of its traditions
and resources. As the world in which a college functions steadily
changes, the recurring challenge is to retain the best of
the celebrated past, to revitalize the best of the thriving
present, and to replenish existing resources with initiatives
appropriate to that world of the future into which students
continually graduate.
Preservation, renovation, and renewal thus provide the vital
signs of a thriving college never content with yesterday’s
achievements but never forgetful enough of them to be dominated
by the truisms of today or the trendiness of tomorrow.
A college community must always have a place for those who
are reluctant to confront the challenges of tomorrow and a
place for those who feel that the future can only be built
by destroying the past, but a college’s survival as an
institution depends on its capacity to link creatively past,
present, and future values. For it not only to survive but
also thrive, it must provide an educational context in which
the best of the past can guide, without governing, students
rightly concerned with what is best for a future that many
of the faculty will not live to see.
Columbia College has its own proud history dating back to
1754, when King’s College opened its doors as a New-World
educational institution with a sometimes innovative but characteristically
Old-World faculty. After the Revolutionary War, the College
reopened with a new name and new faculty more appropriate
to its New-World setting, but to this day it retains the royal
crown as its emblem and, more recently, it has adopted the
royal lion as its mascot. That linkage between change and
continuity has successfully been maintained now for almost
250 years, and to each new Dean is transferred the responsibility
for sustaining it for the future. In the years I have served
as Dean, I have done my best to fulfill that responsibility,
making the most of what former Deans have passed along to
me and working closely with the President, Provost, and Vice
President. What follows, from the reconfigured mission statement
to the reorganization of the staff, is a record of the collaborative
enterprise
Austin E. Quigley,
Dean of Columbia College and Lucy G. Moses Professor
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