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How the strengths of an artist apply to the 21st century job search

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Students cultivate self-reflection, problem solving and critical thinking in UW Dance Program’s Senior Seminar, readying them to articulate their experience as a dancer to prepare them for success in the job market

Graduates from the UW Dance Program pursue careers in arts leadership, nonprofits, teaching, medicine, movement therapy and more. Since many students double or even triple major, dance alumni enter the job market with a high level of skill in giving and receiving feedback that is valuable in a wide range of team and coaching environments. Faculty also focus on cultivating self-reflection, creative problem solving, critical thinking and a fearless willingness to try new things. Dance majors can then bring these attitudes to their job search, which gives them a jump-start in the Dance 480 Senior Seminar.

The seminar guides students to analyze both what they want from a career and how their individual strengths as an artist will match their aspirations. In the dancer’s tradition of experiential learning, they also spend nearly a full day on a job shadow. As they summarize what they learned in the class, students practice verbalizing the meaning of their personal experience with dance, a critical but challenging skill for dancers.

Thinking critically about CVs and personal strengths

“My senior seminar on career preparation starts at 8:30 in the morning, and I can tell from the lack of absenteeism that the students want to get something out of it.”

Hannah Wiley
Professor, Dance

 

Dance professor Hannah Wiley teaches the program’s senior seminar. She invites alumni and dance professionals to speak with her class about careers, and asks guests to make their curriculum vitae available ahead of time so that the class can analyze them. “They see how these professionals present themselves, and it helps the students shape how they will want to be presented,” says Wiley. After a guest lecturer’s visit, Wiley asks students to discuss what they learned from the content of the presentation and the way the visitor described his or her knowledge and skills.

Through this exercise, “I figured out how to explain the ways my public health degree relates to my dance degree,” says Sean O’Bryan, a senior double-majoring in dance and public health. “At first I didn’t think cover letters were that important, but now I see how I can represent my personality and accomplishments in them. I think it makes me stand out.”

Job shadowing helps students find the right professional fit

After learning about different careers from guests, students in the senior seminar choose a job to shadow. This offers students more nuanced insight into fields they’re interested in exploring. “I don’t know any job where you’d get any real sense of what it’s like in an hour,” says Wiley. “If a job is boring to you, you’re not going to figure that out in an hour, but you’ll figure it out in six.” Shadowing has helped dance students discover what they like and, just as usefully, what they don’t. “There have been some pretty amazing things that have happened,” says Wiley. “Like, a student going to shadow a first grade teacher and realizing, ‘I could never do that.’ But another student saw first graders using dance throughout their day and thought it was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen!”

“If they fall on their face, we’re there to help them figure out what to do next. It’s so key to them feeling like they can make their way through the world.”

Juliet McMains
Associate Professor and Donald E. Petersen Endowed Fellow, Dance

 

Meaningful reflection aids purposeful career decisions

Students give a final presentation in which they reflect on their professional skills, how they expect to apply their personal strengths to the career they plan to pursue, and how what they learned from their job shadow affected their career plans.

“I ask them ‘why’ a lot,” says Wiley. “If they’re applying to medical school, they present to us on why they chose one school over another one.” Wiley says reflection helps students gain a sense of purpose and empowerment that they are in control of their own future, and know that they have skills to accomplish their goals.

The presentation also forces students to verbalize why dance and artistry matter to them. “It’s important that all of us in this field learn to talk about dance because talking isn’t how we relate to it, but it’s how we relate to other people about it,” Wiley explains. “The idea is to practice that skill.”

“Often students who are double-majoring learn more about creativity here, then suddenly realize ‘Oh, I am creative in math, I just never thought of it that way.’”

Jennifer Salk
Program Director and Associate Professor, Dance

 

Pushing students to take risks can lead to surprising results

The dance faculty are constantly encouraging students to try something new, from experimenting with a different shoulder movement to applying for a dream job. “You have to try things,” says Siena Dumas Ang, who is triple majoring in dance, math and computer science. She says her dance training make her more willing to spend the time necessary to experiment in her other studies. “You might need to spend five hours writing code to see if it works, and a lot of people don’t want to spend that time, but in dance you just have to try a lift to know if it works.”

The results of trying something new or uncomfortable often surprises the students. Wiley pushes her seminar students by having them write a tailored cover letter for their dream job, even if they feel it is too far out of reach and don’t intend to send it. One recent graduate took a chance, submitted her dream-job application and was accepted for a year-long internship at the Kennedy Arts Center, which led to a position with the prestigious Dance USA. “It makes a difference to them to have someone say, ‘Yes, you can do that job, why wouldn’t you apply?’” notes Wiley.

The confidence to know when to lead and when to follow

The collaborative, interdependent environment of dance mirrors professional team settings in many ways. Both require a team player who knows her own strengths, how her performance fits in to the bigger picture, how other people rely on her, and when to step forward as a leader to give direction or even a solo performance. Moving between these roles requires a team member to be comfortable with giving and receiving objective feedback as well as a high level of self-awareness, which are nurtured through reflection and other exercises in the dance program.

Dumas Ang summarizes her experiences learning these skills with dance: “It’s about discovering what kind of artist you are, from the theoretical side and the practical side, blending it all and becoming somebody who is confident in who you are.”

Learn More

Read the full Provost report on how to link academic passion to life and careers.

Dispelling the myth of the unemployable humanities major

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Through the History Fellows Program, faculty in the History Department are helping undergraduates realize the wide variety of career options open to them

“It’s a very collaborative endeavor — building connections in the community for internships, and developing a really solid, well-organized curriculum.”

Adam Warren
Director of Undergraduate Studies and Associate Professor, History,

 

Historians spend a great deal of time separating fact from fiction as they dive into myths and misinterpretations of the past. Now, through a mix of academics and professional engagement in the History Fellows Program, the UW History Department is dispelling the modern myth that a history degree is professionally limiting by helping undergraduates realize the wide variety of options open to them.

Launched in 2013, the History Fellows Program is open to junior and senior majors who apply for a three-quarter sequence of classes and workshops, culminating with an internship.

Faculty took the lead in this effort. “We’re confronting head-on the assumption that a history degree leads to nothing,” says Adam Warren, associate professor and director of Undergraduate Studies. Warren and his colleagues had noted the trend of students taking courses they see as ‘employable’ at the expense of indulging their curiosity and pursuing their passions. “It doesn’t have to be an either/or situation,” he says.

