"Coop" Programs

What if we took the idea of community involvement and experiential learning to the next level and developed the equivalent of a "coop" program outside the realm of the engineering sciences where it is most typical?  It could be a way to grapple head on with the controversies around internships and free labor, over commitment to volunteer work during semester at a cost to academic studies, paying for school, etc.  There could be a degree built around something like a semester on semester off with, say, half credit for the semester off (it would be in an internship/coop placement) so that the total time to degree remained attractive.  Partner organizations might find it attractive enough to be willing to go beyond the unpaid "afterschool" intern approach since they'd be getting a full time worker.  If there were a critical mass of participants we could field a guidance/reflection/etc. seminar or some such that would allow the interns the benefit of an academic coach/advisor, etc.  There could be networking opportunities among the organizations that accepted our coop interns -- Mills as bridging social capital.

The general framework could be developed in a manner that permitted it to be adapted for use in technical fields as well as non-technical fields.  Our switching to semester hours could loosen up the structure in a manner that yielded some of the scheduling flexibility that might be needed to make this work.

Don't Let a Strategic Plan Stop Our Strategic Planning

The Problem

Most strategic plans result in the production of some glossy brochures and periodic reports about progress on plan implementation.  But they often amount to little as the really interesting stuff got lost in the process of producing something that was not too dangerous, not too specific.

And often enough the process proceeds backwards: we commit to big ideas about things we would like to do before we have done our homework finding out what we should do and what we could do.

A Solution

Those things my be unavoidable, but they inspire a remedy: ongoing strategic planning.  Let's make sure one element of this strategic plan is a commitment to permanent exploration and experimentation with innovative pilot projects and self study.  Let's build in a recognition that we don't have enough current information to plan the perfect new program and that building an infrastructure that supports innovation and experimentation is the surest route to long term sustainability.

How It Could Work

1. Be sure provost and divisional deans have sufficient "opportunity" funds that they can support good ideas when they happen.
2. Create policy infrastructure that streamlines fielding experimental courses and majors.
3. Have a ready to use optional sunsetting provision for programs that might not be approved if they were necessarily going to be forever.
4. We would have an Educational Innovations Committee with say $10-15K per year to encourage the formulation of ideas to test in small versions — something like this is being tried out in social sciences in connection with designing an interdisciplinary component in PLEA. This would be a voluntary committee of interested faculty members. Budget could fund travel for proposers to see other, better practices, it could fund some targeted research, etc.