Re-Rad 2008 Division I Proposal

This proposal was submitted to the EPC in Spring 2008. It was then officially circulated to the entire faculty alongside the Spring 2008 EPC Division I Proposal.

This document is the result of lengthy study and collaboration among members of the Hampshire community: Students, Parents, Faculty, Staff, and Administrators, both current and past. Organized by The Re-Radicalization of Hampshire College.

Introduction
Hampshire College was founded as a pilot to test a new model for higher education. In 1958, when the new college was first considered, concerns centered around providing a high-quality liberal arts education at the lowest institutional cost. However, by 1966, when The Making of the College was written, Franklin Patterson and Charles Longsworth realized that they were undertaking a project that concerned much more than simple questions of economics. They wrote: "— “It has become evident that the major questions include much more than increasing student self-instruction though student-led discussion groups, teaching machines, and other techniques. Questions of survival and effectiveness, especially in undergraduate education, have become acutely clear. These involve more than keeping costs within sensible limits. They include qualitative questions of the first order: e.g., whether undergraduate education will occur in an intellectual and moral community which may have tensions but also has pride and morale; whether undergraduate education will contribute to the health of the general culture; and whether colleges will make a real difference in the swift development of urbanism.”" Hampshire was designed to be an institution that not only experiments with self-guided education, but also fosters a sense of community, builds upon and improves culture, and maintains an active role in urban life. Within this atmosphere, students are to be encouraged to reach their individual learning potential though a process of inquiry. In this sentiment, the academic system at Hampshire was originally designed to err upon the side of self-motivation, the side of self-responsibility, and the side of freedom. In The Making of the College, it is clear that the visionary founders of Hampshire decisively turned away from the narrow, self-contained institutions that made up the status quo of the time of the College’s founding. They sought not only a new economic order in higher education, but also a new social order. This institution was founded upon the understanding that students and professors alike would need to learn how to take responsibility for themselves, each other, and the community at large.

We believe that in recent years Hampshire has strayed from this path. We have lost our status as an experimenting college. Walls have narrowed, requirements have accrued, and Hampshire as an institution has forgotten of the wisdom of its founding. Rather than encouraging self-sufficiency, the current academic structure begins as an over-protective parent, limiting personal exploration and growth. Then, at some point during the second Division, the rug is pulled out from under the students, who are left without the skills necessary to succeed. Moreover, without these skills, students are not able to fully benefit from their Hampshire education, and they may graduate without realizing the extent of their potential. As concerned members of the Hampshire community, and guardians of both its present and future, we are committed to help it regain its direction. Thus, we present our proposal: Division I 3.3.

This proposal was drafted by a group of Hampshire students who are concerned about the future of the school. We seek support from our community in this endeavor. In this document, we address widely felt concerns about the current Division I system, as well as concerns about the potential negative consequences of such a change. The concerns of the faculty and EPC have especially been taken into account. The desire to initiate a policy change stems from a heartfelt love for Hampshire, its mission, and its community. It is out of respect for all members of this community that we find it necessary to approach these issues and concerns about the current system.

This new Division I proposal is designed to foster a spirit of community and collaboration in interdisciplinary work, as well as create an environment where substantial independent inquiry can flourish. It bridges the divisional gap by actively engaging students of all Divisions while preparing students for high-quality Division II and III work.

It must be emphasized that this is a living document. It is a continuation of ideas presented in the previous Re-Radicalization proposal, expanded and altered to more accurately reflect current and projected needs of the college.

We seek to address many concerns about the current system: deficiency in student engagement (as measured in quality and not quantity), lack of student motivation, inflexibility in the advising system, poor advising quality, the high attrition rate, the tone that the Division I program sets for Division II and III, and the extreme deficit of community engagement.

The current Division I program seemed to solve a number of problems when it was first introduced. It increased the number of courses each first-year student took and passed, more students started their Division II ‘on time,’ and students were provided with greater support in advising. However, two major goals of the last change were to decrease student attrition and faculty workload. As student retention rate has not decreased, and faculty still feels overworked, the system has failed to reach its major goals. To solve the latter, the College has “shifted the faculty burden from supervising independent projects to teaching more 100 level courses at the expense of the upper division courses. We are also hiring more adjuncts to help staff these courses."

