First Draft of the Vision Plan
April 13, 2001
A Vision of the Liberal Arts at Hanover College
The Curriculum and Related Programs
Hanover College is a community dedicated to realizing these objectives through disciplined and morally concerned inquiry. Working together, faculty and students engage enduring and topical questions in dialogue with others inside and outside the College community. They are supported by an ethos that combines respect for tradition with a spirit of rational inquiry, discovery, and innovation, an ethos that looks both backward to historical origins and context and forward to the expansion of the boundaries of knowledge and inquiry. The Hanover community promotes a culture that inspires passion and joy for learning, prizes intellectual and moral integrity, and celebrates quality. Its curricular and co-curricular programs are designed to encourage students to develop and integrate all facets of their lives and to discern and cultivate that which is extraordinary and rare in themselves and others. The College community provides students with sustained individual attention at every stage of their intellectual, professional, and personal development, seeking to build strong relationships that extend beyond the four years at Hanover.
As accomplished scholars and artists, Hanover faculty members introduce students to the liberal arts disciplines and to the international culture of scholarship and art; their goal is to help students themselves become scholars and artists. Hanover faculty members believe that students learn best when they are directly engaged in research, writing, and creative activity and when they publicly present their work to the college and wider communities. Such direct and active engagement in the liberal arts disciplines enables students to acquire the skills, knowledge, values, and understanding essential for meeting the objectives of the liberal arts. The ability, for example, to discern quality from mediocrity, authenticity from artifice, and to make judgments about complex and ambiguous problems is vital for the cultivation of wisdom and moral integrity. Such ability is developed through the discipline of scholarly inquiry, through repeated efforts to identify meaningful questions and problems, to collect and evaluate evidence, to develop and articulate convincing interpretations, and to identify and assess alternative positions. Through active scholarship and performance, students come to identify with the tradition of the liberal arts in a more deliberate and reflective manner, knowing they are part of a wider conversation among scholars and ultimately part of a continuum of conversations reaching across civilizations and extending back to the ancient world.
The academic program at Hanover College combines the best traditions of the liberal arts with new and innovative programs reflecting today's pluralistic and global culture and reflecting current scholarship and models of learning. Hanover faculty members believe that the objectives of the liberal arts can best be achieved in a curriculum that combines rigor, a common core experience, and flexibility, with opportunities to pursue an array of special academic, service, and professional programs. In particular, the Hanover curriculum is distinguished by the multiple opportunities it provides students to work with faculty individually and in small groups; an intensive mentoring program provides students with a degree of individual attention that is rare among liberal arts colleges. The Hanover curriculum also gives a prominent place to integrated, inter-disciplinary courses. Recognizing the interconnectedness of the content and methods of the liberal arts disciplines and also the need to preserve the integrity of individual disciplines, Hanover faculty members have created dynamic integrated courses that bring together distinct disciplinary perspectives, resulting in exciting and often unexpected cross-fertilization among the disciplines and in a unique synergy among diverse faculty and students.
Hanover College seeks to build a community culture consistent with the objectives of the liberal arts, a culture that is intellectually vibrant and exciting, one that challenges and inspires individuals to achieve excellence, one that distinguishes and celebrates quality teaching, scholarship, and service. Hanover College strives to create an environment in which faculty and students are able to integrate their academic and personal lives, to make meaningful connections between their academic inquiry and their development as human beings, and to provide opportunities for learning and reflection outside the classroom, including opportunities for faculty and students to pursue shared interests together. As an essential element in creating an intellectually stimulating culture, Hanover College seeks to build a diverse community composed of individuals of different perspectives, different interests, and different ethnic, geographic, and cultural backgrounds. By recognizing diversity, Hanover College aspires to be a community that cultivates humanity, a community that presupposes the dignity, self-worth, and autonomy of all human beings. It seeks to be a community of active and responsible citizens--citizens who have different roles as faculty, students, and administrators, but citizens who have rights and freedoms, who participate in democratic decision-making processes, and who accept responsibility and are accountable for their decisions. Hanover College seeks to prepare students for citizenship and service beyond the college community, providing them with learning experiences and opportunities both inside and outside the classroom to serve human beings in various local and international contexts.
The objectives of the liberal arts cannot be achieved in four years; the education that students receive at Hanover College prepares them to fulfill the goals of the liberal arts over the course of their lives, to realize gradually their potential as human beings and as citizens. Although the liberal arts are deliberately designed to prepare individuals to develop as human beings and as citizens, rather than as professionals in particular careers, a liberal arts education does equip individuals with the kinds of skills and perspectives that all professions prize, skills and perspectives that form the basis of successful careers and that remain essential even as social and professional contexts change. Increasingly, business leaders and employers are recognizing and publicly acknowledging the practical virtues of a liberal arts education. As the economy undergoes restructuring and as institutions and jobs are significantly redefined, there is a greater demand not for people with narrow technical training but rather for people who are able to bring multiple disciplinary perspectives to bear on problems, who are able make sound judgments based on an understanding of context and implication, and who are able to articulate their positions in a clear and persuasive manner, precisely the qualities that are acquired and refined over the course of a liberal arts education. Based on the conviction that the skills acquired in the context of a liberal arts education have practical career-oriented applications, Hanover College offers students a range of opportunities and programs to explore the meaningful connections between the liberal arts and professional careers.
The Hanover College curriculum is designed to help students achieve the ends of a liberal arts education, to equip them to realize their potential as human beings and citizens and to live productively and humanely in the twenty-first century. It does so by (1) emphasizing the cumulative development of essential skills, knowledge, and understanding, (2) stressing the importance of integration, (3) encouraging focused inquiry and scholarship, and (4) enabling faculty to work closely with students as partners in learning and as mentors. In multiple contexts and in progressive fashion, the curriculum encourages students to acquire the fundamental skills of liberal learning, most notably the skills of effective writing and speaking, of critical and scientific analysis and interpretation, and of creative and integrative thinking. So too the curriculum ensures that students acquire basic knowledge and understanding of human nature, the world of nature, past and present societies, formal systems, and the methods of the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities. The curriculum encourages integration in a deliberate and structured fashion, including the integration of skills and learning, the integration of different cultural and disciplinary perspectives, and the integration of academic, personal, and professional lives. Student scholarship is accorded a prominent place in the curriculum because it encourages students to refine and master their ability to analyze and interpret, to discern and judge, and to write and speak with clarity and precision-skills and perspectives vital to attaining the ends of a liberal arts education. Finally, structured into the curriculum are multiple opportunities for students and faculty to engage in inquiry together, with faculty engaged both as active learners themselves and as mentors to students.
