History – Page 2 – By's Musings

Characteristics of an Ideal Major
What does the ideal major look like? Almost all undergraduate programs today consist of three parts: General Education, Major, Electives. The major is the primary area of study that the student wishes to pursue. In forty years of academic work, I have had the privilege of helping many programs or departments design and construct majors. In any building job, contractors and builders will tell you that it is absolutely necessary to have a plan before you start building. Those plans may be hand-drawn or put together by architects. In either case, the drawer or the architect begins the plans with a style or a philosophy from which to work. My philosophy of building an ideal major includes the following characteristics.

Definition: a major is a combination of related courses and competency requirements that upon completion will permit the student to pursue further study in the area or obtain an entry job in the area.

Necessary Characteristics:

1. Discipline: A major should be built upon a recognized academic discipline, interdisciplinary area or multidisciplinary combination.
2. Structure: The basic structural design of a major is linear, with a beginning, middle and end.
a. Beginning: Foundational courses introduce students to the primary subdivision of the discipline, and the prerequisite content and skills necessary for success in the discipline.
b. Middle: Core courses build upon the introductory courses providing breadth and depth in the discipline. These courses should include work with the literature, history, philosophical foundations, aesthetics, culture and language of the discipline. They should include increasing development of content, methodologies and skills of the discipline.
c. End: Capstone courses permit students to engage in in-depth work within the discipline. They should also introduce and engage the student in the process of integration of the discipline with other disciplines. Since all of my work has been at faith-based institutions, in the context of these institutions this integration should include the integration of faith and the discipline.
3. Coherence/Cohesiveness/Connectedness/Current: Each major should be designed in such a way that the requirements and topics studied are coherent (logically consistent and holding together as a harmonious and credible whole), cohesive (the requirements and topics studied stick or hold together working as a united whole), and connected (requirements and topics are joined or linked firmly together, having something in common). Each major should also represent the most recent views and interpretations of the discipline.
4. Breadth: The major should permit students to see and explore the breadth of the discipline in terms of content sub-divisions, and in terms of the literature, history, philosophical foundations, aesthetics, culture, language, methodologies, skills and values associated with the discipline
5. Depth: The major should provide enough in-depth work to permit students upon the completion of the major, the opportunity to begin engagement in graduate study within the discipline or a closely related discipline, or to obtain employment in an initial position.
6. Experiential Learning: Each major should provide an opportunity for every student to participate in an experiential learning component within the framework of the major. The major should develop experiential learning components that include a foundation for the experience, the experience itself which is based upon well-defined learning objectives, and a reflective component after the experience that provides an opportunity to tie together the achieved learning objectives. If credit is given, it is not to be given for the experience itself. It should be given for the completion of specified learning objectives in connection with the reflective component.
7. Service Learning: Each major should introduce the general principles of service learning and the specific principles of service associated with the particular discipline. Each major should provide an opportunity for every student to engage in service learning within the framework of the discipline, and encourage students to participate in a service learning experience. If credit is given it is not to be given just for the service; it is to be given for the learning component of the service learning experience.
8. Leadership: Each major should introduce the general principles of leadership and the specific principles of leadership associated with the particular discipline. Each major should provide an opportunity for every student to test his or her leadership potential, and encourage every student to aspire to appropriate leadership positions.
9. Multi-cultural/Cross-Cultural: Each major should provide students with the opportunity to become involved in a multicultural/cross-cultural or global experience within the framework of the discipline. Each major should encourage every student to take advantage of these offered experiences.
10. Thinking Skills: Each major should provide students with an understanding of and practice in the critical and creative thinking skills associate with the discipline. Upon completion of the major, each student should have been exposed to and required to demonstrate appropriate skill in the higher level thinking skills of evaluation, synthesis, analysis, application and understanding within the context of the discipline. Each student should have had adequate practice in creating, evaluating, analyzing, applying and understanding within the context of the discipline.
11. Communication Skills: Each major should provide students with an introduction to and practice in the various communication modes indigenous to the discipline. At a minimum, the major should have at least one writing intensive course required of all students. At a minimum, the major should have at least one course in which the student is required to make oral presentations.
12. Problem Solving Skills: Each major should introduce students to the main problem solving methodologies used by the discipline. Students should have adequate practice in solving typical problems of the disciplines.
13. Cooperative Learning/Collaboration: Each major should provide students with opportunities to engage in cooperative learning. Students should be encouraged to collaborate within the normal framework of the discipline.
14. Research Skills/Scholarship: Each major should introduce the students to the normal research practices of the disciplines. Students should be encouraged to engage in scholarship within the bounds of the discipline.
15. Career Planning: Each major should introduce the students to the normal career paths of individuals working within the disciplines. Each major should provide opportunities for students to career shadow a professional within the discipline. All students within the major should be encouraged to tentatively lay out career plans for themselves.
16. Portfolio Development: Each major should introduce students to the typical portfolio designs used within the discipline. Students should be encouraged to begin a professional portfolio that they could begin to use after graduation.
17. Ethical Concerns of the Discipline: Each major should introduce the students to the primary ethical concerns of the discipline. Students should be introduced to and required to read something from the primary authors who address ethical concerns within the discipline. All students should be required to begin to think about what position or positions they should take related to the primary ethical concerns of the discipline.
18. Lifelong Learning: Each major should encourage and instill within every student the understanding of the necessity for and the desire to engage in lifelong learning.
19. Citizenship within the Discipline: Each major should introduce students to the expectations of behavior of professionals within the discipline toward each other and toward the community. Students should be given opportunities to practice aspects of citizenship before they graduate.
20. Economical: Each major should be designed in such a way that it is as efficient and economical as possible for both student and faculty. It should offer the necessary courses to achieve the mission and goals of the major, but not require, or even offer a proliferation of unnecessary courses.
21. Resources: Each major should have the necessary resources (personnel, facilities, equipment, library material, and technology) to achieve its goals and mission and satisfy the fulfillment of these characteristics.
Since my entire career has been in faith-based institutions, for such institutions I would add another characteristic.
22. Integration of Faith and Learning: Integration of faith and learning refers to the process of combining a discipline and one’s faith in such a way that the process gives meaning to or helps interpret isolated facts or makes connections between one’s faith and the discipline. It is an attempt to synthesize knowledge. Integration approaches knowledge and problems from interdisciplinary and/or multi-disciplinary points of view. The key questions in integration are: a)”What do the findings mean?”and b)”How do they provide a larger, more comprehensive understanding of the discipline and/or one’s faith? The major should not only help the student to begin the process of integration of faith and learning, but should also help the student engage in the process in some meaningful way.

