The link to unlimited learning
By Sandy Coleman
Ballet is not Shanita Gopie's forte. It stretches the multicultural and hip-hop dancer out of her comfort zone.
Give her a funky beat and the co-director and choreographer of Wheaton's Trybe dance troupe could give Beyoncé and Shakira a gyrating run for their money. But there she was giving ballet class her all--pointing toes, elegantly lifting arms, and turn, turn, turning on the balls of her feet to the piano tempo of Cole Porter's "Night and Day" in the Ellison Dance Studio. "Ballet is really hard for me," said Gopie '07. "I never grew up with dance classes. It's kind of hard dancing different dances that are a little more loose and then, at the end of my college career, going to something that is very [precise]."
Because of the Connections curriculum, Gopie--like many other Wheaton students--has been encouraged to reach beyond familiar territory.
Four years after it was implemented, the innovative Connections curriculum, which links courses across academic areas, has achieved at least some of its goals: pushing students to go beyond limits they may have unknowingly set for themselves, broadening their perspectives and thinking about all subjects, and showing them that life is a world of links.
The Class of 2007, which graduates in May, represents the first cohort to fully experience the college's approach to emphasizing the cross-disciplinary nature of knowledge. To mark that milestone, the faculty are in the midst of a comprehensive two-year assessment of the program. Their goal: determine how the initiative is working, from the students' point of view. Intrigued, the Wheaton Quarterly set off on an informal look at the program, which has been held out as a model for 21st century liberal arts study to other colleges around the country.
First, a few numbers. Faculty created 72 Connections linking two or more courses in the arts, humanities, history, natural sciences, social sciences, and math and computer science. In all, more than 150 courses across the curriculum are part of the program. And then, students have designed, and won faculty approval for, 157 additional course connections, according to Patricia Brown Santilli, registrar and dean of academic systems.
Although there is not universal acclaim, students said they found value in the curriculum-even when they felt compelled to take courses in which they weren't initially interested.
That's a good thing, given that employers are seeking college graduates who are multidimensional and able to navigate today's global economy, according to a 2006 survey conducted on behalf of the Association of American Colleges and Universities.
Gopie, a Posse and Fulbright scholar, already gets that. She signed up for the ballet class to link her "Basic Anatomy and Physiology" course. She wanted to take anatomy and figure drawing but it was not offered when she needed it.
"I was stuck," she said. In the end, Gopie--an English major with a minor in studio art and Asian studies-found a different kind of connection that helps her now as a dancer and will benefit her later. Her planned career in arts philanthropy demands a broad knowledge base.
"The anatomy and physiology class helped me a great deal because we learned about all the muscles of the body and the bones. It was a lot of memorization. And everything in class was visual. So I was seeing it and learning about it. That helped me," said Gopie.
"Whenever I did stretching exercises, that's when it would hit me: 'Wow, I know what my muscles are,'" she said. "I was more aware of the facts of hydration. I could tell dancers that they needed to hydrate when muscles began tightening up."
Before connections led Gopie to ballet, she was focused exclusively on hip-hop and dances that hailed from places like Haiti, India, the Middle East or the streets of her native New York. "I had a closed mind. Then I realized, 'Wait a minute, I'm shutting off something that I don't know,'" she said. "By taking anatomy and physiology, I had to connect it [to another subject]. It made me think that if I'm going to understand dance, I can't just understand cultural dances. I need to study classical dance, too.
"That will play out in what I want to do because I want to do grant writing and I want to do fundraising and public relations for an arts program. I need to have a well-rounded perspective on the arts," she said.
The verdict
Other students express similar sentiments about the challenges they faced and the lessons they learned.
William Vasiliou '07, an economics and American history major who plans to attend law school, enrolled in two sets of connections: "History and Politics of U.S. Foreign Policy," which included history and political science courses, and "The Calculus of Microeconomics," which linked an introductory calculus course with a class in microeconomics.
He said connections taught him to be aware that all facets of life are connected in some way. "We just have to look hard enough to find those connections," he said.
Robby Grossman '07, a computer science major with a minor in mathematics, registered for two courses--cryptography and U.S. foreign policy--without realizing they were connected.
He took U.S. foreign policy during his freshman year as an elective to better understand the context of events in recent American history. He took cryptography his sophomore year because of his natural interest in mathematics. And the course went beyond the theoretical toward the practical use of math in the real world.
Grossman said he didn't need a push to diversify his of study, but others may. "I think that it's a great way to get students thinking about courses outside of their major department."
Finding the relationships among different courses deepens thinking, Kristin Ford '07 points out. The studio art major, who plans to teach art or work in theater after Wheaton, took the connection that links courses in art, math and chemistry.