The mentoring program serves as a thread that knits together the entire curriculum and academic program. The concept of mentoring brings unity and coherence to a number of different functions, most of which can be grouped into two broad and sometimes overlapping categories: (1) academic tutoring, which includes individual or small group sessions connected with a course, a research or creative project, or some other academic pursuit, and (2) advising, which includes individual or small group sessions connected with freshmen-sophomore advising, major advising, or professional advising. All courses at Hanover College include one-one-one or small group mentoring or tutorial sessions, some courses requiring more sessions, some fewer, according to the nature and objectives of the course. [See the Appendix on Mentoring] Hanover faculty believe that individualized or small group interaction is the best way to cultivate and reinforce the skills, knowledge, and understanding essential for a liberal arts education. One-on-one or small group sessions, for example, are ideal venues for students to learn the skills associated with foreign languages, writing, public speaking, and research. Concentrated contact enables professors both to assess the performance and educational needs of individual students and to challenge individual students to perform at their highest level. Because of the one-on-one setting, faculty members are able to isolate and overcome students' learning problems, problems that are often concealed or difficult to address in a normal classroom setting. In one-on-one sessions, professors can also more clearly identify the sorts of ideas that are most stimulating to each student and the approach that will enable each student to pursue this area of interest in the most fruitful way. Moreover, it is through mentoring that professors can best convey to their students an accurate understanding of the nature, priorities, and methods of their specific disciplines. As advisers, both for the first year and sophomore year and for the major, faculty members also serve as mentors to students. The same faculty members sometimes serve as mentors to the same students in each dimension of mentoring--tutoring and advising. First-year students, for example, are assigned advisers from their fall-semester courses. Later, students often choose as their major advisers the very faculty members with whom they work most closely in their major and their scholarly projects. The two categories of mentoring-tutoring and advising--also complement each other. Like teaching, advising fulfills many of the objectives of the liberal arts, especially inasmuch as advisers help students make deliberate decisions about issues at the intersection of academic, personal, and professional lives, decisions, for example, about adjusting to the rigors of academic expectations, about developing coherent academic programs, and about preparing for careers and life beyond Hanover College. Thus the mentoring system, in all of its dimensions (and it includes programs designed to integrate prospective Hanover students and alumni), serves to unify and bring coherence to students' education at Hanover College, providing greater depth and breadth of experience. [See the Appendix on Mentoring] The Hanover curriculum is designed to integrate students into a rigorous academic environment immediately as they enter college and then to build essential skills, perspectives, and understanding in a cumulative and progressive manner. The First-Year Experience (FYE), begun in late August and including a year-long writing-intensive GDR sequence, aims to introduce first-year students to the skills and modes of inquiry vital to the liberal arts. The General Degree Requirements (GDR's) complement and build upon this foundation by requiring students to develop basic skills, acquire a breadth of learning, gain an understanding of disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives, and cultivate the capacity to integrate their learning. Building upon this core GDR experience is the Major, which is designed to help students reinforce their essential skills while advancing in stages to an increasingly nuanced understanding and practice in a chosen field. Thus the FYE, the GDR's, and the Major combine to fulfill complementary functions; they are structured to enable students to develop essential skills progressively, moving from broad introductory experiences to the more focused and content-specific experiences found in a particular disciplinary perspective. From among their remaining elective courses, students may choose to participate in the Honors College or in a Supporting Program integrating academic and pre-professional experience, including a Management Fellows Program, a Media Production Practicum, Certification in Elementary Education, and Pre-Med Certification. Structure of the Curriculum1. First-Year Experience: 0 credits (not including Humanities GDR)
3. Major: up to 13 credits (including all cognates and pre-requisites)
4. Electives: at least 7 credits (without counting overlap between the GDR's and the major)
Overview
Function
Structure
I. Short List of Requirements
II. Organization of Core Courses and Senior Capstone
A. The Humanities, Social Science, and Natural Science and Mathematics Cores
1. Integrated Courses
2. Interdisciplinary Sequences
B. Fine Arts Core
C. Theology and Religious Studies Core
D. Senior Capstones
E. Options
III. Content and Expectations of Core Courses and Senior Capstone
A. The Humanities Core
B. Social Science Core
C. Natural Science and Mathematics Core
D. Fine Arts Core
E. Theology and Religious Studies Core
F. Senior Capstones
IV. Academic Divisions for Core Courses and Senior Capstones
The General Degree Requirements (GDR's) provide a framework within which students develop the basic skills, knowledge, and understanding essential to achieving the objectives of the liberal arts. The GDR's respond both to the enduring questions within the liberal arts tradition and to the questions and perspectives demanded by an increasingly global and pluralistic society.
Together the GDR's fulfill a number of overlapping pedagogical functions. These include:
1. Skills
While all GDR courses encourage students to develop multiple skills, a number of courses are intentionally designed to provide intensive training in specific areas, most notably in writing, public speaking, foreign language, and physical or athletic activities.
2. Breadth
The GDR's enable students to explore and engage a variety of subjects and disciplines and to cultivate the physical, intellectual, ethical, spiritual dimensions of their humanity.
3. Content and Perspectives
For each GDR, students may select from a range of courses, each with different emphases in content and perspectives. The Core courses in the Humanities, Social Sciences, Natural Sciences, the Fine Arts, and Theology and Religious Studies ensure a certain measure of consistency in presenting the methodologies, approaches, and subject matter of disciplinary areas. The Hanover faculty has determined, however, that for students to begin to acquire wisdom and to be able understand and contribute to local and international communities, it is vital for them to understand the content and perspectives of both their own civilizations and the civilizations of other people. The requirements in ancient and modern cultures and in the western and non-western traditions help students to broaden their knowledge and understanding of world perspectives, both historical and contemporary, and come to see both the unity and the diversity that exists within single societies. Similarly, the foreign language requirement acknowledges the increasing need for students to learn to think of themselves as world citizens; through studying a foreign language, students learn to engage actively with another culture and another mode of thinking.
4. Introduction to Disciplinary and Interdisciplinary Perspectives
In a number of the Core courses (Theology and Religious Studies Core and many of Core courses offered as Integrated Sequences), students have the option of choosing a course taught by a single professor introducing a single discipline. In other Core courses, however, students have the option of learning the fundamentals of individual disciplines in a unique way--through interdisciplinary courses, courses that integrate two or more disciplines and are taught by at least two professors from different disciplines. In creating these interdisciplinary options, the Hanover faculty were mindful of the fact that inter-disciplinary courses cannot succeed unless the integrity of the individual disciplines is preserved and unless the course is clearly grounded in the foundations of each discipline. Thus the Core courses function as introductions to individual disciplines, ensuring that students command the distinguishing features of each discipline-the questions, epistemologies, methods, vocabulary, the limits and scope, and core content of each discipline. At the same time, interdisciplinary courses serve another function: to enable students and faculty together to compare and integrate disciplines, to assess similarities and differences in the basic orientations of disciplines, and to explore and test boundaries between disciplines. While the Core courses serve simultaneously as introductions to disciplines and as introductions to interdisciplinary study, the Senior Capstone provides students with an opportunity to bring their more advanced understanding of a single discipline (their major) to bear on more sophisticated problems of epistemology, methodology, research design, and other issues related to interdisciplinary inquiry.
5. Faculty as active learners
In interdisciplinary courses, faculty members are often called upon to teach subjects and disciplinary perspectives outside of their respective fields. While there may be disadvantages to such an arrangement, Hanover faculty stress the advantages, not only for faculty development but also and especially for student learning. Many faculty members bring extra passion to their study of material in other disciplines and are better able to inspire students to learn. More important, professors can model as active learners for students. When asked a question, for example, they may need to profess their ignorance about particular matters, but, drawing upon their experiences as teachers and scholars, they may, working together with students, articulate relevant questions, identify key contexts, consider potential evidence or data, and weigh possible interpretations. Students learn from direct experience that ignorance need not be debilitating, that it is possible, through reasoning and analysis, to gain an understanding of the range of potential interpretations. And students perhaps gain an even better understanding of the methods and processes of reasoning than if the professor had a quick and ready answer to the question.
6. Integration
Integration of learning has long been central to the objectives of the liberal arts. Without integration, breadth of learning and depth of learning do not enable people to solve life's problems or answer life's questions since most significant problems and questions are complex and multi-faceted, bearing the imprint of many smaller problems and questions that emerge from a variety of perspectives. Students will only be able to solve such problems or answer such questions if they possess the capacity to integrate, the capacity to distinguish and define individual parts and show their relationship to each other and to the whole, the capacity to understand how radically different perspectives relate to each other and to the whole and how such perspectives can be brought to bear on problems and questions simultaneously. The capacity to integrate is closely related to the power to discern and to make wise judgments. In spite of its importance to the liberal arts, integration is all but ignored in most college curricula; integration is left up to the student, perhaps in part because faculty themselves are called upon to integrate beyond their own specialized fields. Hanover College places integration at the heart of its curriculum. With few exceptions, the GDR Core courses and sequences are integrative; many are intensely integrative interdisciplinary courses. When designing Core courses, faculty members seek to integrate distinct disciplines, giving consideration to the integration of content, methods, and perspectives, among other things. Experience proves, however, that much of the integration that occurs in interdisciplinary courses emerges in spontaneous and unexpected ways as faculty members and students make connections, comparisons, and interpretations on points large and small.
The GDR's combine structure and flexibility. They are designed to offer students tremendous flexibility in their choice of courses within broad categories and to allow scheduling room for students who want to complete both a major and a supporting program while still leaving room for electives.
