(revised 13 February 2003)
Center of Inquiry in the Liberal Arts
Wabash College
(Contact: Charlie Blaich, blaichc@wabash.edu)
The Center of Inquiry in the Liberal Arts at Wabash College hosted a consultation meeting, October 2-4, 2002, on the relationship, or even tension, between off-campus study-taken generally to include not just study abroad, but also student teaching, internships, undergraduate research undertaken off campus, campus exchange, and service learning-and liberal arts education. The meeting was part of a larger inquiry on the role of the residential setting in liberal arts education.
Core participants included
-Andy Anderson, Edward Jones, Wabash College Class of '65
-Richard Berman, Kalamazoo College, Dean of Experiential Education
-Ron Brown, Southwest Texas State University, Dean of University College (and Wabash College Class of '67)
-Scott Brown, Mount Holyoke College, Director of Career Development Center
-Deb Dougherty, Alma College, Associate Professor of Spanish and Visiting Scholar at the Center of Inquiry (2002-2003)
-Harlow Hadow, Coe College, Professor of Biology and Director of Wilderness Field Station
-Ray LaDriere, Locke Liddell, Wabash College Class of '78
-Andrew Law, Lawrence University, Director of International and Off-Campus Programs
-Ros Lister, Wabash College, Director of Career Services
-Carolyn O'Grady, Gustavus-Adolphus College, Associate Professor of Education
-Dan Rogers, Wabash College, Assistant Professor of Spanish
-Dan Sack, the Associated Colleges of the Midwest, Program Officer
-Brian Whalen, Dickinson College, Director of Office of Global Education
Participants submitted papers describing their perspective on off-campus study (OCS) from the vantage point of their institutions and experience. In addition, members of the Wabash community served as panel respondents and participated in discussions:
-Michael Abbott, Associate Professor of Theater
-Richard Bowen, Director of Center for Academic Enrichment
-Deborah Butler, Professor of Education
-Melissa Butler, Professor of Political Science
-Doug Calisch, Professor of Art
-David Clapp, Director of Off Campus Studies & International Students
-Edith Dallinger, Director of Aberdeen Program
-Mauri Ditzler, Dean of the College
-Nancy Doemel, Senior Advancement Officer
-Xenia Harwell, Visiting Assistant Professor of Modern Languages
-Alison Kothe, Major Gifts Officer
-Karl Leib, Visiting Assistant Professor of Political Science
-James Makubuya, Associate Professor of Music
-Phil Mikesell, Professor of Political Science
-Julie Olsen, Registrar/Assistant Dean of the College
-Tom Pearson, Associate Director of the Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion
-Michele Pittard, Visiting Assistant Professor of Education
-Andy Schlewitz, Visiting Assistant Professor of Political Science
-Pamela Walters, Assistant Director of Career Services
The initial objective of the meeting was to approach OCS from the perspective of what we at the Center of Inquiry call "residentiality" or the "residential curriculum." As many educational researchers have shown, an important part of undergraduate student learning occurs outside the classroom within the context of student-peer, student-staff, and student-faculty interactions. ([See, for example, Boyer (1987); Ernest Pascarella and Patrick Terenzini (1991); George Kuh, John Schuh, Elizabeth Whitt, and Associates (1991;) Alexander Astin (1993); Kuh (1993 and 1995); and Pascarella, Terenzini, and Gregory Blimling (1999).]) Research also indicates that living on campus has a positive effect on a host of measures (retention, student perception of relationships with faculty, etc.). For small residential liberal arts colleges, the tension between the values of residential education and OCS is especially significant because of a smaller pool of students and the importance of a close-knit, on-campus community. At the same time, we need to understand how residential communities positively impact learning. One of our goals at the Center of Inquiry is to probe this aspect of undergraduate education in order to develop ways to enhance and promote learning outside the classroom. To this end, we initiated an inquiry looking at the relationship between OCS and residentiality; we hope to shed light on that relationship, as well as on residentiality itself.
