Education Through Experience:

a White Paper

A Preliminary Report

to CWRU

on work in progress

from the

President's Commission on Undergraduate Education and Life

March 9, 2001

http://balin.phys.cwru.edu/pcuel

pcuel@balin.phys.cwru.edu

Members of the Commission

Glenn D. Starkman

Commission Chair and

Associate Professor of Physics and of Astronomy

Kimberly Adams Tufts (Davis)

Assistant Professor of Nursing

William T. Conley

Dean of Undergraduate Admissions

Donald L. Feke

Professor of Chemical Engineering and

Associate Dean for Academic Affairs,

Case School of Engineering

Timothy J. Fogarty
Professor and Chair of the Department of Accountancy

S. Beth McGee

Associate Professor of Theater Arts

Jennifer J. Neville

President, Class of 2002 and

President Panhellenic Council

Margaret B. Robinson

Dean of Undergraduate Studies

Jonathan A. Sadowsky

Theodore J. Castele Associate Professor of Medical History

Peter J. Whiting

Associate Professor of Geological Sciences

Table of Contents

Executive Summary 1

A. Introduction and Background: from Problems to Opportunities 4

A.1 Financial Aid Study and Positioning 5

and Discrete Choice Modeling Study: Results

A.2 President's Commission on Undergraduate Education and Life 7

B. An Educational Philosophy for CWRU 9

B.1 Pedagogy: Experiential Education 10

B.2 Educational Values and Objectives 12
B.3 Experiences 13

B.4 The Role of Graduate and Professional Faculty 14

B.5 Connections to the World Beyond 14

C. A CWRU Education 15

C.1 The Academic Progression 16

C.2 Opportunities for Experiences 19

C.3 Entrepreneurialism 21

C.4 Evaluation/Assessment 22

D. The CWRU Environment 25

D.1 The Intellectual Environment 25

D.2 Shaping a Student Body -- Recruiting and Admissions 26

for Excellence and Diversity

D.3 Ethics Education 31

D.4 School Spirit and Tradition 31

D.5 Arts Facilities 33

D.6 Residential Facilities -- Housing 34

D.7 Services -- Food and Parking 35

D.8 Safety 36

E. Faculty 37

F. Administration 39

F.1 Consolidation of Administration of Student Services 39

F.2 Financial health - Budgeting system 40

G. Resources 42

G.1 Personnel 42

G.2 Facilities 46

G.3 Funds 47

H. Why now? Why this? Why us? 48

Acknowledgments 49

Executive Summary

This white paper represents the culmination of the first phase of efforts by the President's Commission on Undergraduate Education and Life to "articulate a philosophy of undergraduate education for the University; and present to the University a proposal consistent with that philosophy for bold action to construct a more vibrant intellectual, social and physical campus environment in which to nurture and educate a community of lifelong creators and seekers of knowledge with lasting ties to CWRU." The Commission intends it as a point of departure for its mission to "foster and facilitate a dialogue among the faculty and other members of the University community on that philosophy and proposal and on specific initiatives necessary to achieve their goals."

The Commission believes that CWRU is at in important juncture in its history. Measured by its total research funding, the University is one of the country's leading research institutions. Its endowment is large and growing. Its undergraduates are, by several objective measures, of very high quality. On the other hand, to use marketing terminology, the University is competing in an intensely competitive educational market in which it has neither a widely recognized brand nor a differentiated educational product. The students who choose to come here prefer CWRU only marginally over their other options, and finally choose CWRU largely on the basis of our financial aid package. Prospective students who do not come here strongly dislike the University. In addition our student body is relatively homogeneous, with marked under-representation of women and minorities. Our incoming students are heavily concentrated in engineering, with very few intending to major in the humanities. Our students are drawn from Ohio and the surrounding states in proportions surprising for a research university of our caliber. We have relatively few international students. These imbalances are enforced by our admissions and financial aid strategies. Moreover, our situation is unlikely to be changed merely by advertising better what we already do. It is likely to be worsened if we do nothing as our peer institutions strive to improve themselves.

Yet, this white paper is presented with a sense of optimism and recognition of opportunity. A recent positioning study conducted for CWRU by the Art and Science Group shows that there are opportunities to dramatically improve our ability to attract a more diverse cadre of students, while maintaining, or even improving our standards, and improving our return on tuition so that the resources are available to invest in new initiatives.

The Commission strongly believes that the CWRU undergraduate education must be organized around a set of educational values. The educational objectives are then the measured achievement of those values. The Commission recommends that CWRU adopt as its Five Educational Values:

Disciplinary Literacy,

Educational Breadth,

Leadership,

Creativity,

Societal Engagement.

These are to be achieved in an environment conducive to transformative personal growth and to the creation of strong interpersonal and communal ties. The educational philosophy for achieving these objectives must be effective, distinctive, and appropriate for CWRU. The Commission recommends that CWRU adopt a philosophy of experiential learning, summarized by the phrase: Education through Experience and encapsulated in the Mission/Vision Statement:

CWRU graduates students who have discovered and are realizing their own uncommon potential through the University's uniquely transformative environment and its philosophy that education is best accomplished through experience.

One reason that the experiential model is so well-suited to CWRU is that it is an approach that is already valued on campus; in the body of the white paper we offer numerous examples. However, the Commission recommends that this approach come to pervade consciously not just all our courses but the way we structure an education. Furthermore we recommend that the metrics for a CWRU education go beyond a comparison of the list of courses a student has completed with the graduation requirements of the appropriate School, College or Department. Students, in collaboration with mentors drawn from the faculty (undergraduate and professional) and beyond (administration, alumni, community members) should develop and carry out an Educational Plan for achieving the five educational objectives. Progress toward achieving those objectives should be measured not only in terms of courses, but also in terms of Experiences, for which courses are important preparatory activities and which are assessed. In the report we expand on how we envisage a student's progression through the planning, preparation, execution and retrospection/evaluation phases of a CWRU education, and on how those shape a student's experience of the University.

The Commission in its discussions has also come to the realization that the education we envisage for our students -- in which they take ownership of both the product and the process; in which they plan, prepare, engage, and assess; in which they assume the risk for their educational ventures -- is fundamentally linked with the entrepreneurial approach, which we argue is not an approach intrinsically limited to business, but rather is far more broadly applicable. We believe that aligning ourselves with entrepreneurialism, in particular in this more broadly defined context, could be both pedagogically rich and market savvy. We urge the University to immediately begin studying how best to incorporate entrepreneurialism into the academic structure of the University.

The vision which the Commission wishes to put forward of an education which extends well beyond the classroom implies greater involvement of many people and institutions in the education of undergraduates. This includes faculty of the university, the cultural and medical institutions of University Circle, the business community of Cleveland (and beyond), the social service organizations of the region, and indeed the citizens of Northeast Ohio. While building these connections may seem a daunting task, we view these connections, especially to the unique concentration of institutions in University Circle, as what could become one of the most distinctive attributes of a CWRU education, and therefore one of our most valuable assets.

The Commission suggests that a great deal of importance should be placed on a diverse student body, and that the entire university community will benefit tremendously from greater diversity. In the white paper, several demographic axes are identified on which greater diversity needs to be achieved: ethnicity, gender, major, socio-economic level, and geography. Possible steps to achieve that diversity are suggested.

If education at CWRU is to extend beyond the classroom, then the stage on which it is played out must facilitate that viewpoint. This includes the construction of new classrooms to accommodate many smaller classes. However, particularly in the context of the Commission's unanimous sentiment that the line between "education" and "life" needs to be far more blurred, the Commission sees a clear and pressing need for a renewal of the undergraduate living facilities within a far more holistic approach to undergraduate life. Components of this approach are discussed in the body of the white paper.

The Commission suggests that other facilities are essential for a more full campus life able to support the educational approach we advocated. Plans for a student center are already in place and the Commission concurs that there is a great need for such a multiple-use facility in a centralized location where students, as well as other members of the CWRU community can gather. The Commission also supports the development of high quality performing arts facilities (whether concentrated in a Performing Arts Center or distributed across campus). These are needed to enrich the campus experience and to support the student body more diverse in interests that we advocate pursuing. However, the Commission views as essential complementing that investment in arts facilities with an investment in arts faculty and staff who can ensure that the facilities truly serve to enrich the campus to their greatest potential.

Achieving the goals put forward by the Commission will require the unprecedented commitment of the faculty. The Commission realizes the difficulties that fundamental change poses for faculty. On the one hand, no "bold plan" can be implemented without significant change; on the other hand, significant change is what is most likely to engender resistance. We appeal however to the observations made in the introduction of this document, in particular that outside research and analysis indicates that the University is in clear need of bold rethinking of its approach to undergraduate education, that failure to implement change will likely lead not to stagnation but regression, but that successful bold change will significantly improve the position of CWRU and improve the environment in which faculty live and work.

The Commission stresses that these changes must take place without a negative impact on faculty research, and therefore without expectations of increased teaching load or service. To the extent that these recommendations require increased net effort in the steady state, they must be met with increased resources, human and financial. It must also be recognized that the process of change will itself require considerable effort by faculty (and others). The University will need to make every effort to free up faculty resources, and to create incentives that will facilitate innovation toward the declared goals. The Commission views the preliminary delineation of the nature and scale of such resources as an essential step in writing its final report; however, only the most rudimentary beginning has been made in this white paper.

The Commission believes that if its recommendations for education reform are accepted then certain changes will be beneficial in the administrative structure of the University. The administrative structure for current and projected student services should further the University's philosophy of undergraduate education. The structure needs to be one that fosters and reflects the integration of student's undergraduate experience, so that the lines and distance currently perceived between "academic" and "non-academic" will no longer exist. A suggestion for a new administrative organization of student services is presented in section F.

The implementation of the Commission's recommendations will require the commitment of significant resources to programs and to personnel. While much of the funding for initiatives may be expected to come from a focused fund-raising campaign, a substantial portion will need to come from the University's operating budget. Vital to the University's ability to enhance undergraduate education and life and to implement initiatives will be its ability to allocate resources to undergraduate education and life. The Commission suggests that the current system for allocating resources discourages the kind of inter-departmental and inter-school cooperation that will be essential to the implementation of the Commission's recommendations and reduces the flexibility of the administration to support the level of innovation that will be required. The Commission strongly urges study and revision of the University's fund allocation system, the goal being to find ways to make the budget allocation system more responsive to University priorities.

A. Introduction and Background: from Problems to Opportunities

Case Western Reserve University is one of the nation's leading research universities. Among private universities, it ranks 15th in total research dollars and 13th in federal research dollars, ahead of such institutions as Princeton University, the University of Chicago and Carnegie Mellon University². Yet CWRU is tied for 38th among the top 50 National universities in the U.S. News and World Report ranking of undergraduate institutions³. Certainly, one must be wary of such "quality" indices, fraught as they are with uncertainty and bias. Nevertheless, these rankings are reflected in the attitudes of our undergraduates. The percentage of incoming freshman that graduate from CWRU within six years (73%) is lower than at any of the top 32 schools in the U.S. News ranking⁴. This is consistent with the results of CWRU's annual survey of graduating seniors which shows that among our students who do graduate 28% were unhappy here, and 44% would not recommend CWRU to others. The asserted sources of the dissatisfaction are myriad -- from a lack of parking to a perception that faculty are not dedicated to undergraduate education, to an anemic social life. The general dissatisfaction appears to extend beyond the undergraduate population to much of the faculty albeit for superficially different reasons : a lack of resources in the undergraduate colleges amidst continued public claims and evidence of mounting University wealth (CWRU ranks 20th among private universities and 23rd among all U.S. universities in endowment assets); salaries that are perceived as uncompetitive with peer institutions amidst ever-growing demands on faculty time from the administration; a sense in many departments that for the best faculty CWRU is a way-station on the road to better things; and, perhaps most crucially to the genesis of this study, a sense that the high quality of the student body is the result of a merit-based scholarship program that, absent an endowment for the program, the University could not sustain indefinitely, especially in the face of mounting competition from others with even deeper pockets.

Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to infer that it was in a spirit of low morale and dissatisfaction that the activities of this Commission were undertaken. Rather it was with a perception among the faculty and administration that there were both challenges to be met and opportunities to be seized. While this perception was reflected in a wide variety of initiatives and conversations taking place across the CWRU campus there were, from the perspective of the members of the Commission, four principal catalysts for the formation of the Commission. The first and last of these, chronologically, were the appointment in the summer of 1999 of a new President for CWRU, David Auston, and the appointment in the summer of 2000 of a new Provost, James Wagner. Whatever the successes of the previous administration, and they were many and considerable, the arrival of fresh faces at the helm of the University has engendered both new expectations and new hopes among many stakeholder groups. The existence of the Commission is a direct result of the new vision that President Auston and Provost Wagner have of the University. The ultimate success of the Commission's mission depends integrally on their continued vision, commitment, and energetic engagement.

The second pivotal event was the hiring in the fall of 1999 of the Art and Science consulting group to conduct for CWRU a Positioning and Discrete Choice Modeling Study and a Financial Aid Study. The positioning study would assess the position of the University in the undergraduate educational market, and evaluate the impact of several possible strategies for how CWRU could better present itself in this market. The Financial Aid Study would evaluate the extent to which a redistribution of financial aid resources could allow the University to achieve goals such as increased diversity of the student body and improved recovery of tuition dollars. These studies were guided by working groups consisting of the Deans of the undergraduate schools and colleges, representatives of the faculty, and members of the central administration. In the process of devising the instrument for the positioning study, it became clear that from the point of view of the consultants, and ultimately of certain members of the working groups, CWRU was surprisingly lacking compared with other institutions in its strategic planning for undergraduate education.

The third pivotal event that led to the formation of the Commission was the report of the University Undergraduate Faculty's 1999/2000 Committee on Undergraduate Admissions. The report of this committee, submitted to the undergraduate faculty in April 2000, contained several specific recommendations for changing the way the University recruits, admits and retains its undergraduates; however, its principal recommendation was the formation of a strategic planning group for undergraduate education. The committee viewed this as particularly important in light of the expectation of a report from the Art and Science consultants group in the fall of 2000. The report of the Admissions Committee was forwarded to President Auston with the endorsement of the University Undergraduate Faculty Executive Committee. In addition several members of the Admissions Committee wrote privately to, and met with, President Auston to stress to him the importance they assigned to this recommendation. The President endorsed this recommendation as being in line with his own vision of what needed to happen at the University and suggested that the mission of this strategic planning group be extended to include not just undergraduate education, but also undergraduate life. With the appointment of Provost Wagner in the summer of 2000, preparations began for the appointment and charge of a President's Commission on Undergraduate Education and Life (PCUEL).

A.1 Financial Aid Study and

Positioning and Discrete Choice Modeling Study: Results

Even before the PCUEL could officially be appointed and charged, the Art and Science Group presented its interim conclusions from both the Financial Aid Study and the Positioning and Discrete Choice Modeling Study. The results of the Financial Aid Study can be briefly summarized -- from a "returns" point of view the University has nearly optimized its use of financial aid resources. Any change in the financial aid packaging, without any associated change in educational offering, would result in no change or a net decrease in tuition revenues. The ability to use financial aid repackaging to diversify the undergraduate student population was limited.

The results of the Positioning and Discrete Choice Modeling Study on the one hand were exceedingly troubling, but on the other hand indicated clear opportunities. Members of the CWRU community can access the Art and Science preliminary report in the Reports section of the PCUEL web page ( http://balin.phys.cwru.edu/pcuel). In conducting this study the consultants called a total of approximately 30,000 high school seniors of whom approximately 1800 were ultimately interviewed for the survey. These included 235 individuals who did not inquire about admission at CWRU (these were drawn from a cohort targeted by us, and included approximately 50% underrepresented ethnic minorities), 488 individuals who inquired but never applied, 365 students who applied and were admitted to CWRU whether or not they accepted the offer of admission. The mere process of identifying survey participants was instructive in that it made very clear that CWRU has a remarkably low familiarity given its status as a major research institution. For example, only 12% of those who had inquired about CWRU's undergraduate program mentioned CWRU when asked of which schools they had inquired. Only 29% of those admitted to CWRU volunteered that they had applied here, and 8% of those who were admitted to CWRU had no recollection of ever having applied, even when prodded.

Beyond the problem with visibility, a number of other salient points emerged:

CWRU is walking a dangerous knife-edge in its ability to attract students. For students who come here, CWRU is preferred only marginally over their next choice (8.9/10 versus 8.8/10, a difference of no statistical significance). For students who were admitted and chose not to come, their ranking of CWRU was unusually far below that of their first choice (6.0 versus 8.9). For students who inquired but did not apply, the margin widened to a remarkable 4.8 for CWRU (reflecting complete indifference to the school) versus 8.6 for their first-choice school, and 7.6 for the other schools to which they applied. Finally for those who chose not to inquire, CWRU ranked 3.3/10, reflecting clear dislike of the University, or at least of the institution that they believe is CWRU. The consultants noted that in their experience a score below 5 on this scale is rare.
When the consultants examined the decision factors used by inquirers who did not then apply to CWRU, they found that CWRU ranked below the schools to which they had applied on every single decision factor, including the attractiveness of its campus, the strength of its programs, the opportunities for internships, and the desirability of its location. When the decision factors used by matriculants to CWRU were examined, the only important decision factor in which CWRU had a wide gap over the students' second choice schools was the attractiveness of our financial aid package.
Interestingly, for students coming here, the most important decision factor was a desirable location. However, in our case the probable interpretation of that was that 66% of our current students are from Ohio and an attractive feature of CWRU was its closeness to home.
71% of students who were admitted to CWRU and did not come said that visits to campuses (ours and others) were very influential in their decision not to come here.
CWRU's competition is unusually diverse with respect to institutional type (university/college and private/public) and size. It includes the top 25 universities (21% of admitted students and 16% of matriculants applied there) but the largest single block (42% of admitted students and 45% of matriculants) applied to universities outside the top 50.

Fortunately, the Art and Science study went beyond elucidating problems to identifying opportunities. The consultants, in conjunction with the Positioning Study Working Group devised four positioning models for undergraduate education which they believed CWRU could realistically realize. These four models were tested among students for their desirability -- the extent to which they would improve the University's ability to attract students, including a wider range of students. The titles of these models (the detailed definitions can be found in the preliminary report⁵) are: Technology and Cultural Literacy, Inquiry-based learning, Applied Learning, and Leadership. Of these models, one -- Applied Learning -- played well among all groups, non-inquirers, inquirers, and admitted applicants. The description of Applied Learning that was proffered is:

"`Hands-on' learning experiences are an integral part of the undergraduate program, enabling students to sharpen their mastery of specific disciplines or apply knowledge to their personal or professional interests. All students participate in research projects with faculty who teach in the graduate and professional schools and/or internships with nationally and internationally recognized companies, law firms, medical centers, cultural institutions and other organizations."

