UNC Asheville and three other southeastern liberal arts schools were recently awarded a $300,000 grant from the Teagle Foundation of New York to assess the impact of active learning on student engagement and intellectual growth. The consortium, led by Agnes Scott College, also includes Converse College and Wofford College.

UNC Asheville will use its portion of the grant to measure the effectiveness of the Liberal Studies Introductory Colloquium, the foundation course in the University’s new Integrative Liberal Studies (ILS) Program. The assessment will focus on the impact of active learning experiences.

“We are grateful to the Teagle Foundation for its commitment to liberal education,” said Dr. Mark W. Padilla, provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs at UNC Asheville. “Teagle’s support will allow us to study and improve upon what the liberal arts can offer to our undergraduates. The diversity of the consortium member-institutions is also critical to the project’s potential, as it will extend the usefulness of our findings and their relevance to wide array of universities and educators nationwide.”

First offered in 2004, UNC Asheville’s introductory colloquia orient students to the values of liberal education and its methods of inquiry, while helping them adjust to the academic demands and culture at UNC Asheville. Students can choose from a variety of topics in disciplines across the university, ranging from world religions and adolescent development to technology and society. Colloquia are all writing intensive, so that students receive additional instruction in college composition and faculty in the program serve as advisers to the incoming freshmen. The Introductory Colloquia provide a foundation for later coursework in the ILS Program, including the Core Cluster in the Humanities and the Integrative Topical Cluster, in which students study complex global and regional issues across several disciplines.

UNC Asheville is one of just 21 colleges and universities nationwide which received a total of $1.5 million as part of Teagle’s Outcomes and Assessment Initiative, which promotes institutional as well as faculty collaboration in order to strengthen teaching and learning. It also is one of the few public institutions funded through Teagle, a foundation devoted to underwriting research at private institutions.

Representatives from the four southeastern institutions met in Atlanta on June 29-30 to outline their objectives and establish the foundations for their future work. The meeting culminated the consortium’s year-long effort to set goals, priorities and procedures for the collaborative. The project extends from June 2006 through June 2009.

The grant proposal, "Improving and Assessing Integrative Learning Experiences," was co-authored by Dr. James Diedrick, associate dean of the college and professor of English, and Dr. Laura Palucki Blake, director of assessment and assistant professor of Psychology, both at Agnes Scott College, with contributions from representatives at the other institutions. This project emerged from an earlier proposal written by Ellen Goldey, professor of biology at Wofford, which led to a $25,000 planning grant from the Teagle Foundation. Goldey used her award to host an initial planning conference at Wofford in November 2005 which led the consortium to revise and develop its preliminary ideas. In February 2006, Diedrick and Goldey attended a conference co-hosted by the American Association of Colleges & Universities and the Teagle Foundation, where they consulted with educators and researchers who are engaged in learning outcomes assessment projects at schools across the country.

Over the next three years, each member of the consortium plans to study and gather data on different approaches to integrative learning and curricula. In addition to UNC Asheville’s assessment of active learning experiences in the colloquium, Agnes Scott will evaluate its First-Year Seminar program and the benefits of linking the seminars to Living and Learning Communities; Converse College will study the impact of its new leadership and learning initiative; and Wofford College will focus on the impact of its Learning Communities that link laboratory science courses for non-science majors and freshman humanities seminars.

“I think we now have the opportunity to teach each other about integrative learning experiences—about what they are but also how they change people,” said Dr. Lisa Friedenberg, associate vice chancellor for social sciences and professor of Psychology, who attended the Atlanta planning meeting. “Today’s college students face a world of increasing complexity and uncertainty. It is critical for college curricula to prepare students to live and work in these ever-changing environments. Many schools are experimenting with integrative learning experiences but few have taken the steps necessary to assess their impact.”

Dr. Edward J. Katz, associate vice chancellor for university programs and professor of Literature and Language, agrees that this represents an important opportunity to examine a central component of the new curriculum. “This project allows us to begin gathering empirical data on how active and integrative learning experiences prepares students for more advanced skills development and interdisciplinary learning later in their college careers,” he said. “With pilot sections of our Liberal Studies Senior Colloquia coming online this fall, we will have the opportunity three years from now to study the impact of these experiences on learning from the time our students arrive here through their graduation from UNCA.”

For more information on "Improving and Assessing Integrative Learning Experiences," or on the Integrative Liberal Studies Program, contact Edward Katz at ekatz@unca.edu or Lisa Friedenberg at friedenberg@unca.edu. For more on the Teagle Foundation, see www.teaglefoundation.org.