"The connection of art to mathematics is a strong one," she said. "And I learned various problem-solving skills dealing with the world of art, as well as how math is inherent in nature."
Jessica Otto '07 is a political science major who plans to spend next year working on a campaign
advocating for sustainable environmental policies. She also intends to go to law school in the future. Her connections--the "History and Politics of U.S. Foreign Policy" as well as the "Logic and Digital Circuits" connection linking philosophy and physics--will serve her well.
"At some point during my time at Wheaton, this curriculum changed the way I view my education
and the significance of the textbook material. Extending knowledge gained from one course to
another necessitates a comprehension of the material beyond that which is immediately apparent. This, in turn, encourages students to evaluate the significance and apply it to broader contexts."
The history
Professor of Sociology Kersti Yllö had a hand in bringing about the Connections curriculum. She and Professor of Biology John Kricher chaired the Educational Policy Committee that organized the faculty discussions that led to the new curriculum.
The process began in the fall of 1999 after Wheaton had just finished a reaccreditation review and self-evaluation. The review process caused faculty to reconsider curriculum and to focus on how students at a liberal arts college should learn in the 21st century. The goal was to get students beyond the traditional frameworks.
"We were trying to get [students] away from that checklist mentality--take two of this, one of that--to push them to have breadth in different areas, yet see the interconnections, and see issues from an interdisciplinary point of view. You can approach Darwin from a literary, historical and biological perspective so that you honor the disciplinary expertise of faculty. This allows faculty and students to come together and compare perspectives and look at some of the issues that are not confined to disciplines."
One of Yllo's favorite links is "The Darwin Connection: Evolution, Race and Culture," which connects a biology course on evolution and ecology with classes on Victorian society and literature. "It lets the science students see that science does not develop in a vacuum. Darwin was a Victorian gentleman influenced by the context of the times, the poetry, the literature, the history. And the English students see how Victorian notions of race were shaped by the early science. They weren't just culturalconstructs that arose out of nothing," she said.
The big question
Four years later, the natural questions to ask are: Is the curriculum working out the way the faculty had hoped? Is it having the impact they sought?
College officials are in the process of completing a two-year evaluation of the initiative, according to Associate Professor of Education Vicki Bartolini, chair of the curriculum evaluation committee.
The process has involved interviews and case studies with selected faculty and students who discussed their experiences with connections, an on-line survey that sought student input in April, and a series of student focus groups for those who have completed connections. An online faculty survey was conducted as well.
The results will be coming. But for now, said Yllo, "I think that it has worked from a faculty perspective in bringing us together around interesting collaborations. One of the outcomes has been that this new curriculum has shaped faculty scholarship in new directions. Usually in higher ed, faculty research affects what we teach in class.... What has happened here is that these curricular initiatives, the interdisciplinary connections, and the infusion of diversity have led faculty to ask different questions in their scholarship.
"I think the students are getting it," Yllo said. "But I don't know that all the students are getting it. At worst, they are getting a distribution. They take some humanities, sciences and social sciences courses. And if they don't, there is kind of a back-up of requirements. If you have taken two connections and managed to avoid science, you still have to go take a science. But we need to get a better sense of what kind of connections are working best for students. And that's what we're in the process of trying to figure out."
The future
Students interviewed by the Wheaton Quarterly offered plenty of suggestions for tweaking the program.
Gopie said one improvement to connections would be to make sure classes are offered frequently enough so students aren't pressed to take just anything as they approach the end of their senior
year.
On connections proposed by students: "I'd require that the professors teaching the courses for a particular connection consult each other before signing off on it," said Grossman. "It's a lot easier to make something look good on paper than it is in practice. And that's the biggest threat to the Connections curriculum coming to fruition-especially when the proposals are written by students whose top priority is meeting their graduation requirements."
And yet, Ford believes that customized connections are important because she has heard from more than one student that in some areas or majors connections are more difficult to fulfill. "I would ask professors and students to think creatively about certain connections that have not yet been integrated into our curriculum, and be more tolerant of students creating their own connections."
Said Grossman: "The next few years are going to determine whether the Connections curriculum legitimately enhances academic studies or whether it's merely a requirement that students need to get checked off in order to graduate."
Communication will be key, he said. "If the powers that be are serious about the Connections curriculum and wish it to be a meaningful one, then they ought to create a direct dialog between the involved professors so that the courses can be coordinated," and better relate to each other.
"The Connections curriculum would be worthless if there were not tremendous professors at Wheaton," said Vasiliou. "A system does not work unless it has good facilitators. The professors I have had over the past four years are the ones responsible for my developing critical skills-thinking, writing and analyzing-not the Connections curriculum.
"I believe, however, the Connections curriculum creates an academic environment that professors enjoy and respect, which results in students enjoying and respecting the curriculum."
