Undergraduate Education on the Knoxville Campus
At large research universities undergraduate education is often considered a stepchild. The common wisdom is that faculty members are more concerned with graduate students and their research activities, with grants and contracts, with time for archival activities and writing scholarly papers. Administrators know that the reputation of their institution depends largely on factors such as the number of PhDs and postdoctoral appointments or on sponsored research, especially from federal grants.
I am delighted to report that on the Knoxville campus of the University of Tennessee undergraduates are not our stepchildren. Although we too recognize some of the key benchmarks of research institutions and strive to improve our standing within that increasingly competitive group, we understand that we have an obligation to provide excellence in instruction to the more than 20,000 young men and women seeking Bachelor’s Degrees on our campus.
But we are also coming to realization that undergraduate education is not incompatible with our research mission; indeed, the task of any respectable research campus should be to integrate the future leaders of our communities, our state, and our nation into the daily activities of our institution. The only way for us to fulfill our goals as a public research university with very high research activity (our Carnegie classification) is to make certain that the excitement of discovery and the pioneering spirit in the quest for knowledge are part and parcel of the undergraduate experience.
One of the reasons that we perceive an increased harmony between our research mission and undergraduate education is the current quality of the student population. A few short years ago, at the start of the decade, the average student on the Knoxville campus had a GPA under 3.3 and an ACT below 24; by contrast, the incoming class for 2007 has an average GPA of 3.65 and an ACT score of 26. A third of our incoming students have GPAs of 4.0 or better.
Let me give you some indication of where these indicators place us among national universities based on standardized testing. An average ACT of 26 ranks us at or above such institutions as the University of Colorado and Colorado State, Arizona and Arizona State, Iowa and Iowa State, North Carolina State, Texas A&M, and Michigan State. It puts us on a par with such schools as the University of Minnesota, Ohio State University, Clemson University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and the University of Texas at Austin. In short, our campus is now nationally competitive, not just in football or women’s basketball, but in a head-on academic comparison with some of the best institutions in the nation.
Moreover, our honors students have indicators that place them among the very best students in the country. This year the Chancellor’s Honors Program selected 365 students. Their average ACT score was 31.1, which is in the top 2% of scores nationally and equivalent to a 1380 SAT. The typical high school GPA for honors students is a 4.0, owing in part to the large number of advanced placement courses in which they are enrolled and in which they perform so well. These students compare to the top admits anywhere at public institutions of higher education.
The increased qualifications of our students mean that the faculty and administration have to do more to prove themselves worthy. For our best students we have implemented several enhancements that make the honor’s experience better than it ever has been in Knoxville. Undergraduate research support and opportunities for education abroad have been integrated into the Chancellor’s Honors Program. In almost every department and college across the campus students wanting an honors course of study will be able to enroll in appropriate courses to realize that goal. First-year honors students have the chance to join in a residential learning community in Morrill Hall. And all honors students have courses dedicated to their education: freshman seminars in their initial year and more advanced offerings in subsequent years.
This fall we are introducing a special type of program for a select group of honors students. Through the generous gift of the Haslams we will be welcoming to Knoxville the initial class of Haslam Scholars in the fall of 2008. This cohort of about 15 students will enjoy dedicated funding for a laptop computer, for research, and for education abroad, as well as other amenities. With the Haslam Scholars the University of Tennessee hopes to attract the very best undergraduates from across Tennessee and the south and to compete with nationally recognized programs at institutions like the University of Virginia and North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
In order to encourage students in the honors program, in the Haslam Scholars Program, as well as students across the campus to compete for prestigious external scholarships, we are establishing this academic year an Office of External Scholarships. Students who wish to pursue the Rhodes, Marshall, Truman, Gates, Goldwater and other awards will be assisted in their efforts by this office. Our goal is therefore not only to attract better students to the campus, but more importantly to assist them – and our campus – to national prominence and accomplishments.
