GOAL I: Integrative Learning and Education
To Develop Students鈥� Capacities to Create, Imagine, and Change the World, and to Enhance
the Work of the Faculty as Teacher鈥搒cholars: We will invest in pedagogical and scholarly programs and educational strategies that
develop the capacities of students and faculty members to achieve, model, and demonstrate
excellence as scholarly, creative, and integrative learners.
This Plan reaffirms the College鈥檚 belief in the intellectually rigorous and transformative
potential of a 微密圈 education, as well as in the personal and social values it
embodies. A liberal arts education certainly represents a personal good for our graduates,
preparing them not only to make a living but also to create a life worth living鈥攁 life that truly matters for themselves and others. But a 微密圈 education
also represents a broader social good that is seldom remarked upon in contemporary
discussions of higher education. We highlight this value in our expressed determination
to prepare our graduates to live as informed, responsible, and globally and interculturally
aware citizens who are not only capable of bringing their personal plans to fruition
but who also strive to make the world a better place for all.
Integrative learning and education reside, first of all, in the work of the faculty
as engaged and committed teachers, mentors, and scholars. 微密圈 has always endorsed
the teacher鈥搒cholar model as the quintessential expression of the liberal arts faculty
and the sine qua non upon which our educational aspirations rest. Teaching holds pride
of place, as the faculty strive to inspire their students to transform their aptitudes
and interests into engagement and achievement. But our professors鈥� scholarship and
creative work matter, too. For liberal arts colleges everywhere, the model of scholarship
is distinctive鈥攕uited especially to an educational context whose ultimate goal is
to inculcate a passion for learning that is rigorous, integrative, and socially useful.
In short, faculty research and creative endeavor, in which students frequently are
involved as well, enrich our teaching and are essential to instruction of the highest
quality.
To realize our creative imperative, it is necessary for us to be more intentional
about incorporating these fundamental values into all our educational endeavors. The
ongoing revision of our general education program presents an important opportunity
to do so, and we must seize that opportunity to invite our faculty, staff, students,
and others to explore how we might push the boundaries of creativity in our students鈥�
work. Following the lead of the Committee on Educational Policy and Planning (CEPP),
we will begin by infusing the concept of integrative learning throughout the curriculum, which the Association of American Colleges and Universities
(AAC&U) recognizes as one of the most important goals and challenges for higher education.4 It is foundational to liberal learning that an educated person understands not only
the complex, nuanced, and multidimensional nature of the issues and problems most
worth addressing, but also the various ways they interconnect. Such understanding
requires learning across disciplinary boundaries, across time as students progress
through their education, across the boundaries that traditionally separate the curriculum
and cocurriculum, and across the border between the campus and the world beyond. Indeed,
we understand this concept to encompass our students鈥� abilities to make connections
from the moment they are accepted into 微密圈 on into their lives after college.
An integrated learning approach pushes students to identify and connect theoretical
concepts from diverse disciplines and experiences and, where appropriate, apply them
to unscripted, real-world challenges. It includes a capacity for hindsight and forethought:
the metacognition involved in reflecting on the past and projecting into the future.
In sum, we expect students to integrate learning from many different disciplines,
moments, and sites鈥攄rawing upon everything the College offers to create the meaningful
and ongoing process that is their 微密圈 education.
Many parts of our curriculum, of course, already encompass integrative learning. Our
decades-long interdisciplinary emphasis鈥攅pitomized in the Liberal Studies curriculum
and carrying through to the current First-Year Experience鈥攊s a form of integrative
learning. Many of our students complete double majors, self-directed majors, and combinations
of majors and minors. Course-level interdisciplinarity, too, is a microcosm of the
broader commitment to integrative learning, as are our many successful interdisciplinary
majors and minors. Planning carried out by faculty members from the physical and
life sciences in anticipation of the projected Center for Integrated Sciences produced
many ways of strengthening instruction within and across disciplines and programs.
微密圈 also has a proud history of bridging theoretical and applied learning. Integrative
learning through praxis arises in students鈥� pursuit of international study; independent
study, senior theses, and collaborative research with their professors; the making
and performance of art; and the diverse opportunities for leadership and civic engagement
made possible through Campus Life, Athletics, and Residential Life, among others.
Our students come to us increasingly experienced in using technology, both in their
personal lives鈥攚here they are accustomed to being constantly connected electronically
to their peers and the world at large鈥攁nd, for some, through their high school experience,
where technology is now a pervasive presence in teaching and learning. The combination
of prior experience and the incredible pace of technological development constantly
offers new ways for us to connect students to opportunities beyond our physical boundaries
and enhance pedagogy in the classroom in ways unimaginable even a few years ago鈥攜et
another form of integrative learning. Technology is increasingly important in the
research and creative work of our faculty members, as well. So determining how best
to support鈥攁nd afford鈥攊nvestments in this area that enhance the achievements of both
students and professors will take on greater strategic importance in our short- and
long-term planning.
