We need your ideas for the QEP!

John Blackburn, Rich Cleary, Charles Curry, Debbie Dailey, Bob Danforth, Scott Dittman, Marcia France, Katy Hall, Joseph Martinez, Aubrey Shinofield, Bob Strong, John Tombarge, Dawn Watkins, Elizabeth Wicht

I am delighted to send you this report which offers our committee’s recommendations for Washington and Lee University’s Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP). In our last meeting on January 30 our committee of faculty members, students, and staff unanimously agreed to recommend a total of five ideas in two groups. In the first group are the two top ideas: Spring-Term Development and Sustainability. The second group contains three ideas: Advising, an Undergraduate First-Year Seminar, and Service Learning.[1] We are particularly enthusiastic about the top two ideas, though we believe any of the five would benefit students at Washington and Lee.

In this summary memo, I offer a brief summary of our top ideas. Appendix 1 (page 7) provides more details on these same ideas, and Appendix 2 (page 37) provides similar details on the other valuable ideas that we received, ideas that did not ultimately make our top five.

I know you are well aware of our process, but I will summarize our approach as a way of explaining our recommendations.

During the 2007 fall term, our committee reached out to the W&L community. We explained what a QEP is, and we asked them to submit ideas they believed would enhance student outcomes. We held three open forums (one with a special invitation to the Freshman Leadership Council, another with the Women Faculty and Administrators Group) and we advertised extensively on campus (radio and television ads, a radio talk show, newspaper articles, posters, web, broadcast e-mail, faculty-meeting announcements, and personal visits from committee members with interested community members). Ideas, in turn, came into our QEP web page at QEP.wlu.edu, into the three idea boxes distributed around campus, and QEP “idea cards” were turned in at a fall faculty meeting.

The response was very gratifying. We had over 200 individual idea submissions, of which over 100 were thought to be legitimate suggestions. Upon review, we found that the community had suggestions about 12 distinct ideas: advising; diversity; enhancement of intellectual life; an undergraduate first-year seminar; focus on the arts; an "I" program; information fluency; international/interdisciplinary education; service learning; spring-term development; sustainability; and value enhancement.[2] Each of these is detailed in either appendix 1 or appendix 2.[3]

In the next phase we broke into subcommittees; each had three or four ideas to evaluate. The committees spoke with potential idea champions, and some original ideas gained a great deal of development during this conversation. In the end, each idea was rated on six criteria, as follows:

Subcommittees reported to the larger committee, and their evaluations were the subject of discussion and follow up with potential champions.

We then turned our attention to winnowing the ideas to a shorter list, ideas that we could recommend to you as particularly worthy of being W&L’s QEP. Two ideas, Spring-Term Development and Sustainability, clearly stood out as committee favorites.

As you know, a spring-term development QEP would need more detailed explanation and specifics than it has now. Nevertheless, there are strong reasons for our recommendation. It is a natural QEP; our students would clearly benefit from a project designed around a new pedagogy for the four-week term. As a University we are committed to the new spring term, as well as funding the work of adapting our teaching to that new term. As such, this QEP idea has natural champions in the faculty and the administration, and is capable of being assessed. Moreover, the committee saw real potential for positive, systemic effects on our campus. Here’s how the subcommittee expressed the potential behind the idea:

It can include student-focused learning, service learning, study abroad, a wide range of intensive student term projects, etc. There are opportunities for students to become excited about learning through innovative immersion experiences that could transform both students’ and faculty’s way of thinking about learning and teaching. It is hoped that such courses might motivate students for more self-learning. There is also potential that what we learn from revising the spring might be incorporated into the longer terms.

There were few worries about the idea; we noted that some existing spring term courses already take advantage of the short, in-depth format, and these will not change as much. In addition, this QEP would not extend its reach to the Law School.

This QEP idea goes to the heart of Washington and Lee’s mission. Sustainability-- loosely defined as the pursuit of economic prosperity, environmental quality, and social equity without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs, resonates well with our motto – non incautus futuri – not unmindful of the future. Moreover, it fits well with our current direction, leadership, and resources. President Ruscio serves on the Leadership Circle for the Presidents Climate Commitment and has signed The Talloires Declaration.[4] The Johnson Gift provides $15,000,000 to explore leadership development through a variety of models.

As detailed in the Sustainability white paper, this QEP would have curricular and co-curricular elements. The guiding philosophy is to create opportunities and vision on the campus, rather than to force participation with requirements.

As you read the white paper, notice how the co-curricular elements -- a biennial conference on our campus, invited speakers, the student-consulting group, local and distant internships -- would create a context for an ongoing conversation. The curricular elements pick up on this conversation with additional sections in certain key Environmental Studies classes, taught by professors already on campus and a new position created with this QEP in mind.

There is extensive leadership on this campus, ready to work hard to see this QEP succeed. Indeed, even the possibility of a Sustainability QEP brought together a group of volunteers, not formal members of our committee, who joined together to build the proposal.

The committee is also mindful of potential challenges: this QEP would be very expensive, and it would take time to build the broad campus climate that this QEP envisions.

In addition to the two ideas noted above, the committee recommends three others that have strong potential to benefit students at Washington and Lee. They are listed below in alphabetical order.

