University Planning

Table of Contents | PDF

Chapter VI | PDF
Conclusion

Appendix A | PDF
Response to 1987 Visiting Team Recommendations

Appendix B | PDF
Findings Related to Learning Outcomes

Notes | PDF

Exhibits | PDF

Accreditation Planning Handbook

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Chapter IV

Integrated Education

The second core initiative of the Strategic Plan, "Providing an Integrated Education," draws on Santa Clara’s longstanding commitment to a hallmark of the Jesuit tradition and Ignatian vision: the education of the whole person. This initiative seeks to foster a learning environment that supports the intellectual, social, and moral development of its members—students, faculty, and staff—by drawing connections among different forms of knowledge, understanding, and experience. The ways in which integration runs throughout the undergraduate learning experience have been documented in this report. The opportunities for connectedness are many. Within the curriculum, for example, undergraduate students chart intersections among the disciplines they study through the Core Curriculum; they relate old and new knowledge through in-depth study in the major; and throughout, they are challenged to relate theory and practice, inquiry and meaning. The teaching scholars of the community of scholars model integration through collaboration and interdisciplinary work and commitment to a governance system that cuts across divisions of the University. To prepare for the world our graduates will enter, students are challenged to relate knowledge and experiences from different disciplines and multiple perspectives into a meaningful whole. The diversity of the University fosters integration as students, faculty, and staff work with and learn from individuals from different cultures and with different life experiences. Moreover, the connections within the curriculum are underscored by the multiple integrative structures Santa Clara presents its students: a vital co-curriculum, a healthy and balanced residential setting, opportunities for experiential education, and engagement in scholarship. To the extent the University uses these structures to weave a seamless learning environment, students are supported and challenged to bridge their intellectual, social, and moral development.

The Strategic Plan spells out two strategic challenges related to providing an integrated education:

• How can Santa Clara provide a coherent educational experience that enables students to make connections among different aspects of their educational experience and to relate what they learn to how they live?
• How can Santa Clara create integrative structures that encourage faculty and students to focus on common themes in ways that enrich their learning, scholarship, and service to society?

This chapter is divided into two major sections, one for each of these strategic challenges, in which the significance of the challenge and goals identified for it are discussed. Historical background and context since the last accreditation visit are provided, and progress toward the goals is evaluated. This chapter will highlight the strategies Santa Clara has proposed to meet these challenges, giving special attention to those that bear the most promise for promoting the holistic education of our students: residential learning communities, the experiential learning typified by the Eastside Project, a new University-wide advising and academic support network, the emerging centers of distinction, and multicultural education.

The undergraduate experience is designed to challenge students to seek connections within established academic disciplines, between academic disciplines, and between ways of knowing and ways of being in the world.

In the context of exploring the Core’s contribution to the four learning outcomes—reasoning and communicating, breadth of learning, depth of learning, and community—Chapter II introduced the Freshman Residential Community (FRC) as an example of how integration within the Core can be accomplished. This section returns to the FRC, focusing on two assessment efforts, to demonstrate how Santa Clara is advancing a coherent educational experience for undergraduates by linking the Core Curriculum to the University’s residential learning community initiative.

The importance of studying the results of this assessment and overall experience with the FRC pilot is underscored by a decision made during the past academic year. In fall 2000, each freshman will be placed in linked Core courses through residential learning communities. As part of that planning effort, a group of faculty and staff are experimenting with another Core-based residential learning community during the 1999–00 academic year (Campisi Learning Community). While it is similar to the FRC in its focus on freshman students and the Core, it links several different Core courses (art history and religious studies, mathematics and philosophy) instead of one common Core sequence to establish its cohort of students. With the exception of a special track in ancient studies, it requires enrollment in common courses only in the fall quarter. Throughout the 1999–00 year, the faculty and staff responsible for this pilot will experiment with different assessment approaches.

When the FRC was launched as a two-year pilot in 1994, its assessment was assigned to the Core Curriculum Subcommittee on Residential Education and Orientation. That committee developed a list of objectives for residential education at Santa Clara and utilized surveys and focus groups to evaluate the FRC’s success in achieving the goals set for the program by the University Core Curriculum (see discussion of goals in Chapter II). During the 1994–95 academic year, surveys were completed by a random sample of students in each of three quarters, and focus groups were convened during fall and winter. The results of those evaluations were included in the committee’s July 1996 evaluation at the end of the two-year pilot (Exhibit II.2.3). Important findings outlined in that report were:

• The nature of the FRC’s goals, including the formation of habits and attitudes, required longitudinal study at least over the students’ four years at Santa Clara.
• The program produced a strong sense of community, which in turn supported collaboration in the form of study groups and joint research projects.
• There was little evidence that the program’s distinctive features—common course enrollments and residential assignments based on them—have transformed FRC life beyond the classroom in ways that would make it different from any other residential community.
• Students did not experience integration among the different core courses they completed in the program.

Several modifications to the program have been introduced based on the committee’s 1996 recommendations on ways to address these findings, including changes in the extracurricular program, writing-across-the-curriculum workshops, and required summer reading for students enrolling in the program.

A subsequent assessment of the FRC was initiated in spring 1998. Working with 54 of the 114 students who began the FRC in 1994, the assessment had two components: a survey, the responses to which could be compared with the responses of non-FRC students on select questions from the University’s Senior Survey; and a comparison of the retention rates and grade point averages for the FRC students who continued to their senior year with those of all non-FRC students. The June 1998 report (Exhibit II.2.3) included these findings:

• FRC students were more likely than non-FRC students to do the following: take interdisciplinary courses, work on independent study projects, study with other students, discuss course material with other students, vote in a student election.
• FRC students were not more likely than non-FRC students to do the following: do extra work for a course, not complete homework on time, be a guest in a professor’s home, challenge a professor’s ideas in class.
• There is no statistically significant difference in GPA between FRC graduates and all other graduates in the class of 1998.
• A greater percentage of FRC students graduated in four years, as compared to non-FRC students, but the difference was not statistically significant when differences between demographic groups were introduced.

Preliminary results from the spring 1999 administration of the survey suggest similar findings.

The faculty and staff developing plans for the fall 2000 residential learning community effort are using these assessment results to help define and focus what they hope to achieve in the area of Core integration and program development, and are studying the methodology to help them develop a more refined assessment strategy for the future.

The University has developed two additional assessment projects beyond the FRC to understand the impact of residential living on the undergraduate experience.

