Professional Educators Opening Doors to the Future
The term “professional educators,” refers both to the professional education faculty and staff of Texas Tech University as well as to our graduates who become professional educators in their own right. Our graduates are professional educators who demonstrate appropriate knowledge, skills and dispositions; integrate theory and practice; respect and value all individuals; and remain life-long learners.
It is essential to use “opening doors to the future” in a concrete manner to guide educator preparation at TTU. One way to do so is to consider the “knowledge,” “skills” and “dispositions” that enable the doors to be opened. We as “Professional Educators” at Texas Tech share knowledge, develop skills and model dispositions with our students enabling them to open doors to their futures. In turn, our graduates, as professional educators share knowledge, develop skills and model dispositions with their students allowing those individuals to open doors to their futures.
In addition, our work should be guided as the doors are opened metaphorically to a future where justice and diversity are commonplace and all individuals are respected and valued. Both TTU educators and our graduates open doors by advocating socially just education, respecting and valuing all individuals, serving as change agents and generally providing opportunities for all students to be successful.
The essence of “opening doors to the future” is partially captured by excerpts from a 1926 message by the first president of Texas Technological College. Dr. Paul W. Horn advised the initial student body to think and act in an affirmative, constructive manner, a manner consistent with the bigness of the West Texas country as he stated:
It is a magnificent country in which our college is located. It is a region of magnificent distances, of far-flung horizons, of deep canyons, of lofty far-arching skies.
Everything that is done on these West Texas Plains ought to be on a big scale. It is a country that lends itself to bigness. It is a country that does not harmonize with things little or narrow or mean. Let us make the work of our college fit with the scope of our country. Let our thoughts be big thoughts and broad thoughts. Let our thinking be in worldwide terms.
Let our affections, likewise, and our sympathies be as broad as the world is wide. Let us strive to exclude from our lives that which is petty, mean, ignoble.
There will always be room at Texas Tech for things that are big. There will be room for courage and industry and hard work, for love of God and of man, for faith in God and for faith in humanity.