In this proposal, we move to decrease faculty workload by allowing students greater freedom to fulfill requirements in innovative ways, such as through EPEC classes, solo and group projects and community service.

This proposal describes a new system that takes the best parts of all the previous ones; it is not a return to the chaos of the older systems. It provides for, and even encourages, independent and interdependent work in the Hampshire way. This is a model that should succeed where past attempts have failed, especially in decreasing faculty workload and increasing collaboration among students of all Divisions.

Outline of the New Division I Proposal
Division I will focus on the completion of five (5) goals. The goals will be clearly articulated to each entering student. The student and his or her advisor will determine the specific standards of each requirement, so as to optimize the program for the individual student.


 * Division I Seminar
 * Self-Initiated Project
 * Areas of Study (4)
 * Community Service
 * Portfolio (with Learning Goals)

Division I Seminar &amp; Self-Initiated Project
First and foremost, all students in their first year will undertake some form of self-initiated work. Such work should produce more independent, mature and motivated students, as well as improving the quality of Division II and III work. Students must be prepared for the independent work required in Division II and III. Truly independent student work must not be assigned in class, but designed, organized and executed by students of their own volition, otherwise the benefits are lost.

Because few students can arrive at college and begin such work without support, we propose that all incoming students will attend a Division I seminar. This seminar will serve as the primary support structure for students undertaking self-initiated work. It will replace the first-year “tutorial” as the setting in which new students will be given a meaningful introduction to Hampshire’s unique academic system.

The seminar will act as the primary medium for introducing students to the Hampshire system, including information on how to navigate the Hampshire system and tools to help students along their way. It will also afford advisors the opportunity to explain to their advisees how to do independent work, and discuss common advising issues. The seminar will examine how to write an independent study proposal, support students as they come up with ideas, introduce the idea of inquiry-based learning by exploring how to ask good questions, and supervise research and project development. This will give students the overall support they need to engage their own questions, and provide regular meeting times between students and their advisors.

The Division I seminar will also encourage said independent work to be collaborative. Students in the same seminar should meet often in smaller groups, based on academic interests or project-type. Such sub-seminars may be facilitated by older students. Students may also collaborate with older students, and thereby be introduced to the intricacies of higher-level independent work.

Structure

 * Preparation: Over the summer, accepted students will be encouraged to begin considering ideas for an independent project and will indicate their preferred advisor based on information provided to them in an information packet and on-line.
 * Class size: Seminars are conceived to be about twice the size of current tutorials, with two faculty facilitators, each of whom will be the advisor for half of the students. The faculty is strongly encouraged to be interdisciplinary.
 * Frequency: The seminar will begin during orientation. Initially it will meet twice a week. At the discretion of the facilitators, meetings may be reduced to once a week. This should happen when students’ self-initiated work is significantly underway and students are meeting with the facilitators and each other outside of the seminar.
 * In order to encourage student-to-student (especially inter-Division) discussion during the seminar, students should be broken into groups facilitated by Division II/III seminar assistants.
 * Students will be encouraged to work collaboratively and practice peer review.
 * Class time can also be used to brainstorm, troubleshoot, present progress, introduce concepts, and generally receive input on projects.

Content

 * Seminar will address common advising questions, specifically those concerning the divisional process and Hampshire academics in general.
 * There should be discussion on how to move to Division II, e.g. committee selection and contract construction.
 * Seminar will include “How-To”s of independent work.
 * How to come up with an independent study idea
 * How to define the key questions that need to be answered by the project
 * How to write an independent study proposal
 * How to find faculty who might be interested
 * How to approach faculty
 * How to work with faculty
 * Students will gain experience in self-initiated work.
 * Students will work together and support each other in their self-initiated work.

