Nebraska Wesleyan's academic and student life departments are focusing more on transformative educational experiences for students.
Guided by the university’s strategic plan, the Provost’s Office provided funding to seven academic and student life departments this summer to initiate curricular and co-curricular projects.The selected departments used the funds to generate new curriculum ideas, establish further service learning opportunities, and enhance classroom experiences.
Professors Susan Wortman and James Perry collaborated to improve their social problems class.
“This course has always been viewed as a rather depressing course, since we discuss a new social problem each class,” said Perry. “We wanted our students to see that people in the community are working to help others solve and cope with these obstacles.”
When considering possible renovations to this course, they looked at what they wanted students to know at the end. Rather than have students simply discuss the social problems, Wortman and Perry redesigned the class to have students first discuss the problem and then follow the social problem all the way through. For example, students who study language barriers would meet with the Lincoln Literacy Council and interview both the persons tutoring and the persons being tutored.
“We want students to avoid solely focusing on the problem,” said Wortman. “We want them to recognize and learn how the Lincoln community addresses social problems.”
“We wanted this course to provide a more holistic approach to social problems by having students more engaged,” added Perry. “We want students to look at social problems through both lenses: the lens of the people addressing the issue and the lens of those working to address the issue.”
The final piece of Wortman and Perry’s project will be to create an online “Engage” magazine to publish students’ research. When the idea for this project was first beginning, Wortman and Perry knew they wanted to incorporate technology. They hope this magazine will provide a database of students’ research that will be accessible to both the Nebraska Wesleyan community and the Lincoln community.
The Career and Counseling Center also received funding from the Strategic Development Fund. They are focusing on experiential and service learning. Kelli Wood, Coordinator of Service Learning and Global Service Learning, is collaborating with several faculty to encourage and promote service learning.
“I was looking to find new ways for students to get experiential learning opportunities and broaden that experience,” said Wood who noted that 18 classes are currently using service learning in their courses.
Wood said the overall goal is to increase student involvement with service projects. Nebraska Wesleyan student organizations and academic classes are currently working with numerous community organizations including Mourning Hope, Teammates Mentoring Program, and the Food Bank of Lincoln. Several Liberal Arts Seminars are joining efforts for a clothing drive.
“Students get a lot out of service learning and the community benefits as well,” said Wood.
The projects funded by the Strategic Development Fund are in line with the fund’s goals of developing new courses that incorporate high impact activities, revise curriculum to impact student and faculty workload in a positive manner, integrate high impact activities and other forms of engaged learning into existing courses, and develop curricular and co-curricular projects that advance the blending of academic affairs and student life.
The following departments were also recipients of funding:
- Biology Department — The department is revising its curriculum. Angela McKinney coordinated a four- day departmental retreat to revamp the first and second year experience, the senior capstone, and reorganize the biology major requirements.
- Modern Languages Department— The department met for a three-day strategic planning workshop to develop a capstone course for Modern Language majors. Rita Ricaurte is working with the department to reorganize the curriculum to address the student and faculty workload while enhancing engaged learning throughout the major and minor programs.
- Communication Studies Department — The department had a two-day retreat to review the current department curriculum. Department chair Karla Jensen reported discussion of increasing engaged learning in the classroom, evaluating the strengths and challenges of the current curriculum and comparing it with those of competing institutions, and re-envisioning courses as adjusted by the potential four credit class schedule.
- The English and Theatre departments also received funding.