Maverick Colleges Fourteen Notable Experiments in American Undergraduate Education 2nd ed., revised and expanded Editors L. Jackson Newell Katherine C. Reynolds L. Scott Marsh Associate Editors Katrina Green Keith Wilson Contributing Editors E. Ann Adams Clifford Crelly Linda R. Fife Katrina Green L. Scott Marsh Kerrie Naylor L. Jackson Newell Zandile Nkabinde Michael M. Packard Katherine Reynolds Richard Sperry Ryo Takahashi Barbra Wardle Keith Wilson Published by the Utah Education Policy Center Graduate School of Education The University of Utah Salt Lake City, Utah 1996 Contents 1 Preface ii 2 Introduction, L. Jackson Newell and Katherine Reynolds iii 3 Antioch: Vision and Revision, Kerrie Naylor 1 4 Berea: The Persistent Ideal, Clifford Crelly 12 5 Reed: A Middle Course, Ryo Takahashi 18 6 Deep Springs: Loyalty to a Fault?, L. Jackson Newell 22 7 Chicago: Young Hutchins’ Dream, Richard J. Sperry 31 8 Black Mountain: Meteor Among Mavericks, Katherine Reynolds 41 9 St. John’s: Back to Classics, Keith Wilson 50 10 Monteith College: Spreading Innovation, Katrina Green 57 11 Miami-Dade Community College: An Open Door to Quality, Linda R. Fife 64 12 University of California, Santa Cruz: Small is Beautiful, L. Scott Marsh 71 13 Prescott: From Parson to Parsimony, E. Ann Adams 78 14 Fairhaven: Harbinger or Hostage?, Michael M. Packard 88 15 Evergreen: Ever Green?, Zandile Nkabinde 94 16 College of the Atlantic: Spirit of Time and Place, Barbra Wardle 103 17 Conclusion: Making Sense of Irrepressible Dreams, L. Jackson Newell 111 A A Partial List of Additional Distinctive Colleges 118 B References 120 i Chapter 1 Preface “In the specific is the universal.” —William Faulkner This book is a product of two University of Utah graduate seminars conducted in the spring of 1991 and 1994: “Notable Experiments in American Higher Education” (Educational Administration 728). The contributing authors are professor of educational administration L. Jackson Newell1 and seminar students, each of whom selected an innovative, or “experimental,” college for research and reporting. By investigating the fourteen innovative colleges individually and then coming together weekly to dis­ cuss emerging themes and ongoing distinctions, seminar participants together forged the frameworks that guided much of the written presentation about each college. In fact, the seminar processes of partici­ pation and collaboration—from early discussions of research methods through in-class reviews of papers in draft—reflected the same progressive orientation toward education that undergirded many of the ex­ perimental colleges being investigated. Seminar participants, like many participants in innovative college experiments, tested in practice John Dewey’s familiar call for each classroom to become “a task oriented learning community.” Following the seminars, the participant manuscripts were edited for this volume by graduate assistants Katherine Reynolds, Keith Wilson, L. Scott Marsh, and Administrative Secretary France Rimli-Shortridge. During this time, Jackson Newell was asked to coauthor a book entitled Creating Distinctiveness: Lessons From Uncommon Colleges and Universities, ASHE-ERIC Higher Education Reports (No. 6), 1992. He adapted his chapter, “Origins and Character of Distinctive Colleges,” from that volume to serve as the conclusion to this study. 1My co-editors have gone on to distinguished careers of their own. Katherine Reynolds (now Katherine Chaddock) is currently Professor and Chair of the Department of Educational Leadership at the University of South Carolina, and Scott Marsh has served as chair of the department of Modern Dance at both the University of Utah and the Ohio State University. I served as president of Deep Springs College from 1995 to 2004. LJN July 1, 2009 ii Chapter 2 Introduction L. Jackson Newell and Katherine Reynolds To select the colleges represented in this book, the authors/seminar participants began by reviewing what is known about many colleges considered to be innovative, distinct or experimental. (See Appendix for a partial list of experimental colleges not included in this volume.) Each examined two or three colleges briefly and brought the results of that investigation back to the seminar group. In making the final selection of fourteen colleges, group members sought a range of founding dates, longevity and geographic locations. They also sought colleges that could be considered not only outside the mainstream of higher education at the time of their founding, but also exemplary of various means to tackle perceived problems and/or needs in higher education. Finally, pragmatic considerations of access to documents and availability of interviewees surfaced as additional criteria for selecting the fourteen colleges