Without question, the experience gained by students while off campus contributes greatly to their intellectual and affective development. OCS programs are particularly important because they provide access to educational resources not available at the home campus. Since OCS and residential experience both play important roles in college students' education, we believe that the relationship between the two deserves particular attention. Study-abroad programs, in particular, have already sought ways to integrate global education with the curriculum. We hope to add to this mission by addressing OCS in terms of its effects on residentiality and how the two might be more fully integrated.
Participants at the October consultation meeting were given a discussion prompt to which they could respond in their papers. The prompt proposed a model of learning that connected the residential curriculum with the academic based on the metaphor of a "bucky ball" ([Charles C. Schroeder and Phyllis Mable also make the distinction between the formal academic curriculum and the "residence hall curriculum."]) :
[Student Learning] = [Formal Curriculum] @ [Residential Curriculum]
Formal curriculum: The explicit structure of our college's curriculum as it is outlined in the course catalog and the content we cover in our classes. It includes things like major and minor fields of study, graduation requirements, and general education / distribution requirements, etc.
Residential curriculum: The underlying structure of our students' out-of-class experiences. This structure may well be implicit and unconsciously developed, and includes things like extra- and co-curricular activities, institutional ethos, residential environments, "cultural" practices, etc.
@: The "a" within the circle is our way of indicating that our formal curriculum is embedded within the residential curriculum. We believe that the stronger the connection or "embeddedness" of the formal curriculum within the residential curriculum, the more opportunities there are for the intellectual work that occurs in class to find purchase and relevance in the student's life. (Our use of the "@" symbol was inspired by the symbolic notation chemists use to describe a metal atom inside of a "bucky ball" [e.g., K@C60]. ([See Chai, Y., T. Guo, et al. (1991).]) )
(A full version of the discussion prompt is available here.) Part of the question for the inquiry and proposed to the participants was whether there are negative consequences for a residentially based learning community when a significant portion of the student body-and often high-achieving students at that-are removed. Are there ways to ensure that they can be reintegrated back into the community upon their return? Moreover, are there ways to ensure that they have the opportunity and encouragement to share what they've learned with the rest of the home community?
The meeting agenda was structured around issues and questions arising from the participants' papers, which were available to all participants before the conference. Instead of a conference format with formal paper presentations, we asked participants to read the papers beforehand as a baseline for the discussions held during the actual meeting. We tried to construct the agenda around the emerging topics and in relation to the discussion prompt and the concerns of the inquiry; however we also wanted the participants to be free to take the discussion where they saw fit. Participants acted as discussion leaders for each of the discussion sessions.
Meeting agenda 
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We began our discussion by attempting to establish a common understanding of the principal terms and issues. This exercise confirmed the principal concern upon which the Center was founded: as practitioners of higher education we lack a clear definition of what distinguishes an education at a liberal arts college from that obtained at any other institution. Although some attention was devoted to the issue of liberal arts education versus the education provided by a liberal arts college, we ultimately agreed that we were talking about a broad-based education valued for its own sake rather than as a marketplace commodity. We deemed it to be interdisciplinary or "relational" in that it encourages students to make connections between seemingly disparate issues in a variety of settings, as well as "interlocational" in that it can be embedded in myriad communities. Lastly, we agreed that the education we strive to provide at liberal arts colleges has the added value of being personally transformational.
This opening conversation exemplified both the complexity of the question and its underlying issues as well as the need to address them in serious debate. The proposed concept of residentiality evolved into broader ideas of community. Questions regarding the impact of OCS on individuals and the residential community expanded to thoughts about how OCS fits with traditional visions of liberal arts education, perhaps transforming its very nature. Throughout the meeting we grappled with the need to articulate the role of OCS as an integral element of a liberal arts education to multiple audiences (from college presidents to faculty to students to the public) and how this message might best be communicated. To situate this discussion at individual campuses, we might consider the connections among OCS, liberal arts education, and particular institutional missions.
The vitality of our discussions led to the sessions becoming more free-flowing and amorphous than the original agenda indicated, a positive characteristic we attributed to our liberal arts tendency to view the bigger picture and also to the structure of the consultation meeting. Even without sticking doggedly to the agenda, central issues did surface: assessment, community, institutional policy and structure, as well as issues particular to residential liberal arts colleges within dialogues undertaken by organizations focused on larger institutions or a wider range of institutions. We left the meeting, as would any good students of the liberal arts, with more questions than answers. The following represents our interpretation of the gist of our conversations and observations.
