This presentation, by the Dean and Associate Deans of the College, will address Grinnell's distinctive academic identity and the current new initiatives that will carry Grinnell College into the future. It has two parts: first, to survey the distinct features of Grinnell's academic identity, and second, to highlight elements of a strategic academic vision.
Part One: Grinnell's Academic Identity
The recent NCA review, major building projects in science and fine arts, preparations for a campus master plan, and the Fund for Excellence process have helped to build a clear picture of Grinnell College.
Intensive Student-Faculty Interactions
With an enrollment of 1300 students, Grinnell is a small liberal arts college, even by comparison with our closest peers. Swarthmore College has 1400 students enrolled, and all the rest of our peer institutions enroll more than 1500 students. Like our peers, we have a low student-faculty ratio and small classes, but compared with our peer group we tend to have fewer large classes, a higher percentage of small classes, and a smaller average class size than any of our peers. The average class size at Grinnell is 16 students, while the average for a composite list of our peers is 19 students.
But it is not enough to look at class size. It is important to consider who teaches these classes. Grinnell prides itself on offering a high level of direct contact with full-time, professional faculty. We have no Graduate Teaching or Research Assistants, and very few adjunct faculty or paraprofessional laboratory instructors. Our low student-faculty ratio is accompanied by student expectations of direct, personal attention; prompt feedback on assignments; informal consultations between students and faculty; and creative teaching methods that may use new information technologies.
A distinctive feature of Grinnell is that the First-Year Tutorial is closely linked with academic advising. The entering student's tutorial professor also serves as the student's academic adviser until the declaration of a major. In this way, the adviser gets to know the student's academic work and can more effectively advise on academic planning, which presents a special challenge in a curriculum with almost no requirements. No other peer school on the list has a curriculum identical to ours. Of our peers, only Macalester College has first-year courses that are taught by the adviser, but Macalester also has other requirements for graduation, including a foreign-language requirement and a specific distribution of courses across the academic divisions. Amherst has an open curriculum like ours, in which a first-year seminar and completion of the academic major are the only requirements for graduation. On the other hand, Amherst's first-year seminar is not linked with the advising system. So Grinnell's system really is unique among its peer schools.
As indicated by the Bibliography that follows this text, Grinnell College emphasizes teaching methods that are now well established by research in higher education as the most conducive to student learning outcomes. These methods include hands-on experience, writing workshops and studio classes, small groups, essay exams rather than multiple-choice, cooperative learning, research apprenticeships, and attention to diverse learning styles. While widely recognized as the best teaching methods, these approaches are admittedly resource-intensive. Most schools are forced to rely on more economical methods such as the large lecture class, distance learning, adjunct faculty, passive reception of information rather than active learning, less contact with professors, and nonexistent or rare collaboration by faculty members across departments and divisions. Grinnell College is fortunate to have resources that permit a consistent emphasis on the most innovative and effective styles of teaching and learning.
Even before the establishment of an experimental capstone program, we have seen growing opportunities for students to participate in original research and discovery, and to take responsibility for communicating the results of these projects. The President's inaugural symposium last October showed the possibilities for display of student-faculty collaboration on scholarly and creative work across all the academic divisions. We hope to plan events like this in the future, perhaps featuring capstone projects.
Interdisciplinary connections and collaborations are flexible and thrive when not bound by a fixed traditional curriculum and when they arise from a small faculty whose members necessarily have a lot of contact with colleagues outside their departments. Interdisciplinary concentrations, which are optional for students, now include many fields of study, most recently Global Development Studies and the revised Africana Studies program. Faculty from different departments offer general education courses such as Humanities, Statistics, and first-year tutorials. There are new majors in Chinese and biological chemistry, and (with support from the Fund for Excellence) faculty members in a variety of departments, including music, biology, anthropology, and history, have started to design courses and course modules with a focus on the new area of Prairie Studies.