We are not ignoring our non-honors students either. This year we are introducing a comprehensive program for undergraduate research administered through the Office of Research. Many undergraduates already have the opportunity to engage in research through courses in departments or through grants and contracts that provide undergraduates opportunities to work with faculty members on sponsored projects. The Undergraduate Apprenticeship Program, however, will attempt to extend research into hitherto underdeveloped areas. Faculty members will be encouraged to “advertise” for research assistance on a web site; undergraduates will declare their interest by filling out an on-line application. Once the match between faculty and student has been made, students will begin working a research area of their choosing, receiving credit for their activities. The integration of undergraduates into research on the campus is one of the most important ways in which we accomplish our dual goal of achieving research excellence and providing undergraduates with a superior educational experience.
In general, however, the campus has begun to place a greater emphasis on academic accomplishment. We have done so in part as a component of our student retention initiative. But, as I have insisted when speaking with other audiences, our efforts at improving our numbers for student persistence are not connected solely with a desire to achieve better indicators for national rankings. Good universities admit good students and retain them because they are good universities. The programs we have developed would be necessary even if they did not increase retention and graduation rates. Our ultimate goal is not simply to achieve a good profile for US News and World Report, but to provide an excellent educational experience for our undergraduates.
In this context our revamping of welcome week is designed primarily to indicate to students from the start that we are interested in their success in the academic realm. The passport program, in which students go on a modified scavenger hunt for their classrooms; the short lectures on how to succeed in major first-year courses; and the college open houses, which give students a chance to meet faculty and administrators in their academic areas of choice; these activities are meant to familiarize incoming students making the difficult transition from high school to the Knoxville campus with academic life at a premier research university.
Likewise, our newly inaugurated freshman seminar program provides undergraduates with the occasion to acquaint themselves with a member of the tenured faculty and to enter into discussions with like-minded peers. We recognize that many courses students must take during their initial semesters at Tennessee are large enrollment classes in which it is difficult to have real intellectual exchange. The freshman seminars are limited to 18 students; they address a limited subject about which the faculty member is particularly passionate; and they are given on a pass/fail basis so that the usual grade pressures are removed. With these courses we want students to receive an introduction to a person – the member of the faculty teaching the course – but more importantly to the excitement and stimulation that accompanies intellectual discourse in the academy.
These courses have been extremely successful. This term fifty seminars are being offered on topics as diverse as the history of punk rock, CSI Knoxville 1863, viruses as world travelers, football physics, obesity, and the influenza epidemic of 1918. Faculty members report that these courses were an extraordinary experience for them; many who have not taught lower class courses for many years are thrilled by the liveliness of the intellectual exchange. By and large students have reacted in a similar fashion. Next term we have planned 70 additional seminars as we eventually ramp up to 200 per year, providing an opportunity for every first-year student to have a seminar experience in his or her initial year at UT.
In the Office of the Provost we hope that we have improved undergraduate education over the past year, and that the programs we are implementing will make a further difference in the educational experience of students. But we know that we still have a long way to go before we are providing the type of education with which we can be completely satisfied.
One area in which we definitely need improvement in the coming years is in general education. We have done a good job thus far in extending general education as a requirement for students in all colleges, and in arranging for the availability of courses when students need to take them. But our current general education curriculum is a strange mélange of basic skills courses, distribution requirements, and general education offerings. I am convinced we must rethink this series of required courses and ask some of the following questions: Are students receiving the skills courses when they are needed, at the start of their academic careers? Are students excited about general education courses? Do they consider them requirements they must fulfill or educational opportunities? Do faculty members regard them as a chance to experiment with the curriculum and to pursue exciting new classroom initiatives? Are the courses currently offered designed for general education, or as the first step in a departmental and disciplinary curriculum? Are the faculty members who teach general education our finest classroom lecturers and teachers, or are they the faculty members assigned to a particular course at a particular moment?
From these questions you can probably guess that I am dissatisfied with the way in which we conceive of general education on the campus. First I would like to see general education courses divided into two categories based on divergent goals: basic skills courses that students should take in their initial year on the campus and general education courses that add to the breadth of the student’s learning, taken throughout the student’s time on campus.
The basic skills courses should be more inspiring and innovative than they currently are. In quantitative reasoning, for example, we don’t necessarily need to teach students calculus unless they are seeking to go into fields that require it; more useful would be to teach them how to deal with the mathematics they encounter in the newspaper and in reports that use statistics. Communication courses, whether oral or written, should focus on the skills needed for further work in college; my feeling is that these courses are currently too free-floating. Perhaps we should consider tying them to disciplines or making them modules on other courses with substantive content.