Examining the impact of this model, the consultants found that its adoption should lead to a conversion rate for non-inquirers (the fraction who would have applied if they had had the appropriate information) of 18.2% compared to the inferred current rate of 13.1% (based on pools of students that were targeted in the past). Among known inquirers, it should raise the percentage who would apply from 13.1% to 21.1%, a 61% increase. Finally, among admitted applicants it should improve the matriculation rate 14% from 25.4% to 29%. Taken at face value, this implies an 84% increase in yield just on the current inquiry base. Similarly if faculty at CWRU were perceived by prospective student to be "more focused on teaching" (more focus than whom was not specified) then this should result in an increased conversion of non-inquirers to applicants from 13.1% to 16.1%, a conversion of current inquirers to applicants from 13.1% to 15.6%, and a conversion of admitted applicants to matriculants from 25.4% to 29.2%; overall this would represent a 37% increase in yield on the current inquirer base.

Given that one might not want to double the size of the class, the increased yields could be compensated for by increased selectivity or by increased return on tuition. For example, a 12.5% increase in the total actual cost of attendance would decrease the yield of inquiries from 13.1% to 11.5%, and a 25.% increase in the cost of attendance would decrease the yield from 13.1% to 8.4%. Neither would completely offset the increase that would result from adoption of the Applied Learning model. Similarly, the effect of even a 25% increase in total cost of attendance would be a drop in the conversion of inquiries to applicants by only 3.9 percentage points, compared to the 8 percentage point rise imputed to an Applied Learning model. Finally, among admitted applicants a 25% increase in total cost of attendance would only result in a slight decrease in the percentage matriculating when offset by the imputed benefit of the Applied Learning model.

Among the tested educational initiatives only one other -- "a faculty with Nobel Prize winners and other preeminents" -- had a uniformly positive effect on yields. Cumulatively this amounts to a 44% increase in total yields. This is significantly smaller than the effect of the adoption of the Applied Learning positioning model and somewhat smaller than developing and marketing of a "faculty more focused on teaching," but significant nonetheless. Given the other advantages of eminent faculty -- intellectual vitality, market visibility, attractiveness to junior faculty -- a strong case for hiring preeminent faculty can be made.

The overall picture presented by the report of the consultants was thus not one of doom and gloom, but rather one of both long term danger in the event of inaction, and great opportunity if properly seized. However, the important question that was immediately raised is how could these initiatives work in a major research university.

A.2 President's Commission on Undergraduate Education and Life

It was in this context that on October 23rd, 2000 President Auston and Provost Wagner charged the President's Commission on Undergraduate Education and Life⁶:

To articulate a philosophy of undergraduate education for the University; and present to the University a proposal consistent with that philosophy for bold action to construct a more vibrant intellectual, social and physical campus environment in which to nurture and educate a community of lifelong creators and seekers of knowledge with lasting ties to CWRU.

To foster and facilitate a dialogue among the faculty and other members of the University community on that philosophy and proposal and on specific initiatives necessary to achieve their goals.

To recommend specific steps and initiatives which could be taken to implement the emergent blueprint for undergraduate education and life.

The original core group of the Commission consisted of:

Kimberly Adams Tufts (Davis), Assistant Professor of Nursing;
William T. Conley, Dean of Undergraduate Admission;
Donald L. Feke, Professor of Chemical Engineering and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, Case School of Engineering;
Timothy J. Fogarty, Professor and Chair of the Department of Accountancy;
S. Beth McGee, Associate Professor of Theater Arts;
Jonathan A. Sadowsky, Theodore J. Castele Associate Professor of History;
Glenn D. Starkman (Chair of the Commission), Associate Professor of Physics and of Astronomy;
Peter J. Whiting, Associate Professor of Geological Sciences.

The Commission was empowered to add members either permanently or on an ad hoc basis. It soon made use of this mandate to include:

Jennifer J. Neville, President, Class of 2002 and President Panhellenic Council;

and

Margaret B. Robinson, Dean of Undergraduate Studies (ad hoc).

The Commission is resourced by Provost James W. Wagner.

This document is presented to the University in fulfillment of the first paragraph of the Commission's charge (see above) and represents the completion of the first phase of the Commission's work. In preparing the document, and more importantly in arriving at the positions that it represents, the Commission did its utmost to create a wide range of opportunities for community input. Upon receiving its charge, the Commission solicited by e-mail input from all faculty members of the University, all undergraduate students, all members of the staff and administration on the general e-mail distribution list, 25,000 alumni, and a selection of parents of current undergraduates. In response over 150 contributions were received, all of which were read and discussed by the members of the Commission. The Commission or its members also met with representatives of numerous student groups, key members of the faculty, administration and university governance, including all deans of the University, the associate deans for academic affairs of all undergraduate schools and the associate and assistant deans of undergraduate studies, the vice-presidents for student affairs and institutional planning, the director and associate director of housing and residence life, and the chair and vice-chair of the University Undergraduate Faculty Executive Committee. The Commissioners had informal conversations with many others. Outside authorities were also consulted, including Lee Artz (Director, Social Justice Curriculum, and Professor, Department of Communications, Loyola University of Chicago), Howard Gardner (John H. and Elisabeth A. Hobbs Professor in Cognition and Education, Harvard Graduate School of Education), Wendy Katkin (Associate Provost for Educational Initiatives, Director, Reinvention Center, SUNY-Stony Brook). Anthony M. Pilla (Bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Cleveland) and Diane Ravitch (Research Professor, New York University and Senior Fellow of the Brookings Institution).

A seminal document for the Commission was the report of the Boyer Commission on Educating Undergraduates, "Reinventing Undergraduate Education: A Blueprint for America's Research Universities" which can be accessed through the PCUEL web site⁷. That commission, whose work was funded by and conducted under the auspices of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, confronted the questions of the role of research universities in the education of undergraduates, the extent to which they had been successfully fulfilling their obligations, and strategies for improvement. The Boyer Commission concluded, in brief, that "undergraduates had too often been short-changed in the past." In particular, "(a)dvanced research and undergraduate teaching have existed on two quite different planes, the first a source of pleasure, recognition, and reward, and the latter a burden shouldered more or less reluctantly to maintain the viability of the institution." The Boyer report argued:

What is needed now is a new model of undergraduate education at research universities that makes the baccalaureate experience an inseparable part of an integrated whole. Universities need to take advantage of the immense resources of their graduate and research programs to strengthen the quality ofundergraduate education, rather than striving to replicate the special environment of the liberal arts colleges. There needs to be a symbiotic relationship between all the participants in university learning that will provide a new kind of undergraduate experience available only at research institutions. Moreover, productive research faculties might find new stimulation and new creativity in contact with bright, imaginative, and eager baccalaureate students, and graduate students would benefit from integrating their research and teaching experiences. Research universities are distinctly different from small colleges, and they need to offer an experience that is a clear alternative to the college experience.

It is obvious that not every student should, or would wish to, attend a research university. Without attempting to characterize students at other kinds of institutions, it might be said that the undergraduate who flourishes at a research university is the individual who enjoys diverse experiences, is not dismayed by complexity or size, has a degree of independence and self-reliance, and seeks stimulation more than security. A research university is in many important ways a city; it offers almost unlimited opportunities and attractions in terms of associations, activities, and enterprises. But as in a city, the requirements of daily living may be taxing, and sorting out the opportunities and finding like-minded individuals may be difficult. The rewards of the ultimate experience, however, can be immeasurable.

The PCUEL took these words to heart. In this document we attempt to "articulate a philosophy of undergraduate education for the University; and present to the University a proposal consistent with that philosophy for bold action to construct a more vibrant intellectual, social and physical campus environment in which to nurture and educate a community of lifelong creators and seekers of knowledge with lasting ties to CWRU." The proposed philosophy of education and plan consciously seek to draw on the unique resources of a major research university situated in a culturally rich, cosmopolitan environment.

Although the Commission heard from and met with many faculty, students, administrators and others, and spent many hours in intense discussion over the ideas and initiatives presented in this white paper, the relatively brief span of 4 months over which it was prepared, makes it almost unavoidable that it is incomplete. Specific initiatives necessary to implement particular objectives may be hastily sketched out or entirely absent, resources necessary for each initiative may be unreliably estimated or not identified, priorities on initiatives have not been suggested, nor have time scales for implementation, people who should have been consulted may not have been, existing programs and initiatives may not all have been identified or appreciated, unsubstantiated claims may have been made . The Commission views the missing information as essential for any final action on its recommendations, and for the formulation of an implementation plan, and fully intends that these gaps will be plugged, to the greatest extent possible, in the Commission's final report. Thus, this white paper is by design a work in progress, intended to stimulate discussion among faculty, students, staff, administration, alumni, and all the stakeholders of the University, according to the charge of the Commission. The Commission intends to hold numerous open fora over the course of the next two months where the ideas contained in this white paper can be discussed. In addition, the Commission welcomes any and all constructive comments and suggestions. These may be registered in person, through the Commission's web page⁸ or by e-mail (pcuel@balin.phys.cwru.edu). The Commission will also continue to meet with groups of stakeholders to solicit input. The goal will be to produce a final report to the President, the Provost and CWRU before the beginning of classes in the 2001/2002 academic year.

B. An Educational Philosophy for CWRU

Disciplinary Literacy

Educational Breadth

Leadership

Creativity

Societal Engagement

These are to be demonstrated in an environment conducive to transformative personal growth, to the creation of strong interpersonal and communal ties, and to the development of ethical skills. The educational philosophy for achieving these objectives must be effective, distinctive and appropriate for CWRU. The Commission recommends that CWRU adopt a philosophy of experiential learning. We believe that this can be summarized by the phrase: Education through Experience. Recast in a way more directed at students or prospective students: Experience Your Education expresses as well the sense of ownership that students should feel toward their own education. The Commission recommends that the undergraduate mission of CWRU therefore be encapsulated in the following Mission/Vision Statement:

It is essential to this vision of a CWRU education that the Commission is proffering that the boundary between "Education" and "Life" be reduced or eliminated. Education should not be what happens in the classroom, life should not be what happens outside of it. We therefore offer the following Statement of Philosophy of Undergraduate Education and Life:

The CWRU community sets as its highest educational values Disciplinary Literacy, Educational Breadth, Creativity, Leadership and Societal Engagement. The prime educational objectives of an undergraduate experience at CWRU are the realization of those values in a manner commensurate with each student's uncommon potential. We hold that these objectives can best be achieved through direct experience, so learning by doing is the central organizing principle of the CWRU education. The University is committed to providing the opportunities, connections, resources, guidance and surroundings necessary to plan for, prepare for and realize these experiences, and so allow each student to achieve these objectives in a supportive environment conducive to personal growth and the formation of strong and enduring interpersonal and communal relationships.

B.1 Pedagogy: Experiential Education

Experiential education is a broad rubric under which all disciplines can enhance their students' life-long learning within a particular subject. It is based on educational research⁹ proving that students learn best, fastest, and with the most personal investment when they are active participants and contributors to their own learning process. Experiential education provides students with an introduction to the world outside academia within its structure in that students are encouraged to discover the issue at-hand, assess the issue, problem-solve concerning the issue, and create viable alternatives and/or outcomes for the issue. Experiential education should not be confused with "vocational training," in that students in experiential classrooms are actively developing the skills, vocabulary, and disciplinary outcomes already taught in "traditional" classrooms. Experiential education creates a format where the professor provides the classroom atmosphere, classroom exercises, and expertise necessary for the student to be an active learner, discovering and internalizing the skills of the professor's discipline. Such classrooms could be organized in many ways, depending upon disciplines, but examples of organizational models include: laboratory learning, practicum-learning, co-ops, internships, individual and group research projects, individual and group presentations and performances, and professor/student research projects. Students thrive within experiential learning experiences due to several factors: they create and contribute to an active classroom learning community; they learn how to work within a discipline both individually and with others; they learn how to investigate problems, make mistakes, and evolve new ideas within a discipline, creating a deeply ingrained skills-set and informational memory within that discipline; they are encouraged to bring their own expertise and background to the discipline and "apprentice" under master teachers in order to be further educated in the discipline, giving them the opportunity to learn from example professional ethics, vocabulary and behaviors under the tutelage of a working professional in the discipline. Assessment of learning under an experiential model can still be based on the body of knowledge which is expected to be acquired and the skills which are expected to be developed, but might incorporate differing assessment models in addition to (or instead of) the usual tests; these include portfolios, research projects, group research, oral presentations, or performances that prove the required information and skills have been integrated by the student(s). The experiential classroom environment creates a learning environment that encourages development and use of communication skills, presentation skills, and critical thinking in that students actively engaged in their own learning process must practice these skills to fulfill the requirements of their disciplinary exercises.

It is notable that while the Commission believes that this statement of philosophy and definition of pedagogy follow the essential spirit and description of the Applied Learning model tested by the Art and Science group, we have chosen consciously to use the name Experiential Learning rather than Applied Learning. Whereas we believe the phrase Applied Learning carries connotations of vocational education, the phrase Experiential Learning encompasses all the same expectations, experiences and opportunities -- internships, co-ops, undergraduate research, etc. -- but allows them to be more comfortably welcomed in an academic setting.

One reason that the experiential model is so well-suited to CWRU is that it is an approach that is already valued on campus. This includes such by now routine examples as laboratory courses or laboratory components to courses (and even, at the most minimally experiential level, in-class demonstrations). It is obviously the hands-on training that students receive in programs such as Theater Arts, Studio Art and Music (but equally obviously to us, initiatives such as the efforts of a Theater Arts major to help revive regional theater in Detroit). It includes the existing senior capstone research experiences in many departments (Engineering, Geology and Physics to name just the ones with which the members of the Commission have personal experience), and the myriad examples of undergraduate research currently being conducted with members of the undergraduate faculty and with faculty from the graduate and professional schools. It is the strong co-op programs in the school of Engineering, the clinical emphasis in the School of Nursing, the opportunities for service learning coordinated through the Office of Student Community Service¹⁰. It encompasses innovations like the "lab" section of BIOL 304; HIST 381 "The City as Classroom" in which students study the history of Cleveland, and virtually never meet on campus, but instead go to key sites in the area; the hands-on approach to statistics of STAT333/433; the Autonomous Robotics course ¹¹, ANTH 366 "Doing Urban Ethnography " in which students prepare an ethnography on an aspect of life in the city of Cleveland; COSI 130 in which students receive training in radio broadcasting by participating in the operation of WRUW-FM; ENGL 374 and 375, Internship in Journalism and Internship in Technical Communication, in which students work as interns in area media and in area corporations or organizations respectively and meet as a class to share their experiences and to focus on editorial issues; PSCL 231, Child Psychology Practicum, involving three hours per week of practicum at either the Church of the Covenant day care center or the Mental Development Center School; POSC 395 Special Projects, which can involve a project here in Cleveland or one completed as part of The Washington Semester, a semester-long program that includes a seminar and an internship in a governmental agency or a NGO in Washington. This is nowhere near an exhaustive list of examples. Rather it indicates the broad range of options for experiential education, and the existing interest in it and commitment to it by the faculty and students across all the undergraduate schools and colleges.

The difference between the pedagogical status quo and what the Commission recommends is that the approach to teaching that is found in courses and programs such as the ones just mentioned should become ubiquitous, and that the spirit of this approach should pervade not just all our courses but the way we structure an education. This does not mean that a professor will never get up in front of a class and present content or teach skills. It does mean that professors should first consider whether or not this is the optimum way for the students in the course to learn that content and develop those skills. It also means that everybody, from individual course instructors to department faculties, to the faculties of the undergraduate schools and colleges will need to assess how they provide the experiences which enable active learning.

Furthermore we recommend that the metrics for a CWRU education go beyond the list of courses a student has completed, and which satisfy the degree requirements of the appropriate School, College or Department. Courses should be considered in the context of a student's Educational Plan for achieving the five educational objectives which we presented above, and on which we elaborate below. It is progress toward achieving those objectives which should be measured, and that must be measured not only in terms of courses, but also in terms of Experiences, for which courses are very likely to be important preparatory activities. Thus, Disciplinary Literacy (a Major) would not generally be demonstrated just by completion of a suite of courses listed in the catalogue, but might be demonstrated by successful completion of an independent research project (often the senior capstone experience) for which a disciplinary department or an interdisciplinary program may consider successful completion of certain courses a necessary prerequisite preparation. Every educational decision -- every course or program approval -- indeed every decision related to undergraduates would be made by first asking how the proposed action(s) are in keeping with the University's undergraduate philosophy.

Thus, for example, since educational research argues strongly that smaller classes enable the experiential education, and are thus more effective, we should have as a goal the reduction of class sizes. In particular, we believe that classes in excess of approximately 50 nearly always preclude, or at least make considerably more difficult, active experiential learning. The Commission believes that the University should have as its stated goal the elimination of all classes in excess of this number, except where there is a clear educational goal for a larger size. (One can argue whether the relevant number is 40, 50 or 60. ) In addition the proportion of classes under 20 should be increased, as it is in these truly small-class settings that the intellectual involvement of every student is most easily ensured, that the strongest bonds are forged among students and between students and faculty, and that the greatest opportunities for experiential education exist. We also know, from widely disseminated ratings of colleges and universities, that smaller class sizes (defined as under 50 and under 20) and contact with faculty contribute positively to perceptions of an institution.

B.2 Educational Values and Objectives

We have written above of educational objectives for the student, a set of educational values which we hold to be paramount for the whole of CWRU, but in particular for undergraduate education. We suggest that students must build their education around these Five Values: Disciplinary Literacy, Educational Breadth, Leadership, Creativity, Societal Engagement. We define these values and provide some rationale for their canonization immediately below. Preliminary discussion of how such values can be taught and how they could be assessed both on an individual student basis and an institutional basis are found in subsequent sections of this white paper.

Disciplinary literacy comprises knowledge of the fundamentals, methodology, ethics, language, history, social context, relevance, and frontiers of a discipline, as well as the ability to communicate important ideas and issues of the discipline to both specialists and non-specialists.

The Commission contends that, particularly at a research university, achieving literacy in at least one discipline should be an essential component of an undergraduate education. Exploration of a discipline at the level required to achieve such literacy arguably requires faculty actively engaged in pushing the frontiers of that discipline, so such literacy is something that only a research university can offer its students across all disciplines.

Educational Breadth: Students must engage in a wide-ranging exploration of disciplines other than their major course of study. The Commission contends that educational breadth is both an objective, in and of itself, and a catalyst to all four other objectives. For example, societal engagement is most constructive if it is undertaken with some understanding of the society with which one is engaged. This arguably requires understanding how it differs from other societies. Even the communication of disciplinary ideas to non-specialists, an aspect of disciplinary literacy, requires some appreciation of the modes of thinking of others. While interactions among the members of a diverse student body would go a long way toward nurturing such an appreciation, the Commission believes that a conscious effort is required to become acquainted with such diversity, whether by studying or traveling abroad, learning a foreign language, studying a culture foreign to you, or engaging with a group that is from a different culture than yours. The Commission also believes that carefully thought out and well executed interdisciplinary education could play an important positive role in supporting educational breadth and fostering creativity. Beyond this, the Commission believes that the role of the University must go far beyond vocational preparation, and that an educated individual must have an appreciation for a broad range of knowledge and creative endeavors.

