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Chapter 12 The College without Walls Partnerships at Home and Abroad Carol T. Christ President, Smith College The residential college has traditionally been a locus amoenus, an idealized place, bounded in its very nature, almost a kind of pastoral. An intentional community, in Rebecca Chopp’s phrase, it seeks to model a democratic society for the purpose of developing both citizenship and leadership. As borders have become more open in the larger world, however, they have also become so in our colleges. In an important sense, such outreach has deep roots in our histories. Many liberal arts colleges have aspired to develop an ethic of community service and leadership in our students from our earliest decades; it shapes our mission. Similarly , study abroad has a long history on our campuses; we have been pioneers in its development. In this new century, we are increasing the range of such opportunities and making them even more central to the design of the education we offer. But increasingly we are moving in new directions—both on our own and in partnership with other colleges and universities. In this chapter I will describe two—pre-professional opportunities and collaboration with other institutions of higher learning. Combining the Academic, the Professional, and the Practical in New Ways We are gradually coming to recognize that the opposition between the liberal arts and professional education is a false one. The term liberal arts suggests to many of us a historical stability extending back several centuries. Yet any history of the American college curriculum shows that the idea of a stable central core constituting the liberal arts is a myth. In 1754 a prospectus for the new King’s College, later to become Columbia University, announced that the course of study would include surveying, navigation, geography, history, husbandry, commerce, govern- 136 Collaboration and Partnerships ment, meteorology, natural history, and natural philosophy. When Thomas Jefferson reorganized the curriculum of the College of William and Mary in 1779, he abolished professorships of divinity and oriental languages and added professorships in public administration, modern languages, medical sciences, natural history, natural philosophy, national and international law, and fine arts.1 These lists show us several interesting things. First, they demonstrate that ideas changed about what subjects constituted the liberal arts. Secondly, they show that the liberal arts have always included branches of study that we think of as professional. Educators were asking not whether to mix the academic, the practical, and the professional, but how to do so. At Smith we have recently developed two programs designed to integrate the academic, the professional, and the practical in new ways: concentrations, as we call them, and global engagement seminars. Our program of concentrations took inspiration from the engineering program we launched at Smith in 2000. In their senior year, all engineering majors must complete a senior design project. Working in teams of three to four students on a yearlong project set by a commercial, government, not-for-profit, or research partner (for example, General Electric, Ford Motor Company, the Northampton Department of Public Works, MIT Lincoln Laboratory, the Natural Resources Conservation Service), the students develop a design solution to a problem the company is currently addressing. Recent projects have included a desktop computer that can withstand tropical conditions , a mobile hazardous materials treatment, utility redesign for a street in Northampton, a box elevator to minimize ergonomic risk, and a culvert design for the restoration of the Weir Creek Salt Marsh in Dennis, Massachusetts. The students work with a mentor from the partner organization and make a presentation of their solution to company representatives at the end of the term. Although this kind of capstone project is fairly common in engineering programs , it is rare in liberal arts curricula. The example of the engineering curriculum had a stimulating effect on faculty from other areas, and we began considering ways in which the college might leverage its investment in internships (Smith provides every undergraduate with a paid internship at some time during her four years) to create a program of concentrations that would provide students similar opportunities to apply their academic work to problems in pre-professional, practical, or multidisciplinary areas. The first concentration we created was in Museum Studies, where students were required to complete a gateway course, two internships, and a capstone project. Students in this concentration have held internships in all kinds of museums all over the world; recent capstone projects [3.135.198.49] Project MUSE (2024-04-26 17:54...

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