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Phase III: Initial Curricular Proposals from the CEP
PROPOSAL: EXPERIENTIAL EDUCATION
Experiential education at its best involves "learning by doing" as well as reflection on the activity. Experiential education in the context of regular semester courses taught by Williams faculty members, and involving field work within the local communities, can enhance the learning of students. We propose that this should be encouraged in the curriculum where appropriate, and regularized by a central coordinator/facilitator for experiential education. We also propose a "Williams in New York" program. Student participants would spend a semester in New York City, doing the equivalent of two courses of academic work and a significant (at least 15 hours a week) related field work placement. The program might involve 15-20 students a semester, with each studying in one of two tracks offered each year. Possible tracks include urban social issues, culture, education, and government/civic affairs. The Williams in New York program would be administered by two Williams faculty resident co-directors.
Experiential Education Within the Local Communities
Experiential education has recently become a popular curricular innovation in American higher education and has been a small, relatively quiet, but successful part of the Williams curriculum for a number of years. Students who have taken courses with an experiential learning component report that they learn a tremendous amount, and the courses are often overenrolled. Such courses, by providing students with opportunities to encounter firsthand the issues that they read and study about, require them to apply academic learning to nonacademic settings and challenge them to use their experiences in the nonacademic setting to think more critically about what they are reading and studying. For example, students learn to question assumptions in the academic literature and flag them as problematic by virtue of their experience. For certain topics and subject areas, this may be the best way to teach and learn, and we would encourage the growth of experiential education in those courses. [We recognize that at present there is experiential learning in the Williams curriculum, e.g., in selected courses in Sociology, Psychology, Environmental studies, and Women's and Gender Studies.]
We wish to make it clear that courses involving experiential education would need to be academically rigorous courses, like any others, meeting at regular course hours with typical requirements for academic work (reading, discussions, written work). In addition students would spend some amount of time in off-campus placements in which their work would complement, be informed by, and inform, the academic work. For example, students in a sociology course might do a placement in a homeless shelter, students in a statistics course might work with a local agency doing a program evaluation study, students in a course on adolescence might do a placement in juvenile court.
In addition to the model in which students do field work during the semester, there is potential for Winter Study experiences to be designed as extensions of regular courses, as is currently the case in several courses in geosciences (see Archive 3). The curricular impact of such courses would be to integrate learning from direct, personal experience with classroom learning, to develop a habit of reflective thinking about issues in the world, using their liberal arts education to its full potential. All such courses would go through the regular approval process of the department and the CEP.
Seeking out, developing, and maintaining field work placement opportunities can be time-consuming and daunting to faculty unfamiliar with such tasks or unfamiliar with the local communities. In addition, if a number of such courses were to develop, some central coordination would be useful. As with the current tutorial program, it would be helpful to have a person knowledgeable about experiential education to serve as a consultant to faculty who are interested in introducing this into their courses. Therefore, we recommend the establishment of a position for a Coordinator/Facilitator of Experiential Education. The coordinator would consult and assist as described above, but the professor would retain primary responsibility for the course, for supervising the students' work, and for engaging the students in reflective thinking about the field experience.
Courses involving experiential education would be regular department or program courses, and would be listed in those places in the course catalogue. They would also be cross-listed in a separate section of the catalogue for Experiential Education, in order to highlight the presence of experiential education in the curriculum and to help students locate such courses.
Experiential education outside the local community: Williams in New York
Williamstown is a wonderful place for a college. At times, however, for certain types of teaching and learning, the geographical and cultural isolation presents distinct disadvantages. These disadvantages could be overcome in part by the establishment of a "Williams in New York" program. For example, the study of urban history, art and art history, sociology, economics, environmental studies, politics, and media could be greatly enhanced by creative use of the resources found in a city.
New York is especially attractive as a location. It is within easy driving distance from campus and is accessible by public transportation, making it more convenient for students and faculty in the program and for others who might wish to use the center as a base for field trips, field research, etc. It is culturally and ethnically diverse, and it has a wide range of rich activity in the arts, politics, public health, education.
The general outline of a Williams in New York program is provided below. The program would be similar to the Oxford and Mystic programs, but with some important differences. The curricular thrust of the program would be an intense, integrated academic and internship learning experience. Students would spend one semester in the program, doing the equivalent of two courses of academic work and a significant (at least 15 hours a week) related field work placement. For example, a student might do coursework in criminal justice and do an internship in a district attorney's office; another might study art history and do an internship at a metropolitan museum; another might study economics and do an internship in city planning or urban renewal; another might do coursework in social justice and work with a nonprofit school reform group. The coursework might be a double tutorial (similar to the current tutorial format, except that students do papers and defend them every week, and the course meets for two hours rather than one). In addition, each student would take a weekly seminar at the Williams in New York center, with one of the two co-directors. Each co-director would teach a seminar for all of the students in one track, and the seminar would culminate in a major research paper integrating the academic and internship work.
The program would involve 15-20 students and two tracks per semester; possible tracks include urban social issues, culture, education, or government/civic affairs. This would permit students with varying interests to participate, but would preserve a manageable program and ongoing evaluation of the internship sites and courses. The program faculty would be selected from NYC institutions by the co-directors, on the basis of their expertise in the subject matter relevant to the tracks, and their ability to teach undergraduates in a tutorial format. The courses would be evaluated by the usual means, and the co-directors and would be directly responsible for overseeing the academic integrity of the program. The co-directors would also be responsible for arrangement and quality control of the internships. Many faculty and alumni network contacts in New York might be utilized for locating excellent teachers and internship sites. All courses offered in the program would come through the CEP. We imagine the program to be targeted at juniors, as the academic and internship requirements would demand some measure of maturity and independence. Second semester sophomores might also be eligible.
The Williams in New York program would be located in a building that would house the participating students and the two resident co-directors and provide office space and a seminar room. The co-directors would be Williams faculty who would oversee the administrative, academic and internship aspects of the program. They would each serve two year terms, and the terms would be staggered to permit continuity.
The Williams in New York program might also be a site for more limited activities within regular courses (e.g., weekend field trips, overnight stay while collecting data for a field project, etc.) This would be limited to academic activities and would require the approval of the co-directors. Also, regular Williams faculty might be invited to give occasional lectures relating to the tracks for the semester. Both of the above would engender a strong connection to Williams, reinforcing the goal of truly having a Williams in New York program, rather than a disconnected "study-away" program.
Overall, this program has the potential to be a highly valuable, invigorating learning experience for students. It would expand the diversity of the curriculum and the fact that tracks would rotate would maximize that feature. It would not, and could not, serve the interests and needs of every student, but its existence in the curriculum would provide some truly unique opportunities and would address the isolation of the college.