My time in Cambridge is drawing to a close. I will be back at Pacific on Faculty Development Day. It is time to take stock of what I have learned here. I followed three lines of thought through many contacts and continued my scholarship.

Ethics

My principal concern has been to explore the moral community from the perceptive of game theory. A game is defined formally by a set of rules, a payoff schedule, and the fact that one’s rewards are determined based on the combination of what one does and what others do. The moral community flows from the fact that we are never in complete control of what happens to us or to others. Here are some of the points I have been able to verify:

1. No one can be ethical by himself or herself.
2. We need not know the right way of doing things in order to start being ethical.
3. An equilibrium is a point where those playing the game would be satisfied to continue playing — no alternative is more fair to all.
4. “Unethical” means interfering with fair games by misrepresentation, reneging, or coercing others.
5. Groups, such as schools or professional communities, also have an interest in preventing private games that damage the common good.
6. Failure to enforce the payoffs of the agreed game is free-riding that undermines the community.
7. Stable moral communities necessarily involve a mixture of strategies.
8. Perfect rationality and complete information are not required; in fact, a little forgetting and bounded rationality promote conversion and stability.
9. Moral communities evolve across time; higher standards, personal growth, and forgiveness are natural features.
10. People who think they know all the rules that others should follow are a pain in the anatomy.

Epistemology

This is the technical term for the branch of philosophy that investigates how we know things. Its counterpart in the social sciences is learning theory. This has been a long-standing, but background interest of mine and one that was only addressed incidentally here in Cambridge.

My view is that there is a difference between “knowing” and “knowing that.” The latter phrasing represents propositions that can be made public and can be tested as true or false. The former are changes in our disposition or what is likely to happen to us in the future. Most philosophers collapse across these categories and hold a position known as “realism”: we know a directly given objective world, either truly or mistakenly.

I came to Cambridge partially because of a faculty member here named Simon Blackburn who has been my sponsor and who is a quasi-realist. He and I think there is a chance that we can make slips when translating what we know into what we say we know and that while the latter can be evaluated publicly most of what matters is tacit.

This is important in dentistry. A significant handicap in the scientific literature is the failure to distinguish between the validity of a scientific “claim” supported by its p-value and the substance of the claim translated into what dentists can do with it. I believe there are large and important differences between what dental students do in the lecture halls and what they do in the clinic. We need to know more about the relationship between these two kinds of knowing.

The Dental Literature

I have been able to pursue my interest in alternative means of analyzing and reporting the dental research literature. Traditional statistical conventions are of more use to researchers than practitioners. There are methods, however, that are rigorous yet tailored to the decisions practitioners make. Among these are measures of likelihood of being surprised, robustness, identification of interaction effects (factors related to treatment that can be ignored or which must be accounted for), and ordering the impact of various factors by their likelihood of affecting treatment outcomes. I was able to verify the soundness of these approaches with faculty members in the Department of the History and Philosophy of Science and the Mathematics Department. I also presented these findings at Leeds University Dental School as I have at several schools in the States. I have had a request before the DFC for a year to make this presentation at Pacific.

Scholarship

Manuscripts accepted for publication:

• Lessons from Students in a Critical Thinking Course: Reflections on the Third Pedagogy, David W. Chambers: Journal of Dental Education
• Issues in the Interpretation and Reporting of Surveys in Dental Education, David W. Chambers and Frank W. Licari: Journal of Dental Education
• Manuscripts accepted subject to minor revisions
• Effects of Clinical Experience and Explorer Type on Judged Crown Margin Acceptability, Casimir Leknius, Lola Giusti, David Chambers, Christopher Hong: Journal of Prosthodontics
• Money, David W. Chambers: Journal of the American Dental Association

Manuscripts reviewed and requiring substantial revision

• Toothbrush Wear Comparison for Two different Toothbrush Designs, DJ Horlak, P Watson, LJ Lyon, DW Chambers, and WP Lundergan: American Dental Hygiene Association Journal
• Alternative Methods for Evaluating the Equivalence of Measurement Systems, David W. Chambers, HeeSoo Oh, Gurminder Sidhu. Dentomaxillofacial Radiology

Streets are named for the buildings they serve. In the 150 meters north from this sign, one is on Trumpington Street, King’s Parade, Trinity Street, St John’s Street, and then Round Church Lane. In most cases one uses landmark buildings to find the street, and not the other way around.