Faculty and staff collaborated to create programming to complement students’ academic coursework. “We wanted something in tandem with the academics they’re doing, and not imposing itself into the curriculum, because we don’t want our faculty to re-adjust how they teach history,” says Matt Erickson, the department’s director of Academic Services. “But we needed students to think concurrently about professional development while in their undergraduate career.”

Tailoring curriculum with the Career Center

“The real point is not to funnel our students into traditional places that history students go, but for them to realize that they’re getting very adaptable skills that apply in all sorts of different career and professional settings.”

Jon Olivera
History Fellows Program co-manager and Undergraduate Adviser, History

 

The department hired doctoral candidate Michael Aguirre to lead the History Fellows Program with Undergraduate Adviser Jon Olivera.

They reached out to Patrick Chidsey, a counselor in the Career Center, and together they developed a curriculum specifically for history majors.

The History Fellows Program focuses on placing each student’s career goal at the forefront. The first step is helping students identify their strengths and see how they relate to future options. “Especially in humanities where that path is less obvious, we want students to develop pride in the choices they’ve made, to recognize the value in what they’ve done inside and outside the classroom and to see the interrelatedness of it all,” says Chidsey, who was a history major himself.

Graduates of the History Department have gone on to jobs with Google, The Brookings Institute, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the National Park Service, Museum of History & Industry (MOHAI) and the Alaska Center for Energy and Power.

Peers help each other articulate unique skills with a new lens

In their first quarter, History Fellows build career skills through workshops on writing strong résumés, practicing interview skills, and expanding networks through informational interviews and social media. The sessions are purposefully structured for small group work.

“During the résumé workshop, students learned a lot from each other about presenting their skills in an attractive and concise way. If there isn’t something that catches an employer’s eye in about four seconds, they’ll move on. Even I edited my résumé after that!”

Michael Aguirre
History Fellows Program co-manager and Doctoral Candidate, History

 

“Small groups allow students to relate to one another, share the same concerns and push others to realize individual skills and accomplishments,” says Chidsey. “The intimacy to let down walls, challenge each other or brainstorm in a vulnerable way is important.” As they work together, each student builds confidence and practices articulating the skills gained from academic accomplishments such as writing major research papers.

“Sometimes you need somebody else on the outside to see your strengths. I believe we all left that workshop thinking, ‘Wow, we’re history rock stars,’” says Debra Pointer, a senior who was in the first History Fellows cohort. That confidence, along with support from program staff, helped her land an internship working in the archives at Planned Parenthood of the Greater Northwest in spring 2014.

Career fairs are a transformative experience

The Fellows program provides a framework for history undergraduates to articulate skills as humanists with their strengths in information literacy, critical thinking, cultural understanding and more. Even when faced with position descriptions that never ask for a history degree, the Fellows learn how to adapt and tailor their pitch.

Students are then required to put their freshly polished résumés to good use by attending at least two career fairs to gain practice. “I wanted them to immerse themselves in the experience and see what the competition is,” says Aguirre. “It was really eye-opening for the students.”

Pointer notes that the experience was challenging but ultimately helped each of them build confidence. “It’s hard to sell yourself. But you have the skills. It’s about finding your way to talk about what you can do,” she says.

Internships connect academics with careers before students graduate

Skills gained in the first two quarters are put in practice by spring quarter, when many students land internships. The program’s faculty and staff work to give students meaningful options, although they also encourage students to find new opportunities that suit their interests.

“A lot of people have the perception of ‘Oh, you’re a history major, does that mean that you’re going to be a teacher?’ And I say, ‘No, you can do a lot of things with a history degree, actually.’”

Molly Malone
Senior, History major

 

Senior Molly Malone, whose spring 2014 internship at the Labor Archives of Washington at the University of Washington inspired her to pursue master’s degrees in History and Archives and Records Management, is a strong advocate of these experiential learning opportunities. “I tell people all the time that they should do an internship,” Malone says.

“It’s the best thing that ever happened to me.”
Studying the past, looking to the future: “So much of what we are doing is breaking down myths and getting history majors to realize they have skills to bring to the table, even in a supposedly technology-driven world,” Aguirre observes.

Through small-group workshops, networking practice and internships, the Fellows emerge more confident in themselves and their ability to find a fulfilling career after studying their passion.

“I followed my heart with my history degree,” says Pointer. “I would love to see all history majors know they have skills that mean something.”

Learn More

Read the full Provost report on how to link academic passion to life and careers.

Career preparation at the college level

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CAREER CENTER @ ENGINEERING

Benjamin Janicki, mechanical engineering master’s student (BS ‘14) consults with Jim Buttrick, Boeing employee, in the new Boeing Advanced Research Center that enables students to work collaboratively with Boeing engineers on aircraft and spacecraft assembly and manufacturing.
Photo credit: Brian DalBalcon

Designed for efficiency and collaboration, the new Career Center @ Engineering will be a branch of the Career Center housed in the College of Engineering. The joint center is scheduled to open to students in fall 2015 and will be located in Loew Hall. It will function as a single entry point for employers seeking to hire engineering professionals. The center aims to improve visibility and responsiveness to students and companies, to increase the number of companies hosted at career fairs and conducting on-campus interviews, and to provide students with more opportunities for internships and jobs.

As College of Engineering Dean Michael Bragg describes it, “The Career Center @ Engineering is an important initiative for the college — one that promises to enrich our students’ educational experience and deepen our industry partnerships. Our students develop strong technical skills in the classroom. This center will expand opportunities for experience-based learning through increased industry interaction, internships and training. This will allow our students to enter the workforce with confidence and, at the same time, meet the needs of industry.”

The Career Center @ Engineering will coach and prepare students in areas of career strategy and successful job search techniques, including:

Basic job search skills: Writing and tailoring a résumé to a specific opportunity, how to build and sustain a professional network, and how to conduct an excellent job interview.

Knowing future options: Familiarity with the variety of engineering careers and how to explore these options.

Connecting academics with professional experiences: Understanding of skills gained through leadership, research, community service, internships and other co-curricular and curricular experiences at UW.

