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For years, big research universities nationwide measured status by size and
quantity of grants procured -- and numbers of graduate students conducting
studies. Now, a new trend in higher education looks not to abandon that focus,
but to ensure that undergraduates aren't forgotten in the meantime.
While many universities have tried a few special programs at a time, Carolina
this fall will launch one of the country's most comprehensive efforts aimed at
enhancing the undergraduate experience. Freshman seminars, improved advising,
an undergraduate research office and the James M. Johnston Center for
Undergraduate Excellence -- expected to open Oct. 12 on the University's 206th
birthday -- all will begin this fall to give undergraduate life a decidedly
cerebral flavor.
Hand-in-hand with those academic affairs efforts will be a first-year
initiative launched by the University's student affairs division. Designed to
help freshmen succeed and feel welcome, the initiative includes residence hall
and summer reading programs.
It's academic
The academic changes grew from two charges handed to Risa Palm when she came
to Carolina two years ago as dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. First,
she was asked to tackle recommendations of a 1997 report of a Chancellor's Task
Force on Intellectual Climate.
"It was clear from the report that the college was being asked to undertake
several initiatives to improve the undergraduate experience and also take
advantage of our strengths as a research university," she said. "The report
called for more interaction between faculty and students."
Palm looked into a program Carolina had tried and dropped years ago because it
hadn't been made a regular budget item: freshmen seminars, or small, highly
intellectual classes of no more than 20 students each with the type of
outstanding faculty that freshmen otherwise might not meet until their junior
or senior years.
"I worked with the senior associate deans to permanently integrate freshmen
seminars into the budget and took it to [the late Chancellor] Michael Hooker,"
said Palm. "He was very enthusiastic, because it did two things. It would
create freshmen seminars and fulfill recommendations in the intellectual
climate report."
The University committed approximately $2.1 million for the program.
Second, Palm inherited a student campaign to bolster an academic advising
system that students found sorely lacking. She formed and chaired a
predominantly student committee, also including faculty and staff, that
designed a new advising system. Provost Richard Richardson approved, and the
University allocated $280,000 to carry it out. Palm then budgeted college
resources, both old and new, so as to most effectively satisfy both the
intellectual climate report and students' pleas for improved advising.
At the helm
The restructuring, with coincidental resignations and retirements,
brought Palm's appointment of psychology professor Bernadette Gray-Little as
senior associate dean for undergraduate education, assigned to implement the
advising and intellectual climate changes.
"The report said that when students first came here, they were lost," said
Gray-Little. "The first-year experience was not always primarily academic and
intellectual. Now, we want to create an atmosphere in which many things are
done in small groups, students get to know faculty more readily and they expect
to work with faculty over time."
Palm saw another chance for just such faculty-student interaction in a report
by then-associate honors dean Robert Allen and Howard Fried, a medical school
professor, identifying opportunities for undergraduate research. She envisioned
a central clearinghouse to enhance and expand those opportunities, thereby
enriching undergraduate education and demonstrating the educational advantages
of a research university.
Palm's restructuring allowed Gray-Little to name four lieutenants without
creating any new jobs:
* Thomas A. Tweed, religious studies associate professor and American studies
adjunct associate, as associate dean for undergraduate curricula and director,
first-year seminars. Author of two books and winner, in 1997, of a Hettleman
Award for Outstanding Scholarly or Artistic Accomplishment by Young Faculty and
a Favorite Faculty Award from the senior class, Tweed holds master's and
doctoral degrees in religious studies from Stanford University and a master's
in the history of Christianity from Harvard Divinity School.
* Carolyn C. Cannon, previously associate dean for academic services and the
General College, Carolina's home for core degree requirement courses, who now
collapses both roles into her new job as associate dean for the academic
advising program in the General College, a part of the College of Arts and
Sciences. Cannon, who holds a master's degree in educational psychology from
the University of Connecticut at Storrs, came to arts and sciences at Carolina
in 1985 as an academic adviser. Steady promotions since have recognized her
contributions to student career planning, academic requirements and advising.
* Patricia J. Pukkila, biology associate professor, who will establish and
direct the office of undergraduate research. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the
University of Wisconsin, Madison, who earned her doctorate at Yale, Pukkila has
participated in numerous research projects and directs a genetics research lab.
She has been honored twice for undergraduate teaching excellence at Carolina.
* James L. Leloudis, history professor, who becomes associate dean for honors
and Johnston Center director. In honors, Leloudis succeeds Robert Allen, who
returns to teaching after 12 years as associate honors dean. History professor
Harry Watson succeeds Leloudis as director of the Center for the Study of the
American South. Leloudis graduated from Carolina with highest honors and earned
a master's degree from Northwestern University and a doctorate from Carolina.