The Commission encourages the idea that Educational Breadth be thought of in terms of the following literacies (some of which may naturally be strongly connected with particular disciplines):

ethical literacy: learning and practicing tools for ethical decision making;
information literacy: an ability to evaluate publicly proffered information and opinions critically (implying basic numeracy, and basic scientific/technological and statistical literacy);
cultural literacy: a grounding in stories, arts, and cultural achievements of one's own society and of other cultures (including fluency in one's own language, and arguably in at least one other);
social and political literacy: knowledge of the governmental and civic structures of society and a grasp of how power operates in society; knowledge of how social structures shape life chances for people.
economic literacy: a grasp of the fundamentals of economic systems.

Leadership: There are many definitions of leadership. Precisely because there are so many definitions, the Commission prefers, at this preliminary stage to frame this value in terms of the qualities and skills that are important to have as a leader, and that therefore need to be fostered and taught. Although few leaders will have honed all these skills or qualities, good leaders will constantly strive to improve themselves as leaders. These skills are:

the ability to set goals, prioritize them, and follow through with tasks to reach those goals;
the ability to motivate others to achieve common goals;
the ability to work productively with others, whether as a member of a team or as a team leader;
the ability to communicate effectively on a personal level and with groups;
the ability to identify ethical questions and apply ethical tools to decision making;
an understanding of different leadership styles, consciousness of one's own style, and the ability to interact with other leaders, especially those with different styles;
dependability.

Creativity is the ability to imagine and realize that which has not hitherto existed, and particularly that which has not previously been imagined. Originality is at the heart of creativity, though what is new may be how the old is juxtaposed or presented. Creativity necessarily involves a translation from the imaginary to the real, be it in the composition of a piece of music, the exposition of a scientific theory, the performance of a play, the development of a business idea, or the elucidation of a new approach to solving a problem in any field of endeavor.

Societal Engagement is an ability and ongoing commitment to act as a member of a community or communities beyond the University and beyond those that are purely intellectual or professional. These communities may be geo-political (the fellow citizens of one's city, region, country or the world), religious or otherwise defined. There is no expectation of adherence to a particular moral, political or religious philosophy or outlook, but there is an expectation of a commitment to ethical behavior.

CWRU students already engage in many activities that demonstrate Societal Engagement. The University does already, through its Office of Student Community Service, and other units encourage and enable such engagement. Nevertheless, societal engagement is mostly viewed as external or incidental to education. It is the incorporation of societal engagement into the educational expectations, including into the notion of disciplinary literacy, which is the prime philosophical change being recommended.

B.3 Experiences

A central notion in our vision of a CWRU education is that of the Experience. Our expectation is that the typical student's educational plan will include more than coursework as a means of achieving CWRU's educational objectives. Most of the five objectives will be met by engagement with Experiences. Some of these Experiences may be relatively standardized, for example disciplinary research in the major discipline under the supervision of a faculty member in the major department as the Experience which demonstrates Disciplinary Literacy. Other Experiences may involve experiences which are currently common, but yet have no formal place in a student's education -- doing summer research, interning with companies, holding leadership positions in student government, planning and organizing the building of a Habitat for Humanity house, writing music and playing it in concert with a band. Thus some will be designed by faculty or other "experts," while others will be designed by students. There is an expectation that each student will select one such Experience as a Senior Capstone Experience -- a particularly central Experience which is the academic focus of their senior year. Such Experiences are not expected to take place in an educational and pedagogical vacuum. As described in greater detail below, they must be planned, prepared for, engaged in, and then reported on and evaluated. These steps will take many forms, but the preparation can generally be expected to include course work.

If Experiences are to be expected of students, they must be easily available, readily accessible and of clear educational merit. The Commission recognizes that it is unlikely that the undergraduate faculty alone could initiate and supervise enough such Experiences to meet all the educational needs of all the students, therefore it will be crucial to strengthen connections to the graduate and professional faculty, and to the world beyond the University. Moreover, we recall from Section A that the definition of the successful educational positioning model stated that:

All students participate in research projects with faculty who teach in the graduate and professional schools and/or internships with nationally and internationally recognized companies, law firms, medical centers, cultural institutions and other organizations.¹²

Transforming these interactions into an expected and formal part of the typical student's life is one of the most essential ways that the Commission envisions differentiating the CWRU experience. There will be a need for new administrative structures that organize, catalog, and support (with human and financial resources) such Experiences. For example, Experiences for Societal Engagement will often require students to interact with organizations and individuals outside the University. An entity such as an expanded Office for Student Community Service will be needed to help in making contacts, providing training and resources to students, and assessing student progress and success.

B.4 The Role of Graduate and Professional Faculty

CWRU's professional schools (Dentistry, Law, Management, Medicine, Nursing and Social Sciences) are some of its greatest assets. Indeed, the University's place among the top research universities is currently secured largely by the strength of those schools. Yet, until now the role of the graduate and professional faculty (defined here as those who are not members of the University Undergraduate Faculty) has been officially mostly incidental to students' education. While students frequently do research with professional faculty (especially with faculty in the Medical School), this research often receives no academic credit, and the faculty receive little or no recognition, reward or resources from the University. There is also no formal expectation that professional faculty will incorporate undergraduates into their research. If CWRU is to enter its aspirant group this arm's length relationship between the professional schools and undergraduate education must change.

There are three roles in which we envisage professional faculty serving:

Mentors for undergraduates. In particular, undergraduates whose career plans are aimed at a particular professional discipline should have mentors from those disciplines. There should be an expectation that professional faculty serve in this capacity.
Supervisors for Experiences. There should be an expectation that professional faculty will create whenever possible opportunities for undergraduate research. It is likely that supervision of undergraduate research by professional faculty will be essential for departments such as biology, chemistry and psychology, where the number of majors who will need to demonstrate disciplinary literacy is large compared to the number of faculty. Professional faculty may also choose to supervise non-disciplinary Experiences as the faculty see fit.
Instructors of undergraduate courses. There should be no expectation that individual professional faculty will teach undergraduate courses, however when there is a desire and an opportunity, these should be supported and facilitated.

New expectations cannot be imposed without compensation. Involvement in undergraduate education will need to be considered by the professional schools as a valid professional activity which counts toward a faculty member's teaching and/or service obligations. Undergraduate research in all schools, including the graduate professional schools, must be supported by the University with the appropriate supplemental resources.

B.5 Connections to the World Beyond

Just as the professional faculty will be essential to enabling the University to meet the needs of the students, so too will connections to the world beyond CWRU. These must include stronger connections to businesses, professional firms and cultural institutions locally, nationally and internationally. We place particular emphasis on strengthened ties to other University Circle Institutions -- failure to create opportunities for students to enter those institutions as more than visitors is failure to capitalize on one of our most distinctive resources.

Of particular importance to the program we are outlining is the strengthening and expansion of the internship and co-op programs. Students should expect that there will always be, between undergraduate research opportunities and internships, a possibility during the summer and during winter breaks for them to engage in educational Experiences which are consistent with their Educational Plans. Local companies and organizations must come to expect, and even rely on our students' presence as a source of creative energy, unusual skills and important connections to the University's resources and expertise. National and international organizations must come to know that our students represent outstanding opportunities for them. Once again, it will be necessary to either create a new administrative center or strengthen and provide greater resources to existing ones if this vision is to be realized. The Commission expects to provide further details in its final report.

A particular concern of the Commission is that if students are to be afforded adequate opportunities to meet our expectations for "Societal Engagement" then the University will need to strengthen its ties to the community, and to community organizations of all types. This is not to minimize either the current efforts of individual students (which are considerable, but individual) or the important role of organizations like the Office of Student Community Service. However, we view as essential that the University adopt a sense of institutional commitment to the community to be played out through the activities of students, staff and faculty. The University, as arguably the most prestigious research university in the region, has a unique position and hence responsibility. In particular, few other institutions can act as such respected convenors on issues of general importance to the community, and few can provide the same pool of creative and energetic talent to address problems. We suggest that the University, under the direction of President Auston, needs to take an immediate first step to evaluate how best it can consciously contribute to the Northeast Ohio community. One model for such a reflective analysis by an institution of comparable size and influence is the Church in the City process conducted by the Catholic Archdiocese of Cleveland over the last years. We have received indications that a greater involvement of CWRU in regional affairs would be welcomed, and supported. The support of other institutions will be essential if we are to successfully facilitate our students greater engagement in the world around them.

C. A CWRU Education

While the Five Values provide the educational objectives, and Experiential Learning the educational philosophy, an education must also be built on a structure which provides each student a vehicle for ownership of his or her education and a mechanism for measuring progress toward successful achievement of the educational objectives.

The Commission suggests that a successful education owned and undertaken by the student requires four phases:

Planning;
Preparation;
Engagement/Experiences;
Retrospection and Assessment.

Although these four stages will often take place simultaneously, nevertheless the consciousness of all four will mark the CWRU experience.

Formalized planning is the first phase. Freshman orientation offers the opportunity for the incoming student's initial exposure to CWRU's educational methodology and signals the beginning of the planning phase. Undergraduate mentoring specific to the CWRU approach to learning is the core component of a successful educational experience at CWRU and must begin in first semester of freshman year. Mentoring must be long term, multi-disciplinary, and engaged. This first phase should result in the preparation and formal acceptance of an individual Educational Plan. Although it should be a living document, constantly revisited and revised, nevertheless the Educational Plan should provide the student a roadmap to successful achievement of the educational objectives. It should include detailed plans for demonstrating attainment of the Five Values, including anticipated Experiences, courses to be taken, other activities to be completed in preparation for these Experiences and the intended methods of assessment. The Educational Plan is a document prepared by the student in cooperation with a mentor and with other advisors within and without the University.

The period of formal planning sets the stage for the preparatory phase. This phase would include completion of courses outlined in the Educational Plan, the groundwork necessary before specific Experiences could be undertaken, and continued consultation with advisors. The development of both a skills and knowledge base from which to engage in the planned Experiences is the goal of this phase. The experiential nature of course instruction will itself be important preparation for the often less formally structured Experiences.

The Experience/Engagement phase is in many ways the culmination of the student's planning and preparation. This phase can take many diverse forms. Experiences may consist of faculty-supervised research, internships, co-ops, travel abroad, service-learning projects, performances, excursions to other educational institutions, independent projects, group projects, etc. The University's development of strong collaborative partnerships with local community resources is essential to the student's success. Partnerships with University Circle Inc., University Hospitals of Cleveland, The Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland Orchestra, Cleveland Institute of Art, Playhouse Square, The Cleveland of Museum of Art, The Cleveland Institute of Music, businesses, and area schools are just a few possibilities.

Retrospection and assessment are fundamental parts of a student's achievement and development. Retrospection may take the form of consultation with advisors, journaling, project reports, and/or public presentations. Evaluation methods will be both ongoing and summative. Because we anticipate that assessment will be a major concern, we discuss it in detail below.

There is a substantial need in this process for a university-wide approach to the reduction of institutional barriers that prevent the linkage of "academics" and student life. This linkage is a vital component of facilitating the students' discovery of their "uncommon potential" and ensuring their ability to realize their objectives. Measures taken to reduce these barriers will greatly enhance the student's academic, personal, and social development. A quality student-life-experience provides quality opportunities for extracurricular learning and recreation.

C.1 The Academic Progression

In this section, we provide an overview of how we envision the implementation of our various recommendations to transform students' educational experiences and intellectual lives.

Recruiting and Admissions

CWRU students' experiences begins long before they arrive on campus freshman year. The public face of the University, that it presents to prospective students and their parents, must be reflective of the Educational Values we espouse. Web pages and printed material must make it clear that CWRU is a place where creativity, leadership, social engagement and educational breadth are valued as much as traditional disciplinary literacy. They must make communicate our philosophy that education happens through experience, and that at CWRU we therefore expect students to own their educations, engaging in the process of planning, preparation, execution and assessment . Visits to campus by prospective students must be engineered to make these attributes clear and appealing. Pre-college programs should be viewed in part as an opportunity to demonstrate the benefits of a CWRU education to prospective students.

The Commission believes that in the process of recruiting and admission, we must strive for both excellence and diversity. The proposal to adopt Experiential Education as an organizing principle of students' education provides an opportunity to differentiate CWRU from many competitors. The Art and Science Group report suggests to the Commission that with the philosophy of education by experience the University can attract more, and more diverse, applicants, and therefore build a more diverse class while becoming more, rather than less selective.

The initiatives needed to shape a class with a focus on excellence and diversity are discussed at length in section D of this white paper.

Orientation

Orientation serves many purposes including bonding, practicalities (IDs, parking, etc.), introduction to the academic life of the University, and learning about the broader community. Orientation must emphasize our educational philosophy and as such should include tangible experiences linked to the core values of Disciplinary Literacy, Educational Breadth, Creativity, Leadership and Societal Engagement. This year's orientation included a service component and would be the sort of activity to introduce the Societal Engagement value. We would like to see events developed around these core values. Orientation should stress the mutual responsibilities the University and the student have in the student's growth. More time during orientation should be reserved for students to meet with faculty both formally (the mini-seminars introduced last year) and informally, and more time should be allotted for students to meet with advisors. Testing for math and language placement should occur before orientation (with testing done online) to provide more time for getting to know classmates, the University, University Circle and Cleveland. Finally, orientation must be fun. While a bit artificial, the development of orientation traditions would serve to provide long-remembered shared experiences.

Freshman year

The first year at CWRU should set the stage for a university career of personal and intellectual growth. Freshmen will take introductory seminars. These seminars with 15 to 20 students are designed:

to provide common experiences for all undergraduates;
to develop critical thinking, quantitative, and research skills;
to develop skills and confidence in oral and written communication;
to develop ethical decision making skills;
to provide a solid intellectual foundation for undergraduate education;
to establish learning communities fostering student-student connections, faculty-student connections and faculty-faculty connections (especially across disciplines);
to provide opportunities to inculcate the values of the University.

A small class size is critical to meeting these goals because it provides more experiential opportunities, stronger connections, and more attention and opportunity to develop and practice skills critical for success at the University. These seminars might be patterned after the recent College of Arts and Sciences proposal.

During the first year students will begin to frame their educational plans - what courses will they need, what will their major(s) be, what their ideas are for experiences in Disciplinary Literacy, Educational Breadth, Creativity, Leadership and Societal Engagement.

Mentoring must play a critical role these deliberations.

Sophomore year

The second year at CWRU should continue the rapid personal and intellectual growth. Too often in the past, sophomores have felt adrift or even abandoned after the attention lavished on them in their first year. During sophomore year, students should take additional seminars designed to further strengthen and refine skills in critical thinking, quantitative analysis, ethical decision making and communication. If a plan similar to that under consideration by the College of Arts and Sciences were adopted, the seminars would broaden student understanding of the various disciplines' key contributions to the creation of knowledge.

The primary goal of the sophomore year is presentation and approval of an Educational Plan. Creating an Educational Plan requires that students think carefully about their aptitudes and interests and about their goals for their education, and that they consult with their mentor in formulating their Plan. In the Educational Plan, the student would outline the courses and Experiences that will allow him or her to demonstrate disciplinary literacy (i.e. complete a major), educational breadth, Creativity, Leadership and Societal Engagement. The plan would have to receive the approval of the student's mentor and of some appropriately constituted official body. The plan could be changed to accommodate changed goals. In essence, we hope to create a culture where students take ownership of their education. We believe that a Rite of Passage built around the approval of the Educational Plan, a sort of Half Graduation, could become an important CWRU tradition.

Junior year

For most students, Junior year will be the richest in Experiences - Junior year or semester abroad, co-ops, meeting expectations for experiences in Creativity, Leadership, and Engagement. At this point in their careers, we expect that students will have made substantial progress toward demonstrating Educational Breadth and will be focusing on developing Disciplinary Literacy by taking more specialized courses and experiences. During Junior year, students will identify their interests for their Capstone Experience and submit for approval, a plan for the Capstone. In preparation for the Capstone Experience, many students may take seminars on research methods and professional development as appropriate to their discipline.

Senior year

For graduation, students will be expected to complete a Capstone Experience. The intent of the Capstone Experience is to have students draw upon their experiences (especially their other Experiences) and course-work to undertake and complete a particularly substantial project. The Capstone Experience will often, but not always, be the Experience that demonstrates a student's Disciplinary Literacy. It is expected that most students will complete the Capstone during their final year. Capstone Experiences might take different forms:

research projects akin to senior theses;
small group projects, with individuals having discrete responsibilities;
projects based upon work with a mentor outside the University;
performance projects or exhibitions that reflect a student's disciplinary study.

In many situations, students will complete their Capstone Experience in their major department and these departments will evaluate the Experience. For those situations where students undertake a Capstone Experience outside of their major or with advisors from the professional schools and outside the University, some structure for evaluation will have to be developed. We would expect both written and oral presentations would be incorporated into the Capstone Experience. We recommend that seniors make a public presentation of their Capstone Experience during a Senior Capstone Fair as a way of celebrating their achievements, and creating the expectation of achievement by subsequent classes.

Summer and breaks

Summers and breaks in the class schedule provide opportunities for students to undertake transformative experiences. Many students may decide to initiate one or more of the required Experiences, to intern, or to do research during these periods. It may be critical to undertake or initiate some Capstone Experiences during the summer before senior year. For many of our students, family finances are such that students are under great pressure to earn money during the summer. We believe that support for more students undertaking undergraduate research and other initiatives is essential. We recommend the development of a competitive undergraduate research funding program. We would like to see an administrative center whose purpose is to assure all students have access to opportunities for experiences. Given the expectations of this educational program, the University would need to guarantee that sufficient and appropriate opportunities will exist for all students in all majors to engage in experiential educational activities such as internships, co-ops, practica and societal engagement over the summer.

Graduation

The requirements for graduation are reflective of the University's values and educational philosophy. We will have to strive to constantly maintain the expectations for achievement by our graduates. Senior week provides another opportunity to create community and foster lasting ties to the University. Activities paralleling the themes of Disciplinary Literacy, Educational Breadth, Creativity, Leadership and Societal Engagement would be appropriate.

Mentoring and Advising

Two fundamental pieces of the educational approach we propose are mentoring and advising, the distinction between which we draw below. Over the years, many undergraduates have expressed disappointment with the advising they have received. At the same time, many advisors have been frustrated by the minutiae of many discussions. We aim to invigorate undergraduate advising by having more than one advisor. Students would each be assigned a mentor before they arrived at CWRU. Mentors could be undergraduate faculty, but they could also be drawn from the graduate and professional faculty, the research faculty, and possibly even the alumni and appropriate members of the community from all walks of life. The mentor-student relationship would persist over the entire period of the student's undergraduate education. The student would also have an advisor. If the mentor is from the student's major discipline then the advisor would not be, and vice versa. This second advisor could again be another faculty member, an appropriate alumnus or an appropriate member of the community, although at least one of the mentor and advisor should be a faculty member. It is our hope that multidisciplinary advising will help assure that all students receive excellent advising consistent with the values of disciplinary literacy, educational breadth, Creativity, leadership and Societal Engagement.

As noted earlier, students will develop their Education Plan and present this plan for approval by their advising team. It is expected that presentation of a plan will be the blueprint for selecting courses and undertaking experiences. It is expected that as students develop their plan they will consult with their formal advisors as well as other students, faculty and staff, alumni, and members of the community. The plan may be modified with the approval of the advisors.

