ACTUALIZING THE PROMISE OF INTERDISCIPLINARITY AND OTHER CORE

ACTUALIZING THE PROMISE OF INTERDISCIPLINARITY AND OTHER CORE MISSION ELEMENTS AS INTEGRATING PRINCIPLES

FOR UNDERGRADUATE EDUCATION

Ramapo College of New Jersey

"Integrative Learning: Opportunities to Connect" Proposal

SUMMARY

Ramapo College of New Jersey was created as an interdisciplinary institution and has a long history in academic experimentation represented in its mission. The project seeks to use this mission to create a platform for meta-integration of integrative learning strategies. An evaluation of significant changes to campus academic programs will be made.

NARRATIVE

Our History

In examining the potential for a fully integrated undergraduate learning experience, it is helpful if institutional experimentation is grounded in the core mission, rather than in peripheral programs. Ramapo College of New Jersey was founded as an interdisciplinary, undergraduate liberal arts college in the New Jersey State College System. Subsequently, three additional pillars were added to the core mission: experiential, global, and multi-cultural learning. The college has been ripe for additional innovations. A FIPSE grant from 1994-1998 diffused ecological literacy throughout the curriculum and sustainability was subsequently added to the college mission,

Each of these core mission pillars represents an integrative force, influencing the shape of a student’s education, as well as program development, hiring and other institutional practices. According to the mission, our students will be issue generalists able to integrate information from multiple disciplines and to practice innovative learning beyond the boundaries of disciplinary thought. Their opportunities to engage in experiential education will make the real world their model for learning integration. Their global focus will prepare them to be world citizens and to think about issues of commonality as well as difference. Their multi-cultural focus will equip them to encounter diverse peoples in positive and productive ways that promote understanding and cooperation. And the quest for a sustainable society asks students to comprehend how people can live in harmony with nature, to promote renewability and avoid pollution, as well as to promote equity and justice in both contemporary and cross-generational frames. Virtually every approach to integrative learning has been tried and/or adopted under one or other of these mission pillars. In theory, Ramapo has achieved an extraordinary level of integrative learning.

Our Burning Questions

At the ripe old age of 35, Ramapo College is in a position to ask how well these mission elements have themselves been integrated into our courses, our campus culture, and our faculty consciousness. Specifically, we must ask:

Do our students even know that they are in a college with an innovative mission and, if so, do they understand and benefit from that mission?

Given major turnover from the original founding faculty, does our Professorate fully understand and support the key mission elements and are they aware of how they might teach differently at Ramapo than at a conventional institution?

What steps can we take to achieve a greater consensus, understanding and implementation of our core mission in the classroom?

What changes do our programs and structure require to facilitate integrative learning?

By revitalizing the core mission’s influence over the conduct of learning, will we significantly improve learning outcomes compared to both our baseline and to more conventional institutions?

The college has not been indifferent to these questions. Concurrent to this grant application, a major campus committee has offered a report to the faculty that proposes the abandonment of credits in favor of learning units that provide sufficient time and opportunity for team teaching and integration of the core mission elements. An agreement between the faculty union and the administration suggests that this shift will be implemented during the same period as this proposed project. It is, therefore, appropriate to further ask:

In the context of converting from credits to learning units, can a greater degree of integrative learning be achieved?

The same committee has recommended a better and sparser integration of the all-college general education requirements, the school core programs, and the majors. The proposed changes are intended to create integrative learning experiences around the core mission elements, for example, through a series of new readings courses to be offered by the college’s five schools, through efforts to help restore to these schools the role of learning communities, and through better integration of study abroad and service learning into academic programs. The evaluation of these further changes offers the potential to address such additional questions as:

How do we make schools (collections of faculty grouped around a theme or divisional focus and led by a Dean) into Learning Communities for the benefit of both faculty and students?

How do we better integrate the progressions of curriculum (from all-college general education to School theme to more specialized major; from 100 to 400 level; from in-class to community to study-abroad) so that there is an opportunity for students to see interrelationships and use them to achieve metacognitive learning?

It is intended that these key questions will be addressed through a targeted in-service program aimed to create discourse about mission implementation. This program will involve a key note address to the faculty by a well known expert in interdisciplinary education and a facilitated workshop program aimed at rejuvenating the current interdisciplinary structure while providing critical discourse.

