What We Learned About Liberal Arts Education
Our self-study reveals that the first year at St. Olaf College is not a single, common experience; students choose from an array of models according to their strengths and interests. Given this understanding, CoFYE has come to question assumptions that veterans of liberal arts learning and teaching may make about students' experience during their first year of college, particularly in terms of general education curriculum. Our self-study clarified a lack of explicit connection among courses in which first-year students typically enroll. We may assume that students will apply content and skills they learn in one course to assignments for another. But for grade-oriented, risk-averse students, as Howe and Strauss characterize some Millennial students, that cognitive leap across course boundaries may not happen without explicit guidance, encouragement, and permission. Likewise, we question if and how students connect academic, support service, residential, and extra-curricular experiences. We are looking to our Conversation Programs, a series of one- and two-year intentional learning communities, as models for building coherence among more loosely structured first-year experiences. Our self-study has highlighted the importance of dialogue among academic and student support professionals at a residential liberal arts college whose philosophy of general education embraces both curricular and extra-curricular experiences.
