"Wabash College celebrates and cultivates competition as a tool for learning and for character building. Faculty and staff delight in challenging and channeling students, pushing and supporting them, showing them how competition can be leveraged to learn more, do more, be more. This ethos has characterized Wabash for a very long time; today, faculty, students, staff and alumni work consciously to sustain it."

Wabash President Andy Ford

 


Magazine
Winter/Spring 2002

Teaching/Learning, 24/7
Wabash Sets Benchmarks
in National Survey of Student Engagement

Wabash College has set national benchmarks in two of five categories in the 2001 National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) according to the study conducted by the Indiana University Center for Postsecondary Research and Planning, and funded by the Pew Forum on Undergraduate Learning and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

The study focuses on whether colleges are using their resources to help students learn and get the most out of school. “A school’s academic reputation as judged by others says very little about the extent that active learning, student-faculty interaction, and a supportive environment characterize a campus,” says George Kuh, director of the NSSE project.

The National Survey of Student Engagement collected information from 155,000 first-year and senior students at 470 different four-year colleges. The study measures student engagement in many important activities that research studies show are positively related to learning and personal development. The results of the survey provide comparative standards for determining how effectively colleges are contributing to learning.

Five benchmarks are measured: 1) level of academic challenge; 2) active and collaborative learning; 3) student-faculty interaction; 4) enriching educational experiences; and 5) supportive campus environment.

Wabash College, a private liberal arts college for men in Crawfordsville, Indiana, set national benchmarks in two categories: “level of academic challenge” and “student interaction with faculty.” Additionally, Wabash scored in the 90th percentile in the other three categories.

"Wabash College celebrates and cultivates competition as a tool for learning and for character building," says Wabash President Andrew T. Ford. "Faculty and staff delight in challenging and channeling students, pushing and supporting them, showing them how competition can be leveraged to learn more, do more, be more. This ethos has characterized Wabash for a very long time; today, faculty, students, staff and alumni work consciously to sustain it."

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