As you know, W&L’s task force on advising made a detailed study of our current system, finding overall strength as well as opportunity for improvement. We offer the task-force report as our third QEP recommendation. Improved advising will lead to improved educational outcomes for our students. In the words of the subcommittee that reviewed this idea:

(This idea) is far reaching and will include the law school, which is not true of all QEP ideas. Improved advising has the potential to influence students’ approach to academic planning…Some of the proposed changes would make advising more of a team effort, asking students to take more ownership of the process. They would allow for -- even encourage -- students and faculty to interact on a different level than they do currently, being more fully engaged… and getting to know each other better.

Moreover, this idea has a lot of institutional momentum; the data collected by the task force and the support received so far auger well for a successful conclusion.

Potential problems here include defining the role and weight of advising in faculty promotion and tenure reviews, as well as salary considerations. Though the report has been positively received, there will be some faculty opposition to some aspects of this proposal.

This QEP would build service into the liberal arts. As one of the proposals suggested:

To have our students actively become part of the ‘solution’ to America’s needs in the 21st century strikes me as a core component of training our students to be leaders in a challenging era.

When thoroughly integrated into the curriculum, service learning, including community-based research, has the potential to affect student beliefs, enhance student learning, and contribute to the development of W&L students as responsible citizens. Through service learning, students would be able to ask more insightful and probing questions in class and through research based on relevant experiences and interactions in the field. As suggested for the QEP, service learning would positively affect student learning outcomes across the curriculum by adding depth to individual fields of study, creating an understanding of how to apply academia and education to the betterment of society, and enlightening W&L graduates on the importance of their role in the broader community.

A final strength of this idea is that it would reach across the ravine, including both undergraduates and law students.

Service learning, like some other QEP recommendations, would need further development. Service learning for all W&L students could have a powerful impact on our students. However, if we are considering a service requirement of all students, then it must be integrated into each individual’s field of study. This would require an advising process and approval of service placements. The benefits of service learning are lost when the placement does not relate to either the individual’s field of study or their academic and career goals in some way. Volunteering alone will not affect student learning in the way that the QEP requires - learning through service that has been integrated into the curriculum and is related to courses that the student is taking or plans to take is the only way that this would be successful. Therefore, we cannot just require a certain number of hours, or add a one-credit class that is not somehow connected to each students own educational development. This would require additional staff and would also require more work from advisers and faculty. Students in certain departments, the sciences are one example, may find it difficult to complete a service learning requirement as well as devote the necessary hours to their majors. Moreover, this QEP would require that we cultivate faculty champions that could take the lead in developing this idea.

There are at least two ideas under this umbrella. One is a classic freshman seminar. Here’s a quote from a detailed proposal from Professors Keen and Goldsmith:

Writing Intensive First-year Seminars should be purpose-designed, topical courses, not simply “freshman only sections” of preexisting introductory courses. Most of the existing Freshman Seminars from the pilot program could be effortlessly transformed into a Writing Intensive First-year Seminar, with some retooling of writing assignments. The seminars should be no larger than 12 students to facilitate discussion and thorough responses to writing. Writing Intensive First-year Seminars should be eligible to fulfill a Distribution requirement (in any of the areas, not necessarily Humanities). In any area, the Writing Intensive First-year Seminars should engage the students in discipline-appropriate writing and revision.

In the quoted version above, the seminar is writing intensive; in other proposals it involves an “introduction to the liberal arts” or has some significant content parameters. One version, long supported by the office of Student Affairs, has instructors teaching their own first-year advisees in a course that helps students make the transition to college. It might be possible to combine some of these objectives into a single course in which two thirds of the time is spent in a seminar classroom where the content is determined by the instructor and one third of the time consists of transition-to-college programming arranged by the student-affairs staff.

This proposal has both faculty and administration champions. It was vigorously advocated during the general-education review. There are multiple models to follow on other campuses that have had success with freshman seminars. This is a proposal that could enhance our undergraduate advising system, guarantee that first-year students would get to know one member of the faculty very well, and add new content and flexibility to the curriculum.

This proposal also has its challenges. The more good things we tried to accomplish in such a course (more intensive writing, common readings for all new students, etc.) the more difficult and expensive such seminars will become. Asking the faculty to commit to a new curricular innovation at a time when we are reducing teaching load, and the total number of courses required for graduation would present particular problems. Teaching all of these seminars in the fall term (which might be ideal for the transition issues) puts even more burdens on feasibility. It might be possible to introduce this QEP in stages, focusing first on the members of the first-year class who are not required to enroll in English 101 or 105, the basic composition courses. This type of phase in would provide the “breathing room” to develop a QEP that would reach all first-year students.

[1] The ideas are not ranked, apart from being in either the top two, or next three. The top two ideas are listed in alphabetic order, as are the next three.

[2] Other interesting ideas were also submitted that, in the committee’s view, did not meet the definition of a QEP.

[3] One point the committee would like to make is that W&L’s leadership would do well to reflect on all of the ideas that we received. We have heard from our community, and we are persuaded that it would be a mistake to benefit only from the idea ultimately selected as a QEP. Instead, we encourage you to consider the entire range of ideas that were submitted, whether or not they ultimately rise to our next QEP.

[4] Both the President’s Climate Commitment and the Talloires Declaration are discussed in the attached Sustainability white paper.