Undergraduate Education at Washington State University

1
Mary Wack
Dean, Honors College
Interim Director, Office of Undergraduate
Education
February 16, 2006
Undergraduate Education at WSU
2
Assessing Strategic Plan Progress

• A Report by Dr. Robert Shoenberg, Senior Fellow,
  American Association of Colleges and Universities
• SAGE Consulting Group

3
Purpose of Consultation

• To provide external perspective on progress in
  reaching strategic goals for undergraduate
  education
• To recommend improvements in undergraduate
  programs and the student experience based on
  national good practices
• To recommend a structure and institutional
  positioning for an office of undergraduate
  education

4
Framework for Analysis A 21st c.
Undergraduate Program

• Has high degree of intentionality and coherence
• What does this mean in practice?
• We connect the dots of the students experience
  so that they are integrated and mutually
  supportive in achieving the goals of the
  baccalaureate, e.g.
• Orientation
• Advising
• 100-level classes
• Residential experience

5
21st C. Curriculum

• Focuses on developing general intellectual skills
  as well as mastery of particular subject matter
• Integrates the goals of general education and the
  major
• Concentrates on developing skills of
  communication, critical analysis, and problem
  solving
• Creates in students a lively awareness of their
  responsibilities in a local, national, and global
  society

6
21st C. (continued)

• Uses various forms of active student inquiry as
  primary teaching strategies
• Employs an active program of performance-based
  evaluation of student learning

7
General Findings

• WSU has many elements of a 21st c. undergraduate
  program
• Essence of this program is embodied in the Six
  Learning Goals of the Baccalaureate
• However, most elements are viewed as peripheral
  to the main business of undergraduate education,
  not firmly established, or are too modestly
  supported to affect dominant practices.

8
Lower-Division Issues

• Many students have a steady diet of large classes
  in the first two years
• Low levels of academic challenge,
  below-peer-average engagement in active and
  collaborative learning
• Interaction with faculty significantly below peer
  average
• Second year attrition bears further study

9
Framework for Action

• We need to move fully into our identity as a
  research university.
• We need to create a lower-division experience
  permeated by the research culture of inquiry,
  evidence, and collaboration.

10
One Focus100-Level Classes

• One small class taught by t.t. faculty, if
  possible
• Active learning strategies, problem-based
  learning (cases)
• 100 level GER courses in the disciplines should
  focus on characteristic ways of knowing
  (epistemologies) of the domains of knowledge they
  represent.
• All course syllabi should include a statement of
  learning goals they address and make clear how
  they do so through assignments, tests,
  activities.

11
Challenges

• Staffing patterns of lower-division courses make
  intervention and improvement logistically complex.

12
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Tier I GER Enrollment By Academic Rank
7
2
2
5
Tenure Track Positions
15
14
PROF.
ASSC. PROF.
55
ASST.PROF.
INST.
GRAD. TA
OTHER
UNKNOWN
Non-Tenure Track Positions
14
Tier II GER Enrollment By Academic Rank
3
10
5
Tenure Track Positions
Non-Tenure Track Positions
14
PROF.
ASSC. PROF.
ASST.PROF.
32
INST.
LECT.
GRAD. TA
12
OTHER
UNKNOWN
1
23
15
Total GER Enrollment by Academic Rank
3
5
9
Tenure Track Positions
12
PROF.
27
ASSC. PROF.
ASST.PROF.
Non-Tenure Track Positions
INST.
13
LECT.
GRAD. TA
OTHER
1
UNKNOWN
30
16
OpportunitiesCan You . . .?

• Re-evaluate offerings to carve out a small-class
  experience at the freshman level taught by a
  tenure-track faculty member?
• Design/redesign 100-level courses around
  problem-based/active learning strategies and
  epistemologies of the discipline?
• Orient instructors who teach lower division
  courses so that they understand the departments
  goals for the course?

17
OpportunitiesCan You . . .?

• Assign PhD students rather than MA students to
  100-level courses?
• Defer TA assignments until students 2nd semester
  at WSU or beyond?
• Sequence graduate curricula so that
  epistemological/reflective practice issues (ways
  of knowing in the discipline) occur earlier
  rather than later?
• Prepare TAs so that they can answer the student
  question Why do I have to take this course? in
  light of the general education rationales for
  requiring sciences, arts and humanities, social
  sciences?

18
Challenges (continued)

• Administrative
• Promising new initiatives are viewed as
  add-ons/overloads and are weakly supported.
• Responsibility for offices whose coordinated
  efforts might address some or all of these
  problems is scattered or ambiguous.

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Opportunities

• Re-examine and re-articulate GER categories
• Establish and fund OUE
• Support Freshman Focus and other learning
  communities
• Create university-wide undergraduate research
  program
• Establish a university assessment structure

20
Model for the Evolution of Intervention Programs
21
Mary Wack
Dean, Honors College
Interim Director, Office of Undergraduate
Education
February 16, 2006
Undergraduate Education at WSU