Michaelmas term ends this week. The streets are empty and quiet, as students are writing their papers. Overheard on St Andrew Street this morning: “You have the appearance of having been up all night.” “Very disconcertingly, I have to say I have not been.” The similarities between the UK and USA are apparent, but there are deep differences, some of them hidden in plain sight, and much we could profitably copy.

Electrical cords have bulbous sockets where they are plugged into the wall. That is because they have surge protectors built into them. The English openly show their appreciation at performances. A hack guest lecturer can expect at least twenty seconds of firm applause. A green is called “pieces” and is usually named after a benefactor or adjacent college, as in Parker’s Pieces. The green next to Christ’s College has an unfortunate name.

The young women in Cambridge dress better than they do in California, but many of them are so poor that they cannot afford tops that connect up with their bottoms. Men make little pretense. All of this gives new meaning to the Britishism “mind the gap!” A faculty member will lecture in a sports coat with an open shirt. Some only have one sports coat. Tucking the shirt into one’s pants is typical but optional. Dressing up means a suit, but not necessarily a tie. At the other extreme, formal and ceremonial dress is lavish. I once saw a faculty member lecture in slacks, a tie, and no sports coat – but he was Canadian.

Churches are everywhere and heavily used. The chapels in each college support a mandatory eight services per week and are host numerous cultural events. There is no stigma attached to using any church beyond strictly sacred means. On almost any day one could have lunch (pay what you can) in several churches in Cambridge. Most churches have bookstores and gift shops. We have seen tractors and live sheep in churches here.

Amateurism is esteemed; professionalism has a faint odor about it. This distinction has nothing whatsoever to do with the quality of performance. Darwin was an amateur, as was Thomas Clarkson, who entered politics to bring an end to slavery. Faculty members may not hold appointments in departments where they took their training. The choristers in the great choirs are amateurs although you can listen to them weekly around the world on their Web casts. High school musicals have live orchestras. Amateur means “done for the intrinsic love of it.” Professional means paid.

Faculty members are rewarded here much as they are in the States – personal satisfaction, take as much as you want. In the social sciences, consulting for business and government help make ends meet. In the natural sciences, there is always the hope of patenting a breakthrough. But the English humanities faculty members have a unique hope: there is a prospect of knighthood or even peerage. One of the individuals in the philosophy department I corresponded with before coming to Cambridge declined being my sponsor because she had just been named a baronet and was taking her place in the House of Lords. The former secretary general of the British Dental Association, who was one of my sponsors, was knighted.

There are wonderfully quaint expressions everywhere: “Undecided” on a questionnaire is “to boggle” – an active verb. But there are some usages that are exactly anticlockwise from what we would expect. Use of “which” and “that” to begin subordinate clauses is reversed. If you asked someone whether his boat was in good shape, he would answer “It is well, thank you,” and he would not mean that it had recovered from being sea sick. In America, we begin and end a quotation with what look like two apostrophes and embed a subordinate quote in single apostrophes. The English do it otherwise. They also put the punctuation outside the quotations; we do not – except for colons and semicolons. No periods in abbreviated titles and articles are often dropped: ‘Dr Smith is in hospital’.

Lectures from visitors or at meetings are typically in the evening and invariably two hours in length. Half of the time is devoted to questioning. During the question and answer session, the chair keeps two lists of who would like to be recognized. If a member of the audience wants to pursue the topic under discussion, he or she will raise a finger. Raising one’s hand signals an interest in introducing a new topic.

The English have a different view of personal rights than we do in the States. Rights are well understood and insisted on in the UK. We talk about them more in the US: we seem to want to have them recognized, even if we have no use for them at the moment. The right of way in a British roundabout belongs to those already in the roundabout; if you forget that, it is probable that you will be driven off the road with nothing particular being said about it. By contrast, when I flew back to San Antonio for the ADA meeting, I was jarred by the whistles of airport police waving frantically at unresponsive drivers and treated to a colorful and rude exchange of words and gestures between my cab driver and another motorist who paid no attention to each other. I find I learn more quickly from the rights people exercise than the ones they talk about.