appearing in this volume. Common Themes As seminar participants exchanged findings about the fourteen selected colleges, several prominent themes emerged that had not been predetermined by selection criteria but appeared to indicate common postures among experimental colleges. These include: — Ideals spawning ideas. In most cases, the fourteen colleges appeared to start with the ideals of visionary founders. For some, the ideal concerned the citizens who would emerge from the learning experience—from Berea, for example, learned and socially conscious Appalachians who could help enlighten their communities; from Prescott, individuals with keen understanding of important human connections with the natural environment. For others, the ideal concerned the learning experience itself—from the highly structured study of ideas and information from classic texts at St. John’s to the interdisciplinary, discussion-focused exploration of contemporary issues at Evergreen. Whatever the source or aim of the ideal, it is noteworthy that the beginnings of each college described in this volume (with the possible exception of College of the Atlantic) owed much to personal visions of social justice activated by uncommon energy and determination. — Emphasis on teaching; retreat from research. The vast majority of experimental colleges are liberal education colleges where the art of teaching and the development of students are values of high esteem. In most of those reported in this volume, founders and faculty questioned the academic research emphasis that had been imported from German universities in the mid-nineteenth through early twentieth centuries, had gained a foothold at Johns Hopkins and Harvard and would eventually iii (with hefty motivation from Federal funds for academic research) represent the preferred strategy of the majority of universities. Instead, the founders of experimental colleges committed to educate the whole person and refine the intellect in preparation for life in a democratic society. Many may have agreed with Black Mountain’s founder, John Andrew Rice, when he insisted, “Research is a report of what one has found out, rather than what one knows” (Rice, 1937). Teaching, therefore, took precedence over research as the primary occupation of faculty at these colleges. Typical of the fourteen colleges studied are small classes, highly interactive learning and frequent student and teacher contact outside the classroom. — Organization without specialization. Not unexpectedly, these experimental colleges also tended to turn away from the disciplinary organization of scholarship that had sprung from the German research university model. Faculty members of the colleges depicted in this volume typically taught in areas of expertise, but worked to broaden that expertise (through attending classes taught by their colleagues and teaching in other areas), rather than narrow it through research into subspecialties. At Evergreen, for example, where the “course” faded in favor of the issue-oriented learning group and the multi-disciplinary seminar, faculty have been hired with the understanding that they would rotate through a variety of different teaching areas in a coordinated studies program. — Administrative innovations. Freedom from traditional higher education bureaucracy and hier­ archy have been common pursuits of the colleges studied—possibly as a way of emphasizing the centrality of educational functions or possibly as a way of assuring “elbow room” for further exper­ imentation. Some of the fourteen colleges did away with boards of trustees and deans in favor of “self-governance,” and some did away with rank and tenure in favor of accountability and broad-based faculty equality. Collaborative governance at some of the smaller colleges, such as Deep Springs and Antioch, has included the entire student body and has been implemented in meetings of the full com­ munity. Even where such community-wide participation is more cumbersome, however, involvement of students and faculty in governing and policy-making appears far more extensive at experimental than at traditional colleges and universities. Divergent Approaches Just as common themes instruct us about the aims and aspirations of various experimental colleges, so too do their divergent approaches. Two notable areas of difference among the colleges focus on who should attend and how their learning might best be organized during the college years. The “who” question presumes another, seemingly more complex, quandary about how education can best contribute to social betterment. All fourteen colleges have at least some distant objective concerning education for the benefit of society. However, they differ over means that range from educating the masses (to promote widespread