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ALL ABOUT MENTORINGA PUBLICATION OF EMPIRE STATE COLLEGE Issue 34 • Fall 2008 ALL ABOUT MENTORING Issue 34 • Fall 2008 Two Union Avenue Saratoga Springs, NY 12866-4390 518 587-2100 www.esc.edu For Morris Keeton At our 1984 All College Meeting, Empire State College honored Dr. Morris Keeton ALL ABOUT with a Doctor of Humane Letters. The citation concluded: “While some teachers saw the classroom as their world, you saw the world as a classroom. Today experiential learning extends richer educational opportunities to people of all ages MENTORING and backgrounds because you perceived the promise in such learning and worked to ISSUE 34 see it fulfilled.” FALL 2008 Keeton, the founding president of CAEL (now The Council for Adult and Experiential Learning), spent 30 years at Antioch College and, in the 1990s, was Alan Mandell College Professor of Adult Learning senior scholar at the Institute for Research and Assessment in Higher Education and Mentoring at University of Maryland University College. He is the author of many books Editor (including Learning from Experience, 1987; Employability in a High-Performance [email protected] Economy [with Sheckley and Lamdin], 1992; and Effectiveness and Efficiency in Higher Education for Adults [with Sheckley and Griggs], 2002). In all of these Kirk Starczewski Director of College Relations writings and in an extraordinary professional life, Keeton has continued to push Publisher us to grapple with the most basic questions about who can learn, where and when [email protected] learning takes place, and (as he put it) “What is a college education? What for?” Gael Fischer In this issue of All About Mentoring, now a quarter-century after his honorary Director of Publications doctorate was awarded, we return to some of the themes, questions and problems Designer that Morris Keeton has encouraged us to take on, especially those related to college Hope Ferguson credit for experiential learning. As Keeton said in receiving his award: “The ‘ivory Senior Writer, Office of College Relations tower’ and the ‘ivied walls’ used to be awe-inspiring symbols. So they were in the community of my childhood. Who today thinks that a monastic setting or a rural Debra Park enclave is the most productive site for scholarly research and student development? Copy Editor Yet even though our old images of where best to learn are crumbling, we cling to the idea that the norm for the places for advanced learning is the campus cluster of PHOTOGRAPHY classroom buildings, laboratories, libraries and faculty offices.” Cover photo by Lee Herman We, again, thank Morris Keeton for continuing to remind us of what we “cling to” Photos courtesy of faculty and staff of and what new “symbols” of learning we need to nourish. Empire State College. PRODUCTION Jerry Cronin Director of Management Services Ron Kosiba Print Shop Supervisor Janet Jones Keyboard Specialist College Print Shop Central Services Send comments, articles or news to: All About Mentoring c/o Alan Mandell Empire State College 325 Hudson Street, Fifth Floor New York, NY 10013-1005 646 230-1255 [email protected] Special thanks to Cathy Leaker, Morris Keeton with Pamela Tate, president and CEO (left) and Margaret Souza, Richard Bonnabeau, Diana Bamford Rees, associate vice president (right) of CAEL. Nan Travers, and Diana Bamford-Rees, and to Kelly Williams and Lynn Nichols for their contributions to this issue of All About Mentoring. EMPIRE STATE COLLEGE • ALL ABOUT MENTORING 1 Table of Contents Editorial – Credit by Evaluation: Only Half the Story. 2 Faculty Voices: A Cinderella Story at the PLA Ball . 60 Alan Mandell Nan Travers, Office of Collegewide Academic Review Bernard Smith, Center for Distance Learning A Learning Experience with Rural Teachers in Argentina. 4 Joan Johnsen, Northeast Center Silvia Chelala, Long Island Center and Paul Alberti, Office of Collegewide Academic Review Center for International Programs Kameylah Hakim, Niagara Frontier Center Experiencing Dewey on Experience: A Conversation. 9 Bhuwan Onta, Metropolitan Center Xenia Coulter, Center for International Programs Elizabeth Webber, Hudson Valley Center Alan Mandell, Metropolitan Center and Walking on the Mild Side: Adult Learning and Mentoring Mindfulness in Personal Risk Management . 65 Julie Shaw, Center for Distance Learning Anne Breznau, Office of Academic Affairs Wayne Willis, Genesee Valley Center Lucy Winner, Metropolitan Center Thoughts on Credit by Evaluation. 69 David Porter, Professor Emeritus, Hudson Valley Center Notes from a Reformed Literary Drill Sergeant . 15 Steve Lewis, Hudson Valley Center Essential Elements of PLA Programs: Institutional Perspectives . 71 The Liturgy of Pedagogy . 17 Gabrielle Dietzel, Vermont State Colleges Katherine Kurs, Eugene Lang College Henriette Pranger, Eastern Connecticut State University, The New School for Liberal Arts School of Continuing Education Reflections on Learning and Educational Planning . 25 Carleen M. Baily, Thomas Edison State College Frieda Mendelsohn, Niagara Frontier Center Maryanne R. LeGrow, Charter Oak State College Ruksana Osman, WITS School of Education, Playing with PLAI: A Discussion with Barry Sheckley . 