A Modest Proposal for the Re-engineering of American Higher Education

By Baylis ?²

For many years, I have been intrigued with any title that begins with a phrase “A Modest Proposal.” Jonathan Swift’s classic satirical essay from 1729 has conditioned everyone to know that what follows is anything but modest, and possibly bordering on sensationalism. I have deliberately used the phrase “A modest proposal” to get people’s attention. However, the heart of the essay is not a satire. I truly believe that American higher education would benefit from adopting some, if not all twenty, of the suggestions that I make in the body of the essay.

I will also admit that I used another sensational term in the title of the essay. “Re-engineering” grabs people’s attention because it has come to mean radical changes that could affect the entire institution. That’s exactly the idea that I wanted to convey.

Education is helping students develop the knowledge, skills and dispositions necessary to move them from where they are to where they need or want to be. There are two actors in this process. Each actor has different responsibilities and roles. Students must come to education with goals. They should know what they want to be. The role of faculty is to identify where the students are and the best route to take the students to where they want to or need to be. Faculty need to realize that the students’ goals are important and they should not unnecessarily impose their own goals on students. Faculty should serve as guides in assisting students along the route to reaching their goals. Students need to realize that education is hard work. It is not an entitlement; it is a privilege.
American higher education should adopt a Social Change Model of Education as the foundational philosophy for building its superstructure. The basic tenet of a Social Change Model of Education is that education should be about helping students learn so that they can improve themselves, society, and the community.
Within the framework of a Social Change Model of Education, institutions need to focus the educational process on helping students acquire the knowledge, skills, and dispositions necessary to live useful lives in order to better themselves and society. An institution must pay attention to all three areas of knowledge, skills, and dispositions. In a 1978 hit song, Michael Lee Aday, commonly known as Meatloaf, suggested that in the area of personal relationships, “Two out of three, ain’t bad” However, in education, “Two out of three, ain’t enough.”
Each institution must have a clearly delineated mission. All individuals involved with the given institution must have a solid understanding of the mission of the institution and a firm commitment to that mission.
The mission of an institution must be clearly communicated to all prospective students and the community at large. The leaders of an institution, especially the president, administrators and faculty, must understand the history of the institution and how that affects the current development of the institution and possible future development.
Institutions need to hire, evaluate and reward faculty in terms of helping students learn. Good teaching should be measured in terms of student learning. Teaching itself is only a means to the end of learning, not an end in itself.
Institutions should consider revamping graduation requirements more in line with competencies instead of credit hours earned in course blocks. What’s more important, the number of credits earned by sitting through the required number of class hours, or what a student knows, can do, and values?
Schools need to consider scrapping the current semester, trimester. or quarter systems that are agriculturally based, in favor of a more flexible schedule that allows or even encourages learning anytime and anywhere, possibly in a 24/7/365 format.
Institutions should be aware and open to the possibility that curricula will evolve. Some new disciplines will emerge while some old disciplines will become obsolete.
Institutions should consider revamping their fiscal model away from the charge for credit hours to one more closely aligned with charging students a credentialing fee based upon completion of competencies.
Faculty must be encouraged to study learning theory with an eye to understanding and using different teaching modalities other than just lecturing. Faculty must be encouraged to experiment with educational pedagogies and technologies appropriate to discipline.
Faculty must know their students. They must be aware of and account for the varying goals of the students they are teaching. It is not the job of faculty to produce clones of the faculty. The job of faculty is to help students develop the knowledge, skills, and values necessary to improve themselves and society.
Institutions should be prepared to provide appropriate learning spaces and resources for faculty and students, including classrooms, laboratories, libraries, and technology.
Institutions should consider paying faculty according to their track record of helping students learn or complete competencies, instead of their degrees and years of service.
Institutions must be prepared to offer developmental resources to faculty to help them use the most appropriate pedagogies and technologies in their teaching.
Faculty should be open to the possibility of unbundling their work. Faculty may have to be open to the idea that faculty governance is too expensive and inefficient.
Faculty need to understand that tenure and academic freedom are not entitlements, but are privileges.
Faculty and institutions need to be abused of their unattainable illusions of grandeur. Not all institutions can be prestigious, research universities. Institutions must get off the academic treadmill of trying to keep up with the institutions that are their neighbors or competitors.
Institutions must realize that not all institutions will look the same. Some institutions will be geared toward a residential clientele. Some institutions will focus on commuter students and some institutions will serve a mixed clientele. Serving these differing collections of student types will mean institutions will have to tailor facilities, curricula, schedules, and teaching modalities to the students they are serving.
Everyone associated with an institution–Board of Trustees, President, administration, faculty, and students–must be held accountable for their part in the well-functioning of the institution and promoting student learning.

I believe the quality academic institutions of the future may look and feel very different from the quality academic institutions of the past. That’s the basis for my modest proposal. We should be ready to embrace the new look of academic institutions and not be afraid of it.