Grinnell is a residential College geared toward active learning. Learning does not just occur during class time or in the classroom, but in art and music studios, science labs, travel seminars, creative writing workshops, foreign-language tables and houses, archaeological sites, cyberspace, and the learning labs. These activities have implications for facilities, which we will discuss in Part Two below.
Student Autonomy
The recent NCA Team Report commented that, "self-governance at Grinnell is a concept, a work-in-progress, a set of high expectations, and a tradition. . . . The team applauds Grinnell's students, faculty, and administration for embracing this powerful approach to education."
Student autonomy extends both to campus life and to the educational program. The same NCA report found that "in the arenas of residential life the overall results are impressive. There are behavioral excesses, yet they seem to be less than in the much-more-common rule-driven collegiate environments." In this context, students sometimes misinterpret self-governance as personal freedom, rather than as collective decision-making (e.g., by dorm) that then governs individual behavior.
The other dimension of student autonomy concerns students' self-directed planning of their own liberal arts education in the context of vigorous faculty advising. According to our NCA review, "the open curriculum . . . puts responsibility for educational decisions squarely in the hands of the student. It is an important reason why students choose Grinnell, and it is a point of pride after they leave." Again, some tension has been known to arise in this system between the assumption that students can use this freedom to follow their whims and avoid subjects that don't appeal to them, and the more responsible ideal of a student striving for a coherent, well-balanced academic plan, guided by faculty expertise and resulting in a successful liberal arts program.
Growing National Recognition and Visibility
In the Dean's Office, we are not sure whether we are seeing an increased number of invitations to apply for nationally-recognized grants, or whether a clearer sense of the college's academic mission now allows us to take fuller advantage of opportunities we might otherwise have been slow to perceive. In any case, these new opportunities build upon a history of nationally recognized academic grants over past ten years, including major grants from the Pew Charitable Trusts, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the Gardner and Florence Call Cowles Foundation, the Lilly Endowment, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Charles E. Culpeper Foundation, the Sony USA Foundation, and the W.M. Keck Foundation.
We are also responding to interest shown by some of our most respected peer schools in using our science building, first-year tutorial, and Fine Arts Center as models. For example, our counterparts at Swarthmore and Pomona have recently approached us to ask for information about our successful first-year tutorial program. Meanwhile, faculty leadership on the Grinnell campus extends to a number of collaborative projects such as ChemLinks and Project Kaleidoscope, a new Mellon ACM program for study abroad involving 41 colleges, and the Bridging Project with the University of Iowa. Grinnell faculty have been appointed to several national positions and are regularly invited to review programs at other institutions of higher education.
Part Two: New Elements and Questions for the Future
In this area, we have enjoyed a high level of faculty involvement and energy this year, particularly in response to the announcement of the Fund for Excellence. We also see greater coherence and coordination of these efforts, compared with the more disparate curricular innovations of the past ten years. Charlie Duke, cited in the NCA Self-Study Report, noted that in the Grinnell curriculum "change usually occurs as the result of small groups of faculty members becoming interested in new curricular areas and requesting funds to support their development" (85). This year, change has occurred on a college-wide scale, with larger numbers of faculty members involved, and the process is leading to new reconsiderations and re-arrangements, not just additions to the existing curriculum.
A Capstone Experience
The primary element of the academic vision is to enrich the "top" level of the curriculum. While our institutional self-study reinforced the strength of our curriculum during students' initial years, it pointed to a lack of balance between the first two and the last two undergraduate years, with respect to our expectations of students and their expectations of themselves. The NCA Self-Study Report specifically notes an absence of any project in the final undergraduate years that challenges students to demonstrate the reasons behind the curricular choices they have made and to apply a broad liberal-arts perspective to a specific discipline or cross-disciplinary area of mastery they have attained. Certain departments already include a senior project as part of the academic major, and some students individually design advanced research projects. However, since this is not a college-wide opportunity or expectation, faculty members have expressed concern that some of our upper-level students may lose motivation, be less willing to take intellectual risks, or become less able to push themselves in constructive ways. This faculty concern is not a new development, though it emerged with particular clarity from our self-study. As early as 1991, the faculty endorsed in principle the value of "advanced integrated inter-departmental study," but concrete plans to make this type of study central to the Grinnell curriculum did not move forward, as the College was not then ready to make the commitments entailed by such large-scale change.