The proposed changes to undergraduate advising will require additional training of advisors and a faculty commitment to supervise undergraduate students.

C.2 Opportunities for Experiences

Experiences in which students put their learning into practice must be an integral part of the overall academic experience and not merely a token or a minor component of the educational process. Experiences to be interwoven into the academic programs can be designed to occur on campus in the context of courses, in partner institutions within University Circle, in local and national companies, or at international venues. The number and nature of such experiences should be appropriate for the particular discipline of the student.

On-campus

To some degree, the educational programs at CWRU are already designed for the students to practice what is taught in lectures. For example, in the sciences and engineering, laboratories allow the students to examine firsthand the principles that have been studied. Opportunities exist for performance in the Arts. Nursing students receive practical training in patient care. However, as curricula evolve, more emphasis must be placed on the practical demonstration of the discipline. Academic units should reexamine their programs and courses and consider how each could be offered most experientially.

Since CWRU is a research-intensive university, opportunities for students to partner with individual faculty members in independent research projects must be facilitated and expanded. The type of mentoring relationship expected as a result of such research experiences benefit the students, not only through the experience gained, but also through the perception of their valuable role in the CWRU community. However, faculty must also come to see such relationships as benefiting them, whether or not the actual research product is of use to their research program.

In addition the Commission believes that a Center/Institute/School of Entrepreneurship and Innovation, if such is ultimately created, could be a valuable asset in fostering experiences on campus. These include such obvious types of opportunities as the creation of student-run businesses, but extend well beyond this narrow view of the entrepreneurial approach. This is discussed further in the Entrepreneurialism section below.

Beyond these disciplinary opportunities, there exist myriad opportunities of other sorts through venues such as student governance organizations, student outreach organizations, University governance committees, and campus arts programs (whether department-centered or not). No attempt is made here to be exhaustive. However, we do recommend that an important administrative function under this approach will be the "organization" of such opportunities. This includes cataloguing opportunities, connecting students with opportunities and with appropriate mentorship, identifying and allocating resources for such opportunities, both those that are pre-existing and those that are initiated by students. This function will require a centralized administrative home, an Office for Undergraduate Experiences. (The exact relationship of such an office to the proposed enlarged Office of Student Community Services being as yet undiscussed. )

In University Circle

One of the most distinctive features of CWRU is its proximity to, and the opportunity for exchanges between, the University and University Circle cultural institutions. One way to distinguish CWRU from other institutions would be to strengthen and enhance the relationships that already exist and to create more opportunities for student interaction within University Circle cultural institutions. These institutions provide natural venues for experiential learning, especially, but by no means exclusively, for students in the Arts and Humanities. We believe that stronger ties with CWRU would be welcomed in most cases, and that these institutions could eventually come to see CWRU students as one of their greatest assets.

We recommend that the University begin an initiative to encourage professors to use the University Circle cultural institutions as part of their course experiences. Course content should be investigated, when possible, through visits to museums and attendance at performances. Class visits and class attendance at cultural events would enhance the experiential learning and the creativity component in many courses. Social events should be planned within the cultural institutions, thus encouraging students to visit and acclimate themselves to museum and concert culture. Intellectual ties between these institutions and the University should be strengthened through use of these institutions for professional advising, capstone mentorships, and opportunities for creative achievement and leadership activities. Cross-appointments between University departments and University Circle cultural institutions would strengthen and support these ties. Financial support for student initiatives that use the institutions and their staff would help students enhance their Creativity, Leadership, and Societal Engagement skills. The Office for Undergraduate Experiences should pay particular attention to fostering opportunities in collaboration with UCI institutions.

There are already some exciting initiatives underway. The Art History and Art Departments' joint program with the Cleveland Museum of Art has a nationally known Art History and Museum studies graduate program, with the Museum's curators serving as adjunct faculty to the program. Students doing the joint M.A. and B.S. in art education share the facilities of both CWRU and the CMA, and have enjoyed a long standing relationship with the Cleveland School of the Arts. Undergraduates in Art History take classes at the museum and use its galleries, and curators teach in some classes. The Department of Art History and Art is currently recruiting two new faculty positions --one a joint appointment with The Cleveland Museum of Art, and the other a joint appointment with the Cleveland Institute of Art.

Cleveland and Beyond

CWRU has already developed several formal programs with local, national and international organizations for formalized experiential learning. For example, the co-operative Education program enables students to gain real-world experience in prolonged assignments that are tightly integrated with their on-campus learning. Through internship and practicum programs, students can gain some practical experience in shorter-term positions that support or are relevant to their on-campus studies. Such programs will need to be expanded such that greater numbers of students can take advantage of these opportunities. This may largely be one of the roles of the Office for Undergraduate Experiences.

We have already discussed how the Office of Student Community Service provides a mechanism by which students can put their studies into practice on projects that have a community service orientation. This office has played an integral role in the development and delivery of a few courses on campus such as the ongoing course ENGR 101, Freshman Engineering Service Project and the EPICS (Engineering Projects in Community Service) courses being piloted in Spring 2001. Development of courses such as these must be encouraged. We anticipate that this office would need to greatly expand the scope of its operations to accommodate the need of all students to meet the Societal Engagement objective.

In a number of areas, it will be beneficial for increasing numbers of students to add some foreign study as part of their educational experience. Foreign study could contribute heavily to meeting several educational outcomes and to give students experience that may be valuable for future leadership positions. CWRU should more actively seek venues for foreign study. In addition, identifying opportunities for international co-op or internship placements should be given high priority.

C.3 Entrepreneurialism

The spirit of entrepreneurialism is symbiotic with the philosophic revision that this Commission recommends be put in place at this University. Entrepreneurialism is that tendency that embraces full personal responsibility for results. It encourages an active frame of mind that moves aggressively toward objectives along a variety of dimensions. Rather than conceiving of the self and the career as a narrow specialty or a cog in a much larger organizational wheel, entrepreneurialism encourages a certain breath of exposure within a disciplinary matrix. Nonetheless, entrepreneurialism should be distinguished from the classic formulation of the liberal arts education. In its essence, entrepreneurialism can only be realized through purposeful action learning.

Entrepreneurialism has gained considerable currency in the business schools of the United States. Bolstered by evidence about the extent of job creation and innovation in the smaller settings dominated by the entrepreneur, many graduate programs in management have targeted this domain almost as a reaction to its relative neglect over earlier years. The Weatherhead School at CWRU has established a niche in this area with a series of courses that undergraduates can take as a concentration. Although this has not reached the level of a major, nor does it have an exclusive faculty, it does reflect the beginnings of a pedagogical commitment consistent with the entrepreneurial spirit.

Although its most obvious applications relate to for-profit business ventures, entrepreneurialism is not limited to these domains. Most careers are entrepreneurial, especially in the context of the turbulence of modern times. We assert that the entrepreneurial spirit underlies the idea of excellence in fields as diverse as the humanities and the natural sciences. The generic features that entrepreneurialism stresses is long-term responsibility for purposeful projects with specific and tangible outcomes. In the arts, this might involve the conception of a performance, the arrangement of the necessary resources to facilitate that performance, the marketing of the performance to an audience, the performance itself and the post-hoc assessment of its success. Entrepreneurialism also connotes a certain attitude towards risk. It seeks to understand risk and to evaluate it systematically as it applies to the prospects for an undertaking. Risk in this context runs the gamut from the chances of technical failure (this would be governed by deep disciplinary knowledge) to institutional risk wherein failure might occur due to an inadequate fit with established norms and conventions (this relates to breadth and Societal Engagement) to market risk (this leans heavily upon creativity). Those imbued with the entrepreneurial spirit do not shy from risk, but instead make shrewd bets on it, based on their superior understanding of its dynamic qualities.

We embrace the notion that entrepreneurialism can thrive within even the largest organizational contexts. We submit that entrepreneurialism is sufficiently robust to make sense across the campus and that indeed the formulation of an individual Educational Plan, the conscious process of planning, preparation, engagement and retrospection, and the experiential philosophy are all resonant with an entrepreneurial approach. The position of the Commission is that learning at the undergraduate level should be entrepreneurial. This recommendation is meant to be ambitious and far-reaching in its implications. Since entrepreneurialism is a word traditionally associated with business, it is important to stress how readily applicable it is to all endeavors currently pursued by undergraduates. The Commission recognizes the marketing advantages of aligning itself with entrepreneurialism. Entrepreneurialism is territory seemingly unclaimed by other universities in any material way. It therefore represents a new message to which students may be receptive. Based upon the early work at Weatherhead, we believe that such a theme for undergraduate education could be made credible and, as a result, could make what we do here truly distinctive in ways that it currently is not.

The Commission also considered the means of making entrepreneurial studies per se available to the undergraduate student body, whether by creation of a center, an institute or a school. Various choices have a different set of merits to consider, and the Commission has not yet reached a consensus. The issues are briefly discussed in the Resources section (G) of this document. However, the Commission does strongly believe that these organizational issues merit rapid study if the University is to seize this opportunity.

C.4 Evaluation/Assessment

In order to ensure that the academic programs are consistent with the CWRU educational philosophy for undergraduate programs and that the educational objectives of each program are met, a formalized assessment and feedback process must be established and nurtured. We envision that this process will evolve and mature over the course of time as faculty become more comfortable with assessment processes and see the benefits of well-tended assessment efforts. Formal evaluation of the CWRU undergraduate programs will be essential to the health and growth of these programs. A focus on distinctiveness and excellence demands that improvements in the quality of the curricular programs must be continuously sought.

A formalized assessment and feedback process should be viewed as a cycle incorporating the following components:

Articulation of the objectives of the various academic programs. This step may include consultation with the various constituencies served by the University, such as our students, faculty, alumni, parents of our students, employers/supervisors of our graduates, and other friends of CWRU. The work of the PCUEL represents the initial part of this first step.
Evaluation and specification of the expected educational outcomes of the various components of each academic program. This review should be done thematically to make sure that the various curricular programs are consistent with and reflective of the educational objectives for the University. Included in this process should be an evaluation of the required core courses, the scope and content of major field courses, the appropriateness of elective sequences, and the effectiveness of other experiential or non-course-work components of the academic programs.
Collection and analysis of adequate amounts of assessment data. These data can be derived both from on-campus sources (students and faculty) as well as off-campus sources (alumni, employers, consultants, visiting committees, etc. ) Assessment tools focussing on the cohesiveness and integration of the various curricular components should be developed and implemented. An Office of Institutional research would be a great asset in this process.
Regular reporting of the assessment results and feedback to students, faculty, and administrators. The assessment data should be used to verify that the program objectives have been achieved through evaluation of the educational outcomes. Adjustments to the program objectives and expected educational outcomes are expected to be a natural outgrowth of this feedback process.

It should be noted that we make a distinction between "program objectives" and expected "educational outcomes." Program objectives are broader and more philosophical in nature; they include the Five Educational Values. It may be more difficult to agree on how to directly assess a student's abilities in regards to program objectives such as Societal Engagement or Creativity. In contrast, specific educational outcomes are more detailed in nature and supportive of each objective can be defined and directly assessed. Consider Creativity. A sizable body of evidence shows that one can both foster and measure creativity. Thus tools exist that can be used both for measuring individual creative growth and the success of CWRU in fostering creative development of its students. For example, a student's success in an independent research experience or off-campus experience might be used to evaluate the creativity expressed by the student. There is less evidence that creativity can be taught. The Commission does not view this as necessarily a problem. Although we may not teach creativity directly, we can provide the environment and opportunities that support this value/objective. The educational role of the University is not limited to teaching. As stated in the mission statement, we seek to graduate students who "have discovered and are realizing their own uncommon potential through the University's uniquely transformative environment." If the environment we have created has allowed the students to grow creatively, then that is an educational success for both the University and the student.

Assessment and evaluation processes occur on multiple time scales. Assessment and feedback on individual courses, independent research projects, or off-campus experiences can occur on a relatively short time frame. Feedback on educational objectives, the cohesiveness of curricula, changes to core requirements occurs on a much longer time scale. Many assessment tools are available, and the combination of tools to be used should be appropriate for the individual program.

The following tools are examples of those appropriate for short time frame assessment:

Testing

Mid-term and final examinations
Course projects
Selected examples of student work retained throughout the duration of the course (work portfolios)

Classroom Assessment

Assess whether a particular lecture or group of lectures was successful, possibly web-based

Questionnaires

Mid-semester and end-of-semester course evaluation
Surveys of co-op supervisors or internship employers

Interviews

Each class interviewed as a group at the end of each course for self evaluation
Selected students interviewed individually
Faculty meet to discuss abilities and knowledge of students entering their class
Interview and/or enlist help from student groups

Placement

Student success in finding summer jobs, internships, and co-op positions or in devising independent experiences

The following tools are examples appropriate for assessment over the longer time frame:

Testing

results on GRE, MCAT, LSAT and other similar standardized tests
Licensing exams
Success in competitive fellowships and other awards

Portfolios - longitudinal measures

Critical Writing Initiative
Ethics awareness

Experiences and experiences

Disciplinary Literacy Experience, Senior projects
Experiences for Creativity, Leadership and Societal Engagement
Independent research projects

Questionnaires, filled out by:

Exiting seniors
Alumni (every 5 years)
Employers
Other constituents

Interviews

periodically of selected graduates

Career Path

Statistics on demand for graduates
Statistics on advancement within companies
Statistics on placement into high quality graduate programs

It is anticipated that the faculty responsible for each academic program would tailor the set of assessment practices chosen to evaluate the health and success of its offerings. As examples, in the following paragraphs, we describe sets of assessment practices that would be appropriate for evaluating various components of the CWRU educational philosophy articulated in this white paper.

Disciplinary Literacy

Since Disciplinary Literacy represents the cumulative learning experience, assessment practices that focus on longitudinal studies in the short time frame are appropriate. For example, this may entail creation of portfolios containing work (exams or projects) performed in key major field courses. A critical evaluation of the Disciplinary Literacy Experience (often the Senior Capstone Experience), which culminates the student's disciplinary education, should be a useful representation of the student's overall Disciplinary Literacy and can become part of this portfolio. On the longer time frame, self-assessment surveys of alumni, as well as other career-path assessment approaches could be used to evaluate Disciplinary Literacy. Statistics on the student's success in securing quality career placements or admission into top-ranked graduate programs can be used as a measure of Disciplinary Literacy.

Educational Breadth

Consistent with and conforming to the overall CWRU philosophy, each student will be required to demonstrate Educational Breadth in his or her Educational Plan. In order to assess whether students have an appreciation for the breadth component of their education over the short time frame, personal interviews might be conducted by the student's advisor. Such interviews should occur no less frequently than annually and should be documented by the advisor. On the longer time frame, the appropriate assessment tool may be opinion surveys completed by alumni. These alumni will be able to evaluate the breadth of their own education relative to the breadth of the education received by peers in their field.

Leadership

There currently exist multiple opportunities to evaluate leadership qualities of our students, and modification of the academic programs to allow more such opportunities should be encouraged. For example, in lecture or laboratory courses, group or cooperative learning assignments provide the occasion for students to take on different roles in the completion of assignments. Courses can be organized such that students rotate leadership roles in group assignments. Establishment of adequate numbers of leadership opportunities throughout the curricula is the responsibility of the faculty. Extracurricular activities provide multiple venues in which students can gain leadership experiences. Academic advisors can play a major role in encouraging students to pursue such opportunities. In the case of students who pursue co-op or internship assignments, supervisors of the students can be surveyed to determine their opinions of the student's leadership capabilities and practices.

Creativity

Creativity may be expressed in a student's performance of an open-ended course project, a Disciplinary Literacy Experience (including a Senior Capstone Experience), or an independent Experience designed by the student and approved as part of the student's Educational Plan. In the case of a course project, or supervised research project, the faculty member offering the open-ended assignment or the research supervisor is the most appropriate individual to assess the student's creative talents. Formal evaluation of the student's creative abilities can be required and included in the student's file. Over the longer time frame, career-path assessment tools, such as peer and employer surveys, can provide perspective on our graduate's creativity.

Societal Engagement

Associated with each major should be specific educational objectives that are supportive of the Societal Engagement component of the CWRU educational philosophy. Students should be fully aware of these objectives so that they can begin to develop an appreciation of how their particular field of study supports or benefits society in general. In turn, students should also know the expectations society places on someone who chooses that particular field. The degree to which this the students assimilate this knowledge and information may best be assessed by individual or group interviews conducted by the student's mentor, advisor or Department Chair. Over the longer time frame, alumni opinion surveys can reveal the extent to which this appreciation has become realized.

The expectation for an Experience which meets the Societal Engagement objective may (and often will), however, be fulfilled largely outside the disciplinary context. In this case (and arguably in the disciplinary case as well) there will be a need for assessment by individuals familiar with context of the Experience. Such assessment might be carried out by professional staff associated with an expanded Office for Student Community Services.

D. The CWRU Environment

As stated in the proposed Statement of Philosophy of Undergraduate Education and Life, CWRU should commit itself to providing for its entire community, but here in particular for its undergraduates, "a supportive environment conducive to personal growth and the formation of strong and enduring inter-personal and communal relationships." This environment has many facets -- intellectual, physical, personal. Here we focus on selected aspects of that environment that the Commission believes merit particular attention. Some of these, as well as other aspects are under study by other groups on campus, including in the Master Planning process, the ongoing review of Food Services, and the recently appointed Presidential Commissions on Minority and Women's Issues. Nevertheless, we believe that the particular issues raised here are important to undergraduates and central to the Commission's vision of undergraduate education on campus.

D.1 The Intellectual Environment

The Commission regards the creation of a vibrant intellectual environment as critical to nurturing many of the values we seek to promote, including lifelong learning and lifelong connections to CWRU. Putting a lot of smart and studious people in the same place does not automatically create an intellectual community. Deliberate efforts to promote intelligent discussion outside of the classroom will help the University to promote the intellectual maturation of our students and create an exciting and memorable four years of study. We need to develop an environment that is supportive of creativity, and of intelligent risk-taking.

Intellectual seriousness and creativity ought to be strongly considered in the admissions process, and here again, essays or other displays of these qualities ought to be weighed along with measures such as grades and scores. Our admissions process should recognize that many creative and intellectually gifted people will not reach their full potential in high school and we should give them the opportunity to do it here-and us the excitement of seeing it happen.

The Commission regards the spirit of the currently proposed revisions to the Arts and Sciences General Education Requirements as a positive step towards developing intellectual community on campus. While the details of the new General Education Requirements (GER) are still to be worked out, we support the proposed move to common educational experiences in small class settings, and urge that other undergraduate schools study the proposal, provide input and plan on incorporating them, in whole or in part, into their curricula. In general, more interactions among the undergraduate schools should be fostered.

Intellectual community could also be promoted through regular campus-wide convocations on issues, that would be intended to both bring students and faculty together on a regular basis, and also to spark discussions that would continue in the residence and dining halls. Attendance at fora like this is required at some colleges, and we could consider this. Alternatively, these could be made especially enticing by using them to showcase important visiting speakers. In general, more efforts to integrate speakers and other events with course-work should be encouraged. Students perceive, probably correctly, that most speaker events on campus are geared more towards faculty interests than toward their own.