Almost everything in England is private and available to the public. You just have to ask, and be willing to be declined. Christopher Wren’s wonderful library at Trinity (with first editions of Newton’s work, among others) or the personal library of Samuel Pepys at Magdalene can be viewed in response to a polite request at the right time. The wife of the master at Emmanuel will host a tea for a women’s group such as my wife’s Soroptimists. The Banqueting House in London where Charles II was beheaded had been commandeered for a Save the Children fundraiser when we visited, and we did our part. Virtually all open land can be used by permission of the owners, and there are guide books sold for walking paths everywhere. The word pub is short for “public house”; a term that is still almost synonymous with “everybody’s living and dining rooms.”

We have not missed having a car. There are two bus lines within this town of fewer than 100,000. In addition, there are six “park-and-ride” lots at the edges of town. Each of the adjacent counties operates a bus service, as does the national bus system. London is 50 minutes away by train. Need a bicycle? Every college is ringed solid with them.

The English see the relationship between buildings and streets the other way ‘round, too. Here, the building takes precedent: streets go with buildings. Sidgwick Street runs in front of the Sidgwick Center, then changes its name to Silver Street to get over the river, and then to Pembroke Street in front of Pembroke College, and on to Downing Street in front of that college (all this in fewer than 1,000 meters). In a row of houses, some will have street numbers, others will have names. The only streets that are reasonably straight date back to the Roman times. The size of the street is signaled by its name: Roads can be driven on, streets usually, lanes would be one-way, closes are as advertised, so are paths, and a mews, if you could get a car into it at all, can only be exited by backing up.

The River Cam can be described in similar terms. It is only about twelve miles long. Beginning within the precincts of the university and south to its source, the river is often called the Granta: not far past the boat houses to the north, the Cam flows into and takes the name of River Great Ouse.

The proactive approach to addressing the needs of the disabled is apparent in even the smallest towns in England. Help is available to anyone who asks for it.

Just as there are two meanings of this phrase, there are two ways to look at the ethics of things that do not work. On the whole, English toilets work fine. In fact, they jubilantly consume ecologically unsound quantities of water in response to a twist of the handle. A Londoner named John Crapper invented the flushing toilet, the first one being installed in Westminster Abbey. That is the only example I can think of where an innovation in known by both the first and last names of its inventor.

What strikes me here is the frankness with which the English address the issues of their handicapped citizens. Signs saying “disabled toilet” are prominently displayed; churches and lecture halls have hearing enhancement systems available to those who request them; public buildings have porters whose job includes being of assistance.

Within the first five minutes of my arriving at the philosophy department in October I was given a safety orientation and handed a document that said, among other things, “As an employee you have legal duties that included taking responsible care for your own health and safety and that of others who may be affected by what you do or do not do.” That part about “having responsibility for others” made an impression.

The American attitude toward disabilities has an undercurrent of denial. Every few years we bring in new terminology in hopes of designating a class of individuals who need help but at the same time should not be singled out as needing help. We seek structural instead of personal ways to avoid handicaps. I know a dentist who had to install an elevator in his very small office because he had built it on the second floor in order to provide parking for his patients. We seem to act as though we want to eliminate disabilities.

The British attitude places more emphasis on helping those with disabilities. There are signs in public places that invite anyone needing assistance to request it. It is gladly provided. I have philosopher friends in the States who find that objectionable — no one should have to ask for help they say. The English do not seem to mind asking or giving. I wonder which culture does more to dehumanize us.

A lode is a navigable drainage ditch that appears raised because the surrounding peat bog shrinks when dried. This lode at Reach dates to Roman times and is similar in size to the River Cam. Both Reach and Cambridge were “seaports” in their day.