1. One-week August First-Year experience - 0 credits
2. First-Year Humanities Core (intensive writing) - 2 credits
3. Social Science Core (intensive public speaking) - 2 credits
4. Natural Science and Mathematics Core - 2 credits
5. Fine Arts Core - 1 credit
6. Theology and Religious Studies Core - 2 credits
7. Senior Capstone - 1 credit
8. Foreign Language Competency - 0-4 credits
9. Physical Education - 1 credit
10. Presentation Day (2 presentations) - 0 credit
Total: 11-15 credits
A. The Humanities, Social Science, and Natural Science-Mathematics Cores
The Humanities, Social Science, and Natural Science Cores consist of two integrated courses. They may be organized in different ways.
1. Integrated Courses
Integrated courses taught by two professors may take one of two forms.
Integrated Sequences
Interdisciplinary courses may be taught by two, three, or four professors per term. The number of students in the course depends on the number of professors teaching it. In the Social Science and Natural Science Cores, there are 15 students for each professor; because it offers intensive instruction in writing, the Humanities sequence has a 12:1 student to faculty ratio. Thus courses taught by two faculty have 24 or 30 students, courses taught by three faculty have 36 or 45 students, and courses taught by four faculty have 48 or 60 students. The second course in a the sequence may be taught by a second set of faculty members (for a total of 8 faculty in the full sequence); all participating faculty should help develop both courses in the sequence.
B. Fine Arts Core
The Fine Arts Core is an interdisciplinary course that may be taught by two, three or four professors. The number of students in the course depends on the number of professors teaching it, with 15:1 being the normal student-to-faculty ratio.
C. Theology and Religious Studies Core
This core consist of one course in Theology and one in Religious Studies, with the Theology course coming first. Courses are typically taught by single professors. Professors in the two areas have the option of creating an integrated sequence, though they need not be integrated or linked together.
D. Senior Capstones
The Senior Capstone course is an interdisciplinary course that may be may be taught by two, three or four professors. The number of students in the course depends on the number of professors teaching it, with 12 being the normal student to faculty ratio.
E. Options
Three or four course sequences can be established by combining and integrating Core requirements (e.g. three by combining the one-course Fine Arts Core with one of the two-course Humanities, Social Science, or Natural Science Cores; four by combining two of the two-course cores).
Interdisciplinary courses involving three or more disciplines may include a discipline from another division.
A. First-year Humanities Core
Disciplines that bridge academic divisions are cross-listed. These disciplines include Anthropology, Art History, Communication, History, and Psychology. Faculty from disciplines and departments not listed below may participate in relevant courses.
Humanities (10 disciplines): Anthropology, Art History, Classics, Communication, English, Modern Languages, Philosophy, History, Religious Studies, Theological Studies
Social Sciences (7 disciplines): Anthropology, Communication, Economics, History, Political Science, Psychology, Sociology
Natural Sciences and Mathematics (7 disciplines): Biology, Chemistry, Computer Science, Geology, Mathematics, Physics, Psychology
Fine Arts (4 disciplines): Art, Art History, Music, Theatre
The First-year Experience at Hanover College is designed to give students a concentrated introduction to the nature of liberal learning, to the skills, values, and modes of inquiry that remain central to the liberal arts experience. With this end in mind, the First-year Experience includes four areas of emphasis: helping students develop the skills of reading, writing, and analysis essential to the academic life of the college; encouraging students to integrate social and classroom experiences; preparing students to think of themselves as members of a diverse, global community; and establishing a mentoring relationship that will result in thoughtful, individualized attention for each student and that will engage faculty and students in joint inquiry. The first-year experience also serves to elevate the campus academic climate and to help beginning students see themselves as part of a vital intellectual community. It aims to make intellectual interaction with peers and faculty our students' first (and lasting) experience.
The First-year experience includes four interconnected parts, the August Experience, the First-year Humanities Core, Think Tanks, and Intensified Advising. In addition, first-year students have the option of choosing living units centered around themes that emerge from their course work.
1. The August Experience
3. Think Tanks
Each first-year student will take part in a 2- or 3-course Think Tank during the Fall Term
4. Intensive Advising
The purpose of the major at Hanover College is to offer students a solid grounding as thinkers and practitioners in a particular discipline. While the General Degree Requirements both introduce students to numerous disciplines and enable them to integrate a wide variety of disciplinary perspectives, the curricular function of the major is to focus and develop students' understanding of the foundations of a particular discipline, to understand the epistemologies, the methodologies, the vocabulary, the history of the discipline, and the competing schools of thought within a discipline. The options of interdisciplinary majors and student-designed majors provide flexibility for students who wish to focus on more that one field of study, but in each case the College requires that the major consist of a substantial grounding in one core discipline. Thus by focusing the student's academic experience on a particular field of scholarly inquiry or artistry over an extended period of time, the major helps students to refine the skills and modes of reflection central to that field, to become more precise in their thinking and more deliberate, experienced, and knowledgeable in their practice.
Because of its commitment to the value of a liberal arts education, Hanover College offers only liberal arts majors. For those students who are interested in pre-professional training in specific areas, Hanover College offers a series of auxiliary programs that complement the liberal arts major. [See the section on Supporting Programs and the appendix on The Liberal Arts and the Professions]
The faculty at Hanover College attempt to ensure that all majors are equally rigorous. Students who come to Hanover College can feel assured that the majority of the faculty in any one department are either tenured or tenure track and have completed terminal degrees in their chosen field. To ensure the rigor of the major, these qualified faculty members focus their efforts in several areas. First, all majors place emphasis on student scholarship and inquiry. The structure of the major requirements works to ensure that students learn the appropriate means and modes of inquiry necessary to engage in independent scholarship and creative projects early on in the major. In lower-level courses students also receive numerous opportunities to engage in both independent and collaborative scholarly and artistic projects. Once advanced in the major, students may choose from a variety of formats for working closely with departmental mentors on sustained research and creative projects. One such opportunity comes through the Independent Study, a required extended project that enables students to work on a project of their own design, and gives them an opportunity to see themselves as part of an intellectual conversation that extends through their department and beyond to all members of the discipline.
The major also works to help students consolidate the skills in writing and speaking introduced through the General Degree Requirements and to see how these skills aid the types of conversation specific to a particular discipline. For this reason, departmental majors include opportunities for individualized instruction in writing as well as a significant writing requirement. In order to develop oral skills, classes in the major provide numerous occasions for oral presentation of work, performance, discussion, and debate. Public Presentation days also provide majors with a singularly rich opportunity to present their own scholarly and artistic projects and to review the work of their peers.
In addition, majors at Hanover College offer several means for students to integrate their learning in their chosen field. All majors participate in a planned common experience during either the junior or senior year. Through this common experience students in the major engage in a dialogue with their peers, a dialogue that helps them see their field as evolving out of continual critical and artistic conversation and debate. Complementing the common experience are senior comprehensive examinations, which help students to consolidate and integrate their knowledge of the discipline. To ensure that this consolidation and integration takes places, departments work to provide an intentional review. Both the common experience and the senior comprehensive examinations provide students with opportunities to integrate their coursework and develop a cohesive sense of their chosen discipline.
Interdisciplinary majors:
Students at Hanover College have the option of participating in several interdisciplinary majors. Developed through the cooperative efforts of two or more departments, these majors are grounded in a designated set of core courses in a single discipline. In some cases, the interdisciplinary majors offer students options in choosing the core discipline. For example, depending upon a student's central interests he or she might choose either to major in International Studies with a core in Economics or to major in International Studies with a core in Political Science. The student's Independent Study will be grounded in the perspective of the core discipline, but may include other disciplinary perspectives as well. Hanover College offers interdisciplinary majors in the following areas [these are actually just examples]:
Hanover College also offers students the option of designing their own majors. In this case, as with interdisciplinary majors, the student must design a major that has a central disciplinary core and find a major advisor from that discipline. The student must also consult with faculty members in the departments that will be combined in the major to determine the feasibility of the proposed program of study. In addition the student must offer a rationale for the planned major course of study, a rationale that establishes a clear academic link between the departments involved. The student must also provide a complete listing of the courses proposed for the major, a description of the manner in which the junior and senior seminars, culminating experience, and comprehensive examinations will be structured and administered, and some indication of how professors from different departments will work cooperatively to help the student realize his or her goals.