Ability to articulate proficiencies: Concisely communicating about talents, strengths, values, transferrable skills and experiences in ways that align with various industries and engineering career options.

 COLLEGE OF ARTS & SCIENCES CAREER PREPARATION

The College of Arts & Sciences is helping students learn how to translate their education to career applications through various college-to-career opportunities focused on job skills, networking, internships and strategic mentorship. Robert Stacey, dean of the College of Arts & Sciences, says the goal is to “introduce students to the skills and attributes that employers are seeking, and to do so early in their UW careers. We want them to recognize that, regardless of major, they can increase the value of their education by starting to prepare now for the world of employment.” Students can add to their experiences beginning with the following options:

“I’d recommend Koru to anyone, whatever major. Whatever program you’re looking to go into, I would say Koru is for you. It gives you a new way to think about school and education, and your career path later in life.”

Gabriela Rojas-Luna
Sophomore, Philosophy major

 

Koru@UW A&S:

The College has partnered with Koru, a Seattle-based training company, to offer Koru@UW A&S, an intensive program that will introduce Arts & Sciences students to skills needed to be successful in the business world. Beginning in late summer 2015, students can enroll in a two-week long session on the UW’s Seattle campus. Students will learn about a range of businesses and will work in small teams to tackle real-life business problems presented to them by a local company. The Career Center is planning follow-up sessions specially tailored to take these students to the next level of professional development, including how to land an internship and refining LinkedIn profiles.

A&S Internships (under development):

The College is rethinking how students approach and take advantage of internship opportunities. From scope of work to location and duration, Arts & Sciences is piloting new ways students can integrate internships with their undergraduate experience. These might include novel forms such as “micro-internships” that last just a day or two, allowing students to quickly assess projects and organizations to more closely align with their skills and interests. Numerous partners, both on and off campus, are committed to reimagining what the internship experience could look like.

Mentorship Activities (under development):

The College is also working closely with the UW Alumni Association to develop a program pairing UW alumni with current students preparing to enter the world of work. Alumni/student mentorships will address a multitude of shared UW Arts & Sciences experiences such as tackling a challenging academic major, leveraging a diverse and ever-evolving undergraduate curriculum, and becoming informed citizens. The mentor/mentee relationship will help students connect their degree to their life and goals after graduation.

Learn More

Read the full Provost report on how to link academic passion to life and careers.

‘Productive disruption’ teaches students to be intentional learners

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Center for 21st Century Liberal Learning (C21)

“Our goal for first-year students is that, by the end of the year, they can present a coherent story about their intellectual goals. If we help students do this work in the pre-major, they are more likely to end up in the right majors for the right reasons. And they become engaged students who are a joy to teach.”

Kevin Mihata
C21 Director and Associate Dean for Educational Programs, College of Arts and Sciences

The Center for 21st Century Liberal Learning (C21) is a recent initiative of the College of Arts and Sciences exploring how to best prepare undergraduates to thrive at the UW and beyond. The Center’s core programming revolves around the C21 Fellows, a group of students who experience a unique curriculum tailored to their needs, and who also contribute to shaping the future of C21 itself. Undergraduate students apply to participate in the program. The most recent cohort started in summer 2014, building skills and relationships even before their first quarter at the UW. C21 is collaborating closely with Undergraduate Academic Affairs, First-Year Programs, and the Career Center in this effort to re-think what a college education should offer.

Putting students in the driver’s seat: In order to get the most out of college, students need to learn to be strategic early on, say C21 staff. “At a big research university like this, if students are not intentional about their own learning, they will miss a lot of great opportunities,” says Director Kevin Mihata. Through experiential learning, facilitated discussions and structured reflection, C21 staff guide Fellows as they learn to be proactive about their educations rather than simply ticking off requirements. “It seems clear that they can’t learn this just by us telling them,” says Mihata. Four years of practice as C21 Fellows helps students develop key skills, attitudes and habits they can draw on to shape their futures.

Learning is less about finding the right answers than asking the right questions: C21 leaders find that incoming students often need to unlearn some attitudes and practices in order to get the most out of their UW education. Intensive, early fall experiences are designed to jump-start this new way of thinking before first-year students ever arrive on campus. In 2014, this consisted of a short study abroad experience in León, Spain. “They have done everything right to get here, but they haven’t had a lot of experience operating in ambiguity,” says Gretchen Ludwig, C21’s curriculum coordinator, of students transitioning from high school. “In León, they came to us for feedback but were really fishing for what we wanted, for the answer. After we didn’t tell them, they began to reflect that maybe there isn’t just one answer.” C21 Fellow Alvaro Contreras says the León trip was “preparing us for what college is going to be like. In high school we’re so used to having a rubric of what we have to do. Here they just told us, ‘Go out, explore, and then give us a presentation.’ ”

A ‘home base’ as students adjust to college life: Like the communities many undergraduates find in the Greek system or student organizations, the C21 Fellows program offers students a tight-knit campus ‘home’ with small cohorts and dedicated campus mentors. For example, Bob Stacey, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, advised the Fellows in Spain during their summer study abroad experience. C21 staff see such support as critical to student success. The first quarter of college is “not a comfortable place to be,” says Ludwig. “They really need a community to support them as they try to make sense of their college experience.” C21 Fellows have three overlapping communities: their own cohort, a “learning lab” that mixes together about 15 C21 Fellows at different points in their academic careers, and all 72 C21 students. Fellow Louie Vital notes, “It gives us a way to not be stuck within our own discipline, but to really learn from each other, and what other majors and students have to offer.”

C21 Fellows (left to right) Alvaro Contreras, Ednauh Kamlondy, Louie Vital and Tiffanie Matthews reflected on their UW experiences in a C21 video. Contreras remarks, “We don’t have anyone saying, ‘Do this, do this this way.’ It’s all the way we interpret it.” Kamlondy notes, “Here they say, ‘This is the prompt, what can you do with it?’ ” Images courtesy of Isaiah Brookshire.
C21 Fellows (left to right) Alvaro Contreras, Ednauh Kamlondy, Louie Vital and Tiffanie Matthews reflected on their UW experiences in a C21 video. Contreras remarks, “We don’t have anyone saying, ‘Do this, do this this way.’ It’s all the way we interpret it.” Kamlondy notes, “Here they say, ‘This is the prompt, what can you do with it?’” Images courtesy of Isaiah Brookshire.
“I teach my 9th graders in the Bronx the same things that C21 taught me: creative problem-solving, love of learning and resilience. I am so happy to facilitate the kind of mentoring relationships that helped me succeed in college for students who otherwise wouldn’t have them.”