Until the 1600s, most of northern Cambridgeshire was a vast bog. The fens are largely gone, but they were a network of flood plains, tidal rivers and pools of standing water with fanciful names. The foundation for all of this was many feet of peat — fibrous, sponge-like matter composed of decayed reeds, capable of burning. The cathedral city of Ely was until recently an island, reachable only by boat. The main river is the Great Ouse (pronounced “ooze.”) Fen ague, a form of malaria, and the wide-spread use of opium to treat it, killed a larger proportion of the local population than did the coal blight of the industrial midlands.

The way this part of England became its “agricultural bread basket” is a case study with lessons for American political history and moral philosophy. The Stuart Kings and Cromwell, who grew up in the area, promoted draining of the fens. It was not as easy as it appeared — taking more than 200 years and creating rivers that flow backwards and lowering the level of the land as much as twenty feet. Some of Cambridge is lower than the Polders of Holland and windmills can still be seen here.

But the message is in the process and its side effects. Most of the fens were common land, used by locals who gathered reeds for thatched roofs on cottages and fished for eel. Think of the American plains two hundred years ago. The crown did not own the land, but it granted rights patent to nobility who helped them. The reward was vast acreage, a portion of what was reclaimed. Such developers were called “undertakers”: they were types of the first entrepreneurs. (Those who invested money in exchange for shares of the wealth to be created were called “adventurers.”) The precedent was set by Pope Julius II about 1500 when he divided the new world between the Spanish and the Portuguese at a meridian 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands (which is why Portuguese is spoken in Brazil). British North America was developed in the same fashion, with large land grants to William Penn, the Hudson’s Bay Company; Virginia and Bermuda were joint stock companies. This system is in use today in the United States with Indian gaming, grazing on forestry land and off-shore oil drilling.

The economic benefit to the government and those who improve its potential is obvious. But there are issues in converting the commons to private use. The enclosure laws in England raised the overall economic level but exaggerated the gap between the few wealthy and the many poor. The American Pilgrims who were the earliest to flee England were from Cambridge.

The ethical issues involved with converting common resources to privileged groups who promise to improve their worth are real today. State dental schools use tax dollars from all citizens and student loans are funded by federal tax dollars, but graduates tend to concentrating in the suburbs to treat the affluent. Innovations in dental therapy based on research in dental schools are in the public domain thanks to the Bayh-Dole Act. The slipperiest dentists enjoy some of the general reputation of the entire profession.

The Saxon, pre-1066, church tower of St. Ben’ets (short for St. Benedict) Church, whose abbey structures were taken over as part of the first college at Cambridge, is an example of a building that has been renovated so many times it cannot really be called old. It is shown here with scaffolding signs in front.

It is a bit misleading to say that Cambridge is an old institution. It is coming up on its 800th anniversary. But that means that it has had eight centuries of upgrading, adjusting and adapting. It knows how to reinvent itself and it does so more or less continuously. It is thus one of the most successful new institutions.

The ultra-modern new research facilities in the green fields west of town are matched by perpetual work of single craftsmen replacing some of the older buildings, one brick at a time. Passing through the eight courts of St. John’s College is a lesson in the history of architecture — each quad becoming more modern and the number of bathrooms per student rising steadily. Because East Anglia is almost barren of stone suitable for building, “reconfiguring” was the way to grow for much of the university’s existence. The major part of Henry VIII’s endowment of King’s College was building materials he confiscated when he closed the monasteries. Appearances can also be deceiving. The big physical growth spurt at Cambridge came during the Victorian era when a dominant style was Gothic revival. Two new whole colleges have been added in the past fifty years. Here is a hot tip on a sure-fire business opportunity: scaffoldings.

The mission and operation of the university have been continuously reinvented as well. It was founded by teaching monks driven out of Oxford by agitated townsfolk. For the first several hundred years of its existence, Cambridge was a trade school for the church with teachers functioning as a band of essentially self-employed entrepreneurs. In Tudor times, it was a training center for government bureaucrats — much like China at the same time. By the 1700s, the new science had taken hold with Newton and Milton (the apologist for the Commonwealth). Newton gave more of a mathematical or logical stamp to the curriculum than an empirical one, and that tradition has very deep roots here even today. Russell in the twentieth century, for example, tried to reduce all of mathematics to set theory and G. E. Moore attempted something like that for ethics. (The masterpieces of all three men shared the title Principia meaning a logical set of propositions and the theorems that can be deduced from them.) The top student, the Head Wrangler, is still determined on math/logic test scores.

