Undergraduate Academic Affairs

February 10, 2009

Reading assignment: Inside the Undergraduate Experience

Undergraduate Academic Affairs

The University of Washington Study on Undergraduate Learning (UW SOUL) is the most extensive study of undergraduate learning ever conducted at the UW.

UW SOUL

Researchers on the UW Study of Undergraduate Learning project with four of the undergraduates who helped them. From left, they are Amy Lu, Andrew Fisher (researcher), Idrus Syed, Jerry Gillmore (researcher), Catharine Beyer (researcher), Oluwatope Fashola, Tula Habb.

Inside the Undergraduate Experience

A result of the study, _Inside the Undergraduate Experience_ by Office of Educational Assessment staff Catharine Beyer, Gerald Gilmore, and Andrew Fisher (Jossey-Bass 2007), presents the insights and findings of the UW Study of Undergraduate Learning (UW SOUL). Unparalleled in scope, this study tracked 304 entering freshmen and transfer students as they moved through their college experience from fall 1999 through spring 2003.

“The portrait [this book] paints of the current undergraduate is complex and richly nuanced, avoiding stereotypes and needless theorizing that mask the individual struggle of all students to make sense of what they see, hear, read, and do in college. That they rise to the occasion so often—albeit in distinctively different ways—is both moving and reassuring. These stories vividly recreate the ‘awe’ of collegiate learning. They remind us all in the academy of why we do this stuff.”
—Peter Ewell

The book is available for sale at the University Bookstore.