Jeevon Durkee ‘13
C21 Fellow 2012-13; B.A., Geography

Out-of-the-box assignments: C21 coursework reflects the program’s focus on ‘productive disruption’—getting students to take on challenges that may be uncomfortable but activate creativity. The C21 curriculum is made up of one-credit seminars that meet for 90 minutes each week. Assignments are often open-ended. One recent activity asked Fellows to film a video reflection about their UW highs and lows so far. Responses ranged from tears to laughter, from quiet reflection to dancing—sometimes all in the same video. These displays of vulnerability and resilience sparked a lively class discussion about the unexpected stresses of college, and how to pull through them. Through assignments like this, mentors believe C21 students have an opportunity to learn to take risks safely—what Assistant Director Cynthia Caci jokingly calls “supervised floundering.”

Students co-create the curriculum: C21 coursework is already student-driven­, but juniors and seniors are also asked to submit proposals about next steps for C21 as a whole. For example, juniors recently designed and proposed a C21 major. Mihata says, “We are in year three, and this is an iterative process. We are co-creating the model with the students.”

A UW education is more than the diploma: As C21 Fellow Ednauh Kamlondy reflects, “University is not just a place to focus on your major, but a place to learn as much as possible.” One thing C21 staff want students to learn is that they don’t have to find every answer on their own. “They are so used to the individualized testing culture,” says Ludwig. “That’s how they’ve been judged. But knowledge is distributed­. What we are helping them learn is how to ask for help, navigate networks and use those networks to solve problems.”

Making better majors: C21 leaders have a series of goals in mind. “The first quarter is just about building a support system,” Mihata says. “The first year is about helping students develop an intentional self-story of their own intellectual aspirations. There’s also an institutional goal here: to get students into their majors earlier, and into the right majors for the right reasons.”

Learn More

Read the full Provost report on how to link academic passion to life and careers.

Supporting student-veterans working towards a degree and a dream

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Veterans Incubator for Better Entrepreneurship (VIBE)

“This program launched just over a year ago and we already have three or four viable companies that are attracting investors. People from all over the country have called me to ask what our students are doing. VIBE is a start-up itself, but this really can be a national model.”

Phil Potter
Director, VIBE, UW Tacoma

 

The Veterans Incubator for Better Entrepreneurship (VIBE) recruits University of Washington Tacoma students with military backgrounds into a cohort-based program that provides coaching, mentorship from local business leaders and peer support as they flesh out and implement their ideas for new businesses. On Veterans Day 2013, the Tacoma campus launched the VIBE program, which Alfie Alvarado-Ramos, director of the Washington State Department of Veteran Affairs, celebrated as “the only one of its kind in the nation.” VIBE students benefit from specialized mentoring that integrates their in-class learning and their broader goals. Director Phil Potter says, “This is a learn-by-doing experience. We’re looking to help veterans understand what it takes to plan a business, start a business, launch a business, but do it within the educational context so they’re not alone. We want to make sure these students know what it takes, and put them in positions to succeed.”

Veterans are natural entrepreneurs: Potter believes military veterans naturally have the necessary skills to run a business. “If you take a look at a spec sheet for what we think good entrepreneurs are and what we know veterans are, they match up really well,” he says. ”They both understand when to lead and when to follow. Both groups are innovative and push themselves. They have a tendency to complete an outcome or a mission, oftentimes in the absence of ideal resources. And at the end of the day, they just get things done.” VIBE member and U.S. Army veteran Steve Buchanan runs ChooseVets, a task-outsourcing business founded on his confidence in other veterans. He says, “The Army has already background checked them, they’ve been trained and they know how to call you ‘sir’ and ‘ma’am’ and get a job done.”

“Often one of the biggest challenges working with young entrepreneurs is their lack of practical experience, but this is not a problem with our military veterans. They know how to run meetings, delegate tasks, set goals and get things done.”

John B. Dimmer
VIBE mentor; co-founder of the Tacoma Angel Network

 

Helping student-veterans translate their skills to the civilian context: Potter considers “incredible veteran talent” one of the South Puget Sound’s best “natural resources.” However, many of VIBE’s student-veterans report struggling to find an outlet for their skills after returning to civilian life. Shem Zakem, a former Army signal support systems specialist who recently graduated from UW Tacoma, remembers, “I thought that the training and skills I had from communications would have a good translation to the civilian sector, but I came to find out that…not so much.” VIBE seeks to “unleash that talent for great things,” says Potter.

The cohort model facilitates creative collaboration and peer-mentoring: VIBE students come to the UW with different military training and enroll in a variety of degree programs. As a result, they often find that one of their best assets is each other. Zakem describes his symbiotic friendship and professional relationship with attorney and business school graduate Buchanan, commenting, “Steve can say, ‘I’m having trouble with my software, what should I do?’ I can go to Steve and have him explain what an LLC is,” referring to a limited liability company. Now as alumni of VIBE, Zakem and Buchanan are focused on growing the businesses they nurtured during their time at the UW. Both are receiving widespread attention for their work: Zakem’s company, Bettery, was identified by the Washington Department of Veterans Affairs as one of the top new veteran-led startups in the state, and Buchanan was invited to attend the State of the Union address with the Washington state delegation as an innovative business leader seeking to benefit veterans.

Cohort now, professional network later: In the challenging, risky world of entrepreneurship, a supportive community can make a big difference. VIBE provides a space for UW Tacoma students who are veterans and aspiring entrepreneurs to come together as professional collaborators. “We’re not just in VIBE together, we’re friends­, too,” says Buchanan. Zakem adds, “It’s not a competition, it’s a team effort. Everyone has contributed to everyone else’s company in one way or another, whether it’s advice or a sympathetic ear. So we’re all invested in each others’ successes.” Most VIBE students are also committed to the Puget Sound region for the long term, notes Potter. As a result, VIBE relationships can grow into a professional network with a lasting impact on the community.

“There are a lot of programs out there to help veterans from the ‘handout’ mindset rather than the ‘hand up’ mindset. I’d rather have someone help me in a way that will help me move up the ladder rather than just help me in the short term.”