Self-Initiated Project

 * Students can choose among various formats:
 * Solo independent study
 * Group independent study
 * Working with Division II/III students on their projects. An online list/database will be provided by Division II/III students who want collaborative help with their own projects (using Hampedia or the Intranet). This system could be based upon the present Mentored Independent Study system.
 * Other self-initiated work approved by the advisor

Advising

 * One of the faculty facilitators will become the student’s advisor. Over the summer, students will rank their preference of advisor given the list of faculty who will be facilitating the seminar. Hampedia profiles of faculty will be made available, including academic biographies.
 * Students will have the ability to switch advisors (just as in Division II and Division III) if the advisor is not appropriate for the student’s education. CASA will assist in this process.
 * Advisors will be given more effective advisor training. (See Appendix 2.4)
 * Advisors will still see all of their Division I advisees together at least once a week.

Concerns Addressed

 * Lack of self-initiated work (current Division I) and deficit of support for self-initiated work (former Division I): This seminar will allow students to ask their own questions and develop a self-initiated project within a strong support system.
 * Deficiency in motivation and academic engagement: The current lack of motivation and academic engagement stems in part from the inability of students to discover and explore their own questions and projects.
 * Weak community: Working with Division II and III students will begin to close the gap between the divisions, and between the mods and the dorms.
 * Poor advising system: Main problems that have been identified concerning the advising system are lack of knowledge, lack of personal interaction, and lack of compatibility with advisors. Training/handbook/seminar curriculum solves the issue of knowledge, the seminar ensures that students interact with advisors on a weekly basis, and allowing students to choose their advisors based on detailed Hampedia profiles makes compatibility more likely. In addition, older students are encouraged to aid in advising Division I students.

Areas of Study
The current Division I program requires students to take 5 courses in each of the 5 schools. While it is appropriate to require that a student’s work span multiple disciplines, the current system fails in the implementation of this concept. Currently, only class work is acceptable as an indicator of interdisciplinary learning, and the current requirements follow the sometimes unclear lines that divide the five Schools.

Our proposal aims to divorce the distribution requirement from the Schools, and strive towards flexibility in the definitions of each area of study.

More flexibility will better maintain student interest and better reward student effort and creativity. It is incredibly important to maintain student interest because when interest drops, engagement, motivation, and self-initiation drop as well. Our current system not only does not encourage student interest; in many cases it actually discourages it because of the strict requirements.

The Division I “Areas of Study” requirement is based on the belief that students should develop inquiry skills by asking and developing a series of questions based in different Schools of Thought. Although these questions can be explored through coursework (i.e. taking courses in different Schools), they can also be explored through appropriate independent work, community service work, mentored independent study, group independent study, EPEC, or any other evaluated work that a faculty member deems appropriate.

This ensures that students will have a well-rounded, liberal arts perspective on their area of study. It also encourages students to be interested, motivated, and engaged in every aspect of their learning and to recognize how various disciplines interact and overlap. It does not stifle the creativity and drive of Hampshire students.

Structure

 * There will be four (4) required Areas of Study (See Appendix 2.5 for a further discussion of these designations)
 * Scientific
 * Artistic
 * Social/Historical/Political
 * Humanities/Communications/Foreign Language
 * Distribution will be approved by the academic advisor. This will be done by initiating a conversation with the evaluator (i.e. the professor of a course, independent study mentor, etc.) about the Areas of Study that the student is aiming to fulfill with each specific learning experience.
 * Can be fulfilled through:
 * Coursework (not limited to 100 level, but level appropriate to student ability and preparedness and professor’s opinion of necessary prior experience)
 * Independent work
 * Community service work
 * EPEC classes
 * Five College Classes
 * Flexible alternatives, as long as a qualified evaluator can evaluate student’s ability in specific area of study

Concerns Addressed

 * We have largely lost our status as an experimenting liberal arts college that encourages independent academic exploration.
 * Faculty workload: this requirement can reduce faculty workload. There will be fewer 100 level courses; group independent studies, mentored independent studies, EPEC classes, and community service will satisfy many requirements with limited faculty time commitment.
 * Lack of engagement and student motivation. The present system forces students to take courses they have little or no interest in, which has a significant negative effect upon student engagement and motivation.
 * The present system discourages students from fulfilling distribution requirements in innovative ways.

