When President Michael Roth first arrived at his position in 2007, he asked members of the University to brainstorm potential ideas for undertakings and improvements that the campus community could work toward. Six years later on Sept. 16, 2013, Roth sent an all-campus email asking the community for ideas once more.
“Despite extraordinarily difficult economic circumstances, we took a number of those ideas and made them happen,” Roth wrote of his experiences in 2007. “We are still working in constrained economic conditions, but we’re in much better shape, and I’d like to encourage us all to once again think innovatively, ambitiously about the future.”
According to Vice President of Student Affairs Michael Whaley, many of the accepted proposals from six years ago were related to academic affairs, prompting the formation of many of the University’s newer pedagogical programs.
“When [Roth] first came, he was really asking for the community to think about how we could energize the educational experience, and most of the proposals—not all of them—that he received at the time were strictly academic focused,” Whaley said. “The proposal for the College of the Environment,…Creative Campus Initiative,…and some of the programs included in the Allbritton Center for the Study for Public Life came out then; there were really a whole different number of proposals around largely interdisciplinary courses.”
For this round of idea submissions, Roth has asked the community to focus on residential features of student life at the University. Proposals are to be sent by email and will be accepted until Nov. 1.
“You’ll notice in the language that he’s used this time [that] he’s really asking for people to spend time thinking about how you energize and enhance an on-campus, residential learning experience,” Whaley said.
Whaley cited the University’s new involvement in online courses as a cause for wanting to concentrate on and prioritize the experience of what an on-campus education should be like.
“Wesleyan has been involved for about a year now in online classes, these MOOCS [massive open online classes] and so forth through Coursera,” Whaley said. “I think that has the President thinking and wondering about the benefit of a residential, educational experience.”
Roth’s initiative not only involves faculty and students in the process of submitting proposals, but also incorporates the efforts of administrators and students to review the suggestions.
“What we’re planning initially is that the faculty proposals will go to Ruth Weissman, who’s the provost in academic affairs, and she will get a group together to look at those and select some of the best ones,” Whaley said. “[President Roth] has asked me to do the same thing in conjunction with the WSA [Wesleyan Student Assembly] for any proposals that come from students.”
Once ideas have passed through the initial round of assessment and the best ones are chosen, the proposers will be asked to expand on their plans in an effort to determine whether the suggestion could be integrated into future plans.
“I’m excited to hear suggestions from all sectors of the Wesleyan community,” Director of Strategic Initiatives Charles Salas wrote in an email to The Argus. “I expect that asking community members to think about improving Wesleyan’s distinctive educational experience by leveraging its residential dimensions will help them to refine their ideas further in light of this crucial goal.”
Salas will be one of several people involved in both the selection of ideas and the implementation of the final proposals.
“This initiative reminds us that…we all have different roles and responsibilities here, [and that] the Wesleyan community is something we build together each and every day,” Salas wrote. “I look forward to reading the proposals and overseeing the implementation of some of them.”
Members of the WSA will work alongside the Office of Student Affairs to assess proposals.
“It’s important to involve students because we (students) know what is working and what isn’t working,” wrote Chair of the WSA’s Student Affairs Committee Kate Cullen ’16 in an email to the Argus. “We know what programming requirements really hit home and which ones could use some work. Residential life is at the center of community development and fostering a feeling of home at campus, so I believe that it’s of the [utmost] importance that students have a positive residential experience.”
According to Chris Caines ’16, a member of the Student Affairs Committee and the Residential Advisor for the new Residential College Program, the atmosphere of student residences must promote exploration and personal development that are not usually offered in the classroom. Caines noted that Roth’s initiative will be a good opportunity for students to participate in shaping their education.
“Most students spend about 12 to 16 hours in classes each week, which leaves over 150 hours for living and learning to occur outside of the classroom for most students,” Caines said. “It is vital that residential communities be open and inviting spaces that foster an environment where learning can continue to take place outside of classrooms so that the time spent beyond the classroom is time well-spent.”
According to Whaley, the initiative will help improve students’ academic and residential lives on campus and make their educations more valuable and well-rounded.
“I’ve long thought that we can do more to make the curricular and co-curricular experience more seamless and more robust,” Whaley said. “This is really exciting for me to get the best ideas from the community and see what ideas we can glean from that process and how we can move forward. It’s really exciting to have an opportunity to look at the best thinking of the whole Wesleyan community on this topic.”