• On a small scale, the University has recently gathered data on students enrolled in an academic course, "Politics of Recognition," offered to students living in the Unity multicultural residential community. This was part of a project funded through the "Leaders for a Just World" grant from the Irvine Foundation (Exhibit IV.1.4).
• In spring 1999, Housing and Residence Life administered to more than half of the 1,800 undergraduates living in the residence halls the "University Residence Environment Scale" and the "Survey of the Perceptions of the Academic Atmosphere in Residence Halls." The University is in the process of studying the data to determine if these survey instruments (Exhibit IV.1.7) will be useful for the assessment planned for the fall 2000 residential learning community initiative.

Conclusions

In his study of undergraduate life, Ernest Boyer observed that "colleges like to speak of the campus as a community, and yet what is being learned in most residence halls today has little connection to the classroom."¹ Santa Clara has tried to remedy this "disconnect" by harnessing the demonstrated power of the common educational experience for all undergraduates in the Core Curriculum to the "unrealized potential" of the residential living experience. Residential learning communities like FRC can be powerful means by which to intensify and focus key elements of Santa Clara’s undergraduate life: the positive influence of peer interaction, faculty-student interaction, collaborative inquiry, setting high expectations for students, and integration of social and academic life. As noted in Chapter III, the University has already committed to this direction as one of several strategies to advance the Community of Scholars initiative. An important challenge will be to capitalize on the energy and resources devoted to this effort to advance integration across the Core Curriculum during the crucial first year of studies for undergraduate students.

Chapters II and III discuss evidence from student survey data and assessment projects related to the coherence and quality of Santa Clara’s curriculum. The self-studies of the schools and college discuss steps taken to strengthen curricular coherence in their degree programs (Exhibit I.4.6). For example, the School of Engineering reports on the success of its integrative capstone experiences, including the senior design project, which requires students to use methods and information gleaned in a variety of different courses. The Business School reports that its effort to make leadership education an integrating theme for undergraduates has been effective. In a survey of students from three classes (1995, 1996, and 1997), 79.1 percent of graduating business students indicated that, as a result of their Santa Clara education, their leadership abilities grew stronger. The College of Arts and Sciences self-study includes a presentation of college-level and department-level "programs of distinction" designed to enhance student learning, and provides an analysis of the many ways in which those programs foster integration within and across its major and degree programs.

The Strategic Plan calls on each school to develop showcase programs that exemplify the distinctive educational goal called for by the "University Guiding Principles" adopted in 1993—"a learning environment that integrates rigorous inquiry, creative imagination, reflective engagement with society, and a commitment to fashioning a more humane and just world."

In the School of Engineering the long tradition of pipeline and academic support programs for underrepresented students has developed into a showcase program. Outreach programs like ACES (Academic Enrichment Seminars) and SES (Summer Engineering Seminars) encourage students of color from local junior high and high schools to pursue further study in the sciences by bringing them to campus to interact with engineering faculty and experience hands-on science in the school’s classrooms and labs. Support programs like FUSE (Frontiers for Underrepresented Students in Engineering), an orientation and first-year program for students of color, and ChALESS (Chicanos and Latinos in Engineering and Sciences at Santa Clara) promote the retention of Latinos in technical fields. The most recent innovation in this area is MUSE (Mentoring program for Underrepresented Students of Engineering), a program providing mentors from industry for freshman engineering students. In its first year (1997–98), 100 percent of the participating students persisted in Engineering. Keys to the program include financial and personal commitment by the dean’s office to an array of pipeline programs; active participation of the school’s Minority Engineering Advisory Board; consistent support from local corporations; and the demonstrated success of the school’s effort to recruit a diverse student body. These programs engage undergraduates, administrators, faculty, and alumni in the University’s commitment to fashioning a more just and humane world by drawing them together to create opportunities and provide encouragement for underrepresented students to pursue higher education.

Among several initiatives underway in the School of Business, two stand out as showcase programs. For undergraduates, the Department of Organizational Analysis and Management has collaborated with the Center for Student Leadership on the Leadership Studies Certificate Program. Developed during the 1997–98 academic year, the program consists of academic courses dealing with leadership, a leadership practicum over two quarters, and a portfolio aimed at self-assessment and reflection. This program is not only a model for curricular and co-curricular integration within the University; it also calls on students to reflect deeply on their leadership role within society. At the graduate level, the Business School launched a joint venture with the Peace Corps in 1998 to provide volunteers the opportunity to use course work in the school’s Food and Agriculture Institute to prepare for their placement, with the possibility of enrolling as Peace Corps Fellows to earn an MBA in food and agribusiness management. This program integrates curricular work with a federal program aimed at fashioning a more humane and just world.

Teacher education has emerged as a showcase program for the College of Arts and Sciences. The College committed resources to the Liberal Studies program in 1994, resulting in improved advising support for students and stronger collaboration with Counseling Psychology and Education. Liberal Studies has since raised its profile within the University and the wider University community with additional faculty appointments and the sponsorship of new programs, including the Eastside Future Teachers Project. This program, the result of a major re-structuring of the University’s longstanding Project 50 outreach program, utilizes a partnership with San Jose’s Eastside School District to recruit students of color to Santa Clara to earn a degree and teaching credential and then return to their communities as teachers.

The Eastside Community Law Center, with offices in East San Jose and Sunnyvale and funded in part by the Law School and in part by external grants, began as a volunteer effort by the La Raza Law Students Association to help laborers collect wages they were owed. When the students’ efforts proved successful in fall 1994, they were able to apply for and receive grants that permitted the Center’s expansion to cover employment issues, consumer matters, legal services for low-income entrepreneurs, immigration issues, and family law. In 1997, more than a thousand individuals received legal counsel at the Center, and over 300 individuals attended workshops. This program is an excellent example of a showcase program that integrates rigorous scholarly inquiry and a commitment to fashioning a more just society. In the first four years of the program, 202 law students received training in public interest law. The Center invites participation by a range of individuals; in 1997, the volunteer staff included 95 law students, 43 pro bono attorneys, 31 undergraduates, and 10 community members. Comments by undergraduates published on the Center’s Web page are moving testimonies to the program’s ability to engage students’ intellects in ways that serve the larger community.

Chapters II and III presented assessment data related to students’ experience of integration at Santa Clara, documented a strong faculty and staff commitment to education of the whole person, and described activities that help students forge connections between their courses and their lives beyond the classroom, such as capstone courses, internships, student clubs, and speaker series. In this section we focus on two initiatives that have been developed since 1987 to foster greater integration of the learning experience: the Eastside Project, an innovative experiential learning program that directly links course work to community service, and a reorganized academic advising plan, which since 1992 has yielded considerable assessment data and in 1997 became a focal point of the reorganization under the Provost.