Community Service
The Hampshire community is not what it could be. Student life is decentralized due to limited interaction between the Divisions, the individualized nature of Division IIs and IIIs, the lack of cross-disciplinary work, and the absence of a centralized student-friendly community space. Our proposal addresses this issue by increasing intra-community interaction, encouraging collaboration with Division II and III students as a meaningful and curricularly supported part of student life, bringing the outside community's needs to the attention of students, and by setting the tone for further community work in Divisions II and III.

This community service requirement differs from the Division II community service requirement currently in practice. The current requirement is often not taken seriously. Many faculty pass students with little consideration, students receive community service for activities unrelated to the community, and it is viewed as only another requirement to fulfill. We do not intend to simply move the community service requirement from Division II to Division I, but rather to expand the community service requirement and redefine what it means to do community work. It will emphasize the importance of such work within our own community and within the context of society at large.

Structure

 * The community service must be directly beneficial to a group or groups of people. The work performed is not limited to the Hampshire College community or the Pioneer Valley.
 * There will be a community service form (submitted online to the Hub, flexible enough to allow for different types of community service) (See Appendix 3 for form example). In addition, students will be required to submit a reflection on their work in the form of a written analysis, presentation, or performance.
 * Some documentation and reflection on their community service experience must be included in the student’s final Div I portfolio.
 * This will benefit the building of an integrated Hampshire community
 * Division Is will work with Division II and IIIs.
 * Students will work with the outside community.
 * Motivation will increase through collaboration.
 * It will create a more holistic education.
 * Advisors should encourage students to do something meaningful for their community service.

Concerns Addressed

 * Community service will be taken more seriously than in the current system.
 * It will foster interpersonal relationships (student-to-student and student-to-community).
 * It will strengthen the Hampshire community and its relationship to the wider community.

Portfolio (with Learning Goals)
The portfolio will act as the form of evaluation for Division I. The portfolio will include the self-determined learning goals, but will also include a complete compilation of the student’s work. The student will be expected to include their final Division I self-evaluation as well as their self-evaluations from their coursework and any work completed outside of courses.

Students will create, with advisor, their own personal goals, although the present learning goals may be used as a starting point to devise them. As the Fall 2007 EPC Report advises, professors will use the present Learning Goals as aides to consider how to structure their classes, but not as required boxes to check off on the Hub.

Structure

 * A 3-Ring binder with the Hampshire logo on it will be given to students during orientation for organization of Division I materials
 * Division I portfolio will be evaluated by advisor

Content

 * Division I Self Evaluation
 * Description and evidence of learning goals
 * Documentation of work inside classroom
 * Documentation of accredited (i.e. Independent Studies, Five College courses, study abroad, etc.) work outside of classroom
 * Documentation of unaccredited (i.e. student group membership, lectures attended, etc.) work outside of classroom
 * Self Evaluations
 * For all courses completed
 * Areas of Study
 * Self-initiated project
 * Community Service (form)

Concerns Addressed

 * Difficulty in evaluating work completed in Division I due to its diverse nature and the qualitative focus of a Hampshire education (as opposed to the quantitative credit systems found at other schools)

Appendix 1: Arguments Against This Proposal
Argument: Without the Five School requirement, there will be decreased student interest in X school.


 * “Our own institutional research shows that electives in Div I are not distributed evenly across the 5 schools. Last year, about 34% were taken in HACU, another 26% were in IA, 19% were in SS, 11% in NS, and 10% in CS. Decreasing the distribution and increasing the number of electives would likely result in uneven course enrollments across the schools in terms of electives, and hence, unequal teaching loads in the schools given the current population of incoming students. Since electives need not be 100 level courses, the result would not be a heavier load of 100 level courses for HACU and IA faculty. In addition, 44% of students entering Fall 2006 took at least 1 language course in 2006-7. If languages did not serve as an IA distribution, language courses would fill an elective slot (assuming students would still opt for them).”
 * “Another configuration discussed is 4 requirements distributed as: science, social science, humanities, and arts. Courses would be designated by instructors as fitting into one or more categories. Courses taken by first year students are currently evenly distributed among these 4 areas.”