Shem Zakem ‘14
VIBE member; U.S. Army veteran; B.S., Computer Science and Systems, UW Tacoma

 

UW faculty are a key resource: As entrepreneurs and students, VIBE members can draw on courses and faculty across the University to help further their business goals. When Zakem realized his background in computer science didn’t prepare him to run the financial side of his company, he signed up for a class at the Milgard School of Business. “I could have banged my head against the wall teaching myself, but I took a class and learned it in three months,” he says. Zakem also sought out advice from faculty members such as Andrew Fry, assistant director of Industry Partnerships and lecturer at the UW Tacoma Institute of Technology, who is also an experienced entrepreneur.

A curriculum driven by student needs: VIBE is mostly a mentor-led model, says Potter. Local companies and business leaders run small seminars for VIBE students that are tailored to their current needs and interests. Because it is a small group­—the first cohort was 15 students—mentors can meet them where they are. Potter says, “They come in at different stages—not just different stages in their business development but also their academic career. This requires a flexible curriculum.”

The university as convener: Comparing VIBE members to entrepreneurs going it alone, Zakem says, “Being associated with the University of Washington lends us instant credibility.” A number of business incubators exist across the country, but VIBE benefits from three key attributes that are rarely found together: one of the largest veteran populations in the country, the Puget Sound’s thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem and the faculty and expertise of a world-class public research university. The University brings these elements together and connects veterans with the people who want them to succeed, such as vocal VIBE supporters U.S. Senator Patty Murray and Joint Base Lewis-McChord Commander Colonel Charles Hodges, along with the local business community.

Learn More

Read the full Provost report on how to link academic passion to life and careers.

Helping graduate students find alternative careers

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Career Development Organization for physicists and astronomers (CDO)

“There are three things I know I like: research, mentoring people and the Northwest. I’m looking to find a career path that combines those. I think I have plenty of options that will use my skill sets appropriately and they’ll all be good ones.”

Andrew Laszlo ‘14
2013-14 Coordinator, CDO; Ph.D., Physics; Postdoctoral Researcher, UW Nanopore Physics Lab

 

Several years ago, physics and astronomy graduate students co-founded an organization to support students looking for jobs outside of academia. They met a growing need to connect graduating Ph.D. students to employers. “The reality is that most people don’t go into a tenure-track position,” says Andrew Laszlo, who was a 2013-14 coordinator of the Career Development Organization for physicists and astronomers (CDO). “A lot of people are going on to do other things. Our goal is to get people thinking about other options and to see what’s out there.”

Connecting alumni, employers and current students: The CDO’s primary focus is an annual networking event. Student organizers invite local and international employers, many of whom are also alumni. On the first day, employers present to students. On the second day, students present their own work to employers. “The idea is to get people talking,” says Laszlo. The visiting professionals represent the range of opportunities open to graduating scientists. Recent graduate Amit Misra notes, “It was interesting to see their career paths. They’re not your professors; they are people who branched off and did what I’ve been hoping to do—find a career outside of academia.”

Creating well-rounded scientists: CDO aims to help science graduate students become better job candidates. Laszlo summarizes the challenge: “I think employers are happy to hire candidates who are good at working with other people and have skills beyond just being intelligent.” As a result, CDO’s programming highlights the value of ‘soft skills.’ The organization’s mission statement contends: “To remain competitive in the job market, physicists, mathematicians and astronomers need to augment their analytic and problem-solving skills with flexibility, leadership, and cross-disciplinary aptitude.”

UW neuroscience graduate student Liza Shoenfeld (sidebar) mapped out possible alternative career choices and sought out informational interviews to explore those options. She now works for a management consulting firm in New York.

Image courtesy of Liza Shoenfeld and branchingpoints.com.

Partnering with the Career Center: To prepare for its fall employer event, CDO holds two workshops with the Career Center: one on effective résumés and another called Networking for Shy People. Laszlo says CDO members have found these events and the Career Center overall “to be incredibly useful. It’s not the norm for physics people to be social, actively engaging with other people and selling themselves,” he says. “That’s what you do when you’re networking. So it’s a bit of social coaching.”

Seminars with guest speakers inform students about career paths: In addition to the annual networking event, CDO organizes a variety of other workshops and seminars, many of which feature guest speakers (often alumni) talking about their fields. Recent presentation topics include working in rocket science and employment opportunities at NASA, and landing a faculty job at a small college. CDO also recently arranged a tour of Boeing linear accelerator labs and a chance to meet the scientists who work there.

“I just got a job at Microsoft as a data scientist. I was asked to give a presentation on my research to start off my interview day, and I was able to re-use a lot of the presentation I gave at the CDO event last year. It was one of the few talks I’d given that was geared towards a technical audience, but one that didn’t have much astronomy experience.”

Amit Misra ‘14
Ph.D., Astronomy

 

For students, by students: For ten years, “the CDO has been passed down grad student to grad student,” says Laszlo, the third generation of coordinators from his research lab. Leading CDO was a core part of his UW experience. “Mentoring other students was an important part of feeling like I belonged in the department and was contributing to the community,” says Laszlo. “And, on my résumé, it demonstrates leadership and organization skills.”

For networking, practice makes perfect: Some CDO participants find jobs directly through the organization, such as Nathan Kurz ‘10, who was recruited by the electron microscope firm Nion after a senior engineer saw his presentation at the fall employer event. For students who don’t get a job offer right away, the event provides “good practice for how to present yourself,” says Laszlo. Misra agrees. “Just interacting with people, seeing what they were doing and how my skills from graduate school could transfer was really helpful,” he says, adding, “Learning to talk about my research to a non-astronomy audience was a good experience. At academic conferences you’re talking to the 10 or 20 people in your field who already pretty much know what you did anyway.”

Student groups complement Graduate School offerings: The Graduate School has a formal program for introducing graduate students to career options. In collaboration with the Career Center and the Office of Postdoctoral Affairs, the Graduate School’s Core Programs offer workshops, seminars and online content geared toward career fulfillment, whether in academia, nonprofits or private industry.