Hanover College's theme-oriented Honors College is unique among liberal arts colleges nationwide. Functioning as a supplement to the general curriculum, the Honors College offers students a singular opportunity to engage in dialogue with distinguished scholars about both enduring topics and those breaking new ground. Rather than functioning as a separate entity that removes all involved students from other classroom activities, the Honors College has a fluid structure that allows students to move easily in and out of its programs while taking advantage of other elements of the college curriculum. The Honors College functions as a magnet for excellence of all kinds; it gives outstanding students access to the most vibrant contemporary thought, art, and performance; it gives average students the impetus to strive for greater achievements.
Characteristics of the Honors College:
The liberal arts provide an ideal foundation and preparation for a wide variety of professional careers. The skills developed in the context of a liberal arts education, including the ability to organize a research project, to think critically and analytically, to solve complex problems, and to communicate with clarity and precision--are precisely the skills that are in high demand in a wide variety of professions. Many students who want a liberal arts education, however, also want assurance of the practical implications of the liberal arts and want some form of professional experience while an undergraduate. For this reason, the faculty at Hanover College has established an exciting series of supporting programs designed to integrate the liberal arts and professional experience, to combine theory with practice, and to offer specific career skills and guidance.
These supporting programs may include prescribed coursework, often with intensive mentoring; a for-credit internship affording students experience in a given profession; a variety of co-curricular experiences such as attending public lectures and colloquia; and career guidance, again in the context of a close mentoring relationship. Each of these programs takes advantage of the particular areas of expertise of our faculty. Hanover alumni also play a role in the programs. As successful professionals in their fields, alumni not only provide career guidance to Hanover students but also serve as teaching mentors, working with Hanover professors. The programs also invite visiting scholars and visiting local and national leaders in various fields to participate.
The overseeing departments (in conjunction with the faculty as a whole) establish application deadlines, set minimum GPA requirements, and create other requirements for entrance to and continuation in the College's supporting programs. Entrance into supporting programs is competitive and the number of participating students is limited to enable a high degree of mentoring and student participation.
Unifying Objectives of the Hanover College Supporting Programs
The OED points out that etymologically discipline is antithetical to doctrine and is less concerned with abstract theory and more with practice or exercise. Academic disciplines today are indeed concerned with theory, but the etymological root of the word reminds us that it is through practice and exercise, repeated practice and exercise, that people gain mastery over their field of inquiry and investigation. Hanover College's emphasis on student scholarship is based on the understanding that students learn best when engaged actively in the practice of a particular discipline and when they come to see faculty members as both practitioners and learners in that discipline. The curriculum offers students numerous opportunities to engage in scholarly and creative activity, and it requires that each student engage in at least one extensive scholarly or creative project. This requirement reflects the faculty's conviction that by entering fully into the processes of investigation, analysis, research, writing, creation, and public presentation, students learn to integrate skills, knowledge, theory, and practice, and they thus acquire the tools necessary to becoming accomplished scholars and artists.
Because Hanover students are actively engaged in scholarship, they are better able to fulfill the objectives of the liberal arts. By working closely with accomplished scholars, students learn that the processes of inquiry and creativity call for repeated efforts to identify meaningful topics, questions, and problems; to gather and analyze evidence; to refine methods and procedures; to identify and assess alternative positions; to develop and express convincing interpretations and positions; to distinguish effective modes of expression and performance. By engaging in scholarship, students develop an understanding of problem solving; they learn to recognize complexity and ambiguity; they learn to make judgments based on thorough investigation and thoughtful evaluation. Thus scholarship helps students to acquire the powers of discernment and of making judgments about complex problems, qualities that are essential for wisdom and moral integrity. In addition, as students become able scholars and artists and present their work publicly, they come to see the value of their work beyond the confines of Hanover College and to see themselves as participants in a larger dialogue and hence as members of a larger community. By entering into the cosmopolitan world of scholarship and art, even in a small way, Hanover students may develop the experience and confidence that will help them to become reflective and active citizens and professionals.
The curriculum at Hanover College currently includes opportunities for students to engage in scholarship and creative projects. The Academic Vision Task Force recommends that the College, working through Departments, increase those opportunities, building upon the structures that currently exist. It recommends that the curriculum move students gradually and intentionally towards independent scholarly and creative projects. Students could begin by learning the basic skills of scholarship and creative work in introductory courses, including GDR's. In upper-level courses and in their majors, students could move beyond basic skills to increasingly sophisticated forms of scholarly and artistic activity. Upper-level courses, including those intended for majors and non-majors alike, could set high expectations for semester-long individual scholarly and artistic projects. Departments could structure their major curriculum to include multiple opportunities for student scholarship, including research methods seminars, colloquia, and directed research courses, as well as a required independent study. There could also be opportunities for particularly intensive scholarly work. One is a designated research course that would enable faculty members to work closely with a small number of students either on a collaborative project (with the expectation that the students would be co-authors of the end product) or on independent projects. Another is summer fellowship program that would also enable faculty to work closely with students during the summer months.
Whether in the context of a regular course work, an Independent Study, or an intensive, designated research course, faculty members will assist students in their scholarly projects in mentoring tutorials, in the context of one-on-one or small group sessions. The nature of their assistance, however, will be conditioned by the faculty members' familiarity with the students' research projects. At least three models of scholarly mentoring suggest themselves:
Hanover College defines scholarship in an inclusive way. Scholarship includes, for example, sustained and original inquiry that leads to an original contribution to a discipline; works of synthesis, such as textbooks, that build upon the original research of others; visual art or performance art; critical editions of texts; anthologies of texts; pedagogical research and writing; texts, workbooks, or essays intended for undergraduates; and essays intended for a general audience beyond a purely academic audience. But scholarship is not simply personal or professional development, though it may include personal or professional development. It must include peer or public review. The types of review themselves vary; they include publications, conference papers and posters, exhibitions, and performances among other venues. But the principle of peer review obtains in each venue. The importance of peer review is that it enables faculty to remain engaged in the wider intellectual and cultural conversations taking place around the nation and the world. Hanover faculty members naturally spend most of their time conversing with undergraduates and seeking to understand their level of comprehension; scholarship enables faculty to converse with their peers. In an isolated part of the world that tends to parochialism, scholarship enables Hanover professors to remain cosmopolitan. Hanover College does not measure scholarship in terms of quantity. Instead it seeks to encourage quality, and it celebrates quality. Hanover seeks to provide faculty members with the time, financial support, and cultural environment to produce thoughtful, reflective, mature scholarly works of high quality.
Scholarship enables college faculty to teach with integrity. Sometimes there is direct overlap between professors' areas of scholarship and the content of their courses. Even when there is no overlap, however, faculty scholarship remains vital to quality teaching. Faculty members are better able to engage their students in inquiry when they themselves are engaged in inquiry. Drawing upon the very activities that define their own scholarship, professors are able to help students define questions, find and weigh evidence, entertain alternative interpretations, develop their own interpretations, and express them with clarity and precision. Many different contexts in teaching-from class discussions, to mentoring sessions, and to review for exams-become contexts for exploration and inquiry. Faculty scholarship has an obvious and profound effect on one critical element of student learning: student scholarship. Even when the professors' areas of scholarship does not intersect the students' area of scholarship, faculty members make ideal mentors because they are able to guide students through the fundamental processes and tasks that confront all scholars.
Faculty scholarship is thus central to the liberal arts mission of Hanover College. To develop and complete a thoughtful scholarly agenda that results in quality work, faculty members need sustained time; they cannot simply fit their scholarly work into the cracks and crevices of the academic year. Accordingly, the Academic Vision Task Force recommends that tenured faculty members be eligible for one semester-long sabbatical every fourth academic year, after teaching three full academic years. As in the current sabbatical policy, sabbatical leaves would be granted on a competitive basis. Proposals for sabbatical leaves would be submitted for approval first to the faculty member's department and then to the FDC. The Department and the FDC would each hold the faculty member accountable. The FDC would require evidence that faculty members accomplished what they had proposed to do. Departments would also hold faculty members accountable as part of the Department's routine procedures. [See the section on Faculty Culture, Governance, and Evaluation.]
An essential element of the liberal arts environment is a vibrant intellectual and scholarly culture, one that engages faculty members on a continuum as learners, scholars, and active citizens of the college community, one that stimulates faculty to strive for excellence, and one that prizes quality performance on every level. It should also be fun; it should inspire joy and passion. Hanover College works to create such an environment, understanding that in doing so it not only promotes a vigorous and resilient faculty, but also best serves its students.
