Making Connections

A new curriculum creates an intentional learning experience that builds on the College's historic strength in the liberal arts

t a moment in history when colleges and universities are trying to reinvent themselves for a new generation, many by radically reshaping their missions and ways of operating, Connecticut College has been engaged in a different kind of conversation about our future: one that honors both the College’s mission to prepare students for global citizenship through the liberal arts, and our historically progressive values related to career preparation, sustainability, shared governance, and equity and inclusion.

For more than two years, the campus community has been engaged in the collective work of imagining a new curriculum that builds on this legacy. The result is a bold new venture called Connections. The new program encourages students to explore the linkages between different modes of thought and different languages; between a chosen major and an elective course of study; between academic classwork and work in the world; between life on campus and life after Conn.

“The greatest learning happens when students have the opportunity to connect the parts of their education that are normally separate,” explains President Katherine Bergeron. That is why Connections is so powerful.

Connections features a stronger first-year experience with enhanced advising; a sophomore year where students choose both a major and a multi-dimensional pathway; a junior year that expands the inquiry outward to include research and internships; and a senior year that ties the study together in an integrative project.

The best aspects of Connections build on what have become the most respected elements of the Connecticut College experience: the certificate programs in the centers for interdisciplinary scholarship; and the funded internship program in the career office. The new concept takes the multi-disciplinary dimension of the certificates and the hands-on dimension of the internship program and integrates them — with the academic major — in a more intentional four-year experience.

Enhanced support from year one

The Connections experience begins before students even arrive on campus, as they select a first-year seminar. As in the past, these seminars explore areas of particular interest to faculty and emphasize discussion-based learning and inquiry. But in the new model, the seminars also provide a forum for students to engage with each other and the broader community; to explore issues of equity and inclusion; and to begin thinking openly and creatively about both their time in college and their lives after graduation.

Beginning this fall, each first-year seminar is supported by a team of advisers — including the seminar professor, a professional staff adviser, and one or more student advisers — who mentor and support students in making the most of their College experience.

These elements place Connections on a solid foundation, explains Jefferson Singer, dean of the College. “Research about student success has identified the importance of strong first-year programming such as our first-year seminars, integrated and accessible academic advising, and availability of support systems such as our Academic Resource Center. Our students now benefit from all of these.”

As part of their foundational coursework, students will also take at least one ConnCourse, a new type of class that introduces students to the idea of applying a broad lens and multiple modes of thinking within a specific academic discipline. The ConnCourse is designed to help students experience the rigor and deep learning of upper-level classes in their first semesters, without the need for prohibitive prerequisite courses.

Charting a Pathway

In the fall of sophomore year, each student will select an integrative pathway: an interdisciplinary, faculty-curated theme that ties together a student’s learning. The model for the pathway concept is the College’s academic centers for interdisciplinary scholarship, through which students have been earning certificates for more than two decades. The College’s four certificate-granting centers are, for practical purposes, the first four pathways available to students.

The first step on the integrative pathway is a gateway course. This interdisciplinary seminar introduces students to the theme of the pathway and asks students to develop animating questions that are meaningful to them. For example, a student interested in the arts who selects a pathway with a public health focus might ask, “In what ways can community performing arts organizations address health disparities?” These animating questions provide focus for each student’s work, culminating in the fall semester of the senior year, when students will present their findings at an all-College symposium, already tagged with the nickname “Floralia of the Mind.”

Along the way, students will complete pathway-affiliated courses that engage students in different modes of inquiry (MOI), or ways of thinking. These modes include creative expression, critical interpretation and analysis, quantitative and formal reasoning, scientific inquiry and analysis, and social and historical inquiry.

Christopher Hammond, associate dean of the College for curriculum, explains the thinking behind these modes of inquiry. “Our goal is to transcend rigid disciplinary boundaries, while allowing students to engage with the broad ways through which human beings know and experience the world, others and self.”