31 University of Witwatersrand Nan Travers, Office of Collegewide Academic Review The Mind-Scrubbers. 73 The Importance of Being on Time for the Robert Congemi, Northeast Center Bus and the Threefold Nature of Tears . 37 Carole Southwood, Niagara Frontier Center Street Smarts: An Experiential Learning Vignette . 81 Viktoria Popova-Gonci, Long Island Center The Role of Experience in Adult Learning: Positive or Negative? . 41 Two Poems. 82 Nancy Gadbow, Genesee Valley Center Heidi Nightengale, Central New York Center Rock, Snow, Trees and a Cow. 45 Making Time – Time Management and the Sociocultural Photography by Lee Herman, Central New York Center Construction of Time: A Collage . 83 Eric L. Ball and Diane Shichtman Found Things: Ten Out of Thirty . 49 Center for Distance Learning Ernest Palola and Paul Bradley, Empire State College Office of Research and Evaluation What Really is “Magical Thinking”?. 92 Margaret Souza, Metropolitan Center On Learning to Play the Cello at 60: A Study in Polyphony. 54 Core Values of Empire State College (2005) . 94 David Starr-Glass, Center for International Programs EMPIRE STATE COLLEGE • ALL ABOUT MENTORING 2 claim, especially because it threw into institutions would have to experiment with EDITORIAL question the sacred belief that all knowledge pedagogical practices, try out new ways worth knowing was born in and the to engage students, set them off to work property of the university. with problems and on projects to see and question (opportunities to be found literally So when in 1974, Empire State College, anywhere and everywhere) that could help along with representatives from New them grapple with issues and play with College of the University of Alabama, ideas. In effect: forget the authority of the Thomas Edison State College, Framingham expert lecturer (no matter how smart), State College, Antioch College, Florida the traditional reading list (no matter how International University, San Francisco savvy), and the final exam (no matter how State College, El Paso Community College “objective”). and Minnesota Metropolitan University founded the Cooperative Assessment of And here’s where the learning contract Experiential Learning (CAEL), which comes in. In important ways, its promise became the Council for the Advancement was that previously unimagined “learning of Experiential Learning, which became activities” could become the heart of new the Council for Adult and Experiential experiential learning. Instead of lectures, Credit by Learning, these social reformers – gently why not have conversations, and not only guided by Morris Keeton (who was then between a student and a professor, but Evaluation: provost and vice president at Antioch), between a student and other informants experience came front and center. inside or outside the academy? Instead of a meticulously constructed bibliography, Only Half From its beginnings, Empire State College why not let the students pursue questions embraced experiential learning through about their experiences that could lead to its commitment to “credit by evaluation.” the Story a search for a wild range of resources – Others institutions (indeed, many other people, books, observations and practices ur history is rich. Empire State institutions) came to this belief either of all kinds? And instead of exams, why not College was part of a burst because they knew it was only fair to let students have the opportunity to present of critical pedagogy, part of acknowledge that learning could be gained O their own work in their own ways and to a powerful social movement of the late just about anywhere, or because the adult discuss it seriously with their mentors? Isn’t 1960s and 1970s, which tried to do two market was just too sweet to pass up. But this a better, a more authentic way to see things: it wanted to push the academy to Empire State College (along with those early what a student has actually learned? Indeed, recognize its deep ties to destructive social CAEL institutions) was out ahead: prior this was the vision of a new university truly and economic practices of all kinds (for experiential learning was serious learning; without walls. And how interesting: the example, to vast inequalities of race, class, it didn’t even have to be evaluated through prior learning portfolio and the learning gender and age; to a colonial war thousands standardized examinations, nor did students contract were to be tied at the experiential of miles away). And, at the same time, it have to twist their knowledge into the hip. sought to experiment with new forms of pre-fab boxes of already existing courses. education that could re-imagine and, in so A portfolio of prior learning became the So what happened? It seems to me that we doing, re-invent what we assumed teaching usually not so neat, time-consuming, got scared. Empire State College and the and learning could be. Our legacy is one of expensive, but often so fascinating place other CAEL institutions had taken a big risk criticism and change.

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