Three years after the debut of the Minerva Houses, hundreds of invited guests from other colleges and universities filled the Nott Memorial Friday night for a symposium on “Bridging the Academic – Social Gap.”
The symposium kicked off a weekend of events held to mark the inauguration of Stephen C. Ainlay as the College's 18th president.
Panelists included Tim Spears, dean and professor of American Studies, Middlebury College; Victoria Swigert, professor of sociology and assistant dean, College of the Holy Cross; Kent Trachte, dean of Franklin and Marshall College; and Suzanne Benack, professor of psychology and Minerva faculty representative from Sorum House at Union College. The moderator was Byron Nichols, professor of political science at Union.
The keynote address was given by Richard Light, the Walter H. Gale Professor of Education and director of the Harvard Seminar on Assessment at Harvard University. Light's recent book, “Making the Most of College,” won the Stone Award for best book on education and society.
Light told the audience about a conversation he had years ago with longtime Harvard University President Derek Bok, who asked him to examine the quality of student life on campus.
The mission, Light said, was to figure out “how do we strengthen the quality of life on campus for our undergraduates who spend fewer than 20 hours a week in class?”
In interviewing more than 2,000 students over a period of years, Light found the overarching theme was “they longed for, wished for, hoped for the opportunity to make a connection between their personal lives and the topics discussed in the classroom.”
Each of the symposium's panelists talked about what their schools have done to improve the intellectual life of their students outside the classroom.
Swigert said there is an “insuperable barrier between living and learning,” and that students “come to our campus with one foot in adolescence and one foot in adulthood.''
Faculty, she said, “has a special responsibility to offer a hand across the divide. We need to anchor students more firmly in the academic world. We need to bridge the disconnect between their intellectual and social worlds.”
After years of planning, the Minervas are now in their third year at Union. Benack was a member of the committee that proposed the Minerva system. Every incoming student is randomly assigned to one of the seven Minerva Houses and joins upperclass students, faculty and staff in a house affiliation. Each Minerva has its own governing council, which is led by a faculty and student representative.
Benack told the audience that while everything hasn't been smooth with the Minervas, the system is thriving and attracts leaders from other schools interested in making changes on their campus.
The Minervas, Benack said, offer opportunities to “let go of our roles as students, faculty and administrators and to know each other on equal footing.”
Achieving this sense of intimacy, she said, can be “invigorating and offer a lot of fun and a lot of joy.”