Editor鈥檚 note: 鈥淣otes from a great conversation鈥� continues with members of the Academic Futures subcommittees, who are updating the campus on their early work to identify key themes and transformative ideas submitted by the campus community during the fall semester.
This week features Jason Shelton and Ted Stark鈥攚ith contributions by committee co-members Jennifer McDuffie and Amy Kirtland鈥攚riting on behalf of the student success subcommittee.
Academic Services Manager,听Academic Advising Center,听Jason Shelton
Senior Instructor, Department of Theatre & Dance,听Ted Stark
In considering Academic Futures, it seems crucial to examine current practices and structures from the undergraduate student鈥檚 perspective.
When the university was first founded, the campus experience was wholly student-centric: a place where undergraduate students gathered with faculty to learn historic ways of thinking and apply these ideas to their own contexts. This synthesis would result in the discovery of new intellectual paradigms, greater than the sum of its individual components. Fostered by faculty, students went on a journey of 鈥渄iscovery.鈥�
As 抖阴旅行射 has matured into a tier-one听research university, we sometimes end up with a bifurcation that seems to require a choice between research and teaching鈥攂ut isn鈥檛 this is a false dichotomy?听
We assert teaching and research are codependent partners in the journey toward discovery and innovation. We propose leaving behind the notions of research or teaching, and instead recognize that these are two pillars that, working as counterparts, support a platform of discovery.听
How might we achieve such a goal?听 First and foremost, we suggest that the University should actively move away from the current binary and recognize the symbiotic relationship of teaching and research, encouraging their simultaneous development in faculty and students alike. This will provide a new lens through which we can view practices and structures. That lens will reveal where we currently support discovery听and where reimagining would yield greater results.听
Throughout the spring we have been applying this lens, digging into the specifics of what makes a student-centric university. We began by focusing on the student鈥檚 admission and first-year experience. While much attention has been paid to the first-year experience, both in concept (via efforts such as the Residential Academic Programs (RAP)听task force or Foundations of Excellence) and in execution (introduction of First-Year Seminars, First-Year Interest Groups and the like), we felt like it still merited conversation, as parties weigh in and programs are piloted.
The campus presents a number of interesting and often competing ideas as to how to best serve students鈥攁 good example can be seen in our approaches to academic advising. To encourage discovery, we feel it鈥檚 important to identify which elements of student exploration are best supported by disciplinary faculty and staff, with the additional coordination and efforts from other campus partners, such as the Division of Student Affairs.听We are encouraged by the work of Foundations of Excellence, which has identified and defined many of these same challenges.听听
As the conversation continues to unfold, we continue to discuss the notion of 鈥渟tudent success鈥濃�攚hat that phrase means and what qualities our students should possess upon graduation. Consequently, we are looking at faculty roles, teaching/learning environments听and the notion of discovery听to supplement the established models of teaching and research that already exist on our campus.
Some of these discussions overlap with other parts of Academic Futures and other efforts on campus. At the heart of these discussions is finding a path that allows our students and our campus to embrace discovery听at the core of their experiences.听
Jason Shelton,
Academic Services Manager, Academic Advising Center
Ted Stark,
Senior Instructor, Department of Theatre & Dance