Argument: There should be a simple system of credits and classes, in the style of the present system, in order to ensure that all students accomplish an acceptable amount of work.


 * In this system, students are still expected to complete a significant amount of work. Furthermore, if they want to do more work than is presently encouraged or allowed in their area of interest, this system actively encourages them to over excel. There have always been ways to get around doing work, but this system encourages students to pursue their passions, which might inspire some to get involved in ways they might not otherwise. Those who don’t want to work will not work regardless of the system.
 * We believe that the system should work to reward self-motivated students instead of trying to force all students to achieve some “standard” amount of work. The precepts of Hampshire’s are based on an expectation of student-initiated work.
 * In addition, there are various safeguards integrated into the system. The most important is the personal interaction with the advisor, with the advisor accorded more power to help a student shape their education, and greater training on how to do so.

Argument: Students can do independent projects within the realm of the classroom.


 * “A course that emphasizes independent projects can be taught in a way that is unchallenging and unengaging, as can a course that has no project component...”
 * Truly independent student work must not be assigned in class, but designed, organized and executed by students of their own volition, otherwise the benefits are lost.

Argument: Some students are not ready for independent work.


 * All students are ready if given the right knowledge, support, and advising. The seminar provides the necessary structure to support independent work.

Argument: The current system works because it increases class attendance.


 * Class attendance is not the primary goal of the College. Learning is. Hampshire was designed to be provide an alternative educational experience.

Argument: Students should not be able to complete Div I in less than a year to preserve funding.


 * “We are now ready to dispense with the tradition of a ‘four-year uninterrupted college education.’ Some students benefit by acceleration.”

'''Argument: More independent work means more work for faculty. The current Division I system sought to decrease faculty workload by replacing independent studies with 100-level courses.'''


 * “We have shifted the faculty burden from supervising independent projects to teaching more 100 level courses at the expense of the upper division courses. We are also hiring more adjuncts to help staff these courses.” This Division I proposal addresses this concern by encouraging student collaboration on independent projects. If adjuncts had to be hired to staff 100-level courses, this system could not have decreased faculty workload.

Hampedia

 * In order to better disseminate information concerning Hampshire in general, we support a concerted effort to transfer all Hampshire-related information to Hampedia, in an organized fashion.
 * For example, Section 3 calls for faculty academic biographies and past divisional projects they have worked on to be readily available to incoming students, so that they can choose their advisor in a more informed manner.

The Hub

 * The Hub needs drastic change and reorganization to record non-course-based work, such as community service. Also, registration for independent studies and EPEC courses should be incorporated into the Hub (or its next incarnation).

Change of Mindset

 * We must enable professors to facilitate independent studies by freeing up their time from other activities. It will not matter if we allow students to do independent studies if no professors are available to mentor them.
 * EPEC must be strengthened and given proper respect, and the system for putting together independent studies must be simplified.
 * Community service needs to be taken seriously.

Improve advisor training / develop detailed curriculum
Basic curriculum for advisor seminar

Although every student at Hampshire will create their own unique education, there are common questions, concerns, and information that should be disseminated to the entire population at Hampshire. This includes: -Independent Study information - Advising FAQ - Insight into overall structure at Hampshire - The information in this proposal, concerning how to finish your Div I - Hopefully some Hampshire history, such as reading The Making of a College over summer break

Independent Study Handbook

Is it possible to relay common advice and insights that apply to independent studies in general? This could possibly simply be handout(s) for students during seminar

Advisor Training and Handbook These two work in tandem. As we have found in our advisor survey, lack of knowledge, lack of personal interaction, and lack of compatibility with advisors, among other things, are needed. In order to disseminate this information easily to all advisors, there should be training and a helpful handbook.

Areas of Study

The definitions of the 4 areas of study are flexible and open to faculty input. 3-5 “distribution” requirements is ideal; but the areas mentioned in the proposal are just suggestions.

Alternate version:


 * Research and Discovery
 * Testing and Empiricism
 * Analysis and Criticism
 * Art and Self-Expression