Opportunities for Experiential Learning: Eastside Project

Boyer has been joined by a variety of scholars in stressing the importance for undergraduate education of learning outside the classroom, particularly when it is linked to the curriculum. The University’s integrated education initiative seeks to create opportunities for students to "make connections among different aspects of their educational experience and to relate what they learn to how they live." Among more than 200 opportunities profiled in the University’s booklet on "Opportunities for Experiential Education" (Exhibit IV.1.5) we focus on one, the Eastside Project.

From its inception in 1986 with the establishment of a small Jesuit community in East San Jose, the Eastside Project (Exhibit IV.1.8) was developed as an academic program that would bridge and foster mutual learning between the University and underserved populations. It distinguished itself from experiential learning programs already in place at the University in two ways. It differed from the community service or volunteer work sponsored by the Santa Clara Community Action Program (SCCAP) through incorporating an academic framework; and it differed from internships sponsored by academic departments by making the community with which the students worked an agent in their learning experience. The project developed quickly, and by the 1992–93 academic year, was firmly established within the University. Its funding source shifted from the Bannan Foundation to the University’s current unrestricted fund; as its founders moved to new positions, the project’s staffing model was set and new staff were hired; on- and off-campus advisory boards were established; faculty outreach and workshop initiatives were developed; and policies and procedures related to classes, placements, and evaluations were put in place. Eastside has since been a catalyst and collaborator for several other University initiatives, including the Community Studies minor; several course-based projects through the "Leaders for a Just World" grant from the Irvine Foundation; the externally-funded Writing in the Community project; and more formal connections between the University and the Sacred Heart Center, an urban parish with a large immigrant population. Student and faculty interest in the program also stabilized in the mid-1990s and the program enrollments have been steady ever since. In 1998–99, the Eastside project worked with 80 classes to place 975 students at 52 agencies.

At the same time the Eastside Project’s reputation as a distinctive and unique community-based learning program has grown among its community partners, among the network of Jesuit universities, and among the national audience of universities developing service learning programs. Evidence of the latter is found in the 1998 publication, Successful Service-Learning Programs,² which includes a chapter on Santa Clara’s program, described by the editor as "a form of Catholic social activism that could, if similarly adopted elsewhere, redefine the meaning of Catholic higher education."

An important part of the program and an equally important source for assessment is Eastside’s emphasis on student reflection. Students participating in Eastside placements are challenged to move beyond the idea of direct service to reflect on their experience, both in the context of their own personal development as well as within the framework of the course in which they are registered. The Eastside Project has developed a variety of ways to promote such reflection: guidelines and samples for incorporating reflection into course syllabi through assignments, journals, and group projects; in-class reflection sessions run by Eastside staff and the course instructor; and mid-quarter and final evaluations that structure students’ processing of their experience. These evaluations have yielded a rich set of qualitative data to analyze the extent to which participation in an Eastside Project placement helps students integrate their experience and their learning. Although these data have not yet been systematically analyzed for this purpose, the staff’s quarterly review suggests they confirm what researchers find regarding the impact of service learning on students: greater awareness and understanding of social issues, commitment to justice, ability to link theory to practice, and increased empathy for others.³

Conclusions

Santa Clara students are generally disposed to participation in community service when they begin their studies here, and a significant majority of them report they actually engage in community or volunteer service during their four years here. The 1998 Senior Survey—with benchmark comparisons—provides a snapshot of this activity.

This student profile—which may already reflect the impact of the Eastside Project on the University community—suggests that experiential learning opportunities like Eastside can be powerful and transformative learning experiences for many students. Faculty at Santa Clara do recognize commitment to community service as an educational outcome. In the 1995 HERI Faculty Survey, 38.3 percent of Santa Clara faculty rated instilling a commitment to community service as very important or essential to undergraduate education, compared to 27.3 percent of faculty at private institutions and 33.6 percent at four-year institutions generally (Exhibit III.1.2). Twenty percent reported using community service as a component in their classes, and nearly one-half of the faculty reported using experiential learning or field studies in their classes. Further study of Eastside’s successes, including a more formal assessment of its impact on the ability of students to integrate different aspects of their Santa Clara experience, should provide a strong base for engaging faculty interest in experiential learning and for the University to develop new programs that similarly link work beyond the classroom with courses to enhance undergraduate learning.

Integration of Personal, Academic, and Career Goals: Advising

The discussion of undergraduate research in Chapter III included an analysis of evidence on the power of faculty-student interaction to shape the undergraduate learning experience at Santa Clara. Another important locus of faculty-student interaction is academic advising. Although advising takes place in different contexts and among a variety of individuals, a primary focus of advising at Santa Clara has been the academic major. In addition to curricular structures like capstone courses and internships, faculty work with students in individual and group advising sessions to help them explore connections between their classes, their developing personal goals, and possible careers beyond the University. Undeclared students also work with faculty advisors largely during the freshman year with a focus on Core courses and exploring possible major programs.

The evidence presented in Chapter III is consistent with research on the effect of faculty-student interaction in and outside the classroom⁴ and the suggestion that academic advising is an important but underutilized ingredient in student satisfaction, success, and personal development. Additionally, research underscores the potential of advising to help students integrate their education and lives. The Council for the Advancement of Students in Higher Education (CAS) standards and guidelines for academic advising capture this integrative dimension: "The primary purpose of an academic advising program is to assist students in the development of meaningful educational plans... compatible with their life goals." ⁵

In this context, the University in 1992 formally adopted the "Undergraduate Academic Advising Plan" (Exhibit IV.1.1). The plan emphasizes the central role of advising in student retention and success, and explicitly adopts a developmental advising approach in keeping with Santa Clara’s commitment to educating the whole person: "We believe that advising should help students formulate and articulate a sense of what they hope to achieve in their studies at Santa Clara and assist them in setting goals and objectives." The plan also addresses several administrative issues, including a strong reaffirmation that "advising is an integral part of the function and responsibility of each faculty member and should not be viewed as an adjunct activity."