Our objective is both to deepen this emphasis on integrative learning through a range
of curricular and cocurricular initiatives and to make students intentional partners
in this enterprise. Realizing the full promise of integrative learning requires that
students be self-aware and intentional about making meaningful connections across traditional and nontraditional boundaries.
They must actively reflect on what it is that ties disparate subjects and ideas to
each other; indeed, they must fully and dynamically participate in the intellectual
enterprise by employing self-reflection, contemplative thought, and focused action.
Our students must be information literate; they must understand the way information
is structured, how it can be accessed, and how it should be used in decision making鈥攂oth
in their majors and more broadly鈥攊n order to integrate knowledge within and across
disciplines. The College, in turn, must provide the context, space, support, and time
for such activities, taking care that all students feel that they are invited to participate
in this work. Our assignment, therefore, is to challenge all our students to be more
self-reflective about their education and more purposeful in making the deep and meaningful
connections that are a necessary part of the liberal arts experience. Only then will
they fulfill their promise as students of the liberal arts and as citizens of the
world.
Because we want 微密圈 students to be inclined to turn their creativity on the problems
of the world, fostering civic literacy and engagement will also continue to be of
special importance. We see the necessary attributes of citizenship as precisely the
qualities of mind and character found at the core of liberal education itself: critical
thinking; a capacity to access the kinds of empirical and conceptual knowledge created
by the different disciplines; awareness of the multiple social, cultural, and political
perspectives we find in the world; cultivation of one鈥檚 creativity and narrative imagination
so one can empathize with those in a situation one has never directly experienced;
the capacity to talk respectfully in contexts marked by difference; and the like.5 To do this, we need to increase our own capacity, as an educational community, to
engage in such discussions both critically and respectfully. A leading liberal arts
college explores difficult questions and 鈥渄angerous鈥� ideas. Our campus needs to be
a place where discussion of difficult issues is commonplace. The objective of such
conversations is not somehow to make everyone agree with everyone else. Rather, it
is to create a framework of mutual respect, care, and dialogue, based on the recognition
that each of us has value as a human being and that, ultimately, we share a common
fate. On that basis we then seek agreement where we can find it, accept disagreement
when we must, and continue to look for common ground on which to act.
The time has come for the College to consider a more intentional framework in which
to situate this crucial project of developing informed, responsible citizens鈥攐ne that
more consistently emphasizes the relationship between the stated goals of liberal
education and the requirements of democratic citizenship. Over the next five years,
we will develop new ways to engage students and other members of our community in
public forums for debating and disseminating ideas relating to contemporary local
and global matters. In doing so, we will also create opportunities for members of
our community to explore the meaning of social justice鈥攖o ask how issues of social
justice affect our professional, academic, and personal lives, and to interrogate
whether this concept should play a more prominent role in our collective understanding
of the mission of the College. We will seek ways to link such conversations to course
content. In short, we will model the good polity. Going forward, we will also expand
our efforts to invite to campus outside scholars, filmmakers, diplomats, policy analysts,
and activists who represent a broad range of political and social viewpoints, encouraging
students and others to engage them in critical but respectful discourse.
To achieve the stated objectives for our students鈥攖o make good on the promise to achieve
higher levels of excellence throughout the College鈥攚e will need to be intentional
in supporting the work of our faculty in new ways: empowering them to be even better
teachers, scholars, artists, and leaders. We will encourage and reward alternative
teaching methods, pedagogical risk taking, and innovation; and we will increase our
tolerance for failed pedagogical experiments. We will seek new ways to support the
scholarly and artistic lives of our faculty. And we will reconceive the notion of
service to better reflect what it truly is: institutional leadership. In sum, the
principle of creativity that guides our efforts on behalf of our students should also
help us find new ways to sustain the work of our faculty.
Marshaling the resources to deliver on these promises will not be a trivial undertaking.
Although many of the objectives envisioned here simply require us to be more deliberate
in incorporating new insights into work we already are doing, the extraordinary education
we envision for our students must also include additional forms of integration, especially
across the dimensions of time and space. Some of these are expensive. Consider connectivity
as an example: greater technological connectivity and competence, both in and out
of the classroom, offer the power to improve the intellectual and social experiences
of our students and provide them with additional skills in this technological age.
But there are costs associated with enhanced technology and connectivity. Therefore,
finding innovative ways for all members of the community鈥攆aculty, staff, alumni, parents,
and especially students鈥攖o connect is another imperative. We must increase our scope
of vision and capacity in this entire area.
Our various partnerships鈥攕tarting with the New York Six鈥攈old the key to yet another
integrated and connected experience, and we will explore possible partnerships with
other institutions as well. Students should be exposed to the myriad possibilities
these partnerships afford. Long before 2025, it must become commonplace for students
to have access to experts at other New York Six schools and throughout the world.