Engaging locally and globally

The new curriculum also builds on the College’s strength in global education, so that as students engage in global communities— both domestically and internationally — they can empathize, communicate and collaborate with others from diverse cultures in their own languages. Language and culture study will be infused throughout all dimensions of the new curriculum: in coursework, internships, study-away programs, community-based learning and student research projects, to name a few.

To encourage students to fully engage in communities where English is not the primary language, the new curriculum requires two semesters of study in a single language. Students will be encouraged to fulfill the language requirement by the end of sophomore year, so they can pursue advanced study and projects during their junior and senior years. Students will work with their advisers to apply their language study to activities that reach beyond the traditional classroom.

Our goal is to transcend rigid disciplinary boundaries, while allowing students to engage with the broad ways through which human beings know and experience the world, others, and self.

CHRIS HAMMOND‍, associate dean of the College for curriculum

Starting now

While it will be a few years before there are enough pathways finalized to accommodate every student — you may need to wait five years to attend your first campus-wide Floralia of the Mind — students are benefiting from the new curriculum today. The new first-year advising was piloted last year and implemented this fall. A sustainability pathway is being piloted this fall, and modes of inquiry will replace distribution requirements for all students in Fall 2016. There is also incredible enthusiasm in the community about taking part in the new curriculum, and continuing the work of developing and improving Connections as it is implemented.

Jefferson Singer, dean of the College, could not be more pleased with how the community has rallied around this effort. “We are incredibly proud of the way faculty, students and staff came together to do the hard and thorough work of reimagining a 21st-century liberal arts curriculum.”

Funded internships are a signature Connecticut College program, and are now more tightly integrated into the curriculum. Here, Claire Lingham ’16, an East Asian studies major and CISLA scholar, interns at the Changyu Pioneer Wine Company in the city of Yinchuan, in the province of Ningxia, one of China’s best wine-growing regions.

Sidebar

Shared governance wins the day

The final components of the Connections curriculum were officially adopted through a faculty vote on May 14, 2015, but the foundation of a new general curriculum had been built in the years — even decades — prior.

The College’s previous General Education program was established in 1973, with few changes in the years to follow. (One significant change came in 2004, as first-year seminars were introduced.) But it wasn’t for lack of trying; several efforts to revamp the College’s curriculum failed due to lack of support from the campus community.

For this new effort to succeed, it was clear to all involved that reshaping the curriculum would require a massive undertaking — and buy-in from the entire College community.

“We’re talking about changing who we are as a college,” said Ross Morin ’05, assistant professor of film studies. “It wasn’t going to be a top-down process; it was going to take everyone.”

Morin was part of a team of six faculty members who spent the summer of 2013 working around the clock to draft a report on how a new curriculum might fit into Connecticut College’s liberal arts education. This was one of seven working groups, two delegations, two pilot groups, and countless formal and informal committees that helped shape the new curriculum and drive the approval process forward.

An even broader cross-section of the College community joined in the process during Curriculum reVision Week in early 2014, with students, faculty and staff gathering in small groups and larger town hall-style forums. Pilots were launched in the 2014-15 academic year, testing the effectiveness of proposed team advising integrated with first-year seminars.

Even as this work was taking place, faculty were debating and voting on individual components of the curriculum throughout the 2014-2015 academic year, approving five separate motions at monthly faculty meetings, with the final vote in May 2015.

But while investing countless hours and securing multiple votes may have appeared a painstaking process from the outside, the process was built on the principles of shared governance, one of the College’s founding values. Because perspectives from students, faculty, staff, alumni and parents were all considered in the decision-making process, the finished product serves the interests of the entire College community.

“We needed to make sure the final result was something everyone believed in,” said Abby Van Slyck, dean of the faculty and Dayton Professor of Art History. “The back-and-forth discussions were crucial, and input was met receptively, not defensively. The conversation modeled the kind of passionate but civil discourse we want our students to engage in throughout their lives.”

Kevin Saunders ’15 served as a student representative on the Educational Planning Committee and said he was inspired to leave a lasting impact on the College. “The new curriculum will offer a unique learning experience that will enhance the liberal arts education,” said Saunders. “It’s a legacy that I’m very proud to leave behind.”