Meeting with High School Counselors

Summary

Thursday, September 11 – Saturday, September 13, the Center of Inquiry and Wabash Admissions Office sponsored the first conference of its kind for High School Guidance Counselors.  Sixteen counselors accepted our invitation from all over North America, with participants attending from some Midwestern locations such as Muncie, Indiana and Skokie, Illinois to varying locations such as New Orleans, Louisiana, Harlingen, Texas, Colorado Springs, Colorado and Juneau, Alaska.  In addition to the variety of locations that counselors represented, there were also a wide variety of types of institutions that were represented.  A highlight of these institutions included Lake Highland Preparatory, which is a private school, to Evansville Signature High School, which is a small town charter school, to The Colorado Springs School, which is a public urban high school and St. Augustine’s, which is a catholic private urban institution.  A complete listing of attendees, institution name and type, and location can be found in appendix O1. Most of these counselors had established some type of working relationship with the Wabash Admissions Office prior to the conference. Partnering on this program provided the Center of Inquiry with an intentional audience with whom we could engage in a dialogue regarding liberal arts education and the needs of students and families when choosing a college (See Appendix O2 for Expenses).
We engaged in both presentations and informal conversation with the invited counselors.  We used the following questions as a stepping off point for discussion:

Where are students and parents coming from?
1. What do prospective students and parents understand "liberal arts" to be? Do students or parents talk about a liberal arts education?
2. What do prospective students and parents hope to get from a college education?  (What are the values and attitudes that motivate their thinking about college?)

What needs to be done?
1. What do you feel, in your role as counselors, needs to be done to increase awareness of and interest in liberal arts education?
2. What are the top three things that need to be addressed, given the work that you do, for students considering college?

What should the Center of Inquiry do?
1. How can/should the Center interest prospective students and parents in liberal arts education?
2. What can/should we do to help you and your colleagues (teachers, principals, etc.) address liberal arts education with high school students?

The Center of Inquiry offered these six questions to counselors, and invited them to suggest which questions a) were most relevant to them; b) did they want to focus on during our time together, and c) what questions should we be asking that we are not thinking of.  Both the Center of Inquiry and Admissions were pleasantly surprised by the eagerness of the counselors to work with us in grappling with some of these issues.  They expressed that there was a huge need to provide concrete information, in clear and concise language, to students and their families. As a result of the counselors’ suggestions, we have created a section of the Liberal Arts Online Website to provide support to the public seeking sound information about choosing a college.  We assembled a variety of articles that describe the sometimes inaccurate rankings of colleges and universities by sources such as U.S. News and World Report (see appendix O3).

Results/Next Steps
This conference with guidance counselors was quite significant in that it helped to sharpen our mission and needs of the college-going public. The meeting affirmed to Center staff that High School Guidance Counselors were interested in the results of the kinds of studies that we have been sponsoring. This information was also vital in that it validates our research approach to date. Counselors consistently commented that they liked the fact that information we provided for them was based on good research (i.e., there was one counselor in particular who wanted to see the original Pascarella and Kuh article on selectivity and good practices once he read the summary that Fred Ohles wrote for Liberal Arts Online). Counselors also noted that they were quite happy with our "liberal arts is about wisdom and citizenship" piece. This new insight was important to our overall work, particularly in light of the fact that many argue students and counselors are not interested in such "high minded stuff".
There is ongoing dialogue between members of the Center of Inquiry and some of the counselors who participated in the conference, and this has led to additional partnerships and presentation opportunities.  The Center of Inquiry was invited by Victoria Englehart, Head of Upper School Guidance and College Counseling at Lake Highland Preparatory School to co-author a presentation at the Southern Association for College and Admission Counseling.  The title of the session that we put together is titled: Making Informed Decisions:  What’s a Liberal Arts Education, Anyway?  A detailed description of this session can be found in appendix 4.

Participating in this conference helped us to realize that there is a hunger among guidance counselors, and a need among the college-going public for objective, clear and concise information that can be shared in conversations before a choice is made regarding college.  The Center of Inquiry believes that we can fill this void by specializing in providing information about liberal arts education, not just college education in general, and we look forward to a long-term dialogue with a variety of constituents that will continue to inform our research and practice.