The strategy is to create an environment that sets the stage for multiple ways of learning -- the active discovery and synthesis of information into knowledge -- that can be applied to success in graduate school, careers and throughout students' lives.
Susquehanna is in a position to offer these benefits to students because of a size that encourages student-faculty collaboration, a commitment to undergraduate teaching, and faculty who have the freedom to explore new, more effective ways of learning.
"When I went to college, the teacher lectured, and you absorbed," says Associate Professor of Spanish Leona Martin. "But today, the sources of information are so much more varied, and there's so much to be learned, the teacher can no longer present herself as the primary source of knowledge," she adds. "Learning is more about accessing information and then synthesizing it, rather than looking for truth in a textbook."
"If you walk into a business classroom today, you're not going to see a professor lecturing to a class. You're going to see groups of students interacting, doing experiential exercises, gathering information." says Associate Professor of Management Mary Cianni. "The way knowledge is being generated and communicated and transmitted differs from the past."
"The basic issue," says Warren Funk, vice president for academic affairs and dean of the faculty, "is what we've learned about learning and how we need to create the forums and activities that are conducive to learning."
Technologically Adept
Andrea Lee Higgins '01 takes piano class in a music computer laboratory newly equipped thanks to a grant from the Edna M. Sheary Charitable Trust. |
They are also preparing to enter a world where employers are increasingly seeking graduates who are well prepared to contribute to the organizations they will join. Knowing where to acquire information, how to solve problems and how information from different fields relates is more important than specialized, subject-based knowledge.
"We have to be a new generation of faculty to meet the needs of this new generation of students," says Crumpacker. To help meet that goal, Susquehanna has joined with the Associated New American Colleges, a consortium of 21 comprehensive colleges and universities working to redefine and improve the four-year college experience. Much of the focus is on a holistic model based on ideas of the late Ernest Boyer, the highly respected president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.
Active Learning
Boyer's vision of an "engaged campus" with the "capacity to connect thought to action, theory to practice," urges faculty to work across disciplinary boundaries to involve students in an active learning experience. Much of this focus is based on effective methods already used in teaching science. The methods move beyond a traditional lecture format where concepts can only be discussed. "In a laboratory you're an agent -- you're actively engaged in doing an experiment," explains Vice President Funk. "And through the activity of that experiment, you can be said to own it -- to know it."
Alexandra Henry '99, Ryan Neumyer '00 and Denelle Lahr '99 Work on a team project in a Spanish class taught by Associate Professor Leona Martin. |
While there is little doubt that, in the words of Professor of History Donald Housley, "a gifted lecturer can create active learners out of passive settings,"
Susquehanna faculty are increasingly turning to other ways to engage students. In Housley's class on Jacksonian politics, students break up into groups of three or four and prepare to recreate an 1830s political convention. Each student researches the goals of a constituent population represented by real people, such as a middle-class woman from upper New York State, a farmer from Tennessee or a New York City merchant. "The groups come back together to organize themselves, seek coalitions and decide where they would stand on the issues of that day," says Housley.
The small group approach produces some of the best work that goes on at the University, stresses Crumpacker. "This is going to be their lives after they graduate. They're going to have to figure out how to think for themselves and be team players."
New Ways of Measuring Success
Associate Professor of Biology Jack Holt stresses the team concept in all his classes. "The projects are too difficult and complex for any one person to do," says Holt. Many of the assignments are team-based writing projects subject to the rigorous editing and selection process used for scholarly journals. Students in Holt's systematic biology class produce a campus Journal of Evolutionary Biology. Phycology class members working on a book about the algae in Central Pennsylvania have identified and described more than 350 varieties.
Holt even grades projects in place of traditional examinations as a primary tool for measuring students' progress. The results support his enthusiasm for the new methods. When the workload increased in all his courses, the grades also rose about one letter. "My own teaching improved as well," he said. "I am increasingly a consultant and partner in learning."
Susquehanna students are often called upon to demonstrate mastery with a presentation. Faculty can, and do, demand the polished, finished product. First-year students in Professor of Management Wallace Growney's Business Awareness class find one-third of their grades based on a final group project presentation to visiting business professionals.
Assistant Professor of Communications and Theatre Arts Kate Hastings also uses team presentations in her highly abstract communication theory course. Students choose and present short film clips to illustrate how theories are applied. "It's not just an assignment in which you regurgitate what the professor says," stresses Hastings. "They have to think of the examples."
Cyberspace Enhancements
Professor of History Donald Housley and other Susquehanna faculty are increasingly seeking alternatives to the lecture format to actively engage students such as Roberto Bergeron '00 and Erin Wayman '01. |
Students can use computers, even from their residence hall rooms, to conduct research through the University's Blough-Weis Library. One popular service is FirstSearch, which offers access to more than 60 specialized databases, including full-text articles from more than 400 academic journals. This ease of access poses new challenges for faculty to help guide students in critical analysis of multiple sources of information.
Technology also offers powerful classroom tools, allowing students in accounting courses, for example, easy access to shared spreadsheets or financial databases. Students in Susquehanna foreign language classes create "chat rooms" where they can interact with people in other countries in multiple languages. The real benefit of such tools, says Associate Professor of Spanish Leona Martin, is "to break down the wall between the classroom and the wider space where people can learn and use their knowledge."
Experiential Riches
While new technologies help bring the outside world to campus, a growing emphasis on experience-based learning is propelling students into the larger, real-world arena. Extensive practica programs in majors such as psychology, communications, and education regularly find Susquehanna students learning in locations from elementary schools and human service agencies to the campus newspaper office or radio station. Others find opportunities for collaborative research with faculty -- once only rarely available to undergraduates. Students from all three Schools gain experience through internships across the country and overseas. The number of academic internships and externships rose again to a record 226 in 1996-97. The total is 6 percent higher than the previous year and 29 percent higher than two years ago.
Experience-based learning is a particular hallmark of the University's Sigmund Weis School of Business. Internships and the School's Semester in London program are not only "profoundly powerful experiences" for individual students, says Dean of Business James Brock. They also enhance the classroom environment. "Students come back with a broader frame of reference on which to hang future course work," he says. "They bring the richness of experience back with them."
Crossing Boundaries
Jennifer Steele, an investment associate at State Street Global Advisors, meets with Susquehanna interns, Chris Arthur '98, left, and Aric Passmore '98 in the trading room of the Boston firm. |
While many colleges offer combinations in language and literature, the addition of a science component makes the Susquehanna Focus programs stand out, says Arts and Sciences Dean Crumpacker. The U.S. Department of Education has approved a $59,000 grant to Susquehanna to develop and implement similar programs. Faculty from history, psychology and sociology will engage students in conversations about politics, race and economics in "Focus: Southern Africa." "Focus: Caribbean" will combine music, French literature and culture, and science.
"Team-teaching and collaboration is becoming the norm at Susquehanna rather than the exception," says Leona Martin, one of the original Focus faculty. "I think that in that sense Susquehanna is ahead of other institutions. It reflects the fact that the most important thing we seek in our professors is good teaching."
It also is one of the things that characterizes Susquehanna as a community of learners where faculty and students have the freedom to explore new, more effective ways of learning. "You can impart the information that's in the textbook or you can make it more open, take a chance and try to explore some things that you honestly don't know," says Jack Holt. "In science that's real tricky. But honestly, I think it's the only way that I can stay excited. And if I'm not excited, then I can't excite students and I can't interest them in the joy of learning."