Subcommittee on Experiential Learning
Executive Summary
May 2005
Note: Each Task Force Report is a collection of background information, analyses, and recommendations that are submitted to the Planning Steering Committee and the President. Over the summer, the Steering Committee and the President will review and discuss all 15 sets of recommendations together in the context of the College's available resources.
This subcommittee on Experiential Learning was asked to:
• Consider ways to strengthen bridges between academics and the professions, the world of work, and the needs of our community and society.
• Find ways to integrate our strong internship programs more fully and seamlessly into the academic setting.
• Consider ways to integrate more fully the different aspects of experiential learning into the curriculum.
It is important to note that "Experiential Learning" can be broadly defined to include many important activitiessuch as community service, volunteerism, and artistic productionsbut we concentrated most of our efforts on service-learning courses, internships,andcommunity-based independent study projects.In particular, we narrowed our focus to include those learning opportunities that enable students touse skills/knowledge acquired in the classroom to solve problems occurring outside of the classroom.
Before delving into our report summary, it is important to highlight that this is the fourth opportunity in the past eleven years to make some of these recommendations. A review of recent processes include: 1994 A Vision for Middlebury College,1995 Committee on Internships, 2003 White Paper on "Real World" Experience, and now the 2005 Long Range Planning Subcommittee on Experiential Learning. On each of these occasions recommendations have been put forth to strengthen our commitment to forms of experiential learning. We hope the College is now poised to take a leadership role in these efforts!
The subcommittee's review of the relevant literature highlights the strong positive impact that experiential learning has on students, faculty and local communities.
More specifically, research has shown that experiential learning has a positive impact on student academic, personal and career development. Furthermore, students engaged in service-learning report stronger faculty relationships, greater satisfaction with college, and higher graduation rates than those who are not involved in service-learning. Some research also suggests that minority students are more attracted to courses with experiential learning opportunities. Lastly, institutions report enhanced community relations.
The value of internship experience is most easily noted as students transition into the "real world." According to the National Association of Colleges and Employer's Job Outlook Survey for 2005, employers reported that 25% of their new full-time hires would be their own previous interns, 55% would be applicants with previous internship experience elsewhere, and 64% of the employers said that they will pay new, permanent, full-time hires with internship experience an average of 8.9 percent more than their inexperienced counterparts. Also, having numerous Middlebury student interns as ambassadors contributing their talents to the needs of the larger community has great value for the reputation of the College.
After both reviewing the literature and the current practices at Middlebury and its peer institutions, this subcommittee has determined that much more emphasis needs to be placed on experiential learning as a valuable form of pedagogy and furthermore, that every student should have at least one Experiential Learning experience while at Middlebury.In order to make this happen, the subcommittee has highlighted the following major goals and recommendations:
1) Our first major goal is to substantially increase the opportunities for students to engage in Experiential Learning.
a. The subcommittee feels that this can be achieved by harnessing the uniqueness of Middlebury's Winter Term and encouraging more students to participate in off-campus internships during January. We therefore recommend allowing more than two WT internship credits (perhaps substituting an AP credit for a 3rd or 4th internship); permitting first-year students to participate in off-campus internships; encouraging more FYS-WT internship combined courses; and giving faculty course credit to oversee or even join a group of students doing an internship domestically or abroad during WT.
Note: This would not only increase student opportunities for experiential learning but also reduce WT course enrollments, thereby reducing faculty teaching loads at no cost.
b. We recommend additional funding to be phased in over the course of this six-year period to equalize access for students to participate in internship experiences while at Middlebury. This would not only increase the opportunity for students with limited financial resources, it would also allow Middlebury to attract a more diverse student body.
c. Develop a "Guide to Experiential Learning at Middlebury" to be included in student, faculty, advisor and parent handbooks and web resources.
d. Create special designation for service-learning courses in the course catalogue (e.g., tags or icons).
2) Our second major goal is to make service-learning more appealing to faculty members.
a. To achieve this end, we recommend that the College redefine "Service" in tenure and promotion decisions to include community-based research, service-learning courses, networking with community partners, and developing academic internships for students
b. We would like to see more collaboration with the Center for Teaching, Learning and Research to offer more Service-Learning training workshops throughout the year.
c. We recommend staff support to faculty service-learning initiatives:
i. Our short-term recommendation is to hire a service-learning coordinator for ACE. This would mean that the Alliance staff would include three people: a service-learning coordinator, a community service coordinator, and a director.
ii. Over the long-term, we recommend hiring additional service-learning coordinators, one for each division, modeled after the Coordinator for Community-based Environmental Studies in the ES program. This will ease the faculty burden of developing and supervising off-campus service-learning projects.
a. Lastly, we recommend a substantial increase in grant support/summer stipends or Service-Learning Development Funds that faculty can use to integrate Service-Learning into their courses. Alternatively, we would be in favor of course reductions for faculty mounting new Service-Learning courses.
3) Our third major goal is to develop and strengthen relationships with community partners, alumni and parents.
a. To achieve this end, we recommend that the college recognize long-term community partners with "Research Fellow" status. These would be unpaid affiliations that recognize the commitments that community partners have made to increase experiential learning opportunities for Middlebury students.
b. We also recommend that dedicated community partners be integrated more fully into the teaching of service-learning courses.
c. Lastly we recommend the development of a "Request for Proposals" database system to solicit service-learning, independent study projects, and internships from community partners, alumni and parents. This would increase experiential learning opportunities for students, ease the burden on faculty to continually develop new project ideas, and better engage community partners, alumni and parents in the educational process.
4) Our fourth major goal is to foster institutional support for experiential learning by:
a. Having the College recognize experiential learning as an essential educational goal for the campus and adopt formal policies to make experiential learning a visible and important part of the campus' work.
b. Administrative leaders understanding and actively supporting all modes of experiential learning.
c. Working towards having experiential learning a component of all formal academic programs.
d. Utilizing the promotion of experiential learning to support a focus on leadership and diversity.
To conclude, we recommend that detailed plans for achieving these goals, as laid out in our recommendations section, be implemented so that the College can seize the opportunity to lead our peers in these pursuits and use our commitment to experiential learning as a part of the defining difference of Middlebury College.
Members:
Jaye Roseboruogh, Chair
Jessica Holmes
Remy Mansfield '06
Diane Munroe
Bob Prigo
Tiffany Nourse Sargent