Our Potential For Contribution to Understanding

Created as an innovative institution, Ramapo has a history of experimenting liberally. Long watched by educational observers, our experiments have been freely shared through our association with other colleges and universities through COPLAC, (the Council on Public Liberal Arts Colleges), NJHEPS (the New Jersey Higher Education Partnership for Sustainability), through open conferences, and through writing and presentation by our faculty and administration.

What is unique about Ramapo as a context for this project is that it has the ability to attempt multiple strategies of integration simultaneously at different levels of organization. In the end, the quest for a truly integrative learning requires more than parts experimentation. It also demands contextual assessment. Ramapo is one of the few places where such insights are possible.

We intend to assess our experiments in the context of this project, to compare outcomes with other institutions, and to use this project as an intervention to guide change. Thus, our team is likely to play the role of institutional change agents, guiding the parts of the experiment and addressing their integration into the whole institution.

Sustaining the Project

We have already addressed this issue when we speak about institutional context. Experiments that are outliers, extraneous efforts that little involve the faculty, students and staff, and that don’t touch on core mission and learning process, have little chance to be continued unless they move from the periphery into the core. At Ramapo, the integrative learning project we propose is about the core of our institution. While key questions may resolve one way or the other, there is little doubt that project outcomes will have a lasting influence.

Dissemination

As noted, we have a history of disseminating similar projects through papers, presentations, video, and other media. In this instance, moreover, one of the key project components will involve an in-service conference to which representatives of a select group of other campuses are invited.

The Team

After a vote of support for pursuing this project was gained from the Faculty Assembly, interested faculty were recruited to serve on an organizing group. The team was selected from this group. Dr. Michael R. Edelstein developed this project in response to issues reviewed and debated in conjunction with his work on a major campus committee that has substantially redesigned the academic program. He is a long time advocate for strengthening the college’s mission implementation through faculty discourse and mutual communication. Dr. Emma Rainforth is representative of the young faculty who are just learning the institution and its mission. Dr. Kathleen Sunshine has a history of promoting communication about campus goals and mission, of program evaluation, and of fostering a sense of cooperation. Together, the team represents variations in length of service, administrative experience, area of academic expertise, and experience with integrative learning.

The Team:

Michael R. Edelstein, team leader, earned his Ph.D in Social Psychology from the University of Buffalo in 1975. This is his thirtieth year at Ramapo. An environmental psychologist serving the environmental studies and science majors, he is known for his twenty-five year continuing study of the effects of environmental contamination on people. His book Contaminated Communities is in its second edition from Westview Press. Dr. Edelstein is also known for his work on sustainability and environmental and social impact assessment. He is currently involved in research and writing projects in Russia and on the issues of indigenous peoples. He is a well known community environmental leader. He has authored and directed successful grants from FIPSE (Ecological Literacy), from the Trust for Mutual Understanding (Russian/American environmental exchanges and research), and from the Geraldine Dodge Foundation (campus sustainability). He has been a core member of the Course Load Adjustment Working group and the principle author of the draft and final reports of this year-long committee moving Ramapo toward a Learning Unit approach and more fully integrated general education, school core, and major programs.

Emma Rainforth earned her Ph.D. in Geology from Columbia University in 2003. Ramapo College is her first tenure track academic position. A paleontologist, she has a natural attraction to dinosaurs. During her masters level work in Colorado, she was Curator of the Mesalands Dinosaur museum. Dr. Rainforth has held grants from the Jurassic Foundation and the Paleobiological Fund. She is now an Asst. Professor in the School of Theoretical and Applied Science. As a young faculty member, Dr. Rainforth brings a fresh perspective to the issues of mission integration and its relationship to integrative learning by Ramapo students.

Kathleen Sunshine earned her Ph.D. in literature from Harvard University in 1968. An accomplished writer at the time she assumed the role of Director of Ramapo’s School of Contemporary Arts in 1974, she has been a campus leader helping to establish the arts as a major force on campus. She subsequently co-authored the New Jersey Challenge Grant that established Ramapo as the state’s international studies center and served as the founding Director of the Center for International Telecommunications. She produced a television series called intercultural perspectives for New Jersey Public television. Dr. Sunshine established a number of the key global partnerships enjoyed by Ramapo. A recognized expert in journalism, communications, telecommunications, as well as literature and creative writing, Dr. Sunshine is a noted filmmaker. Her current project is a documentary on the Indian god Ganesh. She specializes in placing communications students into high profile internships. She has a particular interest in the relationship between literature and film as well as the other arts.