A community of life-long learners must almost automatically be a community of readers. Anecdotal evidence suggests that students currently do very little outside reading, including newspapers. One important way to foster reading, while at the same time encouraging the development of socially engaged and media-savvy students is to make newspapers generally available for free, thus affording students the opportunity to find out about the world easily. We suspect that a program of placing free copies of several newspapers spanning a reasonable spectrum of outlooks in each residence hall, and in public spaces would be both inexpensive and productive. The experiment should at least be tried.

There must be more opportunities for students and faculty to meet outside the classroom. If speakers and colloquia were made more "student-friendly," this would also provide fora where faculty and students could meet. Student-faculty interaction could also be promoted with changes in the infrastructure; we hope that as the University master plan moves forward, opportunities to develop intellectual atmosphere by creating common spaces for students and faculty to meet will be pursued. This includes increased lounge and casual food options widely distributed throughout the campus, including the vicinity of the current academic areas. It also includes a recommendation that as new residential facilities are developed (see below), opportunities are created for faculty to live on campus mingled with the students.

The Commission also recommends that the creation of National Prestige Post-Doctoral Fellowships be studied. This would involve hiring 10-15 postdoctoral fellows per year, probably recent Ph.D. (or equivalent) recipients, for 3 years of teaching and research. They would offer to students and faculty the intellectual stimulation and excitement of people fresh in their fields. They might allow the intellectual community to explore new fields or subfields not well-represented on campus. Fellows would be selected on the basis of both their research and their teaching, with particular attention to innovation and creativity. These fellows might best be utilized as team teachers together with faculty in the freshman/sophomore seminar series. In addition to their direct contributions to CWRU while here, Fellows would serve as natural ambassadors for CWRU once they left.

The initiatives suggested so far in this section mostly address the atmosphere outside the classroom, or the links between class-work and other parts of university life. But the content of our courses is also crucial. Courses in college should promote curiosity, not satisfy it. While recognizing that "coverage" is necessary for developing expertise, we also argue -- following Howard Gardner -- that in many cases, pursuing greater depth on a few topics in a class is preferable to skimming the surface of many. Similarly, the number of courses students take requires more campus-wide discussion. While many of our students flourish under the demands of semesters with many credit hours, for others overloaded schedules may be more of a hindrance than a help to intellectual growth.

D.2 Shaping a Student Body -- Recruiting and Admissions for Excellence and Diversity

The admissions process is sometimes likened to a funnel - - the pool of high school students narrows to the inquirers, which then narrows to the applicants, which we then narrow with offers of admission, which is narrowed by the applicants to our incoming class. CWRU admits and enrolls many superbly qualified students. By some standard measures, such as SAT scores, CWRU's student body ranks among the top 25 in the nation. Nevertheless, we have considerable difficulty moving a representative cross-section of qualified students through the funnel. The pool of high-school students is roughly evenly split by gender, but 64% of matriculants to CWRU are male and only 36% are female. Under-represented minorities drop percentage-wise at each step of the funnel. The percentage of incoming CWRU students expressing a desire to major in the arts, humanities and social sciences is much smaller than the corresponding percentage of inquiries. 66% percent of our students are from Ohio, and a larger percentage have relatives here. The socio-economic distribution of our students' families is particularly weak at both the high income and the low income ends of the spectrum. There are myriad reasons for these observations which include low name recognition, lack of distinctiveness in these fields, a reputation as a technical school, and scholarship strategies.

The Commission views diversity of the entire university community as an important goal, and increasing the diversity of the undergraduate student body while maintaining excellence as an absolute necessity. There are several demographic axes in which greater diversity needs to be achieved; they include: ethnicity, gender, major (more arts, humanities, and social sciences), socio-economic level, and geography.

There are many reasons for regarding greater diversity as an essential goal, but we stress above all our conviction that everyone will benefit from a more diverse campus. Our society is far more diverse than our campus, and successful social and civic engagement requires familiarity with people from diverse backgrounds. There is increasing evidence that a college experience that includes substantial interaction with people from different backgrounds benefits the cognitive, creative, and personal growth of students ¹³. Viewed this way, increasing diversity is not only something that would benefit the currently under-represented groups (though we hope that it would be that too), rather it is of universal benefit. In addition, our campus is not reflective of the ethnically diverse city in which it is situated. We believe that this hinders efforts to be engaged with our community. Finally, increasing the diversity of our students would increase the "comfort level" for groups such as African Americans, Latinos/as, women, and humanities majors, some of whom, it has been reported to the Commission, currently feel marginalized within the university community. Besides being a desirable goal in itself, this increased comfort level for under-represented students may improve retention rates. The Commission therefore recommends increasing the number of arts, and humanities majors to the point where they are a strong presence on campus, comparable to the engineers; and making every effort to achieve in ethnic and gender diversity a student body more reflective of U.S. society as a whole. In addition, the Commission suggests that significant effort be devoted to attracting international students to campus, including extending limited scholarship opportunities to them.

As indicated in section C, the Commission believes that having Experiential Education as an organizing principle of students' education would differentiate CWRU from its competitors. The Art and Science Group report suggests to the Commission that with the philosophy of education by experience the University can attract more, and more diverse, applicants, and therefore build a more diverse class while becoming more, rather than less selective. The Commission also suspects that to the extent that the CWRU education is seen as distinctive, and in particular distinctively supportive of Creativity, Leadership and Societal Engagement, the students the University attracts will be more likely to have the skills necessary to successfully achieve all five Educational Objectives. The consultants' report also suggests to the Commission that creating a structure in which faculty focus more attention on individual students (resulting for students in "a faculty more focused on teaching") will positively affect the result of the recruitment and admissions process; and provides solid evidence that this can be done, as the Commission believes it must, without increasing teaching loads or decreasing research productivity. Finally, the report indicates that the presence of preeminent faculty will help attract more applicants and so allow the University to improve the quality of its student body while simultaneously increasing its diversity. One benefit, among many, is that students motivated to attend CWRU because of its special programs and unique curriculum rather than because of a better financial aid package are more likely to be satisfied during their residence at the University. They are more likely to complete their education at CWRU and to maintain strong ties to the University after they graduate.

If the distinctiveness of the CWRU education is to have its desired impact on the University's ability to attract the best students, then that distinctiveness must be clearly articulated to the outside world. The philosophy of education by experience and its pervasiveness through the university experience should be featured prominently in future application materials. The web portal should emphasize these themes. Moreover, given that approximately 70% of prospective students' first tangible contact with the University is through the web, we must make sure that the content and presentation is compelling. Campus visits by prospective applicants should include examples of how our experiential education permeates life at the University.

To achieve the objective of diversifying the student body, and attracting those students most likely to succeed in the proposed educational environment, the Commission recommends that the University reduce its reliance on "objective" criteria for admission and scholarships. Greater weight should be given to Creativity, Leadership and Societal Engagement as criteria for admission. Within the limits of the law, the awarding of scholarships and aid should be used more effectively as a tool for shaping the incoming class by gender, ethnicity, prospective major, geography and socio-economic status. We advocate a progressive increase in the number of scholarships (primarily grants) awarded to meritorious prospective students with demonstrated achievements or potential for significant achievement in Creativity, Leadership and Societal Engagement. Over time, fewer scholarships should be awarded automatically based upon SAT test scores. More scholarships should be directed toward students with interests in the arts, humanities and social sciences, and toward those with low family incomes.

A potential avenue to the goal of creating a more vibrant intellectual community is pre-college summer programs, especially aimed at our diversity goals. Case Western Reserve University has a number of programs for high ability middle and high-school students and these include: the Science, Engineering, Mathematics and Aerospace Academy and the LTV Science and Technology Institute among others. Between these two programs, 130 students spend at least part of a summer on the campus. In each incoming class there are a one or two alumnae of these programs. If these programs are ever to be a major feeder to our classes, it appears that either size and scope of the programs would have to increase dramatically, or the University would have to use them more intentionally as recruiting venues. For the science and engineering programs, a larger national draw might yield more matriculants. Another complementary approach would be to develop programs in the humanities and social sciences. Summer programs such as Talent Search and Upward Bound would seem to provide an opportunity to prepare under-represented minorities for college work. Previous such programs have resulted in several matriculants per year. We consider such programs useful and recommend that the University consider whether there are ways to attract larger numbers of high-achieving members of under-represented groups to such programs with the hope of yielding more matriculants.

As stated above, the Commission views increasing the diversity of the student body as an absolute necessity and is convinced that the entire university community will benefit tremendously from greater diversity. Increasing the diversity of our student body will not be achieved merely by stating it as a goal and relying on goodwill, which are admittedly important first steps. It will require resources, determination, and creativity. We outline here both issues and initiatives relevant to specific forms of diversity:

Gender

Our current gender ratio is partly influenced by the higher profile of science and engineering within the University. While the Commission supports efforts to attract more women majoring in all areas, including technical fields, matriculating more humanities, social science, and arts majors is just as important. This requires that the University be as committed to excellence in arts, humanities, and social sciences as it is to natural science and engineering, as well as publicizing better the significant progress in improving non-technical fields that has been made in recent years. The Commission also believes that attracting and retaining more women faculty in all disciplines would help attract and retain female students, and that targeted admission and financial aid/scholarships for women would be beneficial.

Women who major in science and engineering currently face particular obstacles, although some women in these areas are also among our most engaged and enthusiastic students. For some, the problems include feelings of anonymity, alienation and loneliness in classes where there are very few women students and a male professor, as well as fewer chances to participate in class discussions because the accepted style of interaction is perceived as more comfortable for the male students. Many women students who do major in sciences and engineering report, often in highly specific ways, a cultural ethos within those fields that regards those areas as male preserves. All professors, regardless of their sex, need to take steps to vary the style of interaction in class to make it easier for women students to contribute. Hiring and tenuring women faculty in science and engineering is particularly urgent.

There is also evidence that targeted programs can be useful. SUNY Stony Brook, for example, has a Women in Science and Engineering (WISE) program that it reports has aided significantly in retaining women in these areas. The program functions as a learning community, where women students benefit from close interaction with faculty and increased interaction with each other. The program provides small study groups and personalized advising which provide contacts with other women undergraduates, graduates and faculty. SUNY's experience is that women students enrolled in the WISE program are retained in engineering at a higher rate than women in their more selective honors program. Excellent women students in these areas form an untapped pool of candidates that could enhance CWRU's academic standing.

Since women do face significant problems on campus that men do not, the Commission generally supports proposals for the creation of a Women's Center on campus, as a step towards making the University more welcoming and supportive of women. The University Women's Coalition has identified numerous ways such a center could be beneficial to women on campus, including hosting and sponsoring events and activities, developing educational programming, mentoring students, advocating on women's issues, and acting as a referral clearinghouse. To have all these functions in one central location would be a powerful counter to feelings of alienation many women on campus experience.

Ethnic and racial diversity

There is need for greater ethnic diversity on campus. A minimum goal would be that the cohort of minority students on campus is large enough to sustain the extra-curricular activities and offices specific to those populations. The programs and offices that do exist are very important to both the academic (National Society of Black Engineers) and the extra-curricular (Afro-American Society and Alianza) lives of minority students. Many minority students feel compelled to serve in these groups, leading many to feel stretched thin. A more desirable goal is that CWRU should have a student body which is sufficiently diverse that the ethnic minorities are themselves diverse, so that particular minority students do not feel as if they are spokespersons for their group. Given the fierceness of national competition for outstanding minority students, achieving the latter within the context of a uniformly high quality student body may be a challenge even if the University greatly increases its attractiveness. However, the Art and Science Group report does suggest an opportunity for attracting these students -- a perceived emphasis on Leadership, one of our five proposed Values, would have a particularly strong positive effect on minority recruitment and matriculation.

Additional efforts within the Cleveland Public Schools themselves could uncover students who could add to our diversity and also thrive academically. Many students from the Cleveland Public Schools, for example, never apply to CWRU because, they say, "I thought I'd never get in." Other places to look to recruit include areas where large numbers of people of color currently reside. Larger cities along the East Coast and in the south are one clear possibility. However, this also is where there already are a number of good schools, and many students don't want to live so far from home. In order to address that concern, stronger efforts for minority-specific recruitment could be focussed in urban areas closer to Cleveland, such as Buffalo, Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Rochester. Recruiting efforts might also be helped by developing partnerships with area K-12 schools.

The current structure of financial aid offerings appears to be working counter to efforts to have a more diverse student body. More need-based scholarships would help us to increase the ethnic, racial, and class diversity of the campus. In addition, most financial aid packages currently offered require students to assume significant debts in the course of their education. Many students from poorer backgrounds are understandably debt-averse, so we may make progress by offering more loan-free packages.

Currently, students from ethnic and racial minorities also do not find themselves reflected in the curriculum. The University lacks programs in African-American studies, Latin-American studies, and other areas of multicultural or ethnic studies. In this respect, CWRU lags well behind other colleges and universities, and not just the elite ones to which we compare ourselves. The creation of such programs would send a message to prospective students that CWRU recognizes these fields to be dynamic and meaningful areas of study. The creation of such academic programs will, however, require more faculty, as well as resources. A recent initiative to explore the creation of a combined program in African and African-American Studies was delayed by the realization that, with so few faculty currently teaching in these areas, the loss of one or two faculty to sabbaticals would hobble the program, leaving it unable to offer an adequate number of courses to students. It should also be kept in mind that as presently structured, inter-disciplinary programs are a drain on the home department of faculty who teach in them. Inter-disciplinary programs require directors, and too often these directors receive no additional compensation or release from other responsibilities. Inter-disciplinary programs can also falter over time because there is no one accountable to the program, and slots to fill teaching areas may not be renewed due to the home departments' priorities. One way of addressing this would be to raise the funds for named chairs in areas of multi-cultural or ethnic studies. The Commission does not at this time recommend an exact configuration for programs for multi-cultural education, but does stress their intellectual merits, as well as their importance for attracting and retaining minority students.

Just as more women faculty would help to attract and retain women students, so would more minority faculty help to attract and retain minority students. The small numbers of minority faculty are currently tapped to an unfair extent for mentoring initiatives directed to minority students. Beyond academic programming, we recommend increased non-curricular programming targeted to minority students. This could include mentoring and research opportunities, summer internships that help open the door to careers and opportunities outside the University, and that help with networking. The University should promote events and activities of interest to minority students, going beyond an emphasis on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and African-American History Month.

With the recent restructuring of the Office of Multicultural Affairs, now is the time for the University to devote resources to achieving a multi-cultural environment at CWRU. The recently formed Commission on Minority Affairs will undoubtedly hear and address the concerns of all students regarding the development of a multicultural community.

Disability

The University needs to be made more accessible and attractive to students with disabilities. Some possible changes that would help to accomplish this include improving communication and collaboration between institutional planning, renovations and physical changes and accessibility needs. We need to strive not simply to meet minimum federal requirements but to surpass them.

Full access for students with disabilities must allow utilization of all the technology that we are putting in place in courses and physical locations. Music, language, and computer labs must all be accessible under the law. This means not only that a wheelchair has clear passage, but that students with sensory and learning disabilities have the means to access the hardware and software with adaptive equipment. This equipment cannot be easily put into place after the fact. Planning for technology must include contingency plans for access to all students that can be implemented quickly.

Administrators, staff and faculty must be well acquainted with the policies and procedures for providing services, programs and equipment. Currently, students often receive incorrect information or are referred elsewhere for assistance, instead of getting assistance at the point of service.

Students with disabilities need to trust that the campus community values them as vital members. This goal can be advanced, for example, by notices on syllabi telling them to meet with their faculty to discuss accommodations. They need to be assured that they will be treated in a fair and confidential manner. Many of the disabilities are not obvious, and many of the students would like to blend in with their peers. Sometimes the students need to be prompted and reassured that they will not be judged if they ask for services.

Major

The preponderance of science and engineering majors in the University cheats those in technical fields of the opportunity to learn from their peers other ways of thinking and being creative. Admissions and financial aid policies that target qualified students with non-technical interests would be beneficial. In addition, our public profile must change to reflect the improvements that have been made in non-technical fields over the last decade.

It must be added, though, that despite the real strengths of many of the non-science departments on the College of Arts and Sciences, many of them are still struggling from cuts in faculty positions made years ago, and from lack of resources to make them truly competitive nationally. Several departments have a small group of strong faculty, but insufficient critical mass for high-school guidance counselors to recommend them as places to study their subject. Increases in the total number will offer opportunities to address these weaknesses. These opportunities are discussed more fully in the Resources section of this white paper.

We must examine the implications for increased diversity in major for the size and composition of the incoming class. The Commission recommends increasing the number of arts, and humanities majors to the point where they are a strong presence on campus, comparable to the engineers. In addition, The Weatherhead School has expressed a tentative desire to increase the number of undergraduate majors. The Commission expresses its support for this desire, and directs attention in particular to the section on Entrepreneurialism. It must however be recognized that an increase in diversity of major of the scale recommended means that there must either be an increase in the size of the incoming class, or a decrease in the number of incoming Engineering students or both. The Commission believes that while there should be no barriers to changing majors, and while students who change majors do contribute positively to their new programs, nevertheless the Engineering program would best be served by admitting only those students who are most likely to persevere and succeed in it, and that other programs are best served by having a majority of students who express a clear interest from the onset. Currently large numbers of students (of order 100) who start out intending to major in an Engineering discipline either leave CWRU or transfer to other disciplines. It is the opinion of the Commission that increased selectivity, coupled with improved retention that they expect from improvements in student satisfaction, should allow a decrease in the number of freshman with a stated intention to major in Engineering, without a decrease in the number of Engineers graduated. We believe that this would only strengthen the Engineering School. This decrease in the number of incoming Engineering students would also free up space in the incoming class to admit high quality students intending to major in other disciplines.

Nevertheless, the Commission does not believe that all of the goals that it has expressed could be accomplished with an incoming class of 800, while continuing to graduate 300 engineering majors and 50 nursing majors per year, even given an improvement in retention rates to a target of 90%. An incoming class of 900-1000 may be required. While the Commission expects to include a more specific recommendation on this issue in its final report, it does not make one now; however, it does wish to suggest that an increased incoming class size should not be seen as an end in and of itself. The goals should be a more balanced distribution of majors, with a reduction in the one-way flow of transfers out of Engineering, but no reduction in the number of graduating Engineers.

Region

The national fame of CWRU is probably not commensurate with the strong reputation we enjoy among those who do know us. To remedy this problem, more pro-active attempts to get CWRU's name "in the mix" of options for out-of-state students are necessary. These efforts could include more representation at high school "college fairs," for example. The University would also benefit from having more international students. We currently do little overseas recruiting, and do not offer financial aid to international students. Success in drawing students from a larger national and international pool will greatly enhance the University's public reputation. We defer, however, at least at this time to the University Visibility Committee on these issues, for the Commission has not yet given them proper attention.