Assessment
A buzzword in recent years, often followed by groans and sighs on the part of beleaguered faculty and administrators, assessment becomes even more cumbersome in terms of OCS. Program operations and student outcomes were identified as two main foci for assessment attention. We discussed the differing types of OCS programs: international and domestic academic (mainstream, hybrid, cocoon), internships, teacher education, and service learning, each with its own operational challenges. Given the individual goals of such programs, success will be defined differently for each. However, they all seem to have some basic underlying objectives and should therefore demonstrate a common measure of success when called upon to justify the removal of students from the resident community. Likewise, program logistics will not follow a single template, but numbers of student participants, trends in educational "fashion" and other quantitative data can be collected. Thus far, there does not seem to be a central clearinghouse for such information, nor is there a standard among liberal arts colleges regarding what data is most useful or how it might be gathered.
Programmatic operation aside, assessment of student learning attributable to OCS is still elusive. Once again, desired outcomes and their relationship and overlap with particular OCS programs complicate the issue as does the duality of academic learning and personal transformation, outlined in Scott Brown's model of wisdom development in the paper he submitted for the meeting. It was generally agreed that many of these outcomes need to be measured longitudinally (as Dickinson College has done), although there is consensus that input from current or recent participants in OCS, while qualitative rather than quantitative, is a good place to start. Richard Berman (Kalamazoo College) suggested a summer institute bringing together students who have participated in the various OCS programs to launch this much-needed component of assessment.
Community
The concept of residentiality was stretched beyond the campus and the interpersonal relationships inherent to a common living environment to encompass multiple communities. However, the impact of OCS on the residential campus community was not discarded. Instead, it spurred questions regarding the mutual risks and benefits for both individual and community participants. Richard Berman offered the metaphor of a pebble being tossed into a pool, resulting in ever-expanding concentric circles. We adopted this image as we discussed the many communities of which students may become members. The role of community in liberal arts education in general, or institutional mission in particular, also provided ample food for thought. Reciprocal teaching and learning within the community, be that community local or global, is an issue often overlooked outside of the campus confines. As Carolyn O'Grady (Gustavus Adolphus College) pointed out, it's not always clear what we mean by "community," and that meaning potentially affects the nature of OCS, how we approach it (the campus as one site in a global community, the off-campus site as an island of OCS students in another culture, etc.), and what we expect students to gain from it.
Institutional Policies and Structures: Creating a Campus Dialogue
The richness of our discussions led us to believe that similar conversations on individual campuses could be equally rewarding. Although our focus often drifted toward international study, we recognized the need to establish a dialogue between all OCS programs so that we might expand perspectives on pressing issues in all areas of OCS and consolidate mutual interests on individual campuses. Increasingly we returned to the assertion that OCS plays a vital role in contemporary liberal arts education and, as Andy Law (Lawrence University) pointed out, even transforms what we think of as liberal arts education. Given the wide array of issues facing OCS programs, including but not limited to funding, staffing, vision and leadership, we noted the need for a broad-based "buy-in" across constituencies (convincing the skeptics), as well as a sense of common purpose between academic and student affairs.
Concerns Specific to Liberal Arts Colleges
It was noted that many groups are currently undertaking studies and projects that will intersect with our discussion, Global Partners, AAC&U, AAHE, Wingspread, Campus Compact, etc. While we must network with and keep abreast of work done by such organizations, it seems there is a place for a group such as ours to concentrate on a) issues particular to liberal arts colleges and b) the commonality between the different kinds of OCS programs. Issues of scale often require great feats of ingenuity and expenditures of human capital as small residential liberal arts colleges strive toward their institutional missions. However, these same issues of scale just as often allow for increased flexibility and collaboration in achieving said goals. There is an opportunity for this group to become a forum, and perhaps an advocate, for those residential liberal arts colleges lost in the periphery of nationally focused organizations. This could be a guiding principle as we take the next steps in producing written material and planning future meetings.