Through the 18th and 19th centuries, the university became a pleasant three years of socializing for the sons of the landed aristocracy. One could obtain a qualification in medicine by attending two dissections. The chair of Astronomy and Geometry (note the connection between science and logic) between 1795 and 1837 never gave a single lecture. His name was Professor William Lax. In the last half of the nineteenth century, Cambridge began to take its science seriously. Clark-Maxwell, Rutherford, Haldane, Kapitsa (Russia’s father of the atomic bomb), Crick and Watson all worked in the atrociously cramped Cavendish Lab on Free School Street.

Today, Cambridge has come full circle: entrepreneurship and detailed specialization for the sake of deep applications are the order of the day. The university Web site lists 91 departments and programs, most of which have an applied focus. There is a ring road, just like Route 128 around Boston, Silicon Valley or the Research Triangle in North Carolina where faculty, former faculty and graduates with very advanced training work in medicine, acoustics, forestry, particle science, education and pharmaceuticals.

The line between the university and political reality has never been clear at Cambridge and it has moved around quite a bit as well. One can almost read the history of the Western world in the responses the university has made in its own identity and its relationship to society at large over 800 years.

The university library seen from a punt on the banks. The building is an iceberg with many times more books in miles of underground stacks than are accessible above ground.

Cambridge is wireless: five or six choices anywhere in town, plus the university system. I have been here over five weeks and have yet to print or copy any document. Jean and I use the computer and our digital cameras to communicate in town. Skype [a service allowing you to make phone calls via the Internet) is common. I have been able to maintain my presence on the Pacific network to the point where some folks have not realized I am here in England, and it still takes me five minutes per day to clear the “spam” from my Pacific account.

Mobiles, PDAs and iPods are not as popular here as in the States. They seem to be regarded as a bit rude or showy. The British also spend more time in face-to-face socialization and are less dependent on surrogates. The pubs are a vital part of the communication network. Some colleges have several.

Although I am certain this varies by discipline, I have not seen any lecturers use PowerPoint. (I will be visiting several dental schools in the next weeks, and will confirm that.) I have also not been able to find a course that makes use of Blackboard [the electronic courseware used by the University of the Pacific]. Perhaps this is because lectures are intended to supplement the curriculum generally and tests are not given over what any lecturer said. The alternative is the reading list. These are managed by the department as a whole and prepared by committees. To have a topic included in the curriculum of a department means to be included on its reading list.

On the other hand, the Internet does have its place. See www.sjchoir.co.uk for free Web broadcasts of Evensong and other church music by one of the greatest choirs in the world.

Each college has a substantial library. So does each department. There are research collections (polar exploration is an example) and “show libraries” such as the collection assembled by the seventeenth-century diarist Samuel Pepys. There is also a university library that is staggering in its holdings. By law, the university library at Cambridge is required to hold a copy of every book published in England, going back many years. (I believe there are four other such libraries in the country.) Many of the books in the university library are entirely online, as are substantial journal holdings. The university library is not arranged for browsers; books are stored in a byzantine system by size of book, date of publication and subject area. That works because one does not go to the library to look for books. The computer (accessed from anywhere) is used for bibliographic research and to explore topics; if books of interests are found, they are requested online and by the time one walks to the library, they are waiting at the call desk.

Without putting too fine a point on it, I believe there is justification for noting two differences in communication style between Cambridge and Pacific: the essential form of communication at Cambridge is interpersonal and real time, and information is organized to promote expanding inquiry rather than documenting circumscribed topics.

Seminars and study groups are ubiquitous at Cambridge. This is a photograph of a philosophy seminar in the “rooms” (office) of one of the faculty members in Kings College.

Undergraduate students apply to one to three colleges at Cambridge. They may be invited to write an essay and come in for an interview by a potential sponsor based on their examination scores (not their grades) in preparatory school. They name a major in their application.