D.3 Ethics Education

The Commission believes that education in ethical skills and decision making is an essential component of the undergraduate experience, both within a disciplinary framework and in the context of other Educational Values. Indeed the Commission considered elevating ethical skills to a sixth Value and Objective, but concluded that it should permeate the existing Five Values and would best be viewed in that context. The Commission believes that an academic unit (a center or office) focused on ethics and committed to ethics education at the undergraduate level is needed. Such a unit might offer courses in ethics, resource students and faculty striving to understand the ethical aspects of their activities, host speakers, workshops and conversations about ethics, supervise Experiences particularly focused on ethics and help other academic units to develop an ethical consciousness in their undergraduate programs. The Commission has not yet devoted sufficient attention to the issue to make a concrete recommendation on the organizational structure of such a unit nor its optimum affiliation, but suspects that the existing Center for Professional Ethics and also the Center for Biomedical Ethics might serve as the core of such a unit.

D.4 School Spirit and Tradition

A large percentage of entering CWRU freshmen in 1999 indicated that they did not expect to have a positive college experience (Astin Survey). Similarly, a significant percentage of graduating seniors in 2000 indicated that they would not likely recommend CWRU to someone as a place to attend college (Senior Survey). These data points are connected. Incoming students do not view CWRU as a place where they will experience college as "the best four years of their lives" and graduating students tell us it, indeed, was not.

CWRU does not have a "party school" reputation and no one is suggesting that this be a desirable identity. However, prospective students view CWRU as a college where schoolwork is paramount and do not expect the academic demands to be balanced by a vibrant social experience. Though social options do exist on campus, current students soon become victims of CWRU's self-fulfilling negative student life undertow. The current is strong that there is "nothing to do on campus" and this pulls new students in often before they can form their own opinions. This occurs despite aggressive efforts over the past ten years by the student affairs division to develop and support improved programming.

For the negative tide to shift, purposeful strategies must be undertaken to fashion a more "holistic" definition of a CWRU education. Pride in the rigor of our academic program is a good thing, but in the absence of large measures of social and personal enthusiasm, it rings hollow. We must invigorate the CWRU undergraduate experience with a school spirit that celebrates our academic and social successes. It is not acceptable to hope this ideal evolves; we must act now to create such an environment.

The Commission makes the following recommendations for increasing school spirit:

Effective Freshmen Orientation

Over the past year considerable effort was put into assessing freshmen orientation and recommending new directions. While changes were made, the fundamental problem remains: orientation is sorely under-funded. Offices responsible for orientation work with a small budget and must pass the "tin cup" to finance even basic programs. Orientation should be the highest priority for setting a positive tone for the undergraduate experience, yet it operates on a shoestring. Every effort must be made to fund this activity more generously and to create a program that both organizers and participants enjoy. It is recommended that an orientation fee be included (but not identified as such) in the amount of tuition; this would also provide funding for the support of the "Welcome Home" weekend recommended in the Building Traditions section.
Class Identity

CWRU allows bureaucracy to stand in the way of emotional class identity. Students' class identity is determined by credit hours, rather than the date of entry. It is imperative that the University establishes a policy that sets a student's graduation year as four years following the year of entry. The student would be allowed to change that identification. Assuming that all-freshmen housing was established on the North Side Residential Village, freshmen (regardless of Advanced Placement credits and/or credit load) will be forging a class identity based on their residential experience. If the desired community-building outcome takes place, these will be friends that form a lasting bond. Those that graduate in five or more years will have the appropriate year listed on their diplomas, but will remain on the alumni rolls as the Class of {four years after freshmen entry}. The Office of Alumni Affairs must play an important role in this process by developing an undergraduate student alumni association that reinforces this class identity.
Enhance the Intercollegiate Athletic Program

Many national research universities benefit from their association with big-time (Division I) intercollegiate athletics. Prime examples are Notre Dame, Stanford, Duke, Northwestern, Michigan, and Vanderbilt. Leaving aside the questionable financial benefits, their athletic teams garner national attention, increase name recognition, and generate enthusiasm among students. No one is recommending that CWRU elevate its athletic program from Division III to Division I. However, our current athletic program is characterized by largely losing teams and very little student support. Many Division III schools are able to combine winning traditions and highly selective admission. Williams College, Kenyon College, and Washington University are just a couple of examples of Division III schools that use general or selective athletic excellence to build school spirit and attract national attention. CWRU's varsity athletic program is mired in mediocrity, leaving the coaches, athletes and student body wondering if anyone even cares about quality. A major study must be undertaken immediately to determine the best course of action for our intercollegiate athletic program. It is the Commission's view that the best course should include an attempt to be competitive and to consider augmenting our intercollegiate programs with women's sport (e.g. lacrosse and field hockey) that increase our draw of women.
Build Traditions

It may seem inappropriate to recommend that more traditions be created. But, in reality, virtually all college traditions began as planned, rather than spontaneous, events. CWRU has a few traditions, notably the Hudson Relays, the International Dinner, Greek Week, Spring Fest, the Academic Happy Hour and the Snow Ball annually mark the calendar. However, the University needs more traditions that will create school spirit and serve as memories after students graduate. The weekend preceding the first week of fall classes should be designated as the "welcome home" weekend for returning students. Just prior to final exams in both semesters, a tradition needs to be developed that will celebrate "community." New traditions should particularly be constructed around the "rites of academic passages" discussed in Section C of this white paper. One example would be a Half Graduation in sophomore year to mark the acceptance of students' Educational Plans, another would be the Senior Fair, where seniors exhibit the results of their Experiences for each other and the broader community. In short, we should review the academic calendar and pinpoint when "traditions" can be used to enhance our social community. Now is an ideal time to create for our students, faculty, and staff, traditions that will remind us that we are a community.
Recognize Achievements

Every opportunity should be taken for special celebrations associated with outstanding achievements of individuals or groups on campus, or of the University as a whole. For example, once the freshmen housing is established, specific events should celebrate the move to one residential village and should punctuate the first year spent in the North Village.

D.5 Arts Facilities

CWRU needs to distinguish itself and make bold choices to enhance the profile of the humanities, arts, and social sciences on campus in order to create a truly diverse undergraduate educational experience for its students, and to counteract the current perception of an anti-humanities bias on campus. The fine and performing arts serve in a unique role as departments on campus, as they bring in large numbers of the public to interact and participate in University Arts events. Centralized performing arts facilities would be a visible and concrete sign of the University's commitment to and support of undergraduate education in the arts and humanities. They would contribute to a positive environment of creativity and artistic collaboration among students, and offer many opportunities for the practice of leadership skills and creativity within the myriad of collaborative avenues that the arts create. Many CWRU students take classes with the fine and performing arts departments without being majors, and these students learn through the fine and performing arts how to apply the creative and interactive skills they learn throughout those classes within their own disciplines.

CWRU students majoring in the fine and performing arts need studio, rehearsal, shop, and production space that will train them to work in the contemporary marketplace. CWRU's fine and performing arts facilities (art studio, dance, theater, and music) are out of date and cannot fully prepare students for disciplinary literacy. Recruitment of students into the fine and performing arts departments remains a difficult task when the campus facilities are far inferior both to those that most of the target high school students have had access to and to those of many of our competitor institutions. CWRU must modernize its performing arts facilities.

For a diverse, lively, and creative social environment, students need a central gathering place that celebrates art and performance to enhance their cultural and social lives on campus. Currently, many students are unaware of the many fine art, music, dance, and theater offerings on campus, and are not enculturated by the University to attend artistic offerings. Student-initiated groups like the Footlighters and the Player's Theater Group are thwarted in their creative efforts due to lack of funding through student activities, lack of rehearsal and performance spaces, and lack of support from the general campus community. Even CWRU-supported activities, such as the music department's Windy and Jazzy group (an award-winning ensemble to which many talented non-music majors belong) are forced to rehearse in sub-standard arenas and perform in venues that are not conducive to the creation and enjoyment of music. Central performing arts facilities would give students active awareness of creative offerings on campus, and a place to gather and participate in creative endeavors.

There is currently a task force that is discussing the needs of the dance, music, and theater departments, and will be making its recommendations concerning options for performing arts facilities. Whether the University chooses to build one large facility to house all the arts, or to build one or more smaller facilities to accommodate the specific shared needs of disciplines, the decision to do so will increase the need for faculty and staffing for these departments. Doing so would not be an extravagance- it would be a reasonable step given the expense of constructing the facilities; moreover, it will be an important step to ensuring disciplinary literacy and building excellence, even eminence within these programs. Mather Dance, an already distinguished contemporary dance program, could easily become one of the country's top contemporary dance programs if they had a proscenium dance facility and an additional of 2-3 more faculty/staff. Theater Arts is currently in the top 30 undergraduate programs, but will not be able to raise its profile or compete with other top programs if it continues to work out of an antiquated performance facility with inadequate rehearsal, studio, classroom, and shop spaces.

D.6 Residential Facilities -- Housing

In reading student responses to the Commission's call for input, the three issues which were most often on student's minds were housing, food and parking. In each case the general feeling was intense dissatisfaction. In visiting the residence halls, the Commission came quickly to understand the general dissatisfaction -- the facilities are unattractive. It is the feeling of the Commission that in order for the University to accomplish its goal of creating an environment which nurtures students and creates a sense of community, it is necessary to develop a new plan for residence life.

We strongly recommend the consolidation of all undergraduates onto one side of campus, as in the Campus Master Plan. Our understanding of the space constraints dictates that this implies a move to North Campus. In addition to creating a more unified student community, this consolidation would also provide many social advantages and would make many of the University Circle institutions more accessible. Furthermore, by having the residence halls near the playing fields, students will be more likely to participate in sports activities, which will aid in increasing the overall spirit of the University.

The Commission views it as particularly important to end the division between academic and residence life, and to create an environment which would facilitate students' discovery of their own uncommon potential. The creation of diverse and quality housing options form the core of student life. Since quality housing is an expectation and an important factor in the eyes of prospective students and parents when choosing a college, as well as essential to current students, it is necessary to create a residential atmosphere to meet these expectations. It is our view that this can probably best be done by replacing the entire current housing stock and constructing a new residential village. This new development would also enable us to create structures that facilitate achieving our educational objectives and implementing our educational philosophy, experiential education, and that are conducive to the creation of a dynamic community. Planning for residential communities must go beyond "room and board" and include social, educational, and cultural programming. An imaginative perspective regarding the scope and purpose of student housing should be an integral component of the CWRU educational approach.

We must make several changes to make living in the residence halls more convenient, desirable, and part of students' educational experience. We recommend increasing commercial activity in the vicinity, especially businesses geared toward the college student. This would include video-rental and music stores, twenty-four hour convenience stores and cafes, and restaurants. Such services should be tied to the meal plan or to a campus credit card. The residential area should also include student-run commercial activity, including spaces that students can sign up to use for their own projects, such as philanthropic sales, ticket sales, and artwork sales. This will be one way to meet education through experience. Twenty-four hour laundry facilities, computer labs, exercise facilities, study spaces, and social lounges should be built within the residence halls or within the residential village. Student exhibition and performance spaces should also be included in the residential village.

Within the residence halls themselves, it is necessary to provide students with a warm atmosphere with the services students need. This means offering a wide variety of living arrangements, including singles, doubles, and suites. Older students should be given the opportunity for more independent living on campus, such as apartment-style townhouses with kitchens. This would, we believe, largely mitigate the current demand to relax the student residency requirements to allow juniors to live off campus. The Commission feels strongly that students' presence on campus is essential to their education, as it should be constructed; and opposes any move to relax residency requirements.

Affinity housing should also be an option for students. We recommend having the option for freshmen to live in all-freshmen dorms or floors, which would strengthen class identity and provide a support network for the adjustment period during the freshman year. We also recommend offering sophomore dorms to second year students as well. A certain number of floors in residence halls and/or houses should be set aside for affinity housing, with groups of students applying for this space with a specific purpose in mind. In order to facilitate the creation of affinity housing, the current continued occupancy rule must be abolished. More co-ed housing should also be available. Basic services such as air-conditioning, self-adjustable heating, and better network services are essential. We recommend reviewing and modifying the guest policy so it is welcoming as well as safe. Every residence hall should include large gathering areas with a fireplace and comfortable, family-style furniture and kitchens with large tables for dinners. This would promote social activities and better serve as a "home away from home," the kind of atmosphere students, especially first-year students, desire.

The Commission believes that greater integration of CIM and CIA students with the CWRU student body would give new exciting opportunities for CWRU students. Both those institutions are currently exploring the possibility of new residence halls. The Commission recommends that the University enter into negotiations with CIM and CIA to house their students in the new residential village integrated into the CWRU student body. Practice rooms and art studios will therefore be required in the village. Informal performance spaces and art galleries should also be created to celebrate students' creative achievements. Centrally located performing arts facilities would offer exciting creative opportunities for artistic collaboration between all the performing arts areas of the CWRU/U.C.I. community.

We very strongly recommend the incorporation of faculty housing within the residential area. This would allow for the integration of life and education and allow for student-faculty interactions beyond the classroom. This housing must meet faculty needs, including things such as playgrounds and yards. Furthermore, it would better enable professors to hold class in the residential areas or to have spontaneous gatherings with students.

While the Commission believes that there is great merit in requiring all freshman to live on campus, or at least requiring that every student spend at least one semester in residence, we are concerned that this will adversely affect our ability to recruit and retain local students of limited means. The Commission is particularly concerned that this group is one from which we already have difficulty attracting students, and yet in the near term is one of our most likely pools from which to draw minority students and thus increase the ethnic diversity of the campus. Moreover, we believe that stronger ties to the local community are essential to the University realizing the value of Societal Engagement. The Commission suggests that the University should strongly consider providing one semester of room and board free to every student and requiring one semester of residence in the first year. The cost of this semester could easily be recovered by a quite small tuition increase spread over four years.

One way or another, some students will be living far off campus. It is necessary to provide quality services for commuter students. This includes twenty-four hour social and study spaces, as well as kitchens, phones, lockers, and mailboxes for student use. Commuters should also be able to set up a convenient meal plan so their food needs can be met while on campus. We encourage required residence for all freshman students during orientation. We also recommend assigning all commuter students to residence halls or floors, to which they have card access and where they may spend time while on campus. This would help commuter students feel more a part of the campus.

D.7 Services -- Food and Parking

Food

Students have an expectation for quality food, good customer services, and convenient options. We need a changed relationship with our food providers. To increase student satisfaction with food services, we must insist on quality food and provide our students a wider selection of food options, including food of various ethnicities, small cafes, ice-cream shops, etc. We should strive to provide students with more customer friendly service, offering financial incentives for student satisfaction in food service contracts. We must also meet student demands for more convenience and flexibility in food services. This includes offering twenty-four hour food services on and near campus, and more food services in non-residential areas, especially in the central academic areas of campus, so that students do not have to abandon this area to eat. We must provide greater flexibility in the meal plan, such as different plans that student can sign up for or an all-campus credit card with different payment options. We acknowledge the fact that increasing quality, availability and flexibility of food services may mean additional charges to students for more satisfaction. However, after discovering that our food service costs are much lower to students than other universities', we feel comfortable with increasing prices for increased quality and services.

Parking

Given CWRU's urban setting, parking is always likely to be either difficult or expensive. We support the construction of well-lit new parking structures (as in the Campus Master Plan), but would like to see the most made out of the space on and surrounding the parking deck. This could include recreational facilities on the roof level and commercial shops at the street level. We also recommend greater flexibility within existing parking facilities, such as the relaxation of after-hour parking rules and street parking.

Additionally, we feel it is necessary to slow down traffic on Euclid Avenue for safety reasons and to create a greater sense of place for those arriving on campus. It is our understanding that proposed changes to Euclid Avenue are part of a joint City of Cleveland, RTA, Department of Transportation project to improve the Euclid Corridor. As the changes are undertaken to make a more attractive gateway to the city, CWRU needs to improve the gateways to the campus and the visibility of the campus to motorists.

D.8 Safety

In order for the University to honestly claim to have a uniquely transformative environment in which to accomplish its goals of supporting each student "realizing their own uncommon potential," it is imperative that students (and all other members of the university community) feel safe at all times and in all places on campus. Obviously, because CWRU is an urban campus, policies and measures must be in place to ensure students' safety and well-being. From reports given to the Commission, it is clear that even though CWRU has many safety measures and policies in place, the campus environment still does not feel sufficiently safe, especially for many women students. The perception of lack of safety affects students' lives in many tangible ways: they do not feel safe visiting one another at night, they do not feel safe walking across campus at night to attend activities, minority students feel particularly singled-out and "watched" by campus personnel, and the policies established to protect students in their dorms are perceived by the students as administrative obstacles to friendly interactions. This general feeling of danger may lead to an attitudinal "catch 22" -- if people feel unsafe on campus at night, then they will not walk across campus, thus creating an atmosphere of "desertion," that reduces both the sense of safety and its reality. One positive change is that the University's master plan for a North Side residential village will help promote a feeling of safety in that all students will be living in one centralized area. We recommend that the architects and planners should be particularly responsive to safety issues as they design, build, and landscape the village.

Continuing to hold night classes and night events will help keep people actively traveling the campus, but more needs to be done to combat the perception and reality of an unsafe campus environment. This issue of security should be approached from four different areas: lighting and landscaping, security availability, adequate and responsive transportation, and university support and education.

Currently the campus landscaping and design layout makes security a difficult issue. It must be remembered that students spend the majority of their time on campus during the winter months, when daylight is most scarce. Landscaping in some areas of the campus is tall, dense, and bushy, creating potential places for perpetrators to hide. Lighting, although sufficient in large open spaces, is lacking to non-existent in some areas, and in the many small alleyways created by the close proximity of buildings. Two examples are the corridor between Millis and Eldred, and the many basement stairwells on both quads that remain unlit. Commuters, who often have to stay on campus at night to attend activities and study sessions, must use parking lots located at the periphery of campus, which are often not well-lit. At least one of the commuter lots does not have a campus bus stop, forcing commuters and residents that use that lot to walk across campus at night to access it.

Campus crime statistics are difficult to evaluate, as they reflect only reported crimes. However, the statistics reveal that campus crime was at a fourteen year low in 1999, with 308 crimes reported on campus.¹⁴. The crime rate in University Circle is much higher than that on the campus¹⁵, a signal that campus security is making a difference. Since 1988, many measures have been taken to improve campus security, including increasing the number of security officers, creating a separate office of campus security (now called Protective Services), installing 150 Ramtech phones with hot-button connections to security, equipping over half of the University's buildings with card access controls systems, and bicycle patrols during mild weather. Even with these measures, the Commission feels that security needs to be much more of a visible presence on campus in general. Security needs the resources to hire officers to patrol campus on foot at night to ensure a feeling of safety for those walking. Security foot patrols are much more likely to scare away offenders and offer help to pedestrians than officers on automobile patrol. If campus security is enhanced by foot patrols, the University will be giving students a strong signal that CWRU is taking visible measures to ensure their safety.

