PMC’s Innovative Educational Initiatives
Attract Regional Interest
by Nia Lane Chester,
Dean of the College
Recent invitations to PMC administrators and faculty by various professional
educational organizations to make presentations at local conferences
and meetings and to share aspects of PMC’s educational philosophy
and initiatives testify to the increasing external recognition of the
College’s innovative programs.
Last June, Dean of the College
Nia Lane Chester, William Boffi, Associate Dean of Student Life, and
William Stargard, Associate Professor of Art History, presented at
the Middlesex Carnegie Summer Institute, describing the PMC Portfolio
Program. Of particular interest to the audience was how the program
relies on the close collaboration of faculty and Student Life staff
members to facilitate each student’s ability
to recognize and document her learning.
In December, the same team,
with the addition of Dean of Student Life Denise Alleyne presented
at a conference co-sponsored by Bentley College, the New England Educational
Assessment Network (NEEAN), and the New England Association of Schools
and Colleges (NEASC). This presentation focused on the forms of assessment
used at PMC to measure student satisfaction and learning, and how results
from recent assessments were used to reconsider the nature and effectiveness
of our first-year seminars, particularly with regard to helping students
make a successful transition to PMC’s highly diverse community.
Following are some highlights from these presentations.
As the PMC student body has become increasingly
diverse, faculty and administrators alike have been well aware that
diversity brings with it remarkable opportunities for, and challenges
to, learning. We have long been committed to a variety of methods of
assessment and have used their results to monitor how effective we
have been in facilitating student learning and development in the context
of our diverse environment.
Some
recent data have powerfully demonstrated that PMC students developed
in ways that were consistent with the College’s mission and values.
According to a national longitudinal study sponsored by the Higher
Education Research Institute at the University of California, our seniors
are substantially more likely than women seniors at other colleges
and universities to demonstrate increases in their intellectual self-esteem
and social confidence; their interest in promoting racial understanding
and becoming leaders in their communities; and their endorsement of
the belief that individuals can be effective in bringing about social
change. (See accompanying article, UCLA Study: PMC
Students Experience Transformative Growth.)
“…our seniors are substantially more likely than women
seniors at other colleges and universities to demonstrate increases
in their intellectual self-esteem and social confidence…”
On the other hand, data in the National Survey
of Student Engagement indicated relatively low scores among our first-year
students with regard to feeling that fellow students were supportive,
friendly, and welcoming. These findings were reinforced by anecdotal
comments from faculty and Student Life staff that first-year students
were not engaging with each other as comfortably as we had expected.
Feedback from first-year seminar evaluations also suggested that these
transition seminars were not highly endorsed by students as a vehicle
for helping them become more comfortably engaged in the broader community.
These
findings led us to establish communitywide discussions and a task force
to redesign the first-year seminars. To get a better understanding
of student perceptions of their experience as new college students,
we formed Campus Action Through Organizations (CATO), a committee whose
initial meeting was attended by 26 students representing almost every
student organization. Its agenda had one item: sharing student perceptions
of the community.
We sought a deeper understanding of students’ views
by using a cross-section of College Composition classes as focus groups.
Ultimately, the task force agreed on two fundamental changes to the
structure of the first-year seminar course: 1) make it experiential;
and 2) make each section theme based.
The experiential piece is
most directly connected to diversity. Relevant research and our own
experiences at PMC support the idea that having diverse students work
on a common project is the best way to erode barriers that may exist
among them based on their perceived differences. It
helps them to focus on how they can work together, taking advantage
of their differences rather than experiencing the differences as roadblocks.
At
the same time, data on successful first-year seminars suggest that
theme-based seminars are more effective than those simply based on “how
to make a successful transition to college”, because of topics
that are more interesting and engaging to students and seminar leaders.
To this end, teams of faculty and Student Life staff developed topics
and projects that were a good fit with the team leaders’ interests
(with two faculty members, one Student Life staff member, and a junior
or senior student leader forming the leadership team for each seminar).
The resulting seminar topics and projects included the following:
- Exploring
Boston (Project: Creation of Guide and Suggestions for Incoming
Students)
- Women and Community Leadership (Project: Planning
of Leadership Conference for Whole Community in Spring)
- Education Experiences Across
Cultures and Communities (Project: Mentoring Program with Dearborn
Middle School Students)
- Social Action,
Social Change (Project: Creation of a Video for Incoming Students
on How to Be Successful at PMC)
- Concepts of Home (Project:
Community Service Activities with Homeless Elders Project)
- Art as An Expression of Individual and Community Identity
(Project: Creation of a Mural)
These seminars have now been implemented, with reassessment of their
effectiveness scheduled for spring 2005, particularly with regard to
three major objectives:
- Helping students make a successful transition
to college
- Helping students feel comfortably at home in and engaged
with the PMC community
- Introducing students to the concepts and values
associated with Inclusive Leadership and Social Responsibility
Continued...
Read accompanying article, UCLA
Study: PMC Students Experience Transformative Growth.
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