By providing the faculty with multiple opportunities to become involved as learners, the College both challenges and reinvigorates the faculty. Facets of the College's educational programs are intentionally designed to enable faculty members to remain vitally engaged as scholars, both in their own discipline and in other disciplines. The General Degree Requirements, the Honors Program, and Interdisciplinary majors all emphasize integrated inter-disciplinary teaching, enabling faculty members to position themselves as learners as well as teachers and to receive the infusion of intellectual energy that comes from encountering new ideas. Similarly, such extra-curricular programs as Faculty Symposia, and the symposia and colloquia offered by the Center for Free Inquiry and the Honors Program all provide exciting sources of renewal for all members of the faculty. By emphasizing faculty learning in this way, the curriculum also enables faculty to model the scholarly approach to new material for their students. When students see the kinds of approaches faculty members use to encounter new areas of knowledge, the types of questions they ask and the kinds of investigation they enter into, these students learn the nature of true inquiry and receive a clear message as to the value of lifelong learning.
The members of Hanover College's faculty are also accomplished scholars and practitioners in their own fields, and the College's programs seek to create a climate that nurtures faculty members in their scholarly pursuits. The College's program in faculty scholarship provides one means to this end; by allowing faculty frequent and flexible access to research time, the College affirms the importance of regular, disciplined, solitary inquiry and reflection to shaping a vibrant faculty culture. The mentoring program, on the other hand, enables faculty to extend most effectively the fruits of that inquiry to others in the community, to share their expertise in ways that meaningfully serve the needs of students. The program in student scholarship in particular provides faculty with a variety of exciting ways to impart to students the best of what they do and know. Moreover, this program gives faculty and students the opportunity to explore shared interests in ways that enrich all involved.
The Task Force recommends a system of faculty governance at Hanover College that reinforces the other elements of faculty culture by creating a community of active and responsible citizens and by aiding faculty in accomplishing their professional goals. We suggest that faculty governance should function on three levels at Hanover College: departmental, divisional, and administrative. By creating a gradation of faculty participation in the College's academic and administrative processes this structure ensures more thorough faculty oversight of academic programs, and more constructive faculty participation in the faculty evaluation process. By enhancing structures of communication between the faculty and administration (particularly in the areas of Admissions, Public Relations, and Development), it also ensures that Hanover's outreach programs send a message more consistent with the college's liberal arts mission.
1. Departmental:
The Task Force recommends a governance structure that assumes greater department autonomy, flexibility, and responsibility. This structure enables individual departments to provide greater support for their colleagues' research and professional development; it gives departments greater responsibility for arranging matters of curriculum, staffing, and leave time; it allows departments to help their members balance the responsibilities of teaching, scholarship, and service proportionately over an extended period of time; it assigns to departments greater accountability for the scholarship of other department members; and it gives departments a greater role in colleague evaluation.
Departmental responsibilities
Flowing from the GDR's is a need for divisional direction: the core courses are complex enough to require oversight by divisional coordinators of the academic program. In addition, these coordinators would play a small role in the faculty evaluation process; they would primarily serve as a form of check or appeal for departmental letters of evaluation.
Divisional Coordinator Responsibilities
The Task Force's recommendations for administrative duties of the faculty evolve out of two components of the vision plan. First, the requirements of the core courses in the GDR's require additional faculty expertise and oversight. Second, the goal of ensuring that all offices of the College send a more consistent message about the nature of the liberal arts mission requires more faculty involvement in all areas of the outreach process. The Task force believes it is especially important for faculty to play a greater role in attracting and retaining high quality students and therefore recommends that faculty involvement at these administrative levels be formalized.
Administrative Responsibilities
The suggestions of the Task Force, particularly those for faculty scholarship and faculty governance, also have implications for the process of faculty evaluation. The Task Force therefore recommends the following:
Hanover College works to create a student culture that is consistent with the principles of a liberal arts education. Consistent with the principle that the end of the liberal arts is to cultivate humanity, the College aspires to build an authentic community that respects the humanity of each of its members. The Office of Student Life, the various student organizations, and the athletic program are all committed to developing the physical, intellectual, artistic, ethical and spiritual dimensions of students and to reinforcing the academic programs. Similarly, faculty, students, and administrators interact on many levels, integrating social and classroom experiences and sharing in the processes of decision-making. Consistent with the principle of cultivating humanity, the College seeks to be a community that presupposes the dignity, self-worth, and moral autonomy of each individual, and a community of citizens possessing rights, freedoms, responsibilities, and obligations. Accordingly, the College abjures the paternalistic treatment of students and instead adopts the stance that students must be treated with respect and dignity, that students possess rights to privacy, freedom of speech, and due process, that students are citizens who participate in decision-making processes, who actively exercise their rights and freedoms, and who are held accountable for their actions. In doing so, the College prepares its students to contribute responsibly as mature members of a democratic society, to contribute meaningfully in local, national, and international communities.
Recommendations of the Academic Vision Task Force
The Image of Hanover College:
All offices that represent Hanover College to the public, including the offices of Public Relations, Development, and Admissions, should promote an image of Hanover College that is accurate and consistent with its vision. Among other things, they should communicate:
The methods and message of the Admissions office are of central importance in both attracting and retaining high quality students to Hanover College. The Task Force recommends that the Office of Admissions include the following in its routine operations:
The Academic Vision Task Force anticipates that many components of the Vision Plan should have a significant effect on student retention and should build upon the work of the Committee on Student Retention. Since students who attend Hanover College note that interaction with the faculty is one of the College's greatest strengths and since the mentoring program gives students greater access to and individualized attention from the faculty, the mentoring program should make large inroads in student retention. Other features of the Vision Plan that should help in student retention include: an authentic and vibrant student culture, integration of learning and integration of academic and student life; the Honors College; and, not least, the clear and consistent message about the liberal arts and careers combined with Supporting Programs that integrate the liberal arts and professional experience.
Attraction and Retention of High Quality Faculty:
Just as the Vision Plan should have a positive effect on attracting and retaining strong students, so too should it enhance the College's ability to attract and retain high quality faculty. The College will be able to present a package of items that would be potentially attractive to faculty. Not every potential or current faculty member would be attracted to every item, but they would likely be attracted to enough of them to form a favorable opinion of Hanover. The list of items include: the opportunity to work one-on-one with high quality and diverse students; 8:1 faculty-student ratio and five course teaching load; opportunity to teach in the Honors College; vital faculty culture; sabbatical leaves every four years; generous support for faculty scholarship; generous support for professional travel; opportunity to teach abroad in the spring term; and opportunity to participate in FIST trips.
Hanover College has historically been a place where students have received an unusual amount of individualized attention from their professors. Many Hanover alumni claim that the most important part of their educational experience was the personal growth that resulted from a life-changing relationship with one or two professors. These former students invariably note that the professors who have engaged in such successful mentoring relationships invested time and effort outside of the classroom experience, time that helped them develop a personal knowledge of individual students and their educational needs. The resulting specialized instruction ensured that students not only mastered difficult concepts and material, but were also challenged to investigate and wrestle with new areas of thought, to push the limits of their own achievement, and to become fundamentally better individuals. The enthusiasm and fervor with which all parties speak of such mentoring relationships, even after many years, point to the long-range impact of this vibrant and vital form of learning.
Recognizing that these mentoring relationships are a central and valuable part of Hanover's tradition, the Task Force recommends that Hanover College adopt an extensive mentoring program, one that not only intentionally integrates elements of mentoring throughout a student's four years here, but that also extends beyond the undergraduate level, both to those who have not yet attended college and to those who have completed the college experience.
The mentoring program serves as a thread that knits together the entire curriculum and academic program. The concept of mentoring brings unity and coherence to a number of different functions, most of which can be grouped into two broad and sometimes overlapping categories: (1) academic tutoring, which includes individual or small group sessions connected with a course, a research or creative project, or some other academic pursuit, and (2) advising, which includes individual or small group sessions connected with freshmen-sophomore advising, major advising, or professional advising.
