Mind

Promote High-Impact Practices Across the Curriculum

Rationale

The University of the ²ÝÝ®ÊÓƵ stands out from larger colleges and universities because of its tightly connected community, where both students and a significant portion of faculty and staff live on or near campus. This makes the University particularly well-positioned to foster close relationships between students and members of the faculty and staff—a distinction that is a point of pride to all of our constituencies and that attracts prospective students. Additionally, many high-impact practices help students to utilize knowledge learned in classrooms in pragmatic settings, deepening problem-solving skills. To live up to this ideal and take full advantage of our strategic position, the University will support efforts and initiatives that bring students, faculty, staff, and community partners together on shared intellectual, creative, and/or academic exploration.

Faculty and students collaborate on scholarly or artistic projects, small classes allow faculty to assign collaborative work, and an increasing number of faculty are incorporating community-engaged learning into their courses. These high-impact practices support students from diverse backgrounds, foster academic excellence, engage with social and environmental justice, and build community and a sense of belonging. The University will expand the number of faculty and staff who participate in these programs to broaden the support for the programs and to alleviate the disproportionate burden that has fallen on faculty and staff who have contributed their time and skills. This will require resources and freedom to explore new ways of teaching and flexible definitions of where and how teaching, learning, and intellectual relationship-building happens.

Description

The University will support the expansion of high-impact practices that already exist in many programs at the University. High-impact practices (HIPs) are pedagogical approaches that have been shown to be more beneficial to all students than a traditional lecture course and which are especially effective for students from “demographic groups historically underserved by higher education.” The American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) has identified 11 pedagogical practices that it defines as HIPs. Among these are First-Year Experiences, Capstone Courses and Projects, Undergraduate Research, Community-Based Learning, Global Learning, and Learning Communities. Not every individual faculty member or academic department will find ways to incorporate all HIPs into their work with students, but each faculty member should feel encouraged and supported in their efforts around even a single one.

HIPs to expand include:

• Capstone Courses and Projects: A capstone project is typically undertaken in the senior year and “integrates and applies” what a student has learned throughout their studies. It can take the form of a “research paper, performance, portfolio of ‘best work,’ or an exhibit of artwork.” Capstone projects do not need to be undertaken within the confines of a structured course.
  Departments already doing this work, or wanting to explore it, should be supported with adequate staffing as well as funds for the research or creative materials necessary for their students to produce the best possible work.
• Learning Communities: According to AAC&U, learning communities are when students take “two or more linked courses as a group and work closely with each other and their professors” to consider a “big question” from different disciplinary perspectives such as environmental and social justice and human rights. (See also Strategy 1C.) Ideally, linked courses would be offered in the same semester and would be indicated as being linked at the time of registration. The resultant learning community should be intellectually stimulating for both the students and the faculty who are working collaboratively across disciplines.
• Community-Engaged Learning: Through community-engaged learning, students are able to apply what they learn in the classroom to a real-world context, thus helping prepare students to be active citizens in their communities. They engage in problem-solving for which they see a real positive impact on their local and global communities, and become personally invested in the well-being and future of those communities. They meet, and work closely with, people of diverse backgrounds and perspectives. With the efforts of faculty and the Office of Civic Engagement (OCE), much progress has been made to intentionally support and encourage the integration of community-engaged learning into College courses.
• Mentored Research, Scholarship, and Creative Work: The AAC&U simply uses the term “Undergraduate Research'' as the involvement of students with “actively contested questions, empirical observation, and cutting-edge technologies.” Undergraduate research and creative work is not the sole purview of the sciences but can and does occur across the whole array of humanities, sciences, and social sciences.
  
  Ultimately, however, it is not enough for students to simply do research. They must also build relationships with faculty. Relationship-building occurs when students work closely and collaboratively with faculty mentors on research projects or creative endeavors. Furthermore, when multiple students work on the same or similar projects, a sense of community and belonging develops. An effective model for mentored research, scholarship, and creative work was piloted by the Biology Department and named the Life Sciences Research Fellowship, but could easily be expanded or replicated to be more inclusive of other disciplines and built into existing fellowships that we currently offer across the College.
  
  This level of mentorship and close student-faculty relationships is important for all students, but can be especially valuable for underrepresented students, or those who are otherwise underrepresented within a discipline. They achieve a sense of belonging and gain access to professional networks that can, in turn, open doors and sustain a successful career.
• Global Learning: With the Sewanee Pledge, more students are opting to study abroad—a high-impact practice that exposes them to different cultures and worldviews. However, rising costs of some of the most prestigious and impactful study-abroad programs have prevented College student participation. As we commit to offering high-impact practices to all students, it will be important to ensure that students can get the most out of their global learning experiences.

Supporting Tactics:

• Encourage faculty to develop learning communities in the form of paired classes. Interdisciplinary team-teaching should be considered a value added at the level of promotion and tenure review, and mini-grants and summer stipends should be available to facilitate the design of new courses.
• Provide resources to expand the opportunities to mentor undergraduate research including summer salaries for faculty, time during the academic year for faculty and students to work on projects together, and supplies, technology, computer software, travel funds, etc., for students’ projects.
• Explore integration of opportunities for engaged learning outside of the traditional academic calendar through the creation of a J-term or Maymester, which expand access to such opportunities, and provide sufficient funding for students to engage in those experiences.
• Reconsider what constitutes “teaching” during the regular academic year potentially to offer teaching credits to faculty who offer large numbers of for-credit mentored research or community-engagement experiences. Faculty should be offered access to workshops and other training opportunities to help them offer the best possible learning experiences for students.
• Encourage students to engage with high-impact practices outside of the classroom by creating a co-curricular transcript that helps them see how all their work fits together as a broad educational experience to articulate that to potential employers.
• Provide additional resources to financially disadvantaged College students to remove structural barriers to study abroad by paying for additional travel, visa, and/or immunization costs.