With support from the Fund for Excellence, the capstone experiment will allow us to strengthen our curriculum by providing students with an enriching experience that challenges them to demonstrate their mastery in the liberal arts. This new program clearly builds on strengths we already have, including those that we described in Part One: intensive student-faculty interaction, active learning, original research, student autonomy, and interdisciplinarity. It is intended to move students toward higher aspirations, higher expectations of themselves, and more intentional planning of their programs.
The capstone is rewarding for the faculty because it can complement their research and show that our undergraduates are capable of high achievement. The program also helps to ease a pervasive faculty sense, noted by our NCA review team, of feeling overextended and overstressed by multiple commitments of time and energy. Not only do faculty members receive teaching credit for their supervision of capstone projects, but they also exercise greater control over the choice of topics for capstone research, as compared with the random scattering of Independent Projects that are first imagined by students and then developed and prepared by faculty. In other words, the capstone experiment helps return to the faculty their appropriate responsibility for curricular planning.
To achieve greater strength at the upper level of the curriculum will entail careful review and reinforcement of all stages leading up to the advanced level. For example, some departments will develop capstone options or even requirements, which may entail revision of their introductory sequences to provide the skills and knowledge that their students will need in order to complete a capstone project successfully. This year, the Tutorial Committee has even started to review the effectiveness of the first-year tutorial program, in an effort to learn whether there is widespread support for revising or even replacing that program with a different kind of first-year experience.
In a move that supports and complements the capstone experiment, this spring the faculty unanimously endorsed the idea that in the fourth semester (or at the point of declaring a major), every student should submit an Academic Plan, including a list of courses already taken and those planned for the future. This plan will clarify a student's intention to complete a capstone project as well as the academic major, and demonstrate a coherent group of courses comprising the student's general education. Students will write a brief statement explaining how they have organized their program and how it resonates with their emerging sense of education in the liberal arts. As seniors, they will revise this statement in light of what they have learned, reflecting their new insights and priorities developed since the time of declaring a major at the mid-point of their Grinnell career.
Enhancement of Technology in the Service of Learning
Technology and facilities planning must support the academic program. We have launched our new Mellon and Culpeper programs for using technology to enhance learning on the campus, and a Fund for Excellence Steering Committee has received funding to promote thoughtful, effective, and well-coordinated upgrading of technology across the campus. The faculty recently voted to create a new Instructional Support Committee which replaces three previously-existing committees and consolidates their tasks, including the provision of auxiliary support necessary for faculty to carry out their educational goals. We find that technology can promote active learning, opportunities for original and creative work, and connection with a broader community of scholars and learners. As such, it deserves an important place in the academic vision for Grinnell College.
Classroom technologies present increasing dilemmas, choices and opportunities. They have implications for all aspects of learning, ranging from the use of A-V, CD-ROM, and multimedia presentations and activities in the classroom, to web sites and hypertext that students use outside of class time. There is an increasing need to teach Internet research skills, and a growing number of instructors use features like electronic journals and bulletin boards to supplement classroom instruction. One of the most exciting elements of the Mellon-Culpeper program has been the role of instructional multimedia teaching specialists, who are working with faculty members in their respective areas of science, social studies, humanities, and the fine arts. The IMTS staff helps faculty members to identify their needs, assists in the design and set-up of new course materials, and trains faculty members to integrate new technologies into their teaching.
Finally, these emerging technologies represent an array of resources for research and scholarly activities, both for students and faculty. By making communication and information exchange faster and easier, they help to link Grinnell College with a wider, even global community of learners, researchers, artists, writers, and scholars.