Lessons Learned

  • Tapping recent alumni to participate in professional networking and mentorship opportunities helps students recognize transferable skills and explore a wider range of career options.
  • Graduate students are most competitive in the job market when they have both deep disciplinary expertise and practice communicating their knowledge and skills to people outside their field.

Learn More

Read the full Provost report on how to link academic passion to life and careers.

Supporting success through an integrated core curriculum

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Discovery Core for first-year and pre-major students at UW Bothell

“The Discovery Core is one the most high-impact, revolutionary attributes of the Bothell campus.”

Ismaila Maidadi ‘12
Program Manager, CUSP; B.A., Global Studies and Policy Studies, UW Bothell

 

First-year students at UW Bothell are immersed in a curriculum designed both to inspire creativity and to bridge the transition to the rigor of college-level academic work. When the Bothell campus added freshmen and sophomore students in 2006, the campus also created the Center for University Studies and Programs (CUSP) to house support services for first-year and pre-major students. Then CUSP launched the Discovery Core, an innovative core curriculum that welcomes students into small seminars and gets them academically engaged through creative course offerings such as “The Biography of a Commodity,” “Utopias and Dystopias,” “Food and Social Justice” and “Dreaming.”

Bringing resources to students, rather than sending students to resources: While the Discovery Core classes are innovative, so is the curriculum’s approach to bringing student success strategies and support into the classroom. The faculty who teach first-year seminars break the ice between new students and the people dedicated to supporting them by, for example, asking the director of the writing center to spend an hour in their classroom modeling how to do a deep read of a scholarly article. “The literature suggests that this student body doesn’t do ‘optional’ very much,” says CUSP Program Manager Ismaila Maidadi. “They were in second or third grade when ‘No Child Left Behind’ was passed, and they’ve been taught to the test. Because most resources are optional, those things we think are crucial we are moving into the classroom. We want students to be able to easily and quickly access any resources they need.”

A curriculum that engages both students and faculty: The Discovery Core offers new students a way to have fun, make friends and learn how to navigate the challenges of college life while also fulfilling general education requirements. But the program is designed to inspire its instructors, too. “We like to think the Discovery Core seminars are not just a rich opportunity for students, but also for faculty,” says CUSP director Leslie Ashbaugh. In a competitive selection process, faculty from across campus apply to teach in the Discovery Core. Lecturer Kristy Leissle says, “The openness CUSP has had to my proposals for content—which range from chocolate to science fiction—really spurs my pedagogical creativity. In the Discovery Core, I am teaching in an open and welcoming environment where innovation is encouraged.”

The Discovery Core’s interdisciplinary team teaching introduces students to a range of disciplines in their first year of college, which helps them discover what kind of degree they might be interested in pursuing.

Jennifer Atkinson
Faculty Coordinator, Discovery Core; Lecturer, IAS, UW Bothell

 

High-impact experiences make learning meaningful and memorable: The Discovery Core curriculum deliberately and explicitly incorporates what the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) calls “high-impact practices,” educational experiences with a demonstrated effect on student retention and engagement. Faculty coordinator Jennifer Atkinson, a lecturer in the School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences (IAS), sees this as a hallmark of the Discovery Core. “Students aren’t shut away in their classrooms,” she says. “They go out into the community for field trips, service learning, research in the wetlands or North Creek Forest; they interview workers in local industries or activists in the streets; and we regularly host guest speakers from the community in our classes.”

Collaboration is the key: CUSP is a team effort from the location of staff offices to the development of curricula. In order to help students find what they’re looking for and foster collaboration, the Bothell campus brought partners such as CUSP, academic advising, veterans services, study abroad, disability support services and career services into one Student Success Center. The Discovery Core is also a joint effort. When faculty and staff met last summer to revamp the curriculum, they were joined by leaders from the Teaching and Learning Center, the Quantitative Skills Center, Career Services, Institutional Research and several other units. “It’s important to have all the key stakeholders in the room,” says Ashbaugh. As faculty coordinator, Atkinson ensures collaboration continues throughout the academic year, and that the Discovery Core faculty meet regularly to discuss teaching best practices.

Student success in three stages: The Discovery Core is designed to help students transition from a top-down high school model of learning to a student-centered, inquiry-based model of learning, says Ashbaugh. The curriculum tackles this challenge in three phases:

  • Discovery (fall): Students learn about campus resources and college-level academic skills, from interpreting written sources to reading a syllabus
  • Research (winter): Students build on discovery skills while focusing on developing new research skills, such as critical analysis and facility with academic citation standards
  • Reflection (spring): Students write about their intellectual development, reevaluate which majors best suit their skills and interests, and curate a portfolio of their work to present at a spring showcase

Overall, the Discovery Core sequence is designed to prepare first-year and pre-major students to take full advantage of their college

“I would not have known about resources like the writing center or librarians had it not been for Discovery Core classes. They told us early on about campus resources so we felt like we knew how to seek out help and where to seek out help. College can be hard to figure out and navigate.”

Shauniece Drayton ‘14
B.A., Community Psychology, UW Bothell

 

education. “Most students will change their minds about what they want to focus on,” says Ashbaugh. “The whole point is to expose them to a rich environment and a diverse set of ideas and experiences, and hopefully by second year they’re finding a pathway for themselves that includes study abroad, service learning, undergraduate research and other high-impact opportunities we offer on campus.”

Wrapping resources into assignments: The faculty and student services staff who design the Discovery Core curriculum intentionally integrate learning outside of the classroom into class assignments. For example, one early low-stakes writing assignment puts students in touch with a variety of resources while emphasizing the value of drafting and revising. After reviewing first drafts, their instructor uses class time to schedule one-on-one meetings with each student to offer feedback. “Approaching a faculty member can be intimidating,” says Ashbaugh. “This breaks that barrier.” Students are then sent to the writing center, and asked to fill out a form reflecting on their experience—“Not only about using the service, but also imagining how it could be useful to them going forward,” says Ashbaugh. Students then go through a round of peer review before submitting the paper again for a final grade.

The ePortfolio is a communication tool, workspace and archive: Throughout the Discovery Core, students build an ePortfolio that is more than an academic archive—it’s designed to become a snapshot of their curricular and co-curricular life throughout four years.

Learn More

Read the full Provost report on how to link academic passion to life and careers.

