by Emily Caldwell
It has been said that some consider the name University College an oxymoron, that somehow that title can't be right. But the truth is, it is the perfect name for the 60-year-old college based in Chubb Hall, a college that serves the entire university in a way no other one does.
"It is a college for the university as a whole," says its dean, Patricia Bayer Richard. "It has a broad mission -- undergraduate education, teaching, learning and advising. A lot of what we do addresses the whole institution."
The college's organizational chart would show arms reaching out to embrace the entire university system, including regional campuses. Its purpose is to advance Ohio University's mission by promoting learning and teaching, first and foremost among undergraduate students. It also plays a university-wide role in orientation, advising, general education, faculty support and curriculum innovation.
University College works with students from their undecided days right through to graduation in some cases. The college serves as a welcome wagon for new students and their parents by coordinating the Precollege orientation each summer for freshmen and transfer students. And it has its own students to advise and teach.
In the meantime, the college operates the Academic Advancement Center and a variety of other advising and transition programs and academic support services, including innovative new programs that have earned national recognition. University College also administers the University Professor award program recognizing faculty for outstanding undergraduate teaching.
"The college is well knit into the structure of the university," Richard says. "But it also changes. It has responded to new needs and directions and added roles that weren't there when it was founded, some of which are quite recent."
In its beginnings, it was the college through which all freshmen traveled as they entered the university. "It focused on supporting the transition to college through advising," Richard says. When Ohio University began assigning students directly to colleges in the 1970s, the freshmen going through University College decreased and steadied out to about a fifth of each freshman class -- those who want to explore the university and its options before selecting their major.
Some students who start their Ohio University careers in University College opt for the bachelor of specialized studies (BSS) degree path and design their own majors. More than 250 students graduated this year with University College degrees, the BSS and the bachelor of criminal justice (BCJ). The college also awards associate's degrees and houses the Army and Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps programs.
Two of University College's past deans still are on campus, having returned to teaching after long stints as dean: Professor of Telecommunications Don Flournoy, who led the college from 1971 to 1981 and now oversees a variety of international projects in the School of Telecommunications, and Trustee Professor of English Sam Crowl, who returned to full-time Shakespearean teaching and research after 11 years as dean.
Under Flournoy and Crowl, the college received steady university support and, in 1986, earned national recognition for its faculty advising system. The system, launched in 1980, assists undecided freshmen in choosing majors while they make progress toward graduation by completing the university's general education requirements.
General education is another charge of University College, which was given responsibility to oversee the program when it was adopted in the late 1970s. Crowl was a major architect of the program, which received a 1990 Program Excellence Award from the Ohio Board of Regents.
Richard, a longtime political science faculty member who took over as dean in 1992, now is pressing for a review of the general education program and its three-tier system "to insure that it meets the needs of students who will graduate in the 21st century," she says.
It is not as if Richard is looking for something to fill her time, for University College is experiencing a heyday now, one that Richard says is driven largely by opportunities that accompanied a series of changes in the college and on campus. In March, Richard assumed the one-year presidency of the Association of University College Deans and Directors of Undergraduate Studies. She also was named one of the nation's 10 outstanding freshman advocates this year.
And, under Richard's leadership, new University College programs, including the Center for Teaching Excellence and the Freshman Year Enrichment (FYE) program, have been instituted. Steady progress also is being made toward establishing a Writing Across the Curriculum program, a project led by University Writing Program Coordinator Suellynn Duffey. Richard was instrumental in Duffey's hiring in 1995 after President Robert Glidden emphasized intensifying writing instruction across campus. The college also is a partner in the service-learning initiative encouraging faculty to incorporate a service component into their courses.
Richard theorizes that part of the driving force behind some of the college's recent activities results from a shift taking place among faculty: Rather than wondering how to deliver the goods, faculty now want to investigate more vigorously what learning takes place in classes. University College emerged as a logical place to examine new ways to promote good learning and good teaching, Richard says.
The college's Freshman Year Enrichment: Environmental Literacy (FYE-EL) program and a "paired-course" pilot project earned the university a place in a National Learning Communities Dissemination Project aimed at strengthening innovative approaches to college teaching and learning across the country. Ohio University is among 21 colleges and universities - and the only institution in Ohio - selected to participate in the project. The participating schools' programs will serve as models for the rest of the country.
Since its start in 1993, the Freshman Year Enrichment program has grown into a multi-faceted area that includes a summer reading program; faculty-led small groups, lectures and informal sessions with authors; and sophomores participating as peer mentors. The program eventually is expected to integrate writing more fully, increase course linkages and extend throughout the undergraduate experience, Richard says.
The FYE program emphasizes critical thinking, values clarification, speaking and writing, and discussion leadership, says Ted Bernard, assistant dean of University College and its coordinator. An environmental theme for the reading program was chosen for a number of reasons: It can be approached from a variety of disciplines, a cluster of faculty with expertise in environmental topics showed early interest in the program, and "it's front-page news and critical for the survival of the Class of 2000 and beyond," Bernard says.
In the "paired-course" pilot project, groups of students are jointly enrolled in an introductory English composition course and a paired Tier II course at the same time. Tier II is considered the breadth of knowledge component of the university's general education program.
The learning communities weren't exactly just discovered, but there is heightened awareness nationally that the more students are engaged in their learning, the more likely they are to stick with their education and thrive, Richard says.
The Center for Teaching Excellence, headed by Director Karin Sandell, focuses on faculty development by sponsoring workshops for professors and graduate teaching assistants. Center activities include luncheons and sessions on topics ranging from teaching large lecture classes to development of teaching portfolios to illustrating methods ensuring that instruction is grasped by all students.
Sandell also has led studies on the heart of University College's concern -- teaching and learning -- in combination with the computer technology component increasingly on the rise in university classrooms. In one study, Sandell and co-researchers found that e-mail and Internet use in the college classroom could enhance students' learning of course subject material.
"We're asking how we can use technology to be more effective teachers," Sandell says. "Our focus in the center is to find out how to make this a good teaching tool."
Emily Caldwell, BSJ '88, is assistant editor of Ohio University Today.
