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Richard Light
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July 18, 2002--Approximately 100 University of Delaware faculty and staff members gathered July15-16 in the Rodney Room of the Perkins Student Center for the second UD General Education Institute, which focused on
- Placing UD’s General Education Initiative in a national context
- Highlighting general education initiatives at UD, especially freshman-year experiences, capstones, writing, quantitative literacy and diversity; and
- Helping faculty build and develop skills related to the General Education Initiative and get appropriate support.
Keynote speaker for the institute was Richard Light, Walter H. Gale Professor of Education in the John F. Kennedy School of Government and Graduate School of Education at Harvard University.
“I’m speaking to you today not as an authority,” Light said, “but as a fellow full-time faculty member.”
Light explained his methods of incorporating general education objectives at Harvard and encouraged faculty and staff at UD to adopt similar policies. In order to improve the undergraduate experience, Light said he found it effective to conduct one-on-one personal interviews with incoming freshmen. Keeping in mind full-time faculty may not have time to conduct interviews, Light suggested selecting upperclassmen and training them to do so as a type of work study.
Instead of the typical generic meeting between advisers and freshman during the first week of school, Light said ideally the first advisement meeting should occur the week before classes even begin.
“I always ask my advisees what they think their job should be for the semester,” Light said, adding that the typical response he receives is “do a good job in all my classes.”
“I tell them their job should be to get to know one faculty member reasonably well, and to allow that faculty member to get to know them as well,” he said. “If they do that at least once every other semester, there’s a good chance those faculty members will recommend them on future job applications.
Light also stressed the importance of spreading out core requirements throughout all four years of college. He said that students who indicated they were somewhat dissatisfied about their years at Harvard said their method for choosing classes was based on getting all the core courses out of the way and then “moving on to the good stuff” during their junior and senior years.
Also, Light touched upon the benefit of group work in science-related majors. He emphasized the positive aspects of working in groups, especially when group work is recommended to the students by their professors.
Article by Elissa Serrao
Photo by Duane Perry
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