Under the proposed mentoring system, the course load assigned to each professor will have to be allocated with the knowledge that mentoring is an extremely time-intensive approach to education. It is the Task Force's opinion that a reasonable balance of course contact and mentoring could be achieved by assigning each professor a five-course load coupled with high expectations for regularly scheduled mentoring contact with students.
Mentoring Schedules:
The current proposal includes several options for amounts of mentoring assigned to a particular class. These options provide rough rubrics for thinking about the amount of time allotted to mentoring in a given course. A course may be designated as either lightly, moderately, or heavily mentored. In any given year faculty members would normally teach two lightly mentored courses, one moderately mentored course, and one heavily mentored course. Lightly mentored courses would be allocated a guideline figure of three hours of lecture/discussion time per week and one hour of mentoring time per week; a moderately mentored course would include a guideline figure of three hours of lecture/discussion per week and two hours of mentoring per week; and a heavily mentored course would include a guideline figure of three hours of lecture/discussion per week and four hours of mentoring per week. These designations are suggestive but not prescriptive; individual faculty members have the option of arranging their courses to make the best use of the time allocated for meeting with students. For example, a professor teaching a lightly mentored course might choose to meet only for lecture/discussion for three weeks, and then in the fourth week allot four hours of mentoring time to meeting with students to discuss such things as paper topics or oral presentations. The only requirement is that faculty make full and effective use of mentoring time to meet with students one-on-one or in small groups.
Once the basic level of mentoring per course is established, there are also numerous other options for reallocating time within courses. One attractive possibility is to reconceive of a course so that it includes an in-class segment that encompasses less time than the present schedule; the remaining time would be devoted to mentoring. For example, a normal thirteen-week course could be structured so that eight weeks of the term are focused on in-class activities such as lectures and discussions, while five weeks of the term could be devoted to mentoring. This allocation of time could be partitioned either in large blocks (e.g. the first eight weeks of the semester in class and the last five weeks in mentoring), on a week-by-week basis (e.g. the first, third, fifth, seventh, and ninth weeks of the semester in mentoring and the other weeks devoted to in-class work), or on a daily basis (e.g. one or two days a week devoted to mentoring and the rest of the week devoted to in-class work). It is also possible that some science courses might be reconfigured to include another mentoring component instead of or in addition to a lab.
Evaluation of students:
In order for a mentoring system to work effectively for both faculty and students, faculty should be held accountable and each faculty member's mentoring activities should be considered in the faculty evaluation process. Since faculty and students will frequently meet one-on-one, relying solely on standard grades or on student evaluations in order to evaluate faculty performance is problematic. Moreover, for students who go through the mentoring process a simple grade seems counterintuitive to the purposes of mentoring. For these reasons the Task Force suggests that faculty should be required to submit a substantial written evaluation of each student's participation along with an assigned final grade. Copies of these evaluations would be included in the Faculty member's evaluation files. In addition, we suggest that each student be given a mentoring file at the beginning of his or her time at Hanover College. The Director of Mentoring would be in charge of coordinating these files, and they would be made available to faculty members who want to gauge student progress.
Extending Mentoring Beyond Hanover's Present, Four-Year Boundaries:
Mentoring expands the possibilities for incorporating both potential students and alumni into the Hanover educational experience. Many people, including the members of the Diversity Task Force, have suggested that Hanover could establish connections with potential students by developing a series of on-campus mini-courses during the summer for rising high school seniors. These courses have great potential for introducing students to the best that Hanover has to offer. By intentionally including a strong mentoring component, these courses will help establish a vital and important between faculty members at Hanover and these potential students. In such relationships, the faculty members could work on the subject matter of the mini-course, help students determine their college readiness, and, on the basis of the students' needs and goals, suggest areas on which the students might profitably focus during their senior year in high school.
Alumni might be included in the mentoring process through internship mentoring, through involvement in summer mini-courses, through mentor-in-residence programs, and through a program of Hanover Fellows in which alumni return to the College for further training in a particular area. Involving alumni in College mentoring has three positive effects. First, it allows former Hanover students to act as models of success. In addition, when students see how their education relates to the practical elements of the workplace, their enthusiasm for their coursework is revitalized. Second, students who engage in vocational mentoring with alumni will be more likely to develop a network of relationships that can help them find jobs or further training opportunities after they have graduated from Hanover. Third, involving alumni reinvigorates both alumni enthusiasm for learning and alumni commitment to Hanover. Not only does such an opportunity give former Hanover students a practical way of contributing to their alma mater, it also strengthens their connections to the College so that they are more likely to contribute to the College program in other meaningful ways.
Coordinator of Mentoring:
Instituting and overseeing a mentoring system at Hanover College will necessarily be a complex process. Faculty members will need introductory and ongoing training in mentoring. They may also need assistance with particular problems that arise in their mentoring activities. In addition, both the summer and alumni mentoring programs will call for substantial administrative efforts. For these reasons the Task Force recommends that the College establish a position of Coordinator of Mentoring.
Liberal arts colleges have long grappled with the question of how to define the relationship between the liberal arts and professional careers. While there is general consensus that a liberal arts education provides a good foundation for careers in a variety of vocations, there is disagreement about whether and to what extent professional-oriented programs should be integrated into a liberal arts curriculum. The question is rendered all the more complex by widespread popular misconceptions about the objectives of the liberal arts shared by students, parents, and the general public alike.
In the twentieth century, Hanover College, like many liberal arts colleges, adopted a number of professionally-oriented major programs. While there have been multiple rationales for such major programs over the years, in recent times faculty and administrators have tended to describe the relationship between these programs and the liberal arts in two ways. One way has been to stress that students in the professionally-oriented majors receive their liberal arts education through the general degree requirements and to point out that Hanover retains a more rigorous and varied general education program than most liberal arts colleges and certainly more than technically-oriented colleges. The other way has been to stress that faculty members in these programs can teach courses in ways that are consistent with the methods and objectives of the liberal arts, in ways, for example, that give prominent place to analysis, interpretation, and communicative skills. Co-existing with these two positions is the conviction that a major in the traditional liberal arts provides an excellent basis upon which to pursue a wide variety of professional careers, a conviction that is widely shared among faculty members and administrators and widely communicated to the public.
The Task Force believes that the current mix of perspectives and programs convey messages that are, or are perceived to be, at odds with each other and that Hanover College, like many other colleges, fails to articulate a clear and consistent vision of the relationship between the liberal arts and professional careers. The notion that the general degree requirements provide a sufficient grounding in the liberal arts, for example, is inconsistent with the oft-repeated position that majors serve unique and vital functions in a liberal arts education. It also, perhaps unintentionally, lends credence to the perception that technically-oriented vocational majors are consistent with the objectives of a liberal arts education, a perception that violates many of the positions objectives recently articulated in a variety of the College's publications. Whether approached in a technical fashion or in a manner consistent with the methods and objectives of the liberal arts, programs associated with professions may also unintentionally undermine efforts to clarify the practical, career-related advantages of traditional liberal arts majors. For a student who wants to pursue a career in business, for example, the task of communicating the benefits of majoring in English or philosophy is made all the more difficult by the mere existence of a business major, especially in light of the common assumption that majors represent credentials preparing students for particular careers.
Understanding that there are a variety of legitimate ways to define the relationship between the liberal arts and professional careers and understanding that popular misconceptions of the liberal arts conspire to frustrate the ambitions of even the most consistent and coherent programs, the Academic Vision Task Force recommends that all majors at Hanover College be liberal arts majors and that the College convey a clear and consistent message about the relationship between the liberal arts and professional careers. Through the various offices that communicate with the public, including Admissions, Public Relations, Development, and Alumni and Parent Relations, the College should articulate a consistent message that addresses popular misconceptions of the liberal arts and demonstrates, both in broad strokes and in detail, how the skills, knowledge, and understanding acquired in the liberal arts equip people to make contributions and succeed in various public and private vocations. Such a message may take the form of essays that clarify how, in the new economy, there is a greater demand for liberal arts graduates, for people who are creative and flexible, able to solve problems, make sound judgments, and communicate effectively. It may also take the form of statements from professionally successful alumni who explain how the liberal arts served them in their careers. Or it may take the form of statements from C.E.O.'s who are among the strongest supporters of a strong liberal arts education to prepare people for careers.