Faculty, as a group, in each discipline annually set a series of six to eight examinations over the three years of the program called the Tripos (for the three-legged stool upon which the ancient Mr. Tripos read insults and scurrilous verses to his examiners) that test the key areas in the discipline. These essay examinations are scored double blind and independently by two faculty members, with strict rules for resolving discrepancies.

Not only is graduation based on the examinations, so is the curriculum. There are departmental reading lists organized by examination. Course catalogue listings carry the Tripos examination number. “Courses” are series of six to nine one-hour lectures, and tend to be extremely didactic — consisting largely of the faculty member reading to the class with no discussion. There are no examinations in lectures.

Some faculty members are hired and paid by colleges; others by the university. The three ranks of faculty are lecturer — those who tell students what they know, reader — those who help students explore a discipline and professor — those whose research has qualified them to “profess” new knowledge in the discipline. It is poor etiquette to call a professor by the title “doctor”.)

Cambridge students are trained and selected for their ability to take responsibility for their own learning. There is also a tradition of tolerating some degree of clever mediocrity in the drive to maximize learning at the highest possible levels — a blend of adequacy and genius is prized over uniformity. Supervision is provided by faculty tutors in the colleges (sometimes the faculty member who sponsored the student’s admission). This consists of frequent progress checks and weekly or bi-weekly seminars in the colleges. In addition, students are expected to participate in the general culture of the university. I typically attend three reading groups, clubs or invited lectures per week. These occur in the early evening, so the lunch hour here is 1 o’clock.

There are variations on this pattern depending on the discipline. The natural sciences, for example, include lab experiences and lab books are scrutinized and marked; engineering has added an optional fourth year of internship.

Graduate admission is by department, not college. Academic work is organized around practical projects and personal relationships with faculty advisors. In philosophy, MPhil students (a one-year program) write four papers, at least one of which is expected to be published. PhD students (three years further) are responsible only for writing a dissertation (although that is expected to be published as a book). There are no graduate courses, but there are enough seminars to keep everyone involved, and these are managed by the PhD students.

The marking standards for graduate papers reveal something about the attitude toward learning. Faculty supervisors are coaches for the papers and they may insist on multiple revisions; other faculty members mark the papers. The standards specify three grades (with minor refinement in each category). The lowest mark is for papers that cover the topic superficially or contain some errors. The common mark is for papers that cover the question completely and accurately. The highest mark is reserved for papers that advance the discipline, literally “tell the faculty members something useful that they did not know.”

In summary, some of the main differences I see between the Cambridge model and what we do in dental education in the States include:

• Agreement among the faculty on what should be learned is the driving force at Cambridge. It guides setting common exams and the exams guide the curriculum.
• An intense personal-professional relationship between faculty and students at Cambridge. This begins with the admission process and extends through supervision of students’ general study plan, seminars, and careful critique of their work. This, combined with the fact that supervisors do not grade their own students, makes them student advocates.
• An assumption that Cambridge students are to be responsible for their learning and are treated accordingly. I have not heard the term “remedial” used here, but I have heard many stories of pride in the significant accomplishments of students and faculty members.

Photo: Seminars and study groups are ubiquitous at Cambridge. This is a photograph of a philosophy seminar in the “rooms” (office) of one of the faculty members in Kings College.

Commercialism is a growing concern in dentistry and elsewhere. This photo shows one of many such windows in the Lady Chapel in the cathedral at Ely, UK. (Click for a closer view)

No sooner did my wife and I establish ourselves in Cambridge than I returned to San Antonio for the American College of Dentists (ACD) and the American Dental Association (ADA) meetings. But it was all a piece with my study of ethics.

The ACD has been called “the conscience of dentistry” and has for years been concerned with the ethical dimensions of the profession. It is held by many in the college that the personal standards by which a dentist practices are the greatest determining factor of the quality a care patients receive in the professional involvement of dentists. The Journal of the American College of Dentists, which I edit, always carries articles about ethics and has devoted entire issues to the topic.

