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Descriptors:
College Curriculum; Internship Programs; Educational Principles; Program Descriptions; Transitional Programs; Articulation (Education); Seminars; Humanistic Education; Student Centered Curriculum; Program Effectiveness; Outcome Measures; Teaching Methods

Abstract:
In an earlier issue of this journal, the authors described a capstone course, Internship, that both "caps" the undergraduate experience and functions as a "bridge" to the world beyond college. Here, they describe a sequel to that course, Advanced Internship, which both extends and enhances the "capping" and "bridging" experiences. The bridging function of the course is especially profound. The principles on which Advanced Internship is based apply to a variety of academic courses and disciplines. Impact of the course on students' learning and confidence is high; costs for implementing the course are low. (Contains 3 tables.) Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract

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Interdisciplinary Approach; Undergraduate Study; Multivariate Analysis; College Curriculum; Classification; Organization; Outcomes of Education

Abstract:
Though the number of interdisciplinary undergraduate programs has increased rapidly over the past several decades, little empirical research has characterized such programs. In this article we report on our investigation of the characteristics of interdisciplinary programs and develop typologies to describe the multiple ways in which such programs are structured with respect to curricular and organizational features. Using cluster analysis, we show differences in both curricular structures and organizational features across programs, irrespective of the program's content focus. This typology will guide future research to explore differences in student learning outcomes across the interdisciplinary program types. Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract

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College Curriculum; Organization; Information Technology; Semantics; Punctuation; Intellectual Disciplines; Computer Software

Abstract:
In this article I describe software that facilitates "question-centric curricula" in which "big questions," rather than academic disciplines, are the primary means of organizing educational resources. To find these questions, the software scans course catalogs and extracts all sentences ending in a question mark. To find connections between questions and courses, I present several computational techniques. One leverages the Library of Congress system; another implements so-called "semantic technology" that uses huge numbers of simple internet searches to ascertain the meaning of texts. The software assembles the results and shows, in one image, how every course at an institution relates to a given question. Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract

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Foreign Countries; Higher Education; Educational Change; Administrators; Private Colleges; Humanities; College Curriculum; Tuition; Tutoring; College Instruction; College Faculty; College Students; Student Attitudes

Abstract:
This article profiles A.C. Grayling, a British intellectual who pioneers a new model for college. In his role as founder of the New College of the Humanities, Britain's newest and most controversial institution of higher education, A.C. Grayling could have chosen among several titles. The senior academic officer at most English higher-education institutions is known as vice chancellor, with a few rectors and a provost and a president or two in the mix. In Scotland, the customary title is principal. Mr. Grayling, however, has opted for master, an honorific with long antecedents at the colleges that make up England's two oldest universities, Oxford and Cambridge. In June 2011, Mr. Grayling announced his intention to establish the New College of the Humanities, with the involvement--and investment--of a handful of fellow academic celebrities. His goal was to bridge what he sees as the growing gap between higher education and the needs of contemporary society. Though his concerns are echoed by many other critics of mainstream universities, both in Britain and elsewhere, his solution is unique. Unlike so many other recent ventures, Mr. Grayling's attempt to devise a new higher-education paradigm for the 21st century is rooted in the American liberal-arts model and the individualized tutorial system that once prevailed at Oxford and Cambridge. "This is a college for the humanities," he says, and its emphasis on the study of philosophy, history, literature, law, and economics is designed to provide its students with the intellectual equipment that will enable them to organize ideas and muster arguments, even in the face of challenges that "we can't even envisage yet." In marrying those fundamentals of American liberal-arts education to the rigorous training that the classic tutorial system provides, Mr. Grayling says his goal is to create what is sometimes called the T-shaped thinker, one with both breadth and depth. The premise seems simple enough and, especially for an American audience, relatively uncontroversial. But when Mr. Grayling announced what he was planning, there was an outcry. Critics, calling the venture a vanity exercise, accused him of selling a bill of goods to a set of rich kids and undermining the rest of British higher education while he was at it. Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract

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Descriptors:
United States History; State History; History Instruction; College Curriculum; Courses; State Universities; Reading Assignments; Supplementary Reading Materials; Anthologies; Primary Sources; Textbooks; College Faculty; Interests; Race; Social Class; Sex; Social History

Abstract:
In 1971, the state of Texas enacted a legislative requirement that students at public institutions complete two courses in American history. With that mandate in mind, the Texas Association of Scholars and the National Association of Scholars' Center for the Study of the Curriculum proposed to determine how students today meet the requirement, and what history departments offer as a means of doing so. What courses can students take, and what vision of U.S. history do those courses present? This study is the result of the authors' investigation. Their report focuses on the University of Texas at Austin (UT) and Texas A&M University at College Station (A&M), flagship institutions serving large undergraduate populations. For this study they examined all 85 sections of lower-division American history courses at A&M and UT in the Fall 2010 semester that satisfied the U.S. history requirement. They looked at the assigned readings for each course and the research interests of the forty-six faculty members who taught them. They also compared faculty members' research interests with the readings they chose to assign. They found that all too often the course readings gave strong emphasis to race, class, or gender (RCG) social history, an emphasis so strong that it diminished the attention given to other subjects in American history (such as military, diplomatic, religious, intellectual history). The result is that these institutions frequently offered students a less-than-comprehensive picture of U.S. history. They found, however, that the situation was far more problematic at the University of Texas than at Texas A&M University. If colleges and universities are to provide students with full and sound knowledge of American history, some things need to change. Teachers of American history should take race, class, and gender into account and should help students understand those aspects of history, but those perspectives should not take precedence over all others. The authors offer the following recommendations: (1) Review the curriculum; (2) If necessary, convene an external review; (3) Hire faculty members with a broader range of research interests; (4) Keep broad courses broad; (5) Identify essential reading; (6) Design better courses; (7) Diversify graduate programs; (8) Evaluate conformity with laws; (9) Publish better books; and (10) Depoliticize history. Appended are: (1) Tables; (2) Texas State History Requirement; and (3) Broad Characteristics of Eleven Discipline Categories. (Contains 17 tables, 32 figures and 54 footnotes.) Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract

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Descriptors:
Higher Education; Partnerships in Education; Faculty Development; Learning Activities; Professional Identity; College Faculty; Access to Computers; College Curriculum; Career Education; School Responsibility; Communities of Practice; School Effectiveness

Abstract:
This article describes selected movements within higher education that communicate one essential point: Faculty must be prepared to lead their institutions through veritable seismic shifts of the very ground on which their institutions are built. To meet these academic and administrative challenges will require the faculty to engage in ongoing professional development. Further, this article is intended to aid the reader in defining faculty development as an intentional set of educational activities designed to equip faculty to grow in their professionalism with the result of being partners in advancing all segments of the institution. When properly designed and implemented, faculty development is a process that will move higher education from where it is to where it is capable of being. Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract

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School Holding Power; Graduation Rate; College Administration; Methods; College Environment; Undergraduate Students; Student Experience; Student Empowerment; College Freshmen; College Curriculum

Abstract:
When institutions engage in discussions regarding improving retention and graduation rates, invariably the conversation focuses on entering student characteristics, especially ACT and SAT scores and high school grades. Clearly, attracting and enrolling well-prepared and motivated high-ability students will certainly improve institutional measures of academic achievement and time to degree. However, if one accepts the premise that degree completion is also an outcome of a high-quality undergraduate experience broadly defined, then institutions must focus attention on students' encounters with broad processes more than simply inputs. Indeed, if graduation is the primary metric by which institutional performance should be judged, then one has to ponder this question: "What kinds of empowering institutional processes produce the most desirable results for the majority of students?" This article underscores the importance of creating broad-based, empowering undergraduate experiences that intentionally foster a higher level of success for large numbers of students--the "process" component of a 4 Ps framework. By focusing more on processes than isolated, discrete activities, institutions can create shared responsibility for educational quality and productivity. Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract

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Descriptors:
School Holding Power; Graduation; Undergraduate Students; Academic Persistence; Academic Achievement; Educational Research; College Administration; College Admission; College Preparation; School Policy; College Curriculum; College Attendance; Time to Degree; Administrative Organization

Abstract:
Few words have dominated the vocabulary of college retention as has the word "persistence." Many institutions still struggle to engage faculty and administrators in building campuswide retention efforts, to find the organizational levers that translate the abstractions and complexities of retention theory into scalable and durable initiatives, and to demonstrate the effectiveness of those initiatives in terms of outcomes in general and degree completion in particular. Indeed, one of the core arguments of this book is that a 4 Ps perspective helps direct institutional attention to such challenges. It may be that the concept of persistence itself is part of the problem. Certainly, it has informed much good work on college campuses. But in directing its focus on what is the most visible marker of student retention--showing up from year to year--it has helped to shape a tradition of research that tends more to the descriptive than the analytical and has directed attention more toward interventions to minimize student departure than the policies and structures that might hinder or facilitate student success and degree completion. The second "P" within a 4 Ps framework of student retention--"progress"--focuses on ensuring that students are making satisfactory academic progress, rather than just persisting, toward degree completion. (Contains 1 table.) Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract

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Descriptors:
School Holding Power; College Administration; Undergraduate Students; Student Experience; Expectation; Student Recruitment; College Environment; College Curriculum; Learner Engagement; Community Colleges; Church Related Colleges; Small Colleges; Private Colleges; School Effectiveness

Abstract:
In this article, the author illustrates how three campuses have, in their own way, attempted to bring coherence to the student experience and enrich that experience by more closely matching what was promised to what each student actually experiences while enrolled. Fulfilling students' expectations that were purposefully articulated in the mission and thoughtfully created through the brand is the objective. In the end, these examples do not stand as roadmaps to institutional transformation. A small book would be needed to adequately describe how these colleges and universities revised their academic programs and shaped their campus cultures to align with a higher degree of fidelity what they say they are about with what students do and experience. It is obvious that institutions are too complex to infer that what works in one setting need only be transported and adapted for a different context. Even so, reflecting on how these three schools have attempted to deliver what they promise will hopefully provoke fresh thinking that may then evolve into an idea or two for how to bring what is supposed to happen to students closer to what they actually experience. In addition, the institutional examples in this article highlight high-impact practices--activities that benefit students and encourage learning in unusually powerful ways--which are a means for implementing critical aspects of the institutional promise. All types of institutions can find ways to intentionally design and offer high-impact experiences to students that are coherent with their mission and brand promise. Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract

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Descriptors:
Undergraduate Students; Marketing; Business Administration Education; Majors (Students); Statistics; Mathematics Anxiety; Measures (Individuals); Factor Structure; Multivariate Analysis; Factor Analysis; Gender Differences; College Credits; Internship Programs; College Curriculum; College Instruction; Teacher Student Relationship; Computer Uses in Education

Abstract:
Marketing students are known as less likely to have an affinity for the quantitative aspects of the marketing discipline. In this article, we study the reasons why this might be true and develop a parsimonious 20-item scale for measuring quantitative affinity in undergraduate marketing students. The scale was administered to a sample of business majors at a midsized university. The scale developed yielded a four-factor solution: Confidence, Enjoyment, Marketability, and Importance. Using multivariate analysis of variance, we test whether there are significant differences in quantitative affinity by gender, major, internship completion, class standing, and class completion. The findings suggest that marketing majors are less likely to enjoy the quantitative aspect of their major, but on completing a marketing research course their appreciation for the importance of quantitative tools increases. Internship completion has no effect on the undergraduate marketing students' quantitative affinity. Our study complements extant literature by providing a parsimonious scale for assessing quantitative affinity specially adapted to the marketing students and analyzing the characteristics associated with students' scores. Suggested teaching strategies, based on the findings, are included. (Contains 2 tables and 1 figure.) Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract

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