The Liberal Arts and Applied Learning: Thinking about Institutions and Thinking Institutionally
Authors: Janel Curry, Provost, Rosanna Drinkhouse, Sohenga Depestre
As an undergraduate, I had a poster on my dormitory room wall that summarized my perception of my liberal arts education experience: “For every question there is a simple answer and it is wrong.” A liberal arts education teaches individuals to see issues from a variety of perspectives—multi-dimensional, multi-disciplinary, and multi-cultural. It builds critical thinking, an essential outcome of a good education that prepares students for a complex world.
As a faculty member and then a provost, I have become more and more uncomfortable with stopping at the point of merely introducing complexity. I once asked a colleague how he gave students hope in the midst of teaching about the complexity of the world’s problems. How did he show them a way forward? I have pondered and reflected on his response ever since—“Freedom is in the critique.” He saw deconstructing the “simple answer” as leading to freedom.
Building critical thinking, arguably, has morphed into postmodernism and identity politics, where it becomes difficult to land on any solid truth or to believe you can understand another person’s experience or perspective. In this new world, students can be paralyzed as they try to live between the vulnerability of recognizing they will never fully understand a given situation and the urgency of the need to act, make decisions, and make a difference.
We need ways to model the living out of a liberal arts education for our students that help them balance these two essential components of a liberal arts education--understanding complexity and making decisions within this complexity. These two components have parallels with Hugh Heclo’s distinction between thinking about institutions and thinking institutionally.
Thinking about institutions is not the same thing as thinking institutionally. Both involve exercising our critical thinking facilities—a good thing, but our modern inclination to distrust typically goes beyond this. A “critical theory” approach, associated with an analysis focused on unmaking and demystifying, can often fail to lead to the goal of actually making a decision, but instead remains at the deconstructive stage. “Thinking about” an institution goes no further than this stage. “Thinking institutionally,” in contrast, involves having to make a decision--an actual concrete expression of theory as it is lived out in a complex world.
Recently, undergraduates Rosanna Drinkhouse and Sohenga Depestre got the chance see these components enacted together through their placement in the Office of the Provost. These two young women were part of the Presidential Fellows program at Gordon College, a highly competitive program that pairs students with vice presidents who then work as part of their staffs and observe and see leadership and decision-making. Thus Fellows get to observe the work of the VP and contribute in meaningful ways.
These two young women watched college leaders make decisions within the context of social and economic complexity, and then were able to follow up with questions about their observations. From their perspective, this experience has been transformative; from my perspective, it has provided opportunities for reflective discussions with the two Fellows on living and making decisions within an institution in a particular context and time.
What follows are some of their observations over the past year as they grappled with the tension between understanding complexity and making concrete decisions in a real world context.
Observation: Students often want the curriculum to change yesterday. Rosanna was struck by the many layers of decision-making and accountability that went into delivering a curriculum.
As a student, Rosanna enrolled in engaging, thought provoking courses. Learning brought her joy, but through the Presidential Fellows program, she gained a deeper perspective on the village behind the learning. She learned that considerable effort, time, and cooperation go into creating a course.
For example, like every student at Gordon, she took a common core course where she ravenously took notes, crammed for exams, and wrote a research paper. But, at the same time, because of her behind-the-scenes access, she was becoming aware that higher education is a web of professors, deans, administrators, and accrediting bodies. All parties work toward the common good of student learning, but from different perspectives.
As she represented the student body on Gordon’s curricular committee and listened to how animatedly faculty discussed their learning goals, that core course gained value. When she took the final exam for the course, she realized that she was not merely regurgitating information but rather demonstrating her fulfillment of a particular learning outcome that will in turn help the faculty assess the very effectiveness of the core curriculum. A question on an exam is not always just a question on an exam.
Observation: Sohenga and Rosanna learned about all the pressures facing higher education and how administrators try to provide stability amid these pressures to ensure that students can focus on learning.
Sohenga and Rosanna observed Provost Curry working across the various offices and divisions of the college on key issues facing higher education, particularly with regard to financial challenges. They saw the tension of having to make financial tradeoffs between such things as increasing faculty compensation versus increasing numbers of faculty, even as a federal mandate that proposed to increase the minimum salary for exempt employees threatened to throw all such choices out the window.
Sohenga learned that an important function of administration is to manage this ever-changing landscape while protecting students from these macro problems that could very well affect their time at Gordon and shift their focus. In the Provost’s office, Sohenga saw how Provost Curry managed crises and challenges, which, had they not been addressed, would have negatively impacted students’ experiences.
Rosanna reflected on how her friends next door in the library did not know these details; instead, they were able to devote their energy to studying.
Observation: Sohenga and Rosanna became aware of how essential and difficult it is for a provost to get a sense for the range of views on campus around current political issues and to understand their impact on the individual classroom.
Connecting social movements across the country with life on the campus is difficult. While making decisions within the macro-climate, often it is difficult for administrators to get a sense of the tensions within the classroom at the micro level or to sense how the larger social forces are impacting the individual classroom.
Rosanna and Sohenga helped me get a sense of the student climate across campus when faculty were talking about international justice issues in class while students were struggling with the racial tensions within their own communities in the United States. Through listening to them, I was able to raise awareness with the faculty, working to sensitize faculty to this tension and giving suggestions on how to open up such discussions.
Observation: Perhaps the most difficult lesson Rosanna and Sohenga learned this past year was that often the community cannot know all of the complications behind a situation.
Gordon is a small, relationally-focused community, so everyone tends to be deeply invested in the inner workings of the college. When personnel recommendations on staffing priorities from faculty committees are not taken due to multiple factors that cannot be shared, complete transparency is not always possible nor desirable. In fact, HR requirements, accreditation stipulations, and employment law limit full transparency.
Rumors and perceptions abound but cannot always be addressed, which requires trust among administration, faculty, and students. Yet the building of trust is one of the greatest challenges of the social media era. We are good about thinking about institutions but have lost capacity to think institutionally.
The liberal arts need contexts where students can see and experience the application of decision-making. Rosanna’s and Sohenga’s experiences as Presidential Fellows gave them a front row view of the complexity that leaders in higher education face. Applied learning programs such as this one offer students the opportunity to move beyond deconstruction alone and toward thoughtful decision-making in complex environments.
- end -