Students also need responsive, available, and dependable transportation service at night. While an escort service is now available, it rarely responds rapidly, forcing students to wait, sometimes outdoors or in empty buildings, and thereby endangering themselves in their quest for safe travel across campus. Changes in the night shuttle instituted this semester represent a positive step. We encourage further development in this direction; in particular, rapidly responsive and dependable night buses are essential to keep individuals safe when walking across campus to socialize, go to night classes, and go to night events. A campus environment in which everybody is safe to walk anywhere at any time should be the University's declared goal.

As always, the University needs to continue its support of educational programs that educate students about safety issues, and needs to continue to give fast, empathetic response to any violent incidents on campus. The majority of campus incidents are student-to-student, rather than perpetrated by an outside aggressor, and students need to be educated to become more aware of their own responsibilities to one another as inter-dependent members of a campus community. Currently university policies and procedures are printed in the Student Services Guide, but students rarely read them, and in an emergency, will not think to go to them. Although R.A.'s and R.D.'s in the residences are trained to have all the information available, students whose circumstances might "get another student in trouble" are slow to ask for help from resident assistants. A centrally located information center with a staff that can aid students quickly in event of specific incidents or circumstances should be created; it would also give students an easily accessible location for all of their questions regarding student services and security issues.

E. Faculty

Any achievements of the goals sought by this Commission will require the unprecedented commitment of the faculty. We are asking faculty, in many cases, to make fundamental changes to the approach that they take toward the instruction of undergraduates. This cuts directly to the values that faculty hold, and in many instances, requires the emergence of new values and habits. The Commission realizes the challenges this poses for faculty. On the one hand no "bold plan" can be implemented without significant change, on the other hand significant change is what is most likely to engender resistance. We appeal however to the observations made in the introduction of this document: that outside research and analysis indicates that the University is in clear need of bold rethinking of its approach to undergraduate education; that failure to implement change will likely lead not to stagnation but regression; but that successful bold change will significantly improve the position of CWRU and improve the environment in which faculty live and work.

The Commission is clear that these changes cannot occur "on the backs of the faculty." They must take place without a negative impact on faculty research and therefore without expectations of increased teaching load or service. To the extent that these recommendations require increased net effort in the steady state they must be met with increased resources -- human and financial. It must also be recognized that the process of change will itself require considerable effort by faculty (and others). The University is urged to make every effort to free up faculty resources, and to create incentives that will facilitate innovation toward the declared goals.

In the Resources section of this white paper, we identify a number of resources that we believe will be essential to realizing the goals we have set out for discussion. In this section we discuss in more generality some of the changes that we believe will need to take place that impact directly on faculty.

It is the view of the Commission that one cannot have a top university without top departments and that a commitment is necessary to raise the profile of more departments or clusters of departments to the point of international pre-eminence. This, the Commission believes, will require investments in preeminent faculty (Nobel Laureates, Pulitzer Prize winners, Macarthur Prize winners, etc.). Selective and strategic hiring of such preeminent faculty would provide many benefits: they would help attract and retain outstanding colleagues; they would, as individual experts in their field, help attract outstanding graduate students; they would as a collective presence raise the profile of the University as a whole, and thus help improve the ability to compete for the best students on the basis of quality; they would contribute to the intellectual vitality of the campus. We believe that the fact that the Art and Science Group found that hiring preeminent scholars would not in-and-of-itself translate into a large increase in the conversion of inquirers to matriculants, should be viewed with some caution. When given the choice between "preeminent faculty" and "faculty more focused on teaching" we don't doubt that student prefer the latter. In fact, we don't doubt that in terms of its direct effects "faculty more focused on teaching" would be more effective. However, it is the indirect effects that are probably most significant. After all, what makes the most preeminent research universities so preeminent is largely the collective preeminence of their faculty.

In contrast to this notion of pre-eminence as defined by some set of international rankings, we must also in evaluating our faculty needs commit to excellence in delivering what we do deliver. Even that which is not preeminent must be excellent if we are to do it. This applies across the full spectrum of our endeavors, from those which we "must" do to be a first rate educational institution to those in which we have achieved or are striving for pre-eminence. We therefore require more critical self-insight around the strength of the programs and disciplines that exist near the core of the shared experiences. For many reasons (e.g. historical accidents), we do not have uniform adequacy in every department. Although we have not collected evidence on this point, we suspect particular systematic weaknesses in some areas of the humanities, social sciences and the arts. To the extent that many of our initiatives involve the contributions of these areas, some degree of preliminary "back-filling" may be needed to make these areas full partners in these new agendas.

The expressed goal of the educational plan outlined in this white paper is the attainment of a special kind of undergraduate teaching environment may require fresh thinking about how we account for faculty teaching time. Our recommendations will require students to blur the line between the curricular and the extracurricular. Our recommendations open up a larger set of choices that must be made by students. This will put a premium on high-quality advice from faculty that have become well versed in the opportunities and expectations. The proposals of this white paper imply that faculty will be expected to engage in many activities that they may not have before, or did, but at a lower level of effort -- mentoring students and supervising Experiences for example. As long as we persist in counting courses taught as the only thing that really matters, we will not succeed in any environment that would seem to require a lot more "off-line" work that cannot easily be contracted for in advance, nor precisely denominated. The Commission is fully aware of the tension that exists between research and teaching, and it strongly believes that the University should continue to insist upon research excellence from the faculty. The University must therefore provide the time and resources to achieve that excellence in research. Nonetheless, we believe that we are just at the beginning of a journey wherein we understand excellence in experiential education and what it takes to achieve it.

We do believe that there needs to be increased opportunity and incentives for faculty to excel at and innovate in teaching before and after tenure. These incentives include funds to support innovations in teaching, leave time and course reductions to enable teaching innovation, greater recognition for innovative teaching (including more numerous and more significant awards), and greater consideration of innovative and excellent teaching in merit raises. Departments must cultivate a culture consonant with the University's philosophy: they are supportive of faculty efforts to be excellent and creative teachers, and they reward such efforts; they consider the talents of individual professors in course assignments; while recognizing the importance of excellence in research in hiring, promotion and tenure decisions, they also look seriously for excellence in teaching. Departments might also receive rewards for educational innovation and excellence.

The type of education for which we are agitating will naturally cry out for interdisciplinary education, whether in the classroom or in more individual interactions with students. The Commission recognizes that the ability to think and teach in an interdisciplinary setting is a talent that must be cultivated. We urge University administration to be particularly diligent and creative in their acquisition and nurturing of such talent. More broadly, the University will have to put a greater value on quality teaching. This may have to be expressed at many points including hiring of new faculty, promotion and tenure decisions and incremental salary adjustments. Put bluntly, it is impossible to become the sort of very special undergraduate place that we want to become unless the new kinds of teaching that we need are rewarded and encouraged in career-meaningful ways.

F. Administration

F.1 Consolidation of Administration of Student Services

The focus of the Commission on initiatives that promote faculty-student interaction and collegiality -- through freshman and sophomore seminars, senior capstone experiences, research and other experiences, the integration of faculty into residential villages as residents, teachers, and mentors -- led to a consideration of how the administrative structure might increase linkages between student services and the faculty and be responsive to the philosophy of "education through experience."

The administrative structure for current and projected student services should further the University's philosophy of undergraduate education. The structure needs to be one that fosters and reflects the integration of student's undergraduate experience, so that the lines and distance currently perceived between "academic" and "non-academic" will no longer exist. The Commission reviewed the many services that the University currently provides for undergraduates and additional services that would be necessary to support the implementation of the Commission's recommended philosophy and initiatives. The services were considered in the context of "organizing principles" that reflect the major role of faculty in the integration of classroom and non-classroom education, the importance of supporting students' general well-being, and the impact of the physical environment in which they develop their "uncommon potential" through a holistic educational experience. We suggest the following administrative organization of student services:

To facilitate a focus on undergraduates, those current and projected student services, programs, and offices that serve undergraduates exclusively or primarily and for which close linkage to or oversight by faculty is necessary or highly desirable should be grouped together as an administrative unit: Undergraduate Affairs.
Current and projected university student services that promote the welfare of all students -- undergraduate, graduate, and professional -- and provide for students' well being, but do not require close linkage to or oversight by faculty should be grouped together as an administrative unit: Student Welfare.
Current and projected university facilities that provide the "stage" on which many of the Commission's recommendations for an integrated undergraduate experience will be realized should be grouped together as an administrative unit: Student Facilities and Operations.

The Commission proposes that the Undergraduate Affairs group and the Student Welfare group report ultimately to the same senior university officer, so that, as a natural outcome of administrative structure, there is a common table where all those concerned with undergraduate students meet. We suggest that each group be headed by a dean or assistant provost reporting to a Vice Provost for Student Services. Each constituent office within each group would be headed by a dean/associate dean/assistant dean (Undergraduate Affairs) or director (Student Welfare). The Commission also proposes that all three groups -- or at least the Undergraduate Affairs group and the Student Welfare group -- be consolidated physically, to facilitate communication and cooperation among the offices in these groups, and, more importantly, to provide "one-stop shopping" for undergraduates. When student services offices are spread across campus, students find it a "hassle" to travel from one office to another, and staff within offices on the periphery feel isolated from colleagues and from the excitement and energy that is generated when many people are working together towards a common goal.

These services must function well, and further the educational philosophy and goals by providing the kind of opportunities and support that will enable CWRU students to realize their uncommon potential. The services must be adequately staffed by persons who are sincerely interested in helping students to flourish and who are friendly, caring, and professional in their interactions with all members of the University community. In fact, the Commission suggests that this attitude should pervade all University offices, and that, to the extent that reports to the Commission indicate that it currently does not, it requires modification.

Using the principles stated above for determining which of the current and projected student services and programs would fall in which groups, we suggest the following as an arrangement that is consistent with the principles:

Undergraduate Affairs

Office providing advice and financial support for student initiatives closely related to the educational mission
Office providing coordination and advising for experiential education outside the classroom -- research, practica, internships, , study abroad, etc.
Office of Student Community Service
Residence Life
Office coordinating academic advising; monitoring academic progress; degree certification; advising for scholarships and fellowships; honorary societies
Academic support services
Multicultural Affairs
Undergraduate Admissions

Student Welfare

International Student Services
Health Service
University Counseling Service
Intramural and varsity athletics
Disability services
Financial Aid
Student Employment
Career Center
Registrar

Facilities and Operations

Residential facilities
Athletic facilities
Student center
Arts center(s)
Dining services
Student services center (single building for physical consolidation of student services)
Transportation (e.g. shuttle)

F.2 Financial health - Budgeting system

As has been noted earlier in this white paper, the implementation of the Commission's recommendations will require the commitment of significant resources to programs and to personnel. While much of the funding for initiatives may be expected to come from a focused fund-raising campaign, a substantial portion will need to come from the current "regular" income to the University -- from tuition, fees, and endowment. Vital to the University's ability to enhance undergraduate education and life and to implement initiatives will be its ability to allocate resources to undergraduate education and life. Whether or not the current system for allocating resources enhances, allows or impedes that ability is a question that must be considered. It appears to the Commission that the current approach to intramural funding discourages the kind of inter-departmental and inter-school cooperation that will be essential to the implementation of the Commission's recommendations and reduces the flexibility of the administration to support the level of innovation that will be required.

The current approach to intramural funding at CWRU is the profit-center approach, commonly known as "every tub on its own bottom." Each school operates as a quasi-independent profit center that generates revenue. From the aggregate revenues, indirect cost recovery income is divided between the central administration ("university general") and the profit center that generated the income. "Taxes" are levied on each school's income to support the University's central administration, as well as libraries, computing services, etc. The central administration also controls and allocates any unrestricted revenues from endowment. The schools, for their part, control the "after-tax" balance of their revenues, and charge their direct costs against that balance. If a school concludes the year with an excess of revenue over expenses, the excess is allocated to "contingency and transfers" and goes into a school fund balance or may be claimed by the University's central administration and placed in the University's unrestricted fund balance. For a variety of reasons, individual schools have on occasion -- and sometimes quite regularly -- ended the fiscal year with expenses having exceeded revenues. To the extent that such shortfalls have been predicted, they have been budgeted to be covered - and have been covered -- by moneys from the University's central unrestricted revenues or, in the recent case of the Case School of Engineering, by a formula-based additional transfer of funds from the College of Arts and Sciences.

The schools in which the majority of undergraduates are enrolled - The College of Arts and Sciences and The Case School of Engineering - have in recent years ended each year with expenses exceeding revenues. The shortfall is attributable largely to the low return on tuition income (distributed to each school on the basis of credit hours taught). The low return on tuition income results from the fact that the colleges are billed for "unfunded financial aid," i.e. student financial aid that is not funded by income from endowments or by state and federal government financial aid programs. A tiny fraction of merit-based scholarships is funded by endowments. Most merit-based CWRU scholarships and any CWRU contributions to need-based aid financial aid packages are funded out of the colleges' tuition income. Consequently, income to the colleges does not increase in proportion to increases in enrollment. The current lack of growth in income to the schools places substantial limitations on the deans. The inability of the deans to make multi-year commitments, the lack of funding for any program that goes beyond maintaining the status quo, and the limits on funds available for faculty merit raises all undermine faculty morale and stifle innovation. Endowments to support undergraduate merit-based scholarships and university grants-in-aid would enable the colleges to realize a higher return on tuition income.

The profit center model provides incentives to individual schools to raise money and to be more efficient, and for CWRU, it restored financial health in the early 1970's. For at least five consecutive years in the late 1960's and early 1970's, the University ended the fiscal year in the red. Profit center budgeting and allocation was adopted to remedy the problem, and since 1972-73, the University has operated in the black. But more than 25 years after the University's financial recovery it has become apparent that the profit center model inhibits cross-disciplinary cooperation among the University's various schools, and limits the flexibility of and funds available to the University administration to support a priority area (like undergraduate education), or other initiatives throughout the University. A few undergraduate interdisciplinary programs that have involved the professional schools have debuted with the enthusiastic participation of individual professors, who subsequently learned that there was neither institutional nor school nor departmental supports -- financial or otherwise -- for their participation in such programs. The programs, even ones with solid student enrollments, such as the program in Law and Public Policy, were abandoned. Even within schools, competition among departments for student enrollments that result in assignment of tuition dollars to the department is evident in course proposals from one department that come close to duplicating content of courses from other departments.

The programs and goals recommended by the Commission rely heavily on the involvement of faculty from all of the professional schools as well as from the schools that offer undergraduate programs (The College of Arts and Sciences, The Case School of Engineering, The Francis Payne Bolton School of Nursing, The School of Medicine [nutrition and biochemistry] and The Weatherhead School of Management). The profit center system for allocation of resources is not, we believe, the best system for achieving the goals. The University must adopt a fund allocation system that will allow the University administration to establish priorities and fund them. Establishing priorities or embracing proposed programs without the means to support them dooms them to, at best, marginalization, or, at worst, failure.

The Commission is not expert in financial structures of universities, and so makes no specific recommendations at this time. However, we urge study and revision of the fund allocation system. The study should include "benchmarking" CWRU against other research universities that have successfully implemented initiatives in undergraduate education. The goal of such study and revision should be to develop a budget allocation system that is more responsive to University priorities and gives the administration of the University more flexibility and control in the allocation of resources to those priorities.

G. Resources

These proposed innovations build on the CWRU tradition of excellent research and education. To implement these recommendations, the CWRU community must identify and secure the resources needed to create a climate that supports creativity, risk taking, and a student's ownership of his or her own education. These resources must include adequate funding, sufficient faculty and staff, renovation of current facilities when appropriate, and construction of new faculties as needed. The Commission views as integral to the performance of its mission the identification of those resources necessary to carry out its recommendations. Without reasonable estimates of such needs, an intelligent evaluation and prioritization of initiatives could not be carried out. That given, this white paper contains only the most superficial estimates of resource needs:

Personnel
1. Faculty
  1. Pre-eminence and Excellence: As stated above, it is the view of the Commission that one cannot have a top university without top departments and a commitment to raise the profile of at least some departments or clusters of departments to the point of international pre-eminence will require additional investments in preeminent faculty. Selective and strategic hiring of such preeminent faculty will be required.
    
    In contrast to this notion of pre-eminence as defined by some set of international rankings, we must also in evaluating our faculty needs commit to excellence in delivering what we do deliver. We must engage in an evaluation of our current programs and ensure that all either can provide or are on a trajectory to providing an excellent education in their discipline. Where this is not yet the case we must invest accordingly.
  2. Freshman/sophomore seminars: We make this estimate based on an incoming class of 800. Seminars are envisaged to have 15-20 students per section. Thus each semester in which such a seminar sequence is offered requires 40-54 sections. Although student enrollment in this seminar implies reduced enrollments in other classes, it is not clear how many sections of introductory level classes could be eliminated, if any (unless this initiative is viewed in conjunction with the imposition of a maximum class size of 50). If sections are taught by individual tenure-line faculty, then, given typical teaching loads of 1-2 courses per semester per faculty member (which we take to average to 1.5 courses per semester), 40-54 sections would be taught by 27-36 full-time faculty. Four consecutive semesters of such seminars (generally, fall of freshman year through spring of sophomore year) taught by tenure-line faculty would require double that number 54-72. See however Teaching Fellows below.
  3. Disciplinary Experiences: There is currently no official expectation for how many undergraduates a faculty member can be expected to supervise at any time. A reasonable expectation would seem to be approximately 2-3 students per faculty per year. At this level 270-400 faculty would be required to be involved in Senior Capstone Experience (SCE) supervision. (Although not all SCEs will be disciplinary, most probably will. Moreover, most students whose SCE is not Disciplinary will still undertake some Disciplinary Experience which will require comparable faculty supervision. ) This is comparable to the number of undergraduate faculty. Moreover, SCEs may, and in many cases should, be supervised by people outside the undergraduate faculty (e.g. professional school faculty, outside experts). However, the challenge lies not in the average numbers but in the need for supervision in those departments which have a high number of majors per faculty. One option would be for those departments to structure their Disciplinary Experiences in such a way as not to require extensive faculty supervision. However, this may not be either realistic or desirable. An alternative is to cut the regular teaching load in those departments and raise substantially the number of SCEs which a faculty member is expected to supervise. No analysis has yet been attempted of the required number of faculty lines and to which departments they should be assigned.
    
    This raises the question of how to count supervision of undergraduate Experiences toward a faculty's teaching duties. Currently, most departments that have Senior Capstone Experiences treat the supervision of same as faculty service and do not compensate faculty for it directly, either financially or by counting it toward their teaching load, though it is mentioned in annual faculty activity reports. This matter requires further study. If these Experiences are truly central to our educational philosophy and pedagogy then faculty engagement in them must be treated as an aspect of their teaching duties, not an option. On the other hand, it must be counted toward the performance of their teaching duties and not overlooked. There is also a clear danger that those faculty who are most active as researchers will attract the most undergraduates for supervision. In some fields, this may have a positive impact on the professor's own research, however in others the ability of even a senior to contribute to ongoing research is not sufficient to justify the professor's time investment from a research point of view alone and must be justified on an educational basis. Compensation of some sort must be offered, whether in the form of increased resources for research, reduction of other teaching load, or direct payment.
  4. Supervision of Experiences in Creativity, Leadership, and Societal Engagement: Further study is required to estimate the faculty resources that will be required.
  5. Mentoring and advising: The program we have outlined requires dedicated mentoring and advising of each student. One might reasonably expect each faculty member to mentor or advise 2-5 students per class, so that the steady-state advising load is approximately 10-20. It seems that mentoring and advising 3200 students could therefore be accommodated by an undergraduate faculty of approximately 300 or 400. Moreover, we believe that there is an important role for faculty in the graduate and professional schools as mentors; as well as alumni and appropriate members of the community could make very good mentors in many cases. The challenge may well lie not in the typical mentoring and advising loads but in the deviations from them which will inevitably occur, such as in departments with large numbers of majors per faculty.
    