Independent Study Plans in Community, Environment & Planning (CEP)

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Helpling undergraduates direct their own learning

“Helping students prepare for their next steps has always been part of our philosophy. There shouldn’t be a wall between academics and what we often call ‘the real world.’”

Caitlin Dean ‘06 ‘10
Program Manager, CEP, 2010-2014; B.A., CEP; M.Ed.; MPA

 

In 1994 a group of faculty and students in the College of Built Environments used principles of the new community-based planning movement to create their version of the ideal major. Caitlin Dean recalls, “They asked questions like, ‘How can we prepare students for the real world?’ and, ‘What does a holistic education mean?’ ” Their work resulted in the Community, Environment & Planning (CEP) program. As program manager from 2010 to 2014, Dean worked with Director Christopher Campbell to grow the program while preserving the founders’ mission: helping undergraduates direct their own learning.

Students approach the interdisciplinary curriculum with a goal and a plan: To help students structure their education, CEP requires each incoming student to create an Independent Study Plan (ISP). Students make revisions as their interests evolve. Margot Malarkey ‘12 began the program focusing on environmental studies, but exposure to graduate-level urban studies classes sparked her interest in the intersection of housing, politics and academics, and she altered her ISP to reflect that. “The cyclical process of planning, acting, reflecting and changing your plan—the iterative cycle of learning—is important not just for academics but also for life,” says Dean. “We hope students will adopt that mode of thinking and take it out into their careers and personal lives.”

Graduate Jen Hamblin has done just that. Remembering her own ISP, she says, “It was the first time in my entire life I was forced to sit down and be intentional about something that hadn’t happened yet. CEP requires you to come up with a strategy—’You say you want to get to the moon by Thursday… so, where is your map?’ ” Hamblin now uses these skills regularly in her career as a consultant aiding companies and institutions in diversifying their workforces. “I just developed a growth model for my CEO with a three-year projection and a risk assessment for each phase. Long-term planning is a major, critical skill for the professional world.”

Independence, but with structure: “The first generation of the program was seen as an experiment,” says Dean. The program philosophy still emphasizes learning by doing, including the value of making mistakes. However, the program team has also made changes to the curriculum, such as establishing required classes for students working on capstone projects. “In the past, students were expected to work mostly independently,” says Dean, “but we learned we needed to build in more structure to support all of them, not just the top 25 percent who know how to draw on the resources available to them. The majority of undergraduates still need modeling, coaching and guidance.”

“I think the first time I realized how much CEP mimics the real world was not my first job but my second. It required a lot of strategic planning. In CEP it’s called ‘governance.’ In the real world it’s called ‘boardroom meetings.’”

Jen Hamblin ‘07
B.A., CEP, minor in disability studies

 

Shared governance builds student leadership skills: CEP advertises itself as “built for and by its students,” and this shared governance model permeates the entire program. Students take the lead on the majority of decisions about the major and its curriculum. Final decisions require full consensus of current students, which can be a challenging exercise in patience, negotiation and building buy-in. Campbell says, “In CEP, students are not only responsible for themselves, they are responsible for the whole CEP community. This means they must learn how to make decisions together, resolve disputes and respect individual differences as they work towards common goals. For many students, the skills they learn through governing the major are the skills that prove most important to them in their careers and civic lives.”

Students gain confidence from the confidence shown in them: “CEP not only taught me, it also empowered me to contribute to the learning process,” says Dan Fitting ‘14, who returned to college after his military service. “Until I found CEP, I felt like I was only going to school to learn what other people already knew.”

“CEP’s flexibility allowed me to take risks and test my ideas in a safe setting. It also pushed me to take ownership of my decisions—both the successes and the failures.”

Margot Malarkey ‘12
B.A., CEP, minor in urban design and planning

 

Through his capstone project he created new knowledge, helping local residents inventory historically significant architecture in their community and develop a plan for its preservation, refining skills he now uses as Sustainability and Facilities Coordinator for Skagit County.

Flexibility is challenging but pays off in the long run: “I would sometimes have an identity crisis,” says Malarkey. “I would look at my friends in business school with a clear path forward and say, ‘What am I doing?!’ ” Campbell notes, “Being responsible for your education is hard.” He adds, “It can be frustrating at times but when students come back after they graduate, they say, ‘Ah, now I get it.’ ” Malarkey agrees that work experience helped her gain perspective on the value of her major. As a research associate at an environmental consulting firm she frequently draws on the meeting facilitation, planning, presentation and analytical skills she gained from the program.

Learn More

Read the full Provost report on how to link academic passion to life and careers.

Students step up to collaborate as a professional research team

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Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations and Newbook Digital Texts in the Humanities

“We basically structured the project like a business. We have various departments, and we do everything from marketing to publishing. So the students that hang with us and do the work get a pretty good picture of what professional life is like.”

Walter Andrews
Research Professor, Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations

 

Under the direction of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations (NELC) faculty, undergraduate and graduate students hone skills in historical research and computer programming as they digitize, transcribe, translate and edit century-old texts from Ottoman Iraq and Egypt. As these students advance the growing field of digital humanities, they also experience how diverse teams work in the professional world. A key example is the independent, web-based publishing house Newbook Digital Texts in the Humanities led by Walter Andrews.

Collaboration is the future of research and of work: The project has drawn together an interdisciplinary team to solve complex research puzzles and give students experience working in diverse professional teams. The team includes:

  • Undergraduate and graduate students from an array of UW departments, including Biology, Math, History, Computer Science & Engineering and the Jackson School of International Studies
  • UW faculty, including visiting scholar and Egyptologist Sarah Ketchley
  • Iraq-based researcher and dialect expert Nowf Allawi, project co-founder

Project leaders and participants see such interdisciplinary, international collaboration and open-access digital publishing as the future of research. “Having digitized primary sources has opened up research in ways that were simply impossible even twenty years ago,” says Kearby Chess ‘14, whose master’s thesis relied on Newbook Digital Texts sources. For example, the Svoboda Diaries, a detailed first-person chronicle of trade and travel in one of the world’s last multi-ethnic empires, were scattered among libraries and personal collections. Access to many of the original diaries was lost after the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Thanks to the work of UW students and their collaborators, copies of the diaries are becoming available online both as annotated transcriptions and through the “Svobodapedia” wiki.