Next Steps
Although the question of residentiality dropped out of focus during the meeting, two initiatives did arise, which the Center of Inquiry in the Liberal Arts intends to pursue over the next three years in conjunction with the schools represented at the consultation meeting. More information on each initiative will be available on the Center of Inquiry website. The Center of Inquiry is very interested in forging links among all institutions devoted to liberal arts education; if your institution would be interested in participating in any of these initiatives, contact Ed Chan, chane@wabash.edu.
Assessment Pilot Project
The Center of Inquiry plans to assess the impact of short-term study abroad experiences.
We begin with the following questions: What are the immediate impacts of these short-term programs? How does short-term study abroad affect students' long-term decision making (e.g., selection of courses or topics for papers and projects in other classes, career choice, decisions about graduate study)? What do students identify as the impact these trips have? The objectives of the assessment are to document what has heretofore largely been anecdotal evidence and capture the range of impacts identified by participating students. This is not program assessment. Instead, it tries to identify and learn about how students see these experiences affecting their lives-regardless of whether these effects are tied to the specific objectives of the program-especially important in the long term. We also want to get at these questions from the specific vantage point of liberal arts education: how do these effects relate to liberal arts education? For example, that a liberal arts education should help students become global citizens is one way to relate the two, but are there others? The Center of Inquiry has been and continues to work on an operational definition of liberal arts education for research purposes. This assessment will inform that work, and vice versa.
As a first step, the Center is conducting a pilot study of students going on immersion trips during Wabash College's 2003 Spring Break. Students will be interviewed pre-trip, post-trip, and at the end of the Spring 2003 semester. Depending on the outcome of this first stage, the study may continue for up to three years in order to collect longitudinal data on these impacts. There are also plans to include other schools with short-term study abroad programs (May-mesters, Winter/January terms, etc.).
Report on Learning Outside the Classroom and Liberal Arts Education
This report will provide liberal arts institutions with some means of objectively prioritizing decisions regarding the development and support of programs that involve learning outside the classroom. Are we building programs based on personal initiative and available resources rather than on objective rationales regarding institutional mission? If institutions find themselves unable to support all types of experiential learning programs, we can hopefully provide some criteria on which to base prioritization-depending, of course, on individual institution's objectives and missions pertaining to liberal arts education. The manuscript will consist of the following:
1) An account of the Center of Inquiry's operational definition of liberal arts education. To the degree that we can differentiate liberal arts education from higher education in general, we feel the justifications and objectives of these types of programs must be able to speak specifically to liberal arts education.
2) A literature review of arguments for why learning outside the classroom is an important part of a liberal arts education. This will exclude discussions that deal with this issue in terms of higher education in general.
3) A review of the assessment tools developed for these types of programs. Again, the review will be based on the specific perspective of liberal arts education.
4) Conclusions about the role of learning outside the classroom in liberal arts education in the 21st century.
Bibliography
Astin, A. W. 1993. What matters in college? San Francisc Jossey-Bass.
Boyer, E. L. 1987. College: The undergraduate experience in America. New York: Harper & Row.
Chai, Y., T. Guo, et al. 1991. Fullerenes with metals inside. Journal of Physical Chemistry, 95, 7564-8.
Kuh, G. D. 1993. In their own words: What students learn outside the classroom. American Educational Research Journal 30: 277-304.
Kuh, G.D. 1995. The other curriculum: Out-of-class experiences associated with student learning and personal development. Journal of Higher Education 66.2 (March / April): 123-155.
Kuh, G. D., J. H. Schuh, E. J. Whitt, & Associates. 1991. Involving colleges: Successful approaches to fostering student learning and development outside the classroom. San Francisc Jossey-Bass.
Pascarella, E. T., and P. T. Terenzini. 1991. How college affects students: findings and insights from twenty years of research. San Francisc Jossey-Bass.
Schroeder, C. C., and P. Mable. Residence halls and the college experience: past and present. In Schroeder, Mable, & Associates, Realizing the educational potential of residence halls. San Francisc Jossey-Bass, 1994.
Terenzini, P. T., E. T. Pascarella, & Gregory S. Blimling. 1999. Students' out-of-class experiences and their influence on learning and cognitive development: A literature review. Journal of College Student Development 40.5 (Sept / Oct): 610-623. [Reprinted from 1996]