The Academic Vision Task Force also recommends that the College offer supporting programs designed to engage students in the academic and practical dimensions of professional careers in ways that support students' work in the general degree requirements and major. The supporting programs will provide exciting ways to articulate, in concrete and practical terms, the connections between the liberal arts and the professions. In addition to courses and seminars, such programs may include, for example, opportunities for internships and opportunities to work with alumni who have been successful in their professions and who can serve as mentors to Hanover students. The Academic Vision Task Force believes that these supporting programs can serve as magnet, attracting top students who are interested in acquiring a liberal arts education but also interested in preparing for careers. They will also play an important role in realizing the objective of integrating all dimensions of students' lives, in this case integrating academics and careers, integrating life in the classroom with life after Hanover College. So too they will also provide opportunity for the constituents of the College--current students, prospective students, faculty, and alumni-to work together in common purpose. Hence, the Task Force believes that the adoption of its recommendations will enable the College to convey a consistent vision to all constituents about the objectives of a liberal arts education and about the relationship between the liberal arts and professional careers and simultaneously contribute to the goal of integrating the experiences of its students and the goal of building a stronger, more extensive community.
DRAFT PLAN FOR INCREASING AFRICAN-AMERICAN AND LATINO/A PARTICIPATION AT HANOVER COLLEGE
Advisory Committee on Minority Initiatives Ted Eden (Chair), Ken Moyer, Jeff Hughes, Billy Sue Smith, Ed Stigall, Amy Weir, Tara White, Eduardo Santa Cruz, Chanasai Tiengtrakul, Tonya Clemons
Statement of Purpose
The primary motivation for our desire to increase the number of African-American and Latino/a students at Hanover is to serve these students and the communities from which they come, as is the case with any student who attends the College. It is also important to note, however, that increasing the number of African-American and Latino/a students at Hanover will improve the educational experiences of all of our students. Bringing together students of different races, ethnicities, nationalities, socioeconomic status, cultures, and intellectual viewpoints increases goodwill among people of different groups, increases knowledge of the richness of experience possible in a multicultural world, and helps students, through discussions with others who have different values than their own, to challenge their intellectual, spiritual, and ethical beliefs.
This plan focuses on increasing the numbers of African-American and Latino students, faculty, and staff at Hanover because these are the groups that have been and are most dramatically underrepresented at Hanover. Nothing in this plan is meant to suggest that the College should reduce its efforts to attract scholars from a broad variety of ethnic, geographic, national, and socioeconomic backgrounds. In fact, if this plan is to succeed, the College must continue its largely successful efforts to improve the diversity of its student body and staff.
Implementation
Many of the initiatives mentioned here have already been implemented by the staff and faculty at the College; others have been assigned to various administrative officers and faculty for further planning or immediate implementation. The plan will be overseen by an administrator who will report directly to President Russell Nichols, and who will work in partnership with the relevant administrative branches of the College. In addition, the College will establish a committee composed of representatives from various campus administrative branches to coordinate the ongoing components of the plan.
Elements of the Plan
A. Recruitment of African-American and Latino/a Students
Beginning in Fall 2002 the College will seek to increase the number of African-American and Latino/a students so that the populations of these students are more or less consistent with the demographics of the region from which the College draws most of its students. The College will
1. Publicize the successes we have had in increasing the numbers of international and minority students at Hanover in the past ten years
2. Continue to actively recruit Native Hawaiian and other U.S. minority students
3. Increase advertising and mailings directed to African-American and Latino/a students, and increase attendance at minority college fairs (begun Fall 2000)
4. Create and maintain a section of the College's web site focusing on our commitment to serving minority students
5. Target urban schools in Louisville, Cincinnati, and Indianapolis for recruiting visits (begun Fall 2000)
6. Build upon successful relationships with Hanover alumni who can help recruit African-American and Latino/a students, and cultivate new relationships of this kind whenever possible
7. Invite interested students to on-campus and off-campus events (begun Fall 2000)
8. Work with academic departments to attract talented students to specific programs (e.g. Education)
9. Offer full-tuition academic scholarships for outstanding African-American and Latino/a students, whenever possible through community organizations such as Louisville's Black Achievers program
10. Work to increase the number of minority students who participate in the Scholarships for Merit Competition
11. Increase involvement of Hanover students, faculty, parents, and alumni in encouraging admitted students to attend Hanover
12. Maintain the College's commitment to a diverse staff in the Admissions Office.
B. Campus Community
The College will continue to emphasize, as a principle-based community, respect for all members of the community. The College will also continue its efforts to reflect the diversity of its community by striving to involve all members of the community in important positions and decision-making processes. The College will
1. Actively encourage students of diverse backgrounds to serve in the Peer Advisors, Resident Assistants, and Peers Advising Life Situations programs
2. Develop a plan to help all faculty and staff understand "best practices" for teaching and interacting with students, faculty, and staff whose backgrounds may differ from their own
3. Move the social components of the Anwarul & Mythili Haq Multicultural Center to an on-campus house, to provide a more active social center
4. Review the College's harassment policy to ensure that it protects all members of the community
5. Develop a plan to deal with emergencies involving international students
6. Encourage Greek organizations to reach out to minority students when recruiting new members, and to work with minority student organizations
7. Make more efforts to coordinate event programming, to increase the quality of the programming, to increase the number of African-American and Latino/a speakers and programs, and to assure funding for all organizations to sponsor diversity-related programming
8. Continue to actively support the development of student groups reflecting the social and academic interests of minority students
9. Work with Sodhexo-Marriott to develop an ethnic food night once a month
10. Continue to emphasize the importance of study abroad in creating more open- and globally-minded students
11. Review the College's statements about its goals and purposes to ensure that they take clear and firm stances toward accepting and embracing difference
12. Continue to encourage discussions of diversity issues that intersect staff, faculty, and students
13. Consult with faculty and staff at diverse institutions to clarify the characteristics of community most favorable to the retention of a diverse population.
C. Recruitment of African-American and Latino/a Faculty and Staff
Recognizing that an ethnically diverse faculty and staff will enrich the experiences of all members of the community and provide important support for minority students in particular, the College will strive to increase the number of African-American and Latino/a faculty and staff. The College will
1. Continue to provide administrative support and incentives to academic departments to hire excellent scholars and teachers from underrepresented groups
2. Advertise all available positions in journals and databases targeted toward scholars from underrepresented groups
3. Make a coordinated effort to hire several faculty from underrepresented groups, while clearly articulating that these faculty are hired for the expertise and intellectual excitement they bring to the campus, not to fulfill quotas
4. Establish a dissertation/teaching fellowship for an African-American or Latino/a scholar
5. Establish faculty exchange programs with Stillman College and UNIVA (Guadalajara)
6. Make efforts to help all faculty understand "best practices" for teaching and interacting with students and faculty with backgrounds different from their own
7. Continue to make efforts to hire international faculty
8. Continue efforts to hire and retain qualified professionals from underrepresented groups in Student Life, Admissions, the Haq Center, and other administrative departments
D. Curriculum
Because of the growing ethnic, social, and cultural complexity of American and international life, it is important for all students to study the many manifestations of this complexity, both in the U.S. and throughout the world. In order to foster this understanding in all students, the College will
1. Survey the current curriculum to determine the amount of attention already devoted to the cultural and ethnic complexities of society in the U.S., and encourage faculty to devote more attention to these subjects when appropriate
2. Survey the syllabi of courses meeting the current General Degree Requirement in Cultures other than the West, and encourage new courses as appropriate
3. Continue to increase the number of students studying off-campus and to emphasize the importance of off-campus and international study to developing a full understanding of the complexity of relationships with people of different cultures and races
4. Encourage faculty and staff to emphasize to students the personal relevance of understanding cultural diversity, given demographic and social changes in U.S. society.
