Despite the fact that Georgetown has a rather well-articulated set of requirements applicable to all students, there are already several different kinds of paths through the university. For example, I am impressed in talking with alumni who took part in intercollegiate athletics that their memories are quite different from others. They disproportionally participated in fewer clubs; many didn’t participate in study abroad. Their team is a predominant memory. So too those students pursuing premedical preparation have a very different mix of requirements versus electives than many other students. For some it limits their exploring other interests in their courses. Further, art (studio practice) majors have a set of experiential courses that directly evolve the pact of painting, drawing, sculpture, and/or printmaking. The density of such hands-on experiences is greater than in other fields. Majors in lab-based sciences also have experiences that bridge theory and practice.
Ever larger percentages of our undergraduates are quite close to completing all requirements for their BA/BS degree prior to the last semester of their senior year at Georgetown. Some of this arises from their arriving at Georgetown with AP courses and/or courses from other colleges and universities that are accepted as credit in fulfillment of degree requirements. Just a few years ago the percentage of seniors who were taking a reduced load in their eighth and last semester was roughly 15%; now it’s double that rate. Still the majority of seniors take a full load in the last semester, fulfilling important requirements for their degree in the last semester.
All of this variation has emerged organically over many decades. One wonders whether we should address these differences more structurally. Can we serve a wider variety of students by organizing different ways through their BA/BS?
For example we’ve already built out a set of “bridge” courses that attempt to help the senior prepare for life after Georgetown. Many of these guide a student in a discernment process of what features of a future are important to living an authentic life given their values and ambitions.
One goal of all universities these days is to prepare graduates for long working lives that will require them to re-tool many times, to gain knowledge that permit them to enter a new career. Experiential learning appears to help prepare our students for this future. Faculty in every school are actively inventing new research-based and experiential learning courses. The creation of the Capitol Applied Learning Labs (CALL) on the Capitol Campus attempts to integrate internships of students with academic programming, instead of leaving internships outside the curriculum.
The question remaining is whether there are other structural supports that a university might consider at this moment. Given that many of our entering first-year students come with college course credit from other schools, could we serve them with Georgetown courses as high school seniors, to more fully help their academic progress? Could we formally set up their entering Georgetown the summer after their high school graduation?
Could we identify ways through Georgetown that would permit, by design, a three-year BA through use of summers creatively? Could we invent 4-year BA/MA programs at Georgetown to give our students and their families more?
Could we identify ways for more students to combine study abroad and “research” abroad by exploiting the many ties our faculty have with collaborators at other universities abroad?
Could study “abroad” be expanded to local institutions for credit-bearing experiential/research learning opportunities? Would this be a way to take advantage more fully of our location in Washington DC, the site of the Library of Congress, the World Bank, the Kennedy Center, NIH, NIST, etc.?
Students come to us with a wide variety of talents and interests. The essence of liberal education serves that variety. They also vary in the maturity of their career choices, formal educational credentials, and desire for post-graduation education. Could we serve them better by more formally recognizing this type of variation by supporting more diverse paths through Georgetown?
I like the ideas presented and think the CALL program is a great example. I want to add the ideas coming out of Professor’s Bass’ University as a Design Problem and Big Rethink courses to this list. Additionally, I think Georgetown should keep the extended Winter Break. Students could opt to take classes during the 5-6 week period, participate in Alternative Winter Break programs, other service trips, or simply relax.
I think the CALL program (The Capitol Applied Learning Labs) does an admirable job of what you mentioned (studying in a different capacity in Washington DC.) Students who want to find out more about CALL can check out what the Red House has to offer over on their website!
Thoughtful ideas worth thinking about.