Santa Clara has available to it several means to assess the success of its implementation of the developmental advising model: student responses on the Senior Survey (with national benchmarks); faculty responses to the 1998 Faculty Survey and the 1995 HERI Survey; and five years of responses on an advising survey that measured student expectations and experiences with advising. These data suggest that with modest effort, our system meets the advising needs of students but that Santa Clara should and will have to do more to make advising a more effective integrative structure in which faculty work with students to help them craft a coherent and meaningful educational experience.

The establishment of the new John B. Drahmann Advising and Learning Resources Center in fall 1999 provides an excellent opportunity to make progress in this area. The fruit of two years of study and consultation, the Center consolidates into one comprehensive unit services and positions that had operated independently of one another: the three undergraduate advising offices maintained by each dean, the Learning Center, the new student orientation program administered by the Dean of Students, and the Student Resource Center, which reported through Student Affairs. The consolidation to be led by a Dean of Academic Support Services yielded a new configuration of campus-wide services in advising and learning assistance, including increased technical expertise to work with the new student administrative system. While undergraduate advising remains a faculty responsibility and activity, the Center coordinates the overall advising system (including orientation, assignment of advisors, adjudication of policy exceptions, assistance with academic difficulties, and degree audits) and in that capacity will collaborate with deans and others to utilize the assessment data presented below to improve advising at Santa Clara. A priority for the new dean is to develop more regular and systematic faculty development related to the Center’s areas than had been possible under the previous dispersed approach to student advising and support.

The annual advising survey administered since 1993–94 has yielded findings about student expectations for advising as well as opportunities for the University to use advising more effectively to improve the undergraduate experience. Student satisfaction is high on several indicators that are essential ingredients in a developmental advising model.

Other indicators, however, suggest weaknesses in our implementation of developmental advising. For instance, although students report high expectations for including career opportunities in advising sessions, they did not find faculty particularly helpful in providing information in this area.

And consistently over the five years, the percentage of students who would recommend their advisor to another student hovered around 50 percent, suggesting a less than enthusiastic endorsement of the University’s faculty-based advising system.

Students have high expectations for and are generally satisfied with faculty assistance on the "nuts and bolts" of advising—course selection, explanation of requirements, formulating academic plans—but it is surprising that they have few expectations that faculty advisors will help them with the more personal and holistic questions like the purpose of a college education.

Institutional Research’s factor analysis of the 1997–98 advising survey data suggests that greater attention to questions like this could, in fact, do much to enhance a positive experience of advising for students.

A particularly important finding for the potential of advising to promote integrated learning is the disjunction between students’ expectations for and experiences with advisors as an essential part of their academic program. This particular finding was cited among other considerations in the University’s 1998 decision to overhaul the campus-wide advising and learning support system for students. Attention to this issue along with other factors cited above will be an important part of the assessment of that change.

The Senior Survey provides additional data on students’ experience with advising. Given that the majority of freshman students enter the University without a declared major, a particularly important result of the survey is the very different rating students assign to the quality of advising in the major and as an undeclared student. Graduating seniors over the period 1990–94 consistently rated the former almost one point (on a five-point scale) higher than the latter. Coupled with similar findings in the advising survey, the consistency of this result led to an emphasis on freshman year programs (Orientation, Student Planning Day, tutoring in Core courses) in the design of the new Advising and Learning Resources Center. Other findings related to students’ perceptions of the quality of Santa Clara’s educational program in the Senior Survey confirm findings in the annual advising survey and provide benchmarks to other private and four-year universities. The finding that approximately one-half of Santa Clara students met with their advisors during the year is confirmed and in part accounted for in the Senior Survey finding that the percentage of Santa Clara participants reporting academic advising as a satisfactory or very satisfactory experience was lower than the percentage at other four-year universities nationwide.

That the same survey reports what must be construed as positive interaction with faculty in other venues (quality of instruction) suggests that faculty need to attend more to the advising portions of their teaching responsibilities.

In addition to student surveys, assessment of Santa Clara’s developmental advising model should include faculty self-reports, given the key role of faculty. The 1998 Faculty Survey shows strong faculty support for the integrative principle underlying developmental advising: 97 percent of faculty respondents agreed with the statement, "I am committed to the education of the whole person in my teaching here." Data from the 1995 HERI Faculty Survey, however, suggest that this hallmark of a Santa Clara education does not translate directly into time commitments to advising.

To put this in perspective, the same survey found that faculty reported similar allotments of time to committee work and meetings—65.5 percent of faculty reported they spend 1 to 4 hours per week in this manner. These figures, coupled with the 1998 Faculty Survey data indicating advising commitments are not seen as a serious obstacle to teaching and research, suggest that the University needs to do more with the University reward structure to achieve the advising plan’s provision for recognition of excellent advising in annual faculty evaluations and merit raises as well as in rank and tenure deliberations.

Conclusions

The 1992 advising plan defines Santa Clara’s advising system as a developmental process in which faculty assist students in the integration of academic, personal, and career goals. As such, academic advising can be a powerful integrative structure. The above evidence suggests Santa Clara has moved in the right direction with a strong commitment to developmental advising but that it has a way to go to make this commitment a reality in the lives of students and faculty. As part of the reorganization under the Provost, the University addressed this issue in the context of exploring ways to support student learning more effectively and devised a plan to develop a comprehensive Advising and Learning Resources Center. Rather than replace the University’s traditional faculty-based advising system, the Drahmann Center conceives of advising and learning assistance as a system of shared responsibility in which faculty, students, and staff collaborate to advance effective advising. The external consultant charged with evaluating this plan saw the proposal as "the culmination of nearly a decade-long effort to implement a comprehensive advising program in support of student learning...[that has] emerged not as a reaction to crisis but as part of a strategic plan that seeks to create a more cohesive future for all of the constituencies that comprise the University community" (Exhibit IV.1.3). With this promise, it is expected that the Drahmann Center will be in a position to define advising more in terms of the developmental model and, in a parallel effort, to help deans and others incorporate that perspective into faculty reward and development programs.

The introduction of "integrative structures" as an image to sharpen University planning and discussion of ways to create a learning environment that fosters connectedness has proven quite productive. The image lies behind much of the reorganization under the Provost and the collaboration between faculty and student affairs staff that has occupied the University since the mid-1990s. In addition, it captures well the role of centers of distinction in the University community. It is also a key to the initiative taking shape around the new Center for Multicultural Education and the effort to integrate more effectively the cultural richness of our community into the undergraduate learning experience and the overall campus environment.

