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Antioch unveils
plans to transform curriculum at college
This week Antioch publicly announced what appears to
be a bold and innovative plan to transform the curriculum at Antioch College
as well as increase the college endowment and stabilize the college’s
finances.
The “integrated three-part vision” is
intended to “renew Antioch College for the 21st century,” Antioch
said in a press release issued on Tuesday. The plan was approved by the
Antioch University Board of Trustees at its meeting earlier this month in
Los Angeles.
“This is the most important news to come out
of Antioch College in more than a decade, if not a generation,” Dan
Kaplan, president of the board, said in the press release.
“I’ve never felt more excited and more
charged,” Kaplan said on Tuesday. “It’s been a generation
since we took this kind of transformative, deep and thorough step.”
In an interview on Tuesday on the Antioch campus,
Kaplan and Antioch College President Joan Straumanis outlined the college’s
plan, the centerpiece of which is a proposal for a new curriculum at the
college based on experiential learning communities, or ELCs.
Replacing traditional classrooms, the ELCs would
consist of groups of students and professors working together for an extended
period of time around a single multidisciplinary focus.
While other progressive colleges have adopted the
learning community concept, Antioch plans to take the idea in a new direction
by incorporating it with Antioch’s co-op experience. The Antioch experiential
learning community will be “unique in higher education,” Straumanis
said.
Included in the three-part vision is the current
effort to increase the college’s endowment. Launched four months ago,
the Campaign for Antioch College has so far raised $32.6 million out of
its $65 million goal, Antioch announced.
The plan’s third prong involves restoring
the college, which currently has a $1.1 million deficit, to fiscal health.
“That will involve some belt-tightening,”
Straumanis said.
The belt-tightening will involve several pieces,
said Kaplan and Straumanis this week. To reduce costs, about eight staff
positions will be eliminated by Antioch’s next fiscal year, which
begins in July, Straumanis said. She added that no faculty positions will
be eliminated. However, several faculty members plan to leave or retire
this year and those positions will not be filled, Straumanis said, bringing
the total staff reduction to between 12 and 15.
“It’s a small number, a small percentage
of total staff, but they’re real people and this is painful to them
and to us,” Kaplan said. “But we’re obligated to operate
Antioch in a fiscally responsible way.”
Antioch will also institute a hiring freeze, although
the college will continue to seek a new president, replacing Straumanis,
who was hired in 2002 for two and a half years.
Straumanis plans to announce the specific staff
reductions at a college Community Meeting tomorrow (Friday).
Straumanis also said that the college will cut several
non-lucrative student programs, including several in the summer term, but
will not cut any majors.
The college will also begin next year offering less-generous
financial aid packages, said Straumanis, noting that a significant portion
of the college’s budget goes to financial aid. Two years ago the college
began offering full financial aid packages in hopes of attracting more students,
but the increased aid has not resulted in a larger student body, she said.
The college will honor the financial aid packages it has made with current
students, she said.
In order to enhance fiscal accountability, the college
plans to hire a new comptroller. Currently, college finances are handled
by the university comptroller, a situation some on campus felt led to the
college’s increased deficit. Straumanis said that she will announce
the name of the new comptroller, who is employed at the college, at tomorrow’s
Community Meeting.
These budget measures are intended to lead to a
balanced college budget by the beginning of fiscal year 2005–06, Kaplan
said.
The three-pronged plan “all falls under the
umbrella of creating a sustainable and responsible Antioch,” he said.
College officials hope that the college’s
proposed curriculum will attract and retain more students, thus contributing
to restoration of fiscal health.
The ELCs are related to learning communities, a
new style of college learning environment that has been adapted at Evergreen
College in Washington State, Wagner College in New York and George Mason
College in Virginia, Kaplan said.
Straumanis said that the recommendation to adopt
ELCs came from the college’s Renewal Commission, a 15-member commission,
composed of administrators, trustees, faculty, students and alumni.
While the college will experiment with ELC pilot
programs in the next few years, the plan will not be fully implemented until
fall 2006, Straumanis and Kaplan said. Students entering their first year
at Antioch would be the first to go through the program.
The incorporation of learning communities on college
campuses follows research on how students best learn and retain information,
said Straumanis, who became familiar with the concept in her work with the
U.S. Department of Education. “What really matters is making a connection
with people,” Straumanis said. “You put people in intentional
communities organized around” an educational focus and they “become
more engaged and more successful,” she said.
Replacing traditional classrooms, learning communities
allow students and faculty to experience a variety of learning options,
including student- or faculty-led learning, independent study, lectures
and field trips. ELC participants would choose how best to accomplish their
learning goals, Straumanis said.
The ELC curriculum would feature different kinds
of experiences for students at different levels of their college career,
and offer new students more structure and support than they currently have,
Straumanis said.
For instance, first-year students would choose one
ELC that they would stay with all academic year. The group, which might
focus on a topic such as environmental justice, would be composed of professors
from a variety of disciplines, such as philosophy, science and filmmaking.
The ELC members would choose how they wish to pursue their learning goals.
During the first year, students would not take part in a co-op, but would
travel with their ELC for a six- to eight-week period to an off-site work
area, where they would continue to pursue their education.
An ELC would be composed of about 60 students and
four faculty members, Straumanis said. A student would spend about half
of her second year in a different ELC on campus and half her time on co-op,
which may or may not be related to the ELC. However, even while on co-op,
the student would remain in virtual contact with her ELC mentors and peers,
Straumanis said. And students on second-year co-ops would live in communities
with other Antioch co-op students in one of several co-op sites across the
country, and would be in close touch with Antioch alumni as well as employers.
Third-year students would also be linked to an ELC
but when on co-op would live more independently, Straumanis said. And fourth-year
students would remain on campus the entire year to focus on their senior
projects.
The ELC program would offer students more support
from both faculty and each other during both their co-op and on-campus experience,
Kaplan said, a move college officials hope will reduce student attrition.
And while college officials hope the new curriculum
will attract more students, it will serve as a more viable learning structure
than the traditional classroom, even if the college remains at its current
size, which is around 650 students, Straumanis said.
Response from faculty regarding the new curriculum
has ranged from “cautious to enthusiastic,” according to Straumanis.
Antioch recently received a $50,000 grant from the
Mellon Foundation to help faculty adapt to the new curriculum and to conduct
student and parent focus groups regarding the change of curriculum, Straumanis
said.
—Diane Chiddister |
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