Centering on Students Scott Evenbeck National Conference on - PDF document

Centering on Students Scott Evenbeck National Conference on Students in Transition St. Louis November 3, 2006 Students come to campus expecting to learn and to get jobs or go on to graduate or professional school. What contexts — developed, implemented, and assessed by faculty, staff, and students working together — will foster student success? How might we think about student expectations and student learning in ways that will build on what students bring to campus and support their academic achievement and persistence, resulting in graduation? What is the student experience of our campuses? Who is listening? Thank you, Nina. It is good to be here and an honor to share thoughts with persons so committed to the success of students. IUPUI has learned so much from you and your colleagues. And, we have lots of stories on campus about our experiences at the conferences. Who could ever forget the incredible buffets at the top of the residence hall in Columbia. At a recent retirement party, a faculty member recounted how Barbara Jackson had made such a big deal of that reception when pitching the conference to her — and how it lived up to the billing. And then there was the time when the international conference was in Ireland and one of our colleagues went out and bought towels because the ones in the residence hall just didn’t measure up. Our lives at IUPUI are closely intertwined with the work of the Center, and we draw great meaning from our interactions and networking and we take time to celebrate that involvement. Several years ago, Jean MacGregor recommended her “new favorite” book to me. It was on communities of practice by Wenger. I read that book, and it helps me understand our work here. Persons doing the same work develop vocabularies and sets of assumptions and understandings that help them do that work. That’s what we serving students in transition are doing here. Back home, we’re often in our roles in the disciplines or in specialized roles like advising. Here, we learn from one another as we define ourselves by our commitment to students in transition. 1

That’s what we want for our students— for their lives to become intertwined with ours and for them to have interactions they value and for them to celebrate their experiences. We mainly want for them to learn. But, we are social creatures, and we need to find ways to support students in their transitions that help them connect. I come from an urban campus. About 3% of our students live on campus. Most work. Most are first generation students. Many are low income. I remember hearing Sandy Astin giving a talk several years ago where he talked about risk factors. Our campus had EVERY one, most in very significant ways — commuters, working students, first generation students, low income students, often underprepared students. We talked a lot about barriers. How can we overcome this barrier or that barrier? If you have four barriers, are things worse than if you have one barrier? I got tired of that. Let’s deal with individuals and believe each can succeed. Though it’s good for us to know about the barriers and how to address them, I think I can do better by a focus on the student. We have persons coming to campus. They are special. Why? Because we admitted them and we want them to succeed. I want to start this evening with you thinking about why you had the major you did in college. Take a minute. Tell yourself why you had your major in college. (pause) Pick someone next to you. Ask him or her what was his or her major? Quick question and answer. Now, tell yourself why he or she had that major. Got it? (pause) We’ll come back to that. I want to share a bit about some lessons I have learned with transitions in college. I come from Indianapolis and for a long time shopped at the neighborhood grocery where David Letterman bagged groceries so I am going to use an Indiana way of thinking about things —a top ten list. We’re kind of in the Bible Belt so there may some unconscious connection to the ten commandments but let’s not go there. Psychologists ’ research, and this is old stuff, say we have a major number seven plus or minus two that we can remember. Back when learning research was what we mainly did, one prominent psychologist showed that we can recall seven things. But since things are never simple — he could account for more if he tacked on plus or minus two. We used to tell our students in intro psych that phone numbers were seven digits because we could pretty easily remember seven digits. But, since people and circumstances vary, and since psychologists want to be right, he added that plus or minus two. So I have to tell you I am stretching the bounds here by having ten lessons learned. 2

It’s good to be here in St. Louis for the conference. How great that the Midwest underdog playing against another Midwest team won the World Series. I remember my first visit over here, thinking beforehand that the arch would be a bauble or something and not impressive. I was really wrong. I cac look at that arch for a long time and think about all it connotes. Walk down there and look at it at different times of the day when the light is different. Saarinen was good. If you don’t mind bumping knees with strangers if you’re by yourself or if you have someone with whom you’re comfortable bumping knees, go to the top. Saarinen allows us to be part of the art. He allows us to experience it and make it part of us and us part of it. When our students come to campus, do we allow them to become part of the campus? Do we allow the campus to become part of them? That’s my first lesson learned. Students come as whole persons. How do we validate who they are and welcome them into the community of the campus? They are not blank slates. Do you remember the Yeats quotation? Education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire . Years ago, after one of Stuart’s international conferences, one in Dublin, my son and his friend and I headed to the west of Ireland. We were mainly taking it as it went — which I learned was the best course with teenage boys — in that context at least — and we explored towns and the countryside day by day. One of my must-dos, though, was to see Yeats tower. It’s in a part of Ireland where the signs are in Irish. And, then, at least, t he roads leading to the tower were still mainly those little one-lane roads where the sheep are wandering across sometimes and where you have to stop when a vehicle comes toward you. We had gotten up early that morning, setting out from Galway for this one dad- required exploration. It was really foggy and we were lost a lot. Finally, we got there, slogging through the fog. We went over a little creek. There were cows around. And we looked the direction we were driving, and the sun broke and we saw this tower. It was one of those special times burned in my memory. I have a lot invested in that statement about the lighting of a fire rather than the filling of a pail. And, somehow, all that light shining through the fog and the tower became my symbol of that statement. Light. Shining. Coming from within almost. Radiant. Can we see that spark in our students? Can we see an entering student and help provide a context for the students to tell us enough about where they are headed or might have done or care about to let that fire catch? 3