The Student Affairs Division self-study (Exhibit I.4.8) documents the variety of ways in which division staff have collaborated with faculty to advance integrated education. For example, beyond its regular counseling and placement efforts, Career Services has made connections to the three undergraduate schools through a jointly sponsored position in cooperative education with the School of Engineering, through internship opportunities and joint appointments with the School of Business, and through experiential education programs and a for-credit "Career Practicum" course in Arts and Sciences. The Center for Student Leadership also has joint appointments with both Business and Arts and Sciences in support of its advising and leadership programs. In addition, the cooperation between deans and faculty in the schools and staff responsible for new student orientation programs has gradually developed into a collaboration in which faculty and staff plan and coordinate the program. The process to revise the University Core Curriculum included faculty and staff collaboration through subcommittee structures to ensure that the Core learning experience included linkages to residential life, leadership education, and community service. At various points since the mid-1980s, administrators from Student Affairs and Academic Affairs met to study more effective linkages within their networks of student support.

These various initiatives and forays into collaboration were part of the context in which the Planning Action Team (PAT) recommended the major administrative reorganization under a Provost. The University is using the strategic planning process to develop further the coherence, synergy, efficiency, and effectiveness afforded by this major reorganization by bringing faculty and staff together around key learning themes. Examples on this front include the formation of a Multicultural Coordinating Council in spring 1998, the University’s commitment to extend the residential learning community model across all the University residence halls (including the new hall scheduled for completion in fall 2000), the consolidation of advising and learning resource programs into one center beginning in fall 1999, and the collaboration between the School of Business and the Center for Student Leadership in the formation of a Leadership Studies Certificate Program. These and other efforts capture the creativity and energy devoted to smaller and independent projects over the past 10 years. Using the provost model as leverage, these projects become more effective by significantly increasing the scope and level of collaboration across what were previously separate divisions of student and academic affairs, which in turn should help create a more seamless learning environment for our students.

In its Strategic Plan, the University elaborated the concept of centers of distinction which would embody core thematic emphases of the University as a whole. During the development of the plan, there was much discussion about whether the center concept should focus on excellence (special quality) or distinctiveness (special identity). Ultimately, the University Planning Council concluded that both concepts were integral to the kind of centers it had in mind, and selected distinction as the word that would best capture both ideas. It identified several criteria such centers would be expected to meet. These centers should, in the words of the Strategic Plan, "reflect the values and competencies of the University; engage faculty and students from every major academic area; enhance student learning and faculty scholarship; provide leadership in addressing significant public issues; form partnerships with other institutions and organizations; sustain themselves through external funding; and contribute to Santa Clara’s overall excellence, distinctiveness, and national recognition." Three programs were targeted to become centers of distinction.

Markkula Center for Applied Ethics

Established in 1987, this Center reflects Santa Clara’s commitment to the study and practice of ethics. It is a vehicle to leaven competence with a disciplined approach to conscience and compassion within the University, in specific areas of professional practice beyond the academy, and in everyday life. Supported by a generous endowment as well as annual gifts and program fees, the Markkula Center is making progress toward its strategic vision:

The Ethics Center offers a wide range of programs, including ones directed to students (notably undergraduate courses and the Student Reflection Leaders Program), faculty (notably the Scholars Program, the Markkula Seminars, reading groups, and curriculum development assistance), the campus at large (notably the Ethics at Noon discussion series and periodic Community Forums), and the external community (notably programs in health care ethics, character education, and business and public policy). For the external community, the Ethics Center sponsors ethics roundtables, public deliberations, on-site workshops, and ethics camps for school teachers. It has forged a number of ongoing partnerships with, among others, O’Connor Hospital, the Tech Museum of Innovation, the Charles Schwab Company, Independence High School, Hospice of the Valley, the City of Santa Clara, and Santa Clara County. The Ethics Center also publishes an award-winning magazine, Issues in Ethics, and maintains an award- winning website, The Ethics Connection, which has had more than one million "hits" since 1996. Readers seeking more information are directed to the Center’s comprehensive and candid self-study (Exhibit I.4.7), which includes an 80-page listing of all its programs since 1993.

A few figures give some indication of the Ethics Center’s impact. The number of events it sponsors has increased from an average of 10 in its first three years to 35 in 1999. It currently involves more than 40 Center Scholars, Santa Clara faculty members who have demonstrated an interest in incorporating ethics into their teaching and scholarship. The number of clients served has grown steadily, from an average of 678 a year in its first three years to more than 8,000 in 1999. There is also a strong ripple effect that is hard to measure. The Ethics Center’s self-study gives one example of a program that integrates campus and community: "If thirteen Santa Clara undergraduates had not learned ethics from Br. Steve Johnson of the Graduate Program in Counseling Psychology and Education, 250 high school students, future teachers at Independence High School, would not have learned from the SCU students, and 1000 grammar school students would not have learned from their high school mentors." While by many measures, the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics has been stunningly successful, it has also experienced some significant problems that are thoughtfully discussed in its self-study. Since these issues are redefining the Center’s agenda for the near future, and since they also provide cautionary lessons for the other two centers of distinction, they are briefly discussed at the end of this section.

Bannan Institute for Jesuit Education and Christian Values

Established in 1996 with a major gift to the endowment, the Bannan Institute endeavors, in the words of its mission statement, "to assist the University in maintaining its Catholic and Jesuit character at the center of the educational enterprise. The Institute offers faculty, staff, students, and friends opportunities to explore the implications of Ignatian and Jesuit spirituality and mission in the ongoing life of the contemporary university." It roots itself in four aspects of the Jesuit vision: the attempt "to seek and find God in all things," cura personalis (care of the whole person), the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius, and the "service of faith and the promotion of justice."

The Bannan Institute sponsors a wide range of academic and pastoral activities, including explore, a quarterly publication that examines issues of Catholic identity and Ignatian character in Jesuit higher education; "More to Explore," a series of luncheon discussions following up on articles published in explore; the Santa Clara Lecture Series, which brings a prominent speaker to campus each quarter to discuss issues of faith and culture in a lecture which is subsequently printed and distributed to 7,000 friends, scholars, and bishops; the Bannan Grants, through which $20,000 is awarded annually for faculty research and curricular innovations related to the mission of the Institute; Dialogue and Design, a program of planning grants to encourage interdisciplinary cooperation among faculty in preparation for submission of Bannan Grant proposals; Bannan Scholars, a program that brings Jesuit visiting faculty to campus; Bannan Visitors, a program that brings outstanding Jesuit and non-Jesuit scholars, artists, and activists to campus for brief visits; the Spirituality Series, a program of interactive sessions that allow faculty and staff to experience, deepen, and reflect on spirituality in their daily life; and a retreat program for faculty, staff, students, and alumni.

