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Engaging Today's Students with the Liberal Arts |
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Macalester College |
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What do we do well? First Year Seminar Program: Macalester's First Year Seminar program provides an effective transitional experience for new students. All first year students must take, in their first semester, one of approximately 32 courses designated as First Year Seminars. These courses are limited in enrollment to 16 students and offered for regular departmental credit. There is emphasis on writing and discussion as well as an expectation for close interaction with the teacher and fellow students. The instructor of the course is the academic adviser for these 16 students, and this feature of our program is in large part what makes it successful. Faculty find that their ability to advise these students is greatly enhanced by having them in class. An additional feature of the First Year Seminar program is that approximately half of the courses are offered in a residential format. Students in seminars designated as residential are housed together on a particular floor in a residence hall. In most cases students have a roommate who is also in the same class. This residential feature greatly facilitates the development of a sense of community. Faculty development: Teaching a First Year Seminar is seen as an excellent tool for faculty development. Junior faculty find that teaching a first year course helps them become familiar with College goals as well as College rules and regulations, helps them understand who our students are and what they hope to accomplish at Macalester, and introduces them to colleagues in other departments. Tenure track faculty are required to participate in a one semester faculty development seminar in the spring of their first year. They are given a one course reduction in teaching load as compensation. This seminar covers a wide range of topics in its weekly meetings including advising, teaching methods, and balancing teaching and research expectations. It has been well received as a means of acclimating to Macalester in specific and to working in a liberal arts college in general. Room for Improvement We find it challenging to know how best to include writing instruction in all first year courses. Since each course is a departmental course, about half of which are not designed specifically as a first year course (e.g. Principles of Economics), it is challenging to include what is seen as "additional" or "extra" work such as work on writing skills in all first year courses. We have a relatively short new student orientation and we find it difficult to integrate academics into this program. Each First Year Seminar does meet for the first class session during orientation and students meet with their faculty advisers for a half hour each, but that is essentially the extent of the "academic" component of orientation. Our capstone requirement is such that each department defines what counts for a capstone experience in that major. Thus, there is wide variation in the requirement. We would like to see the capstone experience be more of a culmination to a student's experience rather than just a narrow project, but this is difficult to accomplish given the departmental autonomy that has developed around this requirement. Possible Project Topics As students arrive at institutions like Macalester these days, we sense an increasing motivation for being here that has more to do with gaining a credential than with learning. We are challenged to get students to go beyond seeing our requirements as things to check off on the path to receiving the degree. We would like to explore how to help students see the difference between learning and credentialing. How can we expect students to be accountable for their own educations? How can we help them know why they are here? Along these lines, we could benefit from discussions about how to transform our general statements for what a Macalester education is to accomplish into concrete experiences for the students. What are the essential elements of a student's experience and how can we know if each individual student is meeting these expectations? Team Members
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Return to: College strengths Return to: Engagement Project |
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