First-Year Civic Engagement: Sound Foundations for College ...

CASE STUDYTHE COLLEGE OF NEW JERSEYThe First Seminar and The First-Year Experience:Civic Engagement Curriculum and Co-CurriculumRobert J. Anderson, Assistant Provost for Liberal Learning and Academic Advising Bonner Center for Civic and Community EngagementCivic engagement at The College of New Jersey is anchored in thecurriculum and co-curriculum: in our Liberal Learning Program’sFirst Seminar, taught to all first-year students (approximately1,300 of our 5,700 students) during their first semester, and inprograms based in our residence halls. Almost all (95%) of ourfirst-year students reside on the College’s Ewing, New Jersey,campus; the 5% who commute are assigned to a “virtual floor” toconnect them to the campus and to their civic engagement activities.Through the Seminar and the residence activities, every firstyearstudent completes a community-engaged learning experiencethat includes direct contact with agencies or clients, and providesguided opportunities for reflection.The Liberal Learning Program is our re-formed general educationprogram, part of a comprehensive curriculum transformation.In Academic Year 2001-2002 we began to convert the curriculumfrom a traditional three-semester-hour course configuration(where students take five, three-hour courses per semester) to acourse credit system where students take four courses per semesterin a 32-course system. The transformation was shaped by ourmission, which emphasizes educating “those who seek to sustainand advance the communities in which they live” and by ourGuiding Principles for Student Learning, which state (in excerpt)that the accomplished and engaged learner: tionsusing tools of analysis and inquiry, and the value of divergent points of view, seeks ways to improve this and other communities in whichthey live and work.Liberal Learning assumes new and distinctive features builtaround three overlapping goals and, where possible, is integratedwith major programs: and ethnicity, gender, and global studies; of human inquiry.First SeminarStudents are introduced to liberal learning in a clearly focusedfirst-year experience combining an introduction to scholarly andintellectual life, a mentored living-learning community structure,close attention to writing skills, and focused civic engagementexperiences. The centerpiece for Liberal Learning is the FirstSeminar (FSP), taught to all first-year students during theirfirst semester by full-time faculty members in small, 15-studentsections. Each seminar is designed by its professor and is writingintensive. Faculty members are far-ranging and imaginative intheir reading assignments, encouraging students to use not onlytraditional academic sources, but higher quality ‘popular’ publications,including The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.As indicated, students enrolled in FSPs are given residence hallroom assignments based on that class, creating a living-learningenvironment, with their FSP professors serving as intellectualmentors. The Director of Community Engagement coordinatesa welter of activities and events whereby each first-year student,without exception, completes a community engaged learning experiencethat includes direct contact with agencies or clients, andparticipates in guided opportunities for reflection.Community-Engaged Learning for First Seminarand for Residence-based GroupsSpecific activities fall into two broad categories: those integratedinto particular First Seminar sections (about eight of 80), andthose selected by residents of particular residence hall floorswhose seminars do not integrate civic engagement. These activitiesare divided among 12 tracks, with 15 specific projects:Environment, Developmental Disabilities, Hunger, Youth Development/Sportsand Life Skills, Senior Services, Early Education/Emergent Literacy, Diversity Appreciation, Literacy, Communityand Economic Development, Housing, Health/Cancer, andUrban Parks and Recreation.Guided reflection on civic engagement is led by a cadre ofBonner Scholars who serve as peer mentors. (Bonner Scholarsare supported by The Bonner Foundation, which asks studentsto engage in ongoing service work and programs that help themdevelop the tools and the knowledge necessary to make that workmeaningful and lasting.) These Scholars help organize, facilitate,