Happy New Year! Welcome to Teaching, a free weekly newsletter from The Chronicle of Higher Education. This week:
- Dan describes how a college drew inspiration from another institution’s town-hall program and revamped its general-education curriculum.
- Beth passes along some recent articles about teaching and related topics that might interest you.
- We share one reader’s story of an experience that changed the way he teaches.
Public Pedagogy
Shenandoah University was in the midst of revising its general-education curriculum about four years ago when Amy Sarch, an associate provost there, heard about an unusual program on the other side of the country.
It was called Town Hall Meeting, and featured a forum at which students at California State University at Chico discussed public-policy issues with other students, faculty members, administrators, and community members. The students analyzed policies and came up with solutions by drawing on multiple perspectives.
To Sarch, the approach seemed like a good fit for her institution. “We blend liberal arts with career preparation,” she said. “I thought this could work.”
A trip to Chico State to see the program in action further persuaded her. “There was so much energy,” Sarch said. “It was palpable and we could feel it – and that’s what we wanted to bring back to campus.”
But some tweaking was in order. Chico State’s town hall is part of a freshman-level political-science course on American government. Shenandoah wanted its version to be part of the general-education curriculum, so that students taking courses in disciplines as diverse as dance, political science, and statistics could analyze social issues like poverty, immigration, and human trafficking.
“It was a leap of faith for a lot of faculty members,” Sarch said.
Here’s how it works. Shenandoah students – most of them freshmen and sophomores – enroll in a section of the town-hall general-education courses in the spring semester.
Each section is taught from the disciplinary perspective of the faculty member. The subject is selected by the students, as a group, from a list of topics that have emerged from surveys and other feedback gathered during the fall semester.
Several sections might choose the same topic. If, say, a section of the town-hall course that is taught by a professor of Hispanic studies chose poverty as its issue, a student might focus on the aftermath of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. Students in another section, one taught by an economics professor, might look at microfinance as a means of fighting poverty. “It’s not about the content,” Sarch said. “It’s about the approach.”
Papers and presentations are assigned throughout the semester and build to an evening town-hall event near the end of the semester. Students receive printed invitations and, at check-in, are given badges with their name and topic. “We treat it like a conference,” Sarch said. “We make it a big deal.”
For the first hour, the students are sorted by topic and go to a room with a faculty moderator and a “community consultant,” a professional from the region who works on that issue. The students, who have studied the subject from a range of disciplines, sit in a circle and share their research and ideas. The faculty member moderates, and the consultant takes notes.
After a break, the consultant takes over, pushing the students on their ideas, raising questions, and asking them to consider alternatives. Surveys of the program suggest that the students find the experience of interacting with the consultant particularly meaningful.
While students are required to attend the event, they’re not graded on their participation. “That really wasn’t the point,” Sarch said. “We wanted the students to enjoy it and engage.” Sometimes the students are nervous to attend and speak in front of others, Sarch said, but most of them finish the evening curious to know what the other groups talked about.
Since the town-hall program began at Shenandoah three years ago, the number of sections has almost doubled. The course is still not a requirement, but Sarch hopes that students will come to see it as essential.
“We hope,” she said, “it feels like you can’t graduate without it.”