The Bannan Institute coordinates Santa Clara’s participation in Western Conversations, an annual meeting of faculty from the five Jesuit universities on the west coast to discuss their experiences in Jesuit education. To date, more than 100 Santa Clara faculty have participated in Western Conversations. The Bannan Institute is also currently organizing two major conferences on "Commitment to Justice in Jesuit Higher Education": a regional conference in 1999 and a national conference in 2000 to assess and revitalize the role that justice plays in the curriculum and scholarship of all 28 American Jesuit colleges and universities. In addition to assessing the commitment to justice on Jesuit campuses, these conferences are intended to develop a better theoretical rationale for social justice as an essential part of higher education and to articulate concrete steps for further implementation. Each institution has prepared a critical self-study of the impact of justice at that campus.

Although there are no specific attendance counts for all the programs sponsored by the Bannan Institute, it is accurate to say that several thousand people have participated in its program activities over the past two years. All of Santa Clara’s major constituencies—faculty, staff, students, and alumni—have actively participated.

Exhibit IV.2.5 includes more information about the Bannan Institute for Jesuit Education and Christian Values.

Center for Science, Technology, and Society

Established in 1997 as a direct result of the Strategic Plan, the Center for Science, Technology, and Society (STS) reflects the diversity of Santa Clara’s academic programs, takes advantage of its location in Silicon Valley, and exhibits a commitment to bringing together scholars and practitioners from a wide range of disciplines and organizations to understand and help shape "the dynamic interplay of science and technology with culture and society."

In its first two years, the Center formulated its mission and goals, appointed a diverse faculty steering committee and a distinguished external advisory board, received its first major gift ($1 million from Applied Materials), and formed partnerships with several companies and organizations. It sponsored eight public symposia on topics ranging from Internet commerce to biotechnology and the world food supply; eight faculty colloquia on topics ranging from "Cultural Preservation in the Electronic Age" to "Technology’s Impact on Hobbies" to "Transactions Technology and Financial Markets;" a major conference co-sponsored by IBM and Santa Clara’s Institute for Information Storage Technology marking the 100^th anniversary of storage technology; and an authors series co-sponsored by the Tech Museum of Innovation. The STS Center spearheaded the development of a successful proposal for a new interdisciplinary undergraduate minor in Information Technology and Society, which it will be responsible for coordinating. Finally, it conducted research on mobile computing under a grant from Fujitsu, facilitated external funding for a project on digital media and cognitive processes, and awarded six summer grants from its own funds for faculty research projects.

Since fall 1997, 20 faculty from 12 departments made presentations at colloquia and symposia sponsored by the STS Center, 11 faculty from seven departments conducted research projects through the Center, and well over 100 faculty representing virtually every department in the University attended at least one Center program. Participation by students has been minimal to date, but is expected to increase with the launching of the new minor in fall 1999. Since most of the Center’s programs so far have been aimed at the campus community, participation by members of the external community has been limited, but it too is expected to increase as the Center enters into more partnerships and sponsors more public events. The 2001 annual conference of the Society for the History of Technology is being held in San Jose at the initiative of and with the support of the Center.

Exhibit IV.2.6 includes more information about the Center for Science, Technology, and Society.

Issues Facing the Centers of Distinction

The self-study of the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics identifies several problems or challenges which that center has faced and which are relevant to the two newer centers. They include:

• The mandate of the centers is broad. The Ethics Center’s strategic plan, in particular, is so ambitious that "our broad approach can sometimes degenerate into lack of focus, with such a dizzying array of programs that we are not identified as excellent in any one particular area."
• The centers are expected to be bridges between the campus and the community, building on the interests and competencies of faculty while also serving the needs of society. The volume of work and the modesty of resources can sometimes "force us to favor one constituency over another." One of the most significant issues facing the Ethics Center is that it has devoted so much attention to community programs in the past several years that it has devoted less to campus programs that support faculty scholarship and student learning.
• The problem of focus may be exacerbated by a governance model, used by all three centers, that includes both a faculty steering committee and an external advisory board. Closer linkage between these two groups is important to ensure that they share the same vision and do not pull the Center in different directions.
• The expectation that centers sustain themselves through external funding creates great pressure, even for one as well endowed as the Ethics Center, to devote so much effort to revenue generation that attention to core programs may suffer. As the Ethics Center’s self-study notes, "in addition to the constant stress, our staffing and programming is sometimes driven more by considerations of what will generate revenue than by what we feel would best meet the ethics needs of the campus and the region." Owing to the Ethics Center’s inability to generate all the funds it needs to carry out its extremely ambitious strategic plan, the University has had to cover budget deficits at the Center in each of the past three years. The University and the Ethics Center are currently attempting to develop ways to stabilize the Center’s budget.
• In order for staff of the centers of distinction to work effectively with faculty, it is highly desirable for them to have faculty status themselves. The directors of the three centers of distinction all had faculty status at Santa Clara prior to their appointment as directors. The question of faculty status becomes problematic when hiring a new director or a program director at a lower level. Since faculty status resides only in academic departments at present, the Ethics Center has experienced some difficulties in recruiting staff with program responsibilities, though it has generally been able to work out lecturer appointments with appropriate departments. The status of program staff in the centers of distinction needs further discussion within the University.

These issues call for attention by all three centers of distinction. While they are serious concerns, they do not diminish the fact that all three centers have established themselves as important integrative structures within the University and between the University and the broader community. As a somewhat novel feature of the University’s Strategic Plan, they have made an important contribution to Santa Clara’s vision of "educating men and women for competence, conscience, and compassion," to its core strategic initiatives of "Building a Community of Scholars" and "Providing an Integrated Education," and to positioning Santa Clara University within both the community and higher education.

The Strategic Plan includes a provision for the development of other potential centers of distinction that foster integration, both at the University and at the school level. Discussions of this provision in the plan yielded several exploratory proposals and not a little discussion about how these other programs would relate to the three to which the University is already committed. Individuals also questioned whether or not long-standing programs like the Executive Development Center or the Retail Management Institute already constituted such centers. Since then, plans to develop at least two have been initiated:

The Business School in 1998 launched the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. This has the potential to bring together faculty, students (undergraduate and graduate), and members of the local business community for conferences, research colloquia, and classroom and advising interactions.