Students work with primary sources, such as photographs and handwritten diaries, to illuminate life in Ottoman Iraq. Above, steamships arriving in Baghdad, captured by Alexander Svoboda, ca. 1900. Image courtesy of the Svoboda Diaries Project and Newbook Digital Texts.
Students work with primary sources, such as photographs and handwritten diaries, to illuminate life in Ottoman Iraq. Above, steamships arriving in Baghdad, captured by Alexander Svoboda, ca. 1900.
Image courtesy of the Svoboda Diaries Project and Newbook Digital Texts.
“I didn’t know how history and computer science could work together prior to this.”

Kelsie Haakenson
UW senior double majoring in History and Computer Science & Engineering

 

History students learn to code; computer science majors learn to work in interdisciplinary teams: Unexpected cross-pollination can happen when students from different disciplines work together towards a shared goal.

  • Kelsie Haakenson came to the UW planning to study history with an eye towards preserving historical buildings and artifacts. Last spring, after working with the Svoboda Diaries team for a year and teaching herself the Python programming language, she was accepted to the UW Computer Science & Engineering program. Now she envisions a career in the digital humanities, blending her passions and professional goals. “I want to focus on online publishing of primary sources and user-friendly ways to display information rather than fixing artifacts and leaving them in a museum or an archive somewhere,” Haakenson says. “In digital form, sources are more accessible and hopefully have more longevity.”
  • Undergraduate intern Sarah Johnson also developed an interest in programming through the project. “I would never have taken a computer science class, but now that I see the content it’s creating and that it’s a necessary step in making this historical research available, it’s more interesting to me,” she says.
  • Students on the technical team have also explored new territory. Intern Tori Wellington, an undergraduate Informatics student, learned to facilitate communication between the programmers and historians on the team. Ketchley notes, “Tori has been able to take the technical jargon and present it to less technical teammates in a palatable way. That’s a real skill.” Wellington adds, “It’s a challenge, but it’s fun to make it less intimidating.”
“The project is full of invaluable people, both students and teachers. I try to learn as much from each of them as possible and to emulate their skills.”

Rachel Elizabeth Brown
Graduate student, Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations; Project Manager, Newbook Digital Texts

 

A student-driven project fosters leadership skills: “Walter has a knack for seeing things in students they don’t see in themselves,” says graduate student Rachel Elizabeth Brown. “He spots potential really quickly.” And Brown should know. She grew from an undergraduate intern who doubted her ability to contribute, to the lab’s project manager. Faculty leaders envisioned an organizational structure for the project that put students in leadership and management roles, and Brown made it happen. Although Andrews describes her as a “whiz” at project management, Brown recalls she had a lot to learn. “I was convinced he was crazy for accepting me, that I didn’t have the skills needed to work on the project,” she says. “Walter is really good at letting students find their niche. It turns out that organizing is my thing. I love helping students figure out what their skills are and find a place in our organization that will make them happy and proud to work with us.”

Through scholarly research, students learn practical problem-solving skills: Student interns and employees on the Newbook Digital Texts team learn to push the boundaries of scholarly research through digital publishing. They also learn how a professional team works to solve complex problems beyond any one person’s expertise. As Haakenson discovered, it is often necessary to identify and fill gaps in one’s own skills and to reach out to peer experts for help. “I found an online tutorial on starting with Python and worked through the different lessons,” she says. “Whenever I came in contact with a problem I couldn’t figure out, I would use the group email list to send out questions for more experienced people to answer. The tech team is really supportive when you’re learning new things.”

Learn More

Read the full Provost report on how to link academic passion to life and careers.

A classroom veteran tackling new technology

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Professor of Philosophy, Lynn Hankinson Nelson, shares how she transitioned to a hybrid-online class set-up

“I encourage collagues to take a workshop. When I go, I learn, I get refreshed, I get invigorated.” Lynn Hankinson Nelson Professor, Philosophy
“I encourage colleagues to take a workshop. When I go, I learn, I get refreshed, I get invigorated.”

Lynn Hankinson Nelson
Professor, Philosophy

 

There’s a learning curve in setting up a hybrid course, says Lynn Hankinson Nelson, “especially for those of us my age, with 35 years of teaching experience. But the support is wonderful.” Nelson, who was a Teaching with Technology Fellow in summer 2013, credits the staff at the Center for Teaching and Learning, UW Information Technology, and UW Educational Outreach (UWEO), with helping her set up her first hybrid and online courses. “The UWEO Instructional Designer, Maggi Kramm, walks on water, as far as I’m concerned,” says Nelson. Here are Nelson’s suggestions for adding technology to teaching:

When creating a video, imagine you’re facing a class, not a camera: Nelson was nervous at the thought of filming a dozen videos for an upcoming UWEO online course. “I’m really camera shy,” she says. However, she says the process was easier than she’d feared, because Kramm and the UWEO videographer were so helpful and professional, telling her they could re-record any portion of a lecture and setting lights at a comfortable level. “What happened finally, with that kind of encouragement and the knowledge that I could do any lecture over, I just forgot I was speaking to a camera,” says Nelson. “I just made believe I was standing in front of 200 students, which doesn’t frighten me at all, and the muse took over.”

Take advantage of the Active Learning Classrooms in the Odegaard Undergraduate Library: The round tables facilitate discussion, says Nelson. So do the computer screens at each table. At the beginning of class, which Nelson opens with a mini-lecture, she sends her presentation to the screens at the tables. When the class breaks for small group discussion, “the recorder for each group can link his or her laptop to the screen and take notes that are visible to the whole table so the students can edit together. When the time comes to report out, I can send the presentation from each group to all the tables,” says Nelson, adding that groups can also choose to write their report on one of the room’s orange glass walls, which function as white boards. “There’s also a microphone at each table, which can be important for students who have softer voices.”

Philosophy of Science Spring 2014 C

ACTIVE LEARNING CLASSROOMS

“The Active Learning Classrooms are just fabulous,” says Lynn Hankinson Nelson, meeting in an ALC with students in her hybrid class, Philosophy of Science (PHIL 460). “The flexibility is great. I can roll my chair from one group to another, or I can say, ‘Roll to the middle of the room, we’re all going to work on something together.’” The course meets officially once a week and a subgroup of students also meets in the room informally for additional in-person discussions.

Learn More

Read the full Provost report on how to use technology in the classroom to engage students.