    A further challenge is that undergraduate advising is currently treated as university service. Since it is service, it is widely viewed as uncompensated effort. It therefore elicits little or no real effort from many faculty, though some take it very seriously. To implement the reforms recommended in this white paper, it will be essential to strengthen the undergraduate advising system. It will be necessary to offer professional backup as well as training sessions to advisers, and to appropriately reward good advisers.
  6. Cap on course enrollments: We expect that small class size will be very important in the achievement of the Commission's recommended goals. Evidence suggests that large classes are less experiential and less effective for most students. In particular, we believe that it is particularly difficult to make a class truly experiential and truly effective for a large number of students. There is evidence to support this belief that small classes are more effective. What constitutes "large" and what constitutes "small" can be debated, but to us it is clear that small class size should be looked at as an investment in a higher quality educational process. The Commission views as a desirable goal that no undergraduate course enroll more than 50 students (except where there is clearly articulated pedagogical benefit).
    
    Quick estimates suggest that tens of new faculty lines would be needed to implement this cap. However, this estimate has been made without accounting for many effects, the largest of which is the impact of Freshman/Sophomore seminars, which would, by drawing students away from other freshman and sophomore courses, reduce the size of those classes. The Commission recognizes that it is both not feasible and not desirable to hire this many faculty at once, but suggests that this goal could be reached with a gradually falling cap.
  7. Specific Academic programs: In addition to the broad educational initiatives discussed above, we have made specific recommendations in this white paper that would require additional faculty lines.
    1. School/Institute/Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation: As indicated in section C, the Commission regards entrepreneurialism as important to its vision of an education. The Commission considered the means of making entrepreneurial studies available to the undergraduate student body. The establishment of a center would be easy to accomplish and would involve the lowest level of risk for the University. However, the center approach would not demonstrate the sustained commitment to entrepreneurial studies that we think would be appropriate, not would it be distinctive. An institute of entrepreneurial studies would signify a larger commitment to the idea of undergraduate involvement in the area, as well as signal a certain sense of permanence.
      
      The Commission debated whether the creation of a new School would be in order, but failed to reach consensus on this issue. On the one hand, a School would be as bold a step in this worthwhile direction as we could imagine. It would be favorably received by the media and would likely open new admission possibilities for the University. A School of Entrepreneurship, or perhaps Entrepreneurship and Innovation, might be an organizational cornerstone of the CWRU education and so help provide the distinctiveness and heightened name recognition CWRU needs, and help attract more of the type of students we would benefit from having. On the other hand, the creation of a School would entail the commitment of significant resources and would require many institutional questions to be faced. These would include its relationship with existing schools, most notably the Weatherhead School, and the staffing of this new School. Entrepreneurial studies are not so firmly established in the academy that conventional means of faculty recruiting could be accomplished on a large scale. Arguably such a School would be strongest anyway if a large fraction of its faculty were cross-appointed to other academic units, but if these are existing faculty then they would need to be partially replaced in their current departments. Such synergies have already been realized in the establishment of programs such as the Physics Entrepreneurship Program¹⁶ and the Morgenthaler Engineering Educational Excellence in Entrepreneurship and Innovation (E4I) Annual Lectureship. The staffing of a School might also imply a heavy commitment to "clinical" faculty.
      
      The Commission has also not reached consensus on how such a school would add to the undergraduate degrees awarded. It other words, how many new majors and minors should there be is a question that would need to be addressed if a School is created. These organizational issues merit rapid study if the University is to seize this opportunity.
    2. Multicultural or Ethnic Studies: We have recommended the creation of a program or department in Multicultural or Ethnic Studies; the minimum faculty to make this a vital entity has not been discussed, nor how many of such (if any) should be appointed directly to this unit, and how many cross-appointed to other departments.
    3. Performing Arts : We have argued that if the University is to invest the large sums it will take to build new performing arts facilities, then it would be penny-wise-and-pound-foolish not to invest in new faculty in the related departments, specifically dance, theater and music. Opportunities exist in these areas to raise the profile of the departments significantly on the national scene with a few new faculty lines.
  8. Commitment to Tenure-line Faculty: The Commission strongly suggests that if we view students' decisions to come to a research university as essential to the type of education they will receive, then there must be a commitment from the University that their instructors will be active researchers. This implies that the University must commit to having tenure-line faculty in every class room except in those cases where an outside expert has a clear expertise, or there is some other clear pedagogical rationale. The impact of such a commitment has not yet been studied.
2. Teaching Resource Personnel/Master Teachers
  
  Despite the commitment to tenure-line faculty, the Commission believes that there is a role for instructors of particular note, who are not active researchers in their discipline. The Commission does not recommend the establishment of a teaching track for tenure. However, the Commission does recommend the expansion of financial and human resources to foster innovation and experiential teaching. One reasonable investment of resources to this end would be the hiring of non-tenure-line Master Teachers, who would assist the faculty to innovate and to implement the experiential philosophy. Such personnel might reasonably request, or be expected, to teach classes, to maintain and improve their own teaching skills and to lead by example. Their primary affiliation might be to UCITE.
3. Teaching/Research Fellows
  
  The Commission believes that the establishment of a prestigious postdoctoral teaching and research fellowship community merits serious consideration. Ten to fifteen such fellowships might be awarded each year, and fellows would then spend 3 years at CWRU engaging in both teaching and research. Fellows might function both within their disciplinary departments and within a self-contained intellectual community. Their presence would have numerous benefits. The constant influx of young scholars would provide ongoing energy and intellectual vitality. The fellows would be ambassadors for CWRU after their departure. Finally, the fellows could participate in the teaching of the freshman and sophomore seminars, possibly in cross-disciplinary teams with faculty. If this is properly structured, this would reduce the load on departments trying to staff these seminars. Also, the lower compensation level of these fellows compared to the average tenure-line faculty member would reduce the cost of offering the seminars, while not, the Commission believes, compromising the commitment to staffing courses with tenure-track faculty.
4. Senior Administration
  
  The realignment of administrative functions suggested above would imply some adjustments of administrative roles, including appointment of one or more vice-presidents or vice-provosts, and possibly several "non-academic" deans and directors. Some or all of these may be filled by existing personnel. The Commission wishes to make it clear that their recommendations should not be interpreted as a vote of non-confidence in any current employees of the University. To the contrary, the Commission believes that the current staff in many departments have outperformed the existing structure, and that the need for structural reform is necessary, in part, to realize their full potential.
5. Student Services Staff
  
  There will be a clear need for administrative support for certain initiatives. These include, but are not limited to: an office providing advice and financial support for student initiatives closely related to the educational mission; an office providing coordination and advising for experiential education outside the classroom -- research, practica, internships, co-ops, service learning, study abroad; the Office of Residence Life.
  
  Over the years, as the student body has grown, the size of the student services staff has not always kept pace. For example while the student body grew from 2800 in 1990/91 to the current 3200, counseling services have not grown at all, and undergraduate advising has shrunk. A lean operation has clear fiscal advantages; not, however, when that leanness means a reduction in service. The Commission recommends that staffing levels in all support services be reevaluated to ensure a high level of service. Moreover, if the student body increases in size, then there will need to be a planned increase in the size of most support offices.
6. Support Staff
Facilities
1. Research
  
  There will be a requirement for office and lab space for new faculty and for new teaching fellows. A study of the requirements will be conducted in preparation for the Commission's final report.
2. Classrooms
  
  The Commission will conduct an inventory of space on campus. While currently the big shortage is in large classrooms, implementation of the recommendations in this white paper would probably relieve the pressure on the inventory of large classrooms (since a stated goal is capping course enrollments at 50) and greatly increase the need for small classrooms. The biggest single user of small classrooms would be the freshman and sophomore seminars. Some or all of these might meet in classrooms within the residential village. These issues will be studied in preparation for the final PCUEL report.
3. Residential Village
  
  The Commission recommends the construction of a new residential village on the north side of campus where all housed undergraduates will live. As described in detail above, the Commission believes that these residential spaces must become integral to the CWRU educational and social experience. The Commission recommends that the University establish a plan to begin this construction as soon as possible and complete it in no more than 20 years, if possible in cooperation with CIM and CIA. The Commission does not doubt that in order to implement these recommendations the University will have to raise its room and board charges, however the Commission believes that the University's long tenure at the rock bottom of the list of major research universities for student room and board pricing, while appealing to students and parents in the short term, has done much to harm our student satisfaction and marketability in the long term by inhibiting continual and substantial reinvestment in student housing.
4. Student Center
  
  The Commission views with favor the plans for the construction of a larger student center on the site of the current Thwing Center and regards it as an key ingredient of future CWRU student life.
5. Performing Arts Facilities
  
  The Commission acknowledges the need for improved performance and rehearsal space for the arts at CWRU, and supports the drafting of a plan to meet those needs. Where possible, opportunities for co-operation with other area performing arts institutions -- CIM, CIA, Cleveland School of the Arts -- should be carefully explored.
6. Gathering Space for Large Groups
  
  CWRU currently has no good space for large groups (a class cohort for example) to assemble. The cost of using the Veale center for this purpose is prohibitive, and its acoustics and ambiance unconducive to many activities. The Commission recommends that a large gathering space, appropriate for the assembly of a full incoming class be constructed. This space should be made available gratis or at minimal cost for appropriate academic and social events. It need not have stadium seating, and could be built pavilion style next to, and interacting with a green space for extended use in warm weather. A possible site for such a venue might be the platform of the old Freiberger Library.
Funds
1. Support for Teaching Innovations
  
  Resources must be made available to faculty in the form of grants and paid leaves or paid teaching relief to develop and implement teaching innovations consistent with the University's teaching philosophy. These grants should be available on a competitive basis; however, there should be sufficient resources identified that all good ideas get tried.
2. Faculty Compensation
  
  If the University wants to be among the top 10 or 15 in the nation, then it must pay like the top 10 or 15 in the nation. The Commission applauds the current intention to raise faculty compensation, and endorses the notion that there should be significant rewards for merit. The Commission recommends that in addition to excellence in research, chairs be encouraged to consider innovative and effective teaching, and outstanding service as important grounds for merit increases, recognizing all the while the centrality of faculty research in a research university. In the final report, the Commission intends to articulate a more clear goal for faculty compensation.
3. Support for Undergraduate Experiences
  
  Undergraduate Experiences in Breadth, Creativity, Disciplinary Literacy, Leadership and Societal Engagement cannot be accomplished on a shoe string budget. In addition to creating opportunities and relationships, students must also have access to grants to support their activities. This may range from small sums up to venture capital funds to support new venture creation.
4. Support for Programming
  
  Currently much of the undergraduate cultural life is financed through a tax on undergraduates which is then distributed to undergraduate organizations. The University needs to take a more active role in supporting the arts and culture (broadly defined) as well as other student activities on campus.
The Commission anticipates, based on the data and analysis available to us, that successful implementation of this plan would result in new revenue to the University due to an improved tuition recovery rate, decreased need to position the University as a low cost provider both in tuition and room and board rates, increased alumni satisfaction and visibility and hence increased giving. Nevertheless, this bold plan will require the investment of significant resources in advance of any improved revenue stream. It is the considered opinion of the Commission that these resources do not exist in the current operating budget of the undergraduate units of the University and that this plan, if it is accepted and is to be implemented, can only succeed in the context of it becoming a priority of the ongoing capital campaign of the University and ultimately a priority of the University in its quotidian operations.

H. Why now? Why this? Why us?

Why should we do these things? And why are these the things that we should do? Is there really a need for change and are these the appropriate changes to be made?

The case for the need to do something (though not necessarily what is being proposed) has already been outlined above -- the University finds itself in a situation where, after a more than decade long program to "improve" the student body, we are threatened by our own success. By the traditional "objective" measures of scholastic aptitude and achievement, such as SAT and ACT scores, student quality at CWRU has clearly improved, however sweeping application of these measures to admission and financial aid decisions have led to a student body which is dominated by white, male, middle class, science and engineering majors from Ohio and neighboring states. This is unreflective of the demographics of the nation, or even our region, and probably correlates to dissatisfaction among both students and large elements of the faculty. In addition, while this may be a viable niche market, our hold on this demographic niche is tenuous and based largely on our policy of substantial scholarships for which students automatically qualify on the basis of these "objective" measures. This policy has ensnared us in a financial catch-22, for it sucks away the dollars which should be invested in educational programs that by attracting students directly would allow us to reduce our reliance for recruiting on financial incentives.

Thus even if our competition were to remain static there would be a need for us to change. The situation, however, is worse, for our competition will not stand still. Our "aspirant group" is not waiting for us to catch up, and our peer group is actively aspiring. Examples of the former include Princeton's decision to replace the loan component of its financial aid packages with grants-in-aid, and the recently announced Stanford Campaign for Undergraduate Education, a one-billion dollar capital campaign to endow undergraduate educational initiatives, in particular those that more closely integrate undergraduates into the research process. Among our peers, the University of Rochester has embarked upon a bold experiment to center their education around inquiry-based learning. Many schools are making major investments of time and money in undergraduate residence halls, pilot curricula, undergraduate research, etc. Thus, even remaining where we are will require constant improvement.

Furthermore, research conducted by the Art and Science Group indicates that improvement in our strategic position will not be accomplished by marketing what we already have, because what we already have is generic. The change, if it is to bring advancement, must be bold, not incremental; it must make CWRU distinctive as an educational option.

What then of the appropriateness of these particular suggestions? We must first ask what it is that could make CWRU distinct from other educational institutions. The Commission believes that the following attributes encapsulate the essential points of distinction:
1. CWRU is one of the nation's leading private research university with over $175,000,000 per year in total research spending. The opportunities available to students, or that could be made available to students, at such a center of knowledge generation distinguish CWRU from all but a few handfuls of institutions.
2. CWRU is situated in a culturally-rich cosmopolitan environment. University Circle is one of the nation's greatest concentration of cultural institutions including one of the world's finest symphony orchestras, one of the nation's principal museums of art, and two of the country's most outstanding medical centers. Cleveland is a major industrial and financial center attracting people from around the world to live and do business.
3. CWRU offers, or could offer, its students a myriad of opportunities through its connections to University Circle cultural and educational institutions, including a major conservatory of music (Cleveland Institute of Music) and an eminent private school of art (Cleveland Institute of Art); its association with major medical centers (especially University Hospitals of Cleveland and the Cleveland Clinic Foundation), locally-based national and regional law firms, a multitude of engineering groups from small firms to major multi-nationals, NASA Glenn Research Center, major banks and financial institutions and businesses of all sizes, from locally-headquartered Fortune 500's to high-tech startups at its on-campus incubator.
4. Although CWRU is a major research center, its undergraduate program has the scale and intimacy of a small college, with fewer than 4000 students.
5. CWRU has a wide spectrum of educational offerings from the arts to professional training.
6. CWRU has a research faculty unusually committed to undergraduate education.
If CWRU already possesses all these distinctive qualities then why is there any need to make it distinctive? The answer lies primarily in how we deliver the unique opportunities we offer -- serendipitously. It is principally by centralizing these points of distinction, and basing our entire educational approach around their centrality, that we believe we can distinguish CWRU while offering our students an education of which we can be proud. Indeed, this is precisely the central point of the report of the Boyer Commission -- that research universities must offer an education in which their distinctive capability -- research -- plays a central role.

We have argued that CWRU exists in a dangerous state of non-differentiation of its undergraduate offerings, maintaining the quality of its students, in the face of their own unhappiness, by diverting funding away from investment in its educational programs and into heavily subsidizing its students' education. However, beyond the dangers are opportunities which are best seized now:
1. The Boyer Commission report is serving as a catalyst on many campuses to educational innovation. In this competitive market, the race may well go to the swift. If CWRU can be seen as leading the pack toward greater educational value, its reputation will rise accordingly.
2. The Commission believes that CWRU has extremely strong potential, both human and financial. However, the continued presence of that human potential requires making this a place at which the best people want to be, in as many as possible of the fields of endeavor that we undertake. If we do not make it so in the near future, then the human capital is likely to be lost to those that do.
3. The University's residence halls are old and have received little significant investment in 30 years. As one of the main focuses of interaction of parents and prospective students with the University they are recruiting liabilities, and points of major dissatisfaction. The need to replace them offers an opportunity to rethink how residential life fits into the entire educational experience, and the types of residential structures which should be built.
4. The University's academic buildings require augmenting. This has already begun with such construction projects as the Agnar Pytte Science Center and the Peter B. Lewis Campus of the Weatherhead School of Management. However, shortages or inadequacies of faculty offices and labs, classrooms, and other academic, administrative and social space must be addressed. Any educational re-invention will impact the type of space needed and the prioritization of construction activities. It is better to undertake the re-inventing before building the space.
5. The culture of educational innovation has successfully been fostered on campus. In its research, the Commission has found that the campus is already brimming with educational initiatives, plans, and ideas. By harnessing this creative energy and optimism, we believe that we can make a unique contribution to American undergraduate education and help move CWRU out of its peer group and into the very top group of undergraduate institutions.
Acknowledgments

The Commission wishes to thank all of the students, faculty, administration, staff, alumni and members of the community who contributed to the preparation of this document. To list all of them would be impracticable; to list only some of them would be unkind.

Endnotes

1 http://balin.phys.cwru.edu/pcuel/forum

2 http://thecenter.ufl.edu/

3 http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/college/rankings/natunivs/natua2.htm

4 http://thecenter.ufl.edu/

5 http://balin.phys.cwru.edu/pcuel

6 http://balin.phys.cwru.edu/pcuel/reports.html

7 http://balin.phys.cwru.edu/pcuel

8 http://balin.phys.cwru.edu/pcuel/forum

9See for example: Kolb, David A., Experiential Learning, Experience as the Source of Learning and Development, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, Inc. 1984, pp. 25-38; Gardner, Howard, The Unschooled Mind, How Children Think and How Schools Should Teach, New York: Basic Books, 1971, p. 124; Schön, Donald, Educating the Reflective Practitioner, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1990, pp. 36-38.

10 http://ess.caff.cwru.edu/oscs/

11 http://www.eecs.cwru.edu/courses/lego375/

12 http://balin.phys.cwru.edu/pcuel/reports.html

13 See, for example, William G. Bowen and Derek Bok, The shape of the river: long-term consequences of considering race in college and university admissions. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, c1998.

14Taylor, Gail. "Safety in Numbers." CWRU Magazine, Vol.12, No.3, Spring 2000: 34.

15Ibid., 34.

16see http://pep.cwru.edu

50