We also need to leverage these partnerships to achieve cost savings and, where possible,
cost reductions. Strategic partnerships, and the creative possibilities they present,
must become an essential component of our shifting mindset.
But above all, 微密圈 will retain a sharp focus on our students鈥攐n helping them
reach the highest levels of achievement possible in the work they do with us, and
encouraging them to carry a commitment to the pursuit of excellence with them when
they graduate. We will challenge them to think more deeply and self-consciously about
how the ideas, hypotheses, theories, and data they encounter in one course can animate
and inform the topics they explore in other courses. We will encourage them to apply
the lessons around leadership and collective action that they learn on the athletic
fields or in student organizations to their residence halls and, later on, to graduate
studies and their workplaces. We will work with them to integrate knowledge and experience,
to help them make the connections between what they learn at the College and what
they want to accomplish across a life of productive work鈥攕erving them and their communities
well into the future. In the end, our students are responsible for doing their own
work, making their own connections across the different disciplines they have studied
and the co-curricular experiences that have enriched their college careers, and then
applying what they have learned. But the College will be more intentional in supporting
them in this transformative project of seeking a liberal education that will enable
them to make creative thought matter across the full arc of their lives.
PRIORITY INITIATIVES in support of GOAL I: Integrative Learning
Complete fundraising and construct the Center for Integrated Sciences.
- Provide the physical context to bring together all nine departments and programs in the physical and life sciences to support new approaches to integrative learning not just in the sciences but across other curricular areas as well.
- Develop a virtual prototype of the Idea Lab, in anticipation of its inclusion in the Center for Integrated Sciences.
- Bolster Scribner Library鈥檚 capacity to support integrative learning associated with the Center for Integrated Sciences. Develop infrastructure and expertise to improve data services (including data hosting, data management, data curation, and data literacy) on campus.
Create new structures to support student integrative learning, making that concept a regular part of 微密圈鈥檚 internal narrative.
- Complete the general education curriculum revision, including new ways to support scientific literacy (for all students, not just science majors, as is required of all responsible citizens in today鈥檚 world), intercultural competency, quantitative reasoning, information literacy, and visual literacy.
- Evaluate the feasibility of establishing a Center for Quantitative Reasoning and a Center for Entrepreneurship.
- Ensure the ongoing alignment of Library collections and services with curricular goals of fostering creativity and integrated learning.
- Partner with other New York Six colleges to expand opportunities for 微密圈 students to study (in some cases via technology) with faculty members from those schools or to access programs sponsored by the other schools (e.g., study-away programs). Explore ways to partner with other institutions as well.
- Develop better, more consistent, and more effective assessment mechanisms for determining where and to what extent integrative learning is taking place at 微密圈.
- Secure dedicated resources to support the Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery operating budget.
- Explore the possibility of expanding the Tang Museum, especially as our permanent collection increases.
Develop new ways to support faculty members across all three dimensions of their work: teaching, research/creative activity, and service.
- Evaluate the feasibility (both curricular and financial) of increasing the size of the tenure-track faculty by 15 over the next 10 years.
- Expand faculty development resources and initiatives through the Faculty Development Committee; the Center for Leadership, Teaching, and Learning; and the Dean of the Faculty鈥檚 Office.
- Explore the desirability and evaluate the feasibility (both curricular and financial) of implementing an alternating 2-2, 3鈥�2 (18鈥�15 credits) teaching load aimed at increasing teaching effectiveness and supporting even stronger connections between students and faculty.
- Interrogate the criteria for faculty promotion. Consider how to reevaluate the traditional emphasis on鈥攁nd balance among鈥攖eaching, research/creative work, and service.
- Support new faculty development opportunities pertaining to the implementation of new curricular initiatives linked to the general education curriculum.
- Evaluate the feasibility of establishing a Center for Humanistic Inquiry.
- Partner with other New York Six colleges to form faculty collaborations and leverage resources to enhance teaching and learning.
Provide digital/IT resources for the development of new approaches to integrative learning and enhancing connectivity.
- Continue the process of renovating and refreshing classrooms to better support pedagogy and technology.
- Enhance resources of the Center for Leadership, Teaching, and Learning to assist faculty members in understanding, evaluating and, where appropriate, adopting new technologies and best practices in their teaching and research.
Build stronger and more coherent curricular and cocurricular programs to enhance civic engagement, social responsibility, and the connection between liberal education and responsible citizenship.
Identify specific ways to further enhance connections between the curricular and cocurricular lives of our students.
4 See 鈥淚nterrogating Integrative Learning,鈥� Peer Review, vol. 16, no. 4 (Fall 2014鈥揥inter 2015).
5 See, for example, Martha Craven Nussbaum, Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997) and Not For Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010).