Of great importance now is the Professional Ethics Initiative. This is a collaboration of the ADA, American Dental Educators Association (ADEA) and the American Society for Dental Ethics (ASDE), with ACD as the convening partner. We have been meeting for almost two years and have identified four initiatives:

1. Increase the number of dentists trained as facilitators of ethics workshops and teachers of ethics in dental schools, as well as qualified to conduct research and influence policy
2. Make available to all practitioners a voluntary self-study and development program for ethics in their offices
3. Make available a voluntary ethical climate audit and improvement program for dental schools, state associations and industry along the Baldrige model
4. Strengthen the online base of ethical courses, cases and other resources

In addition to an online ethics course that some schools require of their dental students, the ACD has a full collection of ethical dilemmas available at www.acd.org. We also have five personality inventories and over 40 CERP-approved continuing-education courses which I have written.

The program for practice self-assessment and development in ethics is under development. A joint subcommittee of the Council on Bylaws, Ethics and Judicial Affairs and the Council on Dental Education and Licensure, as well as ADA President Mark Feldman, have endorsed this program and it was presented to the House of Delegates as Board Report 14.

I also facilitated a joint program for the ACD and the American Association of Dental Editors (AADE), which was created by the ACD in the 1930s in response to concern over commercialization in dental journalism, and presented our joint journalism prize. At the AADE luncheon Pacific students Jamie Parado and Marisa Watanabe received the Meskin Prize for best student publication (the second time we have won in five years) and Dean Ferrillo was recognized for his support of this project.

If you look closely on the bridge you will see several students posing for photographs in their new black academic gowns. These are “freshers,” and I suppose you could say that the double orientation they have just had to their college and their department and their first meeting with their tutor is the equivalent of their “White Coat Ceremony.”

My wife Jean and I are spending the autumn quarter at the University of Cambridge. I am studying moral philosophy, hence my concern with “learning to speak good” in Cambridge.

This is a complex academic institution. Virtually all students and faculty members belong to both a college and a department. There are 31 colleges, with venerable names such as Magdalene, Trinity and St. John’s. The first was established in 1084, before the Crusades began. Per its founding charter, King’s College still pastures cows within 50 yards of its chapel, which is as large as a cathedral. (Established as it was in the late 16th century, perhaps this was the original land grant college.) Each college is a distinct corporation, with its own budget, governing rules and structure. Each separately admits its own undergraduates (about 6,000 in all) and later recommends those who qualify for degrees. They are the dorms, dining halls and social centers of campus life. They are also the touchstone of one’s identity. Often the first question to expect when it is discovered that you are associated with Cambridge is “What is your college?”

There are also academic departments in the sense we are used to them in America. I, for example, am in the Faculty of Philosophy. But there is overlap among the departments as well. I could take a course in British Empiricism in my department or in the Department of the History of Science and Philosophy or a course in mathematical logic in philosophy or mathematics. This layering of interests is intentional, and it promotes creativity. Departments are housed in separate buildings — some ancient and some modern — scattered around the colleges. Sociology and French are in the same building with philosophy, and criminology is nearby. (Incidentally, the buzz in the latter department is evidence-based criminology. I would have thought that was a no-brainer!) Students and faculty are also assigned to departments, so it is a matrix system with both a college and a university (department) home for everyone. The roughly 2,000 graduate students are admitted by department.

But it would be a mistake to confuse this with the American model and think of the colleges as dorms and the academic program taking place in the departments. Every student has an assigned tutor in his or her college. This is not an academic advisor in the sense of someone who checks to see that all the courses needed for a degree are taken in proper sequence. Tutors teach their academic disciplines to small groups of students in the colleges and shepherd students’ complete academic development. In the humanities and social sciences (and to a lesser extent in the natural sciences), there are no required courses and no examinations in individual course. (Weekly quizzes would be an outrage.)

Instead, there are comprehensive papers and examinations in general topic areas. In philosophy, these would be logic, ethics and theory of knowledge (the latter including statistics and research design such as the critical thinking course I teach at Pacific). Tutors recommend courses on an individual basis, or single lectures by topic, books, study groups and other learning experiences that prepare students for the comprehensive papers and exams they must take, and they help students prepare for them.

At Pacific, we approximate this model for a few of our best students who develop deep professional relationships with faculty members, most typically some of the department chairs and students they are grooming for graduate programs. At Cambridge, that sort of relationship is the backbone of learning for all.