Starting last year, a group of Connecticut College students, faculty and staff began to look critically at how the College implements its General Education program, as well as the effectiveness of its structuring. The general consensus among the group is that the Gen Ed system needs to be reformed, and the undertaking now is deciding in what ways.
ReVISION Week, spanning from Feb. 7-14, was a week of lectures, discussions and meetings of campus community members discussing topics ranging from the Gen Ed system to the state of academic advising at Conn. The week began on Feb. 7 with a town hall meeting that featured an address from new president Katherine Bergeron. Her talk was titled “Liberal Learning – a Shared Responsibility” and was given in front of a packed Ernst Common Room. Professor of Chinese and chair of the Educational Planning Committee (EPC) Amy Dooling introduced the president and gave a brief background on the work done so far.
Each day of reVISION week featured three different talks and meetings pertaining to a different aspect of the student experience at Connecticut College. For the Town Hall Talks, students, faculty and staff were encouraged to go through a four-step process to facilitate discussion on the topic at hand. The process included listing the strengths of the College, listing the weakness, deciding on the four most important topics and then prioritizing them with color-coded stickers. The data gathered at these meetings will be analyzed by the EPC and used as the foundations for curriculum reforms.
Technology has played an important role in the information gathering process, as seen in the creation of a Twitter handle, @ccrevisionweek. The Twitter handle was used to encourage community members to continue the discussion even once the talks were over, as well as posing questions for followers to consider. At the beginning of each talk, attendees were encouraged to give the EPC their contact information so they could be sent a Google survey to write down any extra thoughts that they may have had at the end of the discussion.
Changes could be seen as early as next semester, according to Professor Dooling. She explained that the school could begin piloting classes next fall using the information gathered from the discussions of reVISION week. Dean of the Faculty Roger Brooks told community members that a fund called the Curriculum Innovation Fund has already been set up, and is currently holding $500,000 that will be used in the piloting of these new classes and programs. He added that while many other colleges are going through a similar curriculum reform processes as Conn, Conn has the advantage of already having a large amount of money set aside, with more to come through fundraising.