Author of two books, he also has won the faculty Hettleman prize and a
Students' Undergraduate Teaching Award.
A frosh start
Already, this fall's 37 freshmen seminars, for about 740 students, are almost
full. Titles include "The Interplay of Music and Physics," taught by a faculty
member from each department, on how sound is produced in instruments and how
the two fields interact.
"A class of 20 or fewer is not usual for first-year students at a major
research university," Tweed said. "It will be much less like a lecture hall
with professors imparting knowledge and much more like a sustained and exciting
conversation about matters of shared interest."
Carolina aims to phase in 160 first-year seminars for 20 students each over
four years. Senior faculty will teach the seminars, designed to develop
critical thinking, writing and oral skills. The University will hire new
faculty to free senior faculty for seminars.
"Allowing students to have firsthand encounters with first-rate faculty who
are excited about what they teach and research will start students'
undergraduate career in a much more interesting and rewarding way," Tweed said.
"They won't have to wait until they're seniors to find out why all these
faculty members have given their lives to the pursuit of ideas."
Good advice
The new advising system offers eight new full-time advisers and 23 faculty
members serving part-time as advisers, contrasting with last year's total of 50
faculty advising students part-time.
"The problem in the past was that if your adviser was only there eight hours a
week, you had to go when the adviser was there," Cannon said. "Now someone will
be here five days a week, eight hours a day, on call doing advising."
Cannon will monitor how much the changes boost advising hours. She believes
the system will work if students plan ahead and spread visits across each
semester, reducing demand during peak times before registration and drop-add.
"It's challenging," she said. "We're talking about changing students'
behavior. But if we can get students in throughout the semester, it's going to
be more beneficial for everyone."
Pukkila is learning about departments' scholarship activities and how to
connect professors conducting research with students interested in their
projects. Eventually, a web site with links to department sites will be created
to help with those matches, Pukkila said. She also hopes to celebrate results
of undergraduate research through a campuswide symposium.
"Students here come to understand that they're surrounded by dedicated people
doing cutting-edge research, and that they can become a part of that and even
do some of it themselves," Pukkila said. "Some students come to a university
thinking that someday, they will get a diploma that will say, `OK, now you can
start to think about all this.' What I'm interested in doing is fostering
creative thought, because in my mind, that's what distinguishes somebody who
truly has an education from someone who has passively acquired information.
"There is a tremendous difference between learning and discovery. Both are
pleasurable, but nothing can take the place of the thrill of discovery."
It's an honor
That thrill permeates the honors program, which gives its 700-800 students
priority in registering for 120 honors courses that emphasize participation and
writing. Then, if space remains, other undergraduates may take honors courses
if they have B averages or better. Students not admitted to the program as
freshmen may join later if their qualifications improve. And any student with a
3.2 grade-point average by the end of junior year may
undertake a senior honors thesis.
This fluidity contrasts with most college honors programs, which limit
opportunities to join and participate, Leloudis said: "It works to heighten the
caliber of the general undergraduate experience, not just the select few."
And so honors, exemplifying the spirit of the new undergraduate focuses, will
anchor the Johnston Center, which also will house Carolina Leadership
Development, Pukkila's undergraduate research office and the Burch programs,
which fund enrichment projects for outstanding students and off-campus research
seminars in which students work with faculty.
"The challenge of the center will be bringing them all together under one roof
and making them work together," Leloudis said. "It will create a new kind of
synergy."
The center also will house rooms for honors classes, first-year seminars and
all other kinds of classes, plus a computer center, a common room for lectures
and meals and a stately Great Lounge for discussions and faculty-student
interaction.
"My hope is that it will become an intellectual crossroads for the campus,"
Leloudis said.
Live and learn
Student affairs will add to its numerous residence hall programs this fall a
new First-Year Initiative Living/Learning Program, housing 150 first-year
students on the fourth and fifth floors of Ehringhaus Residence Hall. Students
will meet in groups of about 20, weekly for the first eight weeks, then every
other week for the rest of the year, with two faculty members and one graduate
or undergraduate mentor.
"Topics will range from transition issues, such as getting to know the
University and the local community, to University history, citizenship and
leadership, and hot topics they want to discuss," said Cynthia Wolf Johnson,
associate vice chancellor for student learning.
Small groups will undertake service-learning projects benefiting the
community, said Wolf Johnson. All participants will join in such programs as
career fairs and a performing arts component, with the students attending
campus performances of the Dance Theater of Harlem in November and David
Dorfman Dance in February.
This summer, freshmen and transfer students read a book that deals with human
and societal issues and concerns in numerous disciplines. The program aims to
ensure that all new students arrive with a shared intellectual conversation
topic. During fall orientation they discussed the book -- again, in the small
groups that the new undergraduate programs employ whenever possible to
encourage thoughtful discussion and a sense of belonging.
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