The College of Arts and Sciences, among its many interdisciplinary programs, has decided to invest resources in the successful Environmental Studies program. Initiated in 1992, the program has become a key collaborator in several University initiatives including the University Institute on Environment, campus environmental assessment, archaeology, and summer study abroad. The College expects to establish the next phase of this center in fall 2000 to coincide with University sesquicentennial celebrations.

As the University moves forward on these and other possibilities, it will be important to keep in mind the principle that should animate them: faculty and staff interest in integrative scholarship and programs that cut across disciplines and University divisions and extend to the community beyond the University.

Other sections of this report have analyzed evidence and documented activities related to incorporating international, multicultural, gender, environmental, technological, and ethical issues and perspectives into the Santa Clara experience. They are interwoven, for example, into the undergraduate learning outcomes studied in Chapter II, and they are central to integrated education initiatives such as the three University centers of distinction. Co-curricular programs related to the themes are sponsored by various campus departments, and they are reflected in the curriculum through Core requirements and minor programs. The purpose of the following discussion, then, is to illustrate ways in which these themes are embodied in curricular or co-curricular programs, and highlight selected alumni survey responses related to their impact on the undergraduate experience.

• International: Chapter II highlighted the place of international themes such as requirements in second language and world cultures in the Core Curriculum. It reported that two-thirds of alumni said their Santa Clara education shaped the way they understood and dealt with global issues, and that more than 90 percent of the faculty said international perspectives are an important part of undergraduate education. Santa Clara maintains minors in international studies and international business studies, and the College of Arts and Sciences is developing an Asian Studies minor that will require its students to undertake an experiential learning project either overseas or in a diasporic Asian community in the Santa Clara region. International Programs administers the University’s Study Abroad Program (Exhibit IV.2.1), which has been enrolling approximately 15 percent of the junior class in programs during the fall, winter, or spring terms. In the last two years, the Study Abroad Program has developed reflection programs for returning students, used the summer program to develop innovative undergraduate research programs, and strengthened ties to other programs on campus to support international co-curricular programs and advising.
• Multicultural: The next section of this report will discuss the variety of ways in which multicultural themes are woven into the fabric of undergraduate learning through the curriculum and the co-curriculum.
• Gender: Although explicit attention to gender is not part of the University Core Curriculum, it is reflected in the curriculum through more than 40 courses taught by faculty in a large variety of departments in support of the Arts and Sciences graduation requirement and the Women and Gender Studies minor. It is noteworthy in this regard that the 1998 Senior Survey shows 41.3 percent of Santa Clara students (compared to 25.1 percent at private universities and 20.6 percent at four-year institutions) report having taken a women’s studies course. A significant change affecting this theme is the Provost’s approval in 1999 of the proposal to expand the program title to the Study of Women and Gender, and the director of that program is in the process of inviting faculty to submit proposals for new courses in gender studies. When the Student Resources Center reallocated resources assigned to Women’s Resources in the mid-1990s, the University lost the possibility for a primary or centralized office to coordinate co-curricular programs and support student initiatives on gender; however, the Program for the Study of Women and Gender, in conjunction with faculty across the University, does sponsor programs, lectures, and films related to gender. Like Ethnic Studies, the program has sponsored summer workshops in which faculty learn ways to incorporate materials and perspectives related to gender into courses to be taught in the general curriculum as well as into courses prepared for the Ethnic or Women’s Studies programs. About 100 faculty attended one or both of these workshops. In the 1998 Faculty Survey, 88 percent of the respondents said that instilling a sensitivity to gender is a very (49.8 percent) or somewhat (38.2 percent) important goal for undergraduate education; and in the 1998 Alumni Survey, 53.4 percent of the respondents said that helping to promote gender equity is a very important (31.5 percent) or essential (21.9 percent) goal for undergraduate education.
• Environmental: The primary locus for attention to environmental themes is the Environmental Studies Program, which has been highlighted in Chapters II and III. Proposed by Arts and Sciences as a school-based center of distinction, it is present in the curriculum through courses offered across the University in support of the Environmental Studies minor, and it influences student life beyond the classroom by sponsoring activities such as the campus environmental assessment program, the student community garden, and a robust campus colloquia series. The program sponsored a University-wide institute in 1995 on "Ecology: The Environment and the Human Condition." In the 1998 Alumni Survey, 67.2 percent of respondents reported that their Santa Clara education had a moderate (37.9 percent) or major (39.3 percent) impact on their understanding of environmental issues; and 86.9 percent reported that working to preserve the environment was a somewhat important (50.5 percent) or very important (36.4 percent) goal of undergraduate education.
• Technology: Chapter II suggested that the addition of a new requirement in technology to the University Curriculum in 1995 reflected the high level (95 percent) of faculty support for the need to prepare students to live in a world of technological change, and it noted that an assessment of this requirement is planned for the future. The recent establishment of the Center for Science, Technology, and Society as an intended center of distinction—and the even more recent formation of an interdisciplinary minor in this area—similarly reflects faculty, staff, and community interest in this important area. As courses are developed and the Center expands its programs to reach out more to students, the University should study the impact of these two important innovations on the student experience at Santa Clara.
• Ethical: Of the five themes, the ethical theme commands the greatest attention at Santa Clara. As noted in Chapter II, its main presence in the curriculum is as a key Core requirement; and the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics takes the lead in infusing ethical perspectives across co-curriculum programs, faculty development, and student leadership training. Appendix B discusses the 1998 Alumni Survey and Crane Survey data, which provide evidence that ethical themes are an important part of the Santa Clara educational experience. This is corroborated by the institution-specific sections of the 1998 HERI Senior Survey: 66 percent of the students agreed professors had incorporated the importance of ethics into their courses; 76.6 percent reported academic experiences had caused them to reflect on values; and, on a 5-point scale, 62.4 percent of the students rated Santa Clara’s contribution to their development of an ethical framework at 4 or 5. Of the Santa Clara faculty responding to the 1998 Faculty Survey, 97.8 percent rated developing moral character as an important goal of undergraduate education. The June 1999 report on "The Integration of Justice into the Life of the University" (Exhibit III.1.17) provides an excellent account of the extent to which ethical themes are interwoven into the Santa Clara educational experience.

In February 1998, University President Paul Locatelli, S.J., issued a letter to the University community (Exhibit IV.2.7) in which he underscored the commitment to diversity articulated in the University’s Strategic Plan.