E. Community Relations
Reaching out to the community demonstrates the College's good will to a variety of constituencies; it also enables the College to contribute positively to the development of local and regional culture. To strengthen its ties to minority communities the College will
1. Secure a corporate membership to the Southern Indiana Chapter of the NAACP
2. Form an Education Partnership with Central High School (Louisville, Ky) and other magnet schools in Indianapolis, Cincinnati, and Chicago
3. Develop programs with the Black Achievers Program in Louisville
4. Strengthen ties to local organizations with which Hanover has worked in the past (St. Stephens' Church, Ebeneezer Church)
Special Initiatives
Explore College Hanover College will begin an "Explore College" program focusing on African-American and Latino/a students. The program will enroll approximately 24 students. The aim of the program is to raise the aspirations of these students from community and public colleges toward selective liberal-arts colleges. The program will help them improve their academic skills and familiarity with expectations at selective colleges so as to improve their chances of getting accepted, matriculating, succeeding at, and graduating from these colleges. Another aim is to familiarize these students with Hanover faculty, students, staff, academic policies, and facilities so that they are more likely to want to matriculate here.
Participation in the 2-3 week long summer session will earn students .5 Hanover Course credits (2 semester hours). The courses will be in different academic fields, but all will be writing intensive. The courses will feature small classes (10-12 students), with lots of field trips, lab work, personal advising, and help with library searches and resources. The curriculum will be drawn from Hanover's regular courses; these will not be high school courses in disguise. Students will be mentored throughout their experience by current African-American or Latino/a students from Hanover. While the academic experience will be intense, the program will also feature an introduction to the social life of the College; there should be time for fun both within and outside the classroom.
Education Partnership with Central High School, Louisville
Science Education
Through a grant from the Lilly Endowment, Hanover has a program of outreach to elementary-level science teachers in the region surrounding the College. We would like to work with Central High School to extend this program to the secondary level. This program would provide pre-college science educators with resources to help them develop investigative exercises in their courses to enliven basic lessons and encourage their students to seek further training and careers in the sciences. The program would help Central High School faculty to develop, adapt, and revise hands-on, participatory, investigation-oriented activities that engage students in the scientific enterprise. These exercises complement text-based learning and help replace the frustration and boredom often cited as factors for student attrition in the sciences with activities that convey the excitement scientists experience in their investigations.
The current program at Hanover brings elementary school science teachers to campus for a two-day seminar during which they are introduced to new tools that emphasize a hands-on approach to teaching science. Our proposed new program would bring Central High School teachers and students to Hanover for a week-long investigative project using resources available in our new Science Center. Hanover faculty and current Hanover students would collaborate with Central High students and teachers on generating and analyzing data. Students and faculty would be housed on campus. In addition to the research project, there would be social activities available in order to introduce students to College. During the following academic year, Central students and faculty would occasionally return to Hanover for seminars on analyzing data and presenting scientific research.
Central High students who enroll at Hanover and major in the sciences would be able to participate in the program as mentors to younger students and may be encouraged to continue research projects with Hanover faculty they meet during the program.
Law
Building on Central's existing program in Legal/Governmental Services, Hanover might create a mentorship program for pre-law students. Such a program would begin in the high school junior year. During the summer, students would come to Hanover for a short course running concurrently with a Hanover program that will bring young corporate leaders who have not studied the liberal arts to Hanover in order to develop the critical thinking skills and historical and cultural background necessary to success at the highest levels of corporate leadership. The summer Law program would introduce students to the study of law as a liberal-arts discipline rather than as a career program.
At Hanover, students would take courses focused on legal issues, critical legal theory, and both legislative and judicial processes in a variety of disciplines, including Classics, Political Science, History, Sociology, Business, and Philosophy. The College would build on its contacts with the legal communities in Indianapolis and Louisville in order to provide summer internships with law firms; internships with Judge Todd in Madison would also be a possibility. Also, the program would develop relationships with the most competitive law schools in the region so that students can familiarize themselves with these programs while still undergraduates. The program would feature intensive faculty-student mentoring. It would also include LSAT preparation, and perhaps some effort on the College's part to secure financial support for law-school tuition through the law firms that would be partners in this effort. This program should prepare its graduates for success at elite law schools.
While recruitment for this program would focus on African-American students at magnet high schools such as Central, all interested Hanover students would be eligible to participate.
Latin American Studies
For students with native fluency in Spanish. Central High juniors would come to Hanover for introductions to the Business and Spanish departments. During the summer before their senior year, students would come to Hanover for a short course running concurrently with the Hanover program mentioned above in order to make contacts with young corporate leaders. At this point, their skills in written Spanish would be evaluated for placement into a "Written Spanish for Native Speakers" course if necessary.
Once at Hanover, students would major in a liberal-arts discipline such as Latin American Studies, History, Political Science, Spanish, or Economics, with a minor in Business. These students would take some of the regular Business courses in English, but they would also be required to take some on-campus business courses in Spanish, perhaps taught by faculty on exchange from UNIVA, our off-campus program in Guadalajara, Mexico. Students would be required to take on-campus courses in Latin American history, politics, and literature. Students in this program would also be required to spend a semester studying at UNIVA. The program would develop contacts with corporations and non-government organizations with extensive operations in Mexico, Central America, or the Caribbean. Students would each do two internships with these organizations, with one summer internship in a Spanish-speaking country and one in the organization's U.S. offices. This program should prepare its graduates for careers in multinational corporations, nongovernmental organizations, or the foreign service; it would also serve as excellent preparation for PhD programs in Latin American Studies.
Any Hanover student demonstrating near-native fluency in Spanish by the end of the freshman year would be eligible to participate in this program.
Advanced Degrees in the Liberal Arts
According to Reaching the Top: A Report of the National Task Force on Minority High Achievement (1999), there are no college-level programs in the U.S. that prepare minority students for advanced degrees in the humanities and social sciences. Hanover might create such a program, in concert with Central High School, I.U., U.K., Stillman, and perhaps another selective liberal arts college.
Such a program would begin in the junior year of high school and include a mentoring relationship between a Hanover faculty member and a Central High student. The student would come to Hanover regularly during the academic year for activities that would focus on academic research and on teaching. During the summer, the student would work on a collaborative research project with the faculty mentor.
If the student chose to attend Hanover, the faculty mentor would be the academic advisor; the student would be required to do a collaborative research project every summer. There would be small grants to cover research expenses (similar to Richter grants) and financial aid to cover tuition. There would also be help from graduate school faculty on best ways to prepare for graduate school. To remain in good standing, students would have to maintain grades sufficiently high to get into competitive graduate programs (graduate with at least a 3.4 GPA).
If the student chose to attend graduate school, the program would provide some financial support. In addition to a continuing relationship with a faculty mentor from Hanover, the graduate school would provide a faculty mentor. ABD students might return to Hanover on a teaching/dissertation fellowship to gain teaching experience in a selective liberal-arts institution. They might be required after graduation to teach for a number of years at Hanover in return for the support they've received.
While recruitment for this program will be aimed primarily at minority high school students, it will be open to all Hanover students.
Education Certification
In 1995, 81% of the candidates in U.S. teacher education programs were white; 40% of U.S. elementary and secondary school students were members of racial or ethnic minorities. Hanover would like to collaborate with Central High School to encourage more minority high school students to consider teaching as a profession. The Hanover Education faculty and teacher candidates can encourage Central high school students to explore the teaching profession by sending Hanover teacher candidates and faculty to Central to mentor prospective students. Hanover students might do both formal in-class teaching and tutoring or instructional activities; Hanover faculty might lead teaching development seminars or do collaborative research with Central faculty. Central students could visit teacher education classes at Hanover and possibly collaborate in a service project with Hanover Education students at other public schools in Louisville (one possibility would be for Central students to work with Hanover students on cadet teaching in a neighboring elementary school). Hanover is also interested in having Central faculty come to Hanover to share their expertise and experience with our classes. These exchanges might extend anywhere from day-long visits to year-long exchanges. These exchanges should encourage Central High School graduates to attend Hanover, where they would study in Hanover's well-respected Education program; they would be encouraged to do some of their student teaching at Central High in order to strengthen Central students' understanding of the value of teaching as a profession. A Hanover partnership with Central will strengthen the Education Department's involvement in Louisville schools, while also providing Central's students and faculty with additional resources for successful education.
These programs could be developed on a pilot basis with Central, to be extended to other magnet high school programs in the region as the programs stabilize and opportunities develop. The Development Office will work with Louisville-area alumni to support a number of full-tuition scholarships for students at Central High School who will participate in these programs.