From Admit to Alum: Qualitative Research and the Cycle of Learning - PDF document

AAC&U 2016 Karlin-Neumann/Kramer “From ‘Admit’ to ‘Alum’: Qualitative Research and the Cycle of Learning in Innovative Institutions” Patricia Karlin-Neumann, Senior Associate Dean for Religious Life, Stanford University Eli Orner Kramer, Doctoral Student, Southern Illinois University Carbondale Thursday, January 21, 2016 10:30-11:45 a.m. Eli Orner Kramer: Rabbi Patricia and I attended college at the Johnston Center for Integrative Studies (formerly Johnston College) of the University of Redlands in two different eras-- graduating in 1976 and 2012 respectively--yet we share a profound passion and appreciation for the Johnston education. At Johnston’s 40th Renewal, a bi-decade reunion of all Johnston classes, Patricia began to ask: • How do we bring our education into the world? • What happens after Johnston? • Is there a relationship between experimental pedagogy and social justice? She studied the literature on the history of experimental education by facilitating a Johnston seminar in 2010, where we met and I joined the study. We hope to illuminate Johnston's unique contribution to higher education, consider experimental education and social justice, and help advance the small field of research devoted to American innovative higher education. While the literature uses a variety of schemes and concepts to define innovative or alternative education, and with full awareness that these schools have diverse curriculum, 1

AAC&U 2016 Karlin-Neumann/Kramer different historical and social contexts, and varied success, what unified these schools was how they function within culture; they imagine what a world beyond their own could look like; and through their resistance to the perceived status quo (on which they rely for their identity), they prefigure a world that could be . A resistance to the perceived modern culture, and a vision of a world that offers more opportunities for life and dignity, has made these communities places that cultivate persons with a sense of agency. The United States is unique in its long history of these utopian, innovative, and alternative institutions of higher education . The middle of the nineteenth century heralded the earliest and some of most prominent of these counter-cultural dreams. Since the mid- nineteenth century such schools have had a unique philosophy of education, which includes a strong research mission. Despite these schools’ dynamic combination of utopian communal practice with an organic vision of progress, interest in them has generally been reserved to their faculty and students, progressive educators, and the intellectual avant-garde. It was not until the late nineteen-seventies and early eighties that higher education scholars and researchers begin to take some notice. The book that instigated the small field of innovative/alternative higher education scholarship is Gerald Grant and David Reisman’s The Perpetual Dream: Reform and Experiment in the American College . 1 They analyzed the experimental undergraduate education movement in the 1960s, and explored its roots in the earlier reforms of the 1 Gerald Grant and David Riesman, The Perpetual Dream: Reform and Experiment in the 2

AAC&U 2016 Karlin-Neumann/Kramer 1920s and 1930s. The authors distinguished among four types of “telic reform,” 2 carried out in the early to middle twentieth century: Neo-Classical , Aesthetic-Expressive , Communal-Expressive , and Activist-Radical . They then offered a critique of the successes and failures of these institutions. Further, they suggested how such reform might be implemented more broadly. Building on the work of Grant and Riesman, Steven R. Colman wrote a dissertation, and published an article on alternative higher education in the 1920s and 1930s. 3 In 1991 and 1994, philosopher of education L. Jackson Newell (President Emeritus of Deep Springs College, who has recently written a book on its history) led an innovative course that researched and published on fourteen of these schools. In line with our speculations, they concluded that “maverick schools:” …appeared to start with the ideals of visionary founders. For some, the ideal concerned the citizens who would emerge from the learning experience—from Berea, for example, learned and socially conscious Appalachians who could help enlighten their communities; from Prescott, individuals with keen understanding of important human connections with the natural environment. For others, the ideal concerned the learning experience itself—from the highly structured study of ideas and information from classic texts at St. John’s to the interdisciplinary, discussion- 2 By “telic reform” they mean “… to signify those reforms, that emphasize ends and purposes that are different from, if not hostile to, the goals of the regnant research universities…” in the early to mid-twentieth century. See: Gerald Grant and David Riesman, The Perpetual Dream: Reform and Experiment in the American College (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), 17. 3 Steven R. Coleman, "Dangerous Outposts: Progressive Experiments in Higher Education in the 1920s and 1930s," in Reinventing Ourselves: Interdisciplinary Education, Collaborative Learning, and Experimentation in Higher Education , ed. Barbara L. Smith and John McCann (Bolton, MA: Anker Publishing, 2001), 16. 3

AAC&U 2016 Karlin-Neumann/Kramer focused exploration of contemporary issues at Evergreen. Whatever the source or aim of the ideal, it is noteworthy that the beginnings of each college described in this volume (with the possible exception of College of the Atlantic) owed much to personal visions of social justice activated by uncommon energy and determination.” 4 Also building on Grant, Riesman, and Newell, Joy Kliewer studied the successes and failures of the alternative higher education movement during the nineteen-sixties, in The Innovative Campus: Nurturing the Distinctive Learning Environment . 5 She identified “…five dimensions that ‘mark out the territory’ of innovative institutions of higher education…” 6 : “interdisciplinary teaching and learning, student-centered education, egalitarianism, experiential learning, and an institutional focus on teaching rather than research and/or publication.” 7 In my Masters thesis, I explored the first generation of innovative schools in the mid-nineteenth century, while also adding needed philosophical analysis of what unifies the aims of these schools, and their place within American culture, despite their quite divergent histories, curriculum, and success. In our current study, we hope to contribute to the field by identifying what happened to alumni of one alternative school of higher 4 L. Jackson Newell, Katherine C. Reynolds, and L. Scott. Marsh, Maverick Colleges: Fourteen Notable Experiments in American Undergraduate Education , iii. He has recently completed a new book on the history of: L. Jackson Newell, Deep Springs: The Saga of Lucien L. Nunn and Deep Springs College (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2015). 5 Joy Rosenzweig. Kliewer, The Innovative Campus: Nurturing the Distinctive Learning Environment , xvii-xviii. 6 Ibid ., xviii. 7 Ibid ., xviii-xix. 4

AAC&U 2016 Karlin-Neumann/Kramer education; our alma mater. Like other members of the panel, we believe that such research has a place in the general academic literature, will help support the best practices of these schools, and will also support their admissions and retention. Rabbi Patricia Karlin-Neumann: Johnston students design their education around self-defined concentrations rather than standard majors. The alumni we interviewed had concentrations from, “Art Therapy and Buddhism: Contemplative Practice through the Visual and Poetic Arts” to “History, Social Change and the Radical Tradition.” But whatever the concentration, I often joke that we all majored in chutzpah . Hence, a social science study carried out by a philosopher and a rabbi…. This is how a 2002 graduate who served as a Johnston admissions officer explained the place to prospective students: “I would open up a course catalogue and say, "If you go to a school [with a] major that's already been negotiated without you, here it is. You follow." Then I would hold up a blank piece of paper [and] say, "[Here, at Johnston], there's nothing to follow." 8 At some point, that blank paper becomes a graduation contract, which turns out to be essential in our research. We interviewed 33 alumni from every decade of the institution and invited them to reflect on their graduation contracts. This has given us three data points—a narrative graduation contract, a recent interview, and a written 8 Interview 50.1.13.15 5