Suzie Benack, professor of Psychology and a faculty rep of Sorum House, said on a panel at the recent “Bridging the Gap” symposium [see story on p. 13] that one of Union's goals in establishing the Minerva Houses was to blur the lines between inside and outside the classroom, creating a space where students, faculty and staff can put aside their traditional roles and learn from each other in more informal ways.
This “informal intellectual community” offers students an experience that complements their work in the classroom or lab, where they actually spend relatively little time. Increasingly, many colleges like Union are looking for ways to work with the whole student, and to allow for Education (capital E intentional) to extend beyond the walls of the classroom or lab. Sounds good. But, what does it look like?
At Union, it's taking many forms. One of the newest and most innovative is the Marketplace of Ideas, a “virtual learning community,” which will bring informal education into cyberspace. The Marketplace is a Web site where members of the campus community register what they have to teach and what they want to learn, and then link with others to pursue shared interests ranging from stem cell research to the intersection of art and science to the history of baseball. Interest groups can form for discussions, cooking lessons, knitting circles or skiing trips. Imagine a group of professors and students discussing politics while cooking Yakitori or considering thesis topics while taking a chairlift ride up a southern Vermont mountain.
Another example: on Friday afternoons, the Sigma Phi Society invites a professor or staff member to its House for discussion that extends beyond the class, through a program cleverly called “Converging Tea-ologies.” After a 25-minute delivery focused on a topic, there is plenty of time for chat and getting to know students in a more informal way.
One of my own fondest memories of informal learning at Union is of a trip to the Narrows of Lake George with a group of 12 incoming first-year students. We took a two-mile paddle in large canoes and camped for two days on an empty island in nearly perfect weather. We cooked awful food, swam, talked about the Adirondacks and the environment, had canoe races, and just got to know one another better. A couple of students taught us a card game most of us didn't know. We laughed together with a southern California student who was in shock to learn there was no running water on the island. Most of us sat transfixed to learn about one student's life at a remote school in Montana. I became less of a dean and more of a fellow camper. We enjoyed each other as people for two pretty glorious days. Afterward, back at Union, we were bound by the trip. The shedding of our roles allowed for some good, trusting relationships to develop.
As Tim Spears, Dean of the College at Middlebury said at the symposium: “At Middlebury we think in terms of the student as a complete organism.” Well put. The same student I camped with at Lake George might later remember our connection and seek me out for advice with a problem or for a letter of recommendation. Or I might remember that student as a perfect fit for a committee we are forming to tackle a campus life problem.
By blurring the lines and creating campus cultures that promote the development of “the whole organism,” schools like Middlebury, Union, Franklin and Marshall and Holy Cross are making it that much easier for that organism to work its magic in that great, big ecosystem known as The World.