It was just a coincidence that the bookshelves lining Penniman Library in Bennett Hall were completely empty when a small crowd of students, faculty, and administrators convened earlier this month for the 1996 Forum on Undergraduate Life, put together by the English Undergraduate Advisory Board. But even though the topic at hand was "Strengthening the University's Intellectual Community," those empty bookshelves were also somehow fitting.

After all, the emphasis of the forum was not on how Penn's intellectual community could be strengthened in traditional ways--such as more books or more members of the faculty--but on how technology and the changing landscape of higher educa- tion are affecting that community.

"We need to ask ourselves not what the traditional view of the great teacher of today is," said Dr. Judith Rodin, '66 CW, president of the University and the forum's keynote spcaker, "but what is the view of the great teacher of tomorrow, when we all have lectures and notes on-line. The teacher of tomorrow "ill be a mentor, someone who really is advising students in quite different ways from what we're doing today. We need to think what it will mean to be a great teacher in the Uni- versity of the future."

Rodin, responding partly to a series in The Philadelpbia Inquirer that had criticized the place of undergraduates at research universities such as Penn, pointedly defended the species in hcr remarks. "In choosing a research university for your undergraduate instruction," she said to the students, "you are quite intentionally choosing an environment that believes instruction at the undergraduate level benefits from having a faculty that is deeply engaged in the research enterprise."

She acknowledged that "not all leading investigators are great teachers," noted that Penn and other rescarch universities are "becoming more attuned to the fact that we need to consider strongly teaching and teaching ability in evaluating our faculty," and added that Penn is moving "in that direction." In the coming years, she suggested, there "ill likely be a "very significant change in the kind of instruction that we do," suggesting that many students a-re already seeing the "demise" of traditional, didactic instruction.

One professor who cheerfully acknowledged his role in that dcmise was Dr. James J. O'Donnell, professor of classical studics and interim head of information systems and computing. Suggesting that effective teaching "means planting a wide infectious virus--an intellectual virus--in the students, and you go away hoping they will infcct as many other pcople as possible," O'Donnell got a laugh whcn he compared that "intellectual virus" to Mad Cow Disease: "long-lived and slow-acting, transforming the lives of the recipients for many, many years afterwards." He recalled that during his first 12 years at Penn, "the students had some very peculiar characteristics. Among other things, they only existed 28 weeks of the year, and during those 28 weeks, they only existed sometimes two, sometimes three, maybe even four days a week. Odder still, they only came out by daylight- after dark, they disappeared completely." And from his studcnts' vantage point, he noted, "I had exactly the peculiar characteristics that I was ascribing to them: I disappeared for all those hours when I wasn't teaching. I didn't exist."

By 1993, O'Donnell continued, he had "left behind the world of mere appearances and transcended into a world of pure ideas-that is to say, cyberspace. I had acquired colleagues from a variety of other places, and discovered a much livelier intellectual and, indeed, social life for myself many hours of the day and on into the night. In 1993, all of my Penn students showed up in the same place: We gave them c-mail accounts. They came swarming into reality. "Slowly and gradually, over the couple of years that followed, I realized that I was beginning to have, not interviews with students-fairly thorough and fairly scripted encounters of office hours Aith both of us nervous and looking at the door to see if anybody else was waiting outside to interrupt -- but, instead, real conversations, with genuine, back-and-forth, thoughtful reflections; joking; casual wit-all the forms of encounters that mark conversational dialogue, rather than the morc restricted kinds of social encounters that we were having before."

O'Donnell also moved into Van Pelt Collegc House, where he is now surrounded by students. He described some of the benefits and ironies of "living in the world of dialogue which goes on many hours of the day and night," including "the fact that I'm often-times sitting up late at night doing e-mail in Van Pelt College House with students down the hall in Van Pelt College House whom I haven't seen for several days." The transformation of the intellectual landscape by e-mail, he said, "has brought home to me, more than anything ever had before, that any kind of old-fashioned model of teaching--as 'bearing the White Man's Burden' to the unwashed masses who do not have the wisdom that a professor, by very virtlie of his Ph.D., will undoubtedly have-has been not only a mistake but a bad mistake for a very long time."

For Dr. Alan Filreis, the professor of English who serves as undergraduate chairman of the department, the intellectual life of undergraduates has been significantly improved by a hitherto- untapped resource: Penn alumni, more and more of whom are taking courses and othewise communicating with students via the Internet--giving new meaning to the word networking. Filreis read some enthusiastic comments from alumni who are currently taking his course on contemporary American poetry through the Internet. "You just don't stop learning on a day-to-day basis," he said. "We say that-and now I thitik we mean it."

Dr. Stanley Chodorow, the provost, mentioned some components essential to the "collective intellectual life" on campus-nonc of which was especially high-tech. The first, he said, was "space--a place to spend time and do things together." The Perelman Quadrangle, he noted, was a "major step in the direction of creating that kind of space at Penn." The second, he argued, was "community organization, or what I call 'socializing,'" and he described the newly founded Writers House, in the old chaplain's residence at 3805 Locust Walk, as "a place where people who are interested in all sorts of writing can gather and have a life or get a life."

Chodorow also noted that the 21st Century Project, whose purpose is to "aid undergraduates in using and making knowledge. . . , will have, as a by-product, not only their learning what knowl- edge is but also their coming into situations where sharcd tasks become a part of their lives, whether at work or in a community setting."

Finally, he said, "every single department will have an undergraduate advisory board" (such as the forum's sponsors, made up of students and faculty), each of which can do an "enormous amount" to increasc and improve the intellectual life on campus.

The global capabilities of the World Wide Web mirror the increasingly international aspirations of the University, and Rodin, who had just retumed from a trip to Asia, addressed that aspect of her vision of the Univcrsity's future intellectual fife:

"I think we will have a curriculum that is more global in its perspective; the courses will be more comparative. We wifl understand foreign cultures and different aspects of society by changing some of the ways we focus on our material at Penn, and not ordy by study-abroad or exchange programs. We will truly have a global perspective in our curriculum.

"You will have experiences in the Penn of the future to participate in research in even more active ways than you currently do," Rodin concluded. "And I think that you will continue to have this kind of dialogue as we reintegrate and refocus technology, teaching, and research, for the Perin of the 21st century."