International Emphasis and Focus on Social Commitment
In the first round of Fund awards last fall, President Osgood outlined a new administrative structure to increase coordination and visibility in these two areas through an Office of International Programs and an Office of Social Commitment. This spring, he has received a Fund for Excellence proposal for establishing an International Studies program based in the languages, but ranging beyond the languages. This proposal could represent the starting point of an important venture. There are many curricular and other educational opportunities across the campus that could benefit from the visibility and support of a more centrally coordinated International Studies program.
At the same time, we are embarking on a comprehensive review of our Off-Campus Studies program, for greater assurance of high program quality and effective student outcomes. Finally, the campus master plan may include a proposed new facility to give more centrality and visibility to Grinnell's study of nations and cultures outside the United States.
Academic Facilities Conducive to Learning
In a keynote address last February at the annual conference of The Collaboration for the Advancement of College Teaching and Learning, George D. Kuh, a leading researcher in the assessment of post-secondary programs and environments, summarized his findings on the qualities of a campus environment that can most effectively foster student learning. These features included a human scale, psychologically comfortable surroundings, socially-catalytic spaces, and accessible technology. We have been discussing these same features throughout the academic year with our consultants on the campus master plan. Our priority, and theirs, is for the physical plant and facilities to follow and support the academic vision. We are convinced that it is crucial for the design and maintenance of Grinnell's facilities to follow the College's academic vision, in order to achieve fully the academic goals described above.
American Association of Colleges and Universities (1996). Liberal Education, 82, 3, [Special Issue on Active Learning], Summer, 1996.
This issue looks at new pedagogies that have become academic resources, including interdisciplinary models, learning beyond the classroom, varieties of experiential learning, technologies of instruction, and learning communities that link courses around a theme to achieve greater coherence and more sustained interactions between students and faculty members as well as between fellow students.
Astin, Alexander W. (1993). What Matters in College? Four Critical Years Revisited.
Rich, rigorous learning environments, active participation on the part of students and faculty members, and a sense of community make a positive and profound difference in fostering student success.
Barr, R.B. and Tagg, J. (1995). From Teaching to Learning: A New Paradigm for Undergraduate Education, Change Magazine, 27, 6, November/December 1995, 12-25.
Rather than colleges existing to provide instruction, a shift is underway toward seeing their role, instead, as producing learning. Since the chief agent in the process is the learner, students must be active discoverers and constructors of their own knowledge. In Howard Gardner's terms, the authors promote "education for understanding," leading to "a sufficient grasp of concepts, principles or skills so that one can bring them to bear on new problems and situations."
Chickering, A.W. and Gamson, Z.F. (1987). Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education. AAHE Bulletin, 39, 7, 3-7.
The seven principles are close contact between students and faculty; cooperative learning; active learning; prompt feedback for students on their work; intensive time spent on educational projects; faculty with high expectations of student performance; and responsiveness to the ways in which individual students learn most effectively.
From Carol Geary Schneider and Robert Shoenberg, "Contemporary Understandings of Liberal Education," a publication of the Association of American Colleges and Universities, June 1998:
"Presentational teaching as the quintessential activity of the college professor is retreating before a growing emphasis on the centrality of the student as learner. In this newer conception, the instructor's role as motivator remains fundamental, but now as a mentor in acquiring strategies for learning. As the familiar formulation puts it, the professor is no longer primarily 'the sage on the stage,' but assumes a new and crucial role as 'the guide on the side.'" (7)
"New instructional technologies facilitate one-on-one interaction and allow students to do much more on their own individually, or in groups, with professor-created, problem-focused, often computer-mediated materials to provide guidance and correction. None of these developments invalidates the importance of the instructor's greater knowledge and wisdom as a powerful resource for students' learning. Nor do they eliminate the significance of the group setting as a stimulus to intellectual development and understanding. Rather, these key elements in the learning process are being reconfigured through an increasing emphasis on involving students earlier and more frequently in hands-on, inquiry-oriented strategies for learning." (9)
"The instructor serves as the exemplar of the person whose role is to find fresh and instructive connections, helping students learn how to test the intellectual and practical usefulness--the explanatory power--of the connections they find." (9)