The other general education courses need to be reconceived. The requirement as it now exists is uninspiring, consisting basically of a distribution from areas across the various fields of knowledge. In most cases we are putting students into introductory courses for which they will never take follow-up courses. What we need are new ideas and new types of courses: general education should be an educational and inspiring program, taught by the most distinguished classroom educators and designed to reach a general student audience.
I would also like to see them adapted to the needs of our students and our campus. Doesn’t it make sense for the University of Tennessee, which is only a generation or two removed from segregation, to offer a general education course on racism, diversity, multiculturalism, and cultural differences? In an age in which technological change is rapid and often confusing, shouldn’t we be looking at courses that explain and physical universe, the fundamentals of the technology, and the implications of science for everyday life? In a society where cultural values are fleeting and vacillating, shouldn’t we be offering courses that reflect on our vital cultural traditions and their transient qualities?
A redesign of the general education curriculum in line with intercultural, international, and technological perspectives is something I would like to see over the next few years. I think the renewed focus on the content of our general education curriculum has the potential to enhance educational horizons on campus, improve faculty satisfaction with their jobs, and make students better informed citizens. It also enables students to connect with faculty at the most creative levels, engaging them in real issues of their work and of seminal concern to their disciplines.
I should mention one more program that is at the very center of our activities on the campus: it goes by the name of Ready for the World and encompasses intercultural and international dimensions. The premise of this program is rather simple: the world is getting smaller or, as Thomas Friedman would say, flatter. If students are going to succeed in their careers after they receive their degrees and leave the campus, they will need to be able to communicate with individuals whose backgrounds and experiences differ significantly from their own. The global economy is a reality, and it is our obligation as educators to prepare students for what they will face in the real world.
We have been working hard on this initiative, setting up structures for learning about international and intercultural dimensions of modern life; promoting exchange programs with foreign countries on the level of both faculty and students; celebrating diversity on campus with special events, such as theater, music, and the arts; and creating a curriculum that is commensurate with the knowledge students must acquire about foreign countries, their customs, their languages, and their way of life. We have not yet succeeded in infusing the curriculum with these perspectives, and we still have a way to go before we will be satisfied with our results. But we have made great progress and hope that those of you who are now juniors and seniors feel a bit more ready for the world.
The University of Tennessee is placing special emphasis on its undergraduate programs because of its very special students. Indeed, we are only trying to keep up with undergraduates such as the ones who have gathered here this evening for induction into Phi Kappa Phi. You are truly among the best that we have on our campus, and that means among the best we have ever seen at Knoxville. As you probably know, to be invited into this honorary society you have to be among the top 10% of the senior class and the top 7.5% of the junior class in your college.
A few words about Phi Kappa Phi are in order: Founded in 1897 at the University of Maine, Phi Kappa Phi is the oldest, largest, and most selective all-discipline honor society in the country. Its chapters are located on nearly 300 campuses in the United States, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines. Each year, approximately 30,000 members are initiated. The motto of the society is Philosophía Krateítõ Phõtôn: “Let the love of learning rule humanity,” and its stated mission is “to recognize and promote academic excellence in all fields of higher education and to engage the community of scholars in service to others.”
I am proud that Tennessee is one of the oldest chapters of Phi Kappa Phi, having joined in 1900 and thereby making the society a national enterprise, and delighted that the tradition of academic excellence has continued unbroken for well over a century at Knoxville. Counted among the members of Phi Kappa Phi are presidents, Nobel Prize winners, and Supreme Court Justices. Who knows what the individuals sitting here this evening will accomplish in the future? The possibilities for you are limitless.
We hope that we have contributed something to your future goals here at the University of Tennessee. We are dedicated to the education of young men and women, and our greatest satisfaction comes when they succeed. Our goal in undergraduate education is to unlock your potential and to foster your development. We hope that the programs we have introduced in recent years are as successful as you have been in your studies.
Posted: November 19, 2007