Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, January 27, 1995 TAG: 9501310110
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Since the governor's decision to eliminate our funding, we have had to bring the bad news to those students for whom the New College was the college of choice for this fall. They constitute a bright and talented group, and include students who planned to turn down offers from institutions such as Princeton, Stanford and Georgetown.
These are students who would bring new life to Virginia's economic and technological growth. Our applicants generally have 1,100 to 1,300 SAT scores, are taking multiple Advanced Placement courses (including one student taking both French V and Spanish V in the same time slot). Many are bilingual or trilingual, and all are highly literate. These students would be very competitive in any job market.
Comments by these students and our market research show there is a significant demand for the kind of program we have developed. Sadly, those in control of funding for Radford University and the New College have chosen to ignore the professional aspirations and potential contributions of those students and many others like them.
The validity and timeliness of our college concept is underscored not only by the inception of programs, at other universities, which embody parts of our concept, but also by the major efforts along exactly the same lines by national professional organizations of major science disciplines.
It is difficult to understand the elimination of a program such as ours which followed closely the governor's recommendations that Virginia educational institutions embrace the principles of the private sector: accountability, efficient use of resources, practical education, preparation for work, and cost effectiveness.
The ``global'' concept may be threatening to our critics. Nevertheless, even moderate study of major factors shaping our daily lives, such as economics, public health, communications or the environment, underscores how inextricably we are linked to other countries and other cultures.
The program of the New College of Global Studies was designed to prepare students to be able to live and work effectively and confidently in the world of the 21st century. The six of us on the founding faculty, having met high academic standards for all of our combined 87 years in teaching and educational administration, did not come to Radford to stake our professional careers on a venture which is without standards or focus.
As stated in our college publications, the program of the New College has a very clear focus that includes a disciplinary major (such as business, education or ecology) or an interdisciplinary major. Each member of the founding faculty has an advanced degree in at least one disciplinary major, sometimes more than one (e.g., American studies, anthropology, biology, creative writing, educational administration, folklore, geography, geology, history, political science, Russian literature, theology).
We all believe in the importance of a strong disciplinary/interdisciplinary core for every student. In addition to the skills and knowledge gained in their disciplinary focus, our students would receive a strong base in the use of computers and telecommunications. They would gain extensive knowledge of the language and nature of at least one other culture, sufficient to be able to work and function effectively in that culture.
Can anyone seriously suggest that these skills and knowledge, highly regarded by our business consultants, will not be important for the economic development of Virginia and the nation?
One of the great strengths (and great attractions, according to the students who applied) of our program was the intensive nature of the teacher-student transactions. Other than a school with residential tutors, it is difficult to imagine a greater level of direct faculty-student contact and guidance than in our college.
Our highly motivated applicants were also attracted by our program of active learning, in which they would be responsible, with faculty guidance, for mastering fundamental knowledge and carefully defined skills in their discipline, in technology, in language, and in intercultural and interpersonal dealings. They would thus gain the skills they will need when they leave the university: leading sessions, working collaboratively, and communicating via the Internet, a global system of interconnected computer networks.
The curriculum framework for the New College was developed in a three-year effort by Radford faculty, with the input and advice of educators of national rank and leaders of international businesses. National experts across many academic disciplines have told us that the New College was the most innovative and forward-looking educational initiative in the nation, an example for other institutions of higher education to follow.
The New College of Global Studies could have set Virginia higher education in the forefront of the nation's efforts to restructure education, while maintaining high standards of performance and achievement. In our competency-based program, the important consideration was what the students know and what they can do when they finish the program. Our student evaluation procedures involved multiple, comprehensive, detailed, written assessments of each student's performance, skills and knowledge by peers, by their faculty mentor, by all their instructors, and by evaluators from the business community or other groups outside the university. This extensive evaluation provides far more information about the student than is conveyed by a letter grade or a grade point average.
We are grateful to those who embraced and supported the concept of our college and the exceptional, innovative program that it would have initiated. Our profound regret at the elimination of our college is primarily for the sake of those who will lose the most, the students who hungered for the kind of timely, well-thought-out and well-focused program the New College of Global Studies offered.
This commentary was written jointly by the founding faculty of the New College of Global Studies: Sheldon Annis, Monica Bauer, Bruce Conforth, Edwin Everham, Martha Merrill and Philip Sandberg.
by CNB