Holistic Student Learning

As we approach the end of the spring semester and thus the academic year, aside from the press of grading papers, giving exams and celebrating the successes of our students, it is a useful time to contemplate our future.

The events of the past year have taken their toll on the fortunes of many institutions of higher education. Endowments are unable to support key operations in many places, stable or declining enrollments challenge others, and all too common was the story of stopped searches, mid-year budget reductions, and layoffs in institutions that a short time ago had seemed poised for continuous future growth.

American higher education is undergoing a sea change. One thing, and one thing only, seems certain: that we will emerge from the current circumstances slowly and in a new model for the twenty-first century. The press is full of stories these days in support of this conclusion so I'll spare you the details here. But I do think that it is likely that successful universities in the future will be those who seized this moment to reflect upon their core values and to strengthen those parts of the university where those values are energized into action.

This is leading to a stimulating national discussion about student learning, broadly defined. In my comments earlier this semester I suggested that we are well-poised at Roosevelt University to be a leader in this area. I thank all who wrote to share with me their ideas on these matters. After I have taken the time to ponder them more fully this summer, I will have some suggestions for your consideration on how we might use them to our collective advantage next academic year.

Clearly others elsewhere see the potential of Roosevelt to help shape the national discourse. We have been asked to join a select group of 55 universities that are committed to addressing in their own ways the notion that student learning is an all-encompassing endeavor. That is to say, to think of the student as someone who learns continuously, not only in our classes but also in every other aspect of her or his experiences both on campus and off.

Much of the interesting work being done in this regard is in neuroscience and especially in the study of the brain as a physical organ. As we learn more about how it functions, and as we can see that functioning in action through MRIs and other new technologies, the physical as well as the intellectual development of the learning process comes literally into sharper focus. So, too, do the questions about how to create enhanced learning opportunities so that the university graduates of the future are women and men whose lives are lived more fully precisely because their education was wholly developed.

I'm not sure what to make of all this, but I am certain that we as a community will have much to say about these ideas. At the seminar I attended last week in New York, a group of university presidents asked to ponder these issues more extensively was challenged to understand the implications of such a paradigm shift and to identify faculty members and others on campus who can challenge it, shape it, and determine its potential for their own students for the future.
By this point in your reading, I am confident that some of you will have your skepticism in full bloom. I certainly hope so.

Why? Because this is serious business, this responsibility we have to educate the whole student for effective citizenship in a dynamic world. The skeptical mind is a sharper one and since the challenges are serious, we had better think them through carefully. Which is what the challengers of the status quo want us to do. They are serious enough to have provided seed funding to each of the 55 institutions selected (in Chicago, only RU and the School of the Art Institute) to enable us to develop our responses.

In my last letter to the community, I mentioned "five dimensions of 'personal social responsibility'" that lie at the heart of integrated learning. It is important now to make explicit what was implicit in that letter, namely that all members of the community, starting but not ending with the faculty working through the curriculum, must contribute to student learning writ large if we are to succeed in attaining these goals.

That's the sort of major change in higher education that may well be what people are talking about when they say that the future models of student learning will be very different in key ways from those we experienced in the past.
It will be exciting to see just how prophetic that notion might be here at Roosevelt University.

If you are interested in actively participating in the next round of discussions please let me know. As usual, I welcome comments from everyone. Please email me at cmiddleton@roosevelt.edu.

Have a great summer!

Chuck Middleton