As reflected in other sections of this report, the Strategic Plan addresses the challenge of educating for diversity under several headings: as an essential element in academic quality and a vital community of scholars; as an important part of the University’s curriculum; and as a key factor in faculty, staff, and student recruitment and retention. This section of the report approaches diversity and multiculturalism by tracing how the multicultural programs and initiatives undertaken by the University since the late 1980s have developed, and introduces the University’s new Center for Multicultural Learning as the next stage in Santa Clara’s efforts to create a learning environment in which diversity is a positive element in every student’s integrated education.

Since the 1960s, higher education’s approach to diversity has expanded beyond a focus on access and retention to include the impact of diversity on the quality of the educational experience for all students.⁶ This dynamic has played out at Santa Clara through the leadership and initiative of several different campus groups.

The Multicultural Center (MCC), a student organization begun in 1985, has been a major part of Santa Clara’s work on diversity. Common threads have run through its discussions with the administration and the wider University community over the past decade: concern for the autonomy and support for the ethnic-based groups that comprise the MCC; concern about the message sent by the location of the MCC; appeals for greater representation of ethnic minorities in the faculty and staff, coupled with the importance of establishing a critical mass of students from historically underrepresented groups; the need for support programs targeting students of color like those brought together in the Student Resource Center (SRC) in the 1990s; the importance of educating the entire University community for diversity; and the desire for an effective student voice in the policy setting and overall governance of the University. Some discussions of these concerns have originated in acrimonious and confrontational encounters, others in more positive and collaborative settings. The discussions have taken place in a variety of venues, including the pages of the student newspaper, The Santa Clara, and have resulted in significant campus-wide dialogue. An example was the rather heated exchange of articles in the 1995–96 academic year that led to a campus forum, "Taking a Stand," and the subsequent attendance at the National Conference on Race and Equality by students from the MCC and The Santa Clara. Student-initiated efforts like these have been an important element in the development of the multicultural awareness and programs across campus.

Similarly, the Ethnic Studies Program has been a key factor in the University’s multicultural efforts. The program, which began at the University in the 1970s, was reorganized in 1986 to consist of a core of faculty with joint appointments to Ethnic Studies and to a traditional department. Through participation in a variety of campus programs, a curriculum which supports the College of Arts and Sciences requirement in ethnic studies or women’s studies, and an interdisciplinary minor, the program seeks: (a) to educate the whole person through rigorous and disciplined examination of the history and culture of historically underrepresented racial and ethnic groups in the context of U.S. development; (b) to provide an opportunity for all students to gain an understanding of racial and ethnic cultures and their contributions to U.S. society and for students of color to study their own cultural heritage and history; (c) to promote cross-cultural understanding, the pursuit of social justice, and the study of fundamental problems of contemporary society; (d) to facilitate the incorporation of scholarship on historically underrepresented racial and ethnic groups into the University curriculum; and (e) to develop ties to local racial and ethnic communities including students of color on campus. Faculty from both the program core and its advisory board have provided leadership in campus-wide forums such as the Diversity Committee, as well as in developing and co-sponsoring a wide variety of programs.

The Student Resource Center, formed in 1988 by consolidating separate offices serving special populations, has been an important focus for the University’s programs designed to support the academic success and social integration of students of color. The Center’s focus and staffing model changed several times over the past decade, including changes made in response to the recommendations of an external review chaired by Daryl Smith in 1990 (Exhibit IV.2.8). The most recent change has been occasioned by two new University initiatives: the formation of a campus-wide Advising and Learning Resources Center and the Center for Multicultural Learning, both of which will subsume the programs and services of the Student Resource Center.

The Irvine Foundation has been an important part of Santa Clara’s diversity initiatives in the past decade. The $1 million "Excellence Through Diversity" grant in the early 1990s initiated and helped develop a complex set of strategies to increase multicultural education on campus, including faculty recruitment and development, mentoring and undergraduate research programs, seed money for programs, and co-curricular programs (Exhibit IV.2.2). A second Irvine grant, "Leaders for a Just World", focused on the broader themes of leadership and integrated education, but also supported some multicultural programs (Exhibit IV.1.4). And in May 1999, the Irvine Foundation announced funding for another major grant for the University, "Building Partnerships for Diversity", which is expected to support several new programmatic initiatives (Exhibit IV.2.3). These grants sustain—and are sustained by—a wide variety of programs and initiatives developed in a variety of sectors on campus.

Evidence of Performance

What is the overall effect of these programs on the integration of multiculturalism into student learning? An analysis of the 1998 Senior Survey (Exhibit II.2.10) suggests that multicultural participation promotes the internalization of values that are positively related to satisfaction with instruction and overall academic experience (including overall quality of instruction, courses in major, relevance of coursework to everyday life, amount of contact with faculty, and class size). The more students participate in multicultural activities, the lower their dissatisfaction in the following areas: interaction with other students, sense of community on campus, student housing, overall college experience, and opportunities for community service; and the greater their satisfaction with academic advising, tutorial help or other academic assistance, and ability to find a faculty or staff mentor.

One caveat deserves noting: students of color are less satisfied with the diversity of faculty and students, which suggests a need to enhance this aspect of campus life.

Conclusions

It is clear from Exhibit II.2.10 that fostering multicultural participation is related to students’ satisfactory experience at Santa Clara. Therefore, the University should take seriously the need to enhance multicultural experiences and opportunities. Upon the recommendation of a University-wide task force at the end of the 1996–97 academic year, the Provost established a Multicultural Coordinating Council and charged the group to coordinate the various campus programs and resources related to multiculturalism. Following a pilot project in which Council members collaborated on the development of a new Ethnic Studies course, "Multiculturalism and Film," the Council determined that the best means to secure coordination would be to form a Center for Multicultural Learning, and used the opportunity to seek funding from the Irvine Foundation to explore what such a Center could do. The key to the proposed center is captured in the title of the grant proposal submitted to the Irvine Foundation: "Building Partnerships for Diversity." The grant predicts that forging partnerships between faculty, student groups, community organizations, and administrative units will result in significant improvement in the multicultural climate and education at Santa Clara.

The challenge of integrated education is to make connections between the many and varied elements of learning so that each individual can become a person of competence, conscience and compassion. In this chapter we have examined some of the initiatives the University has developed to meet this challenge. The centers of distinction, comprised of multiple constituencies, have the potential to focus undergraduate experience with their thematic emphases. Initiatives like residential learning communities, the Eastside Project, advising, and multicultural learning emerge from—and seek to transform—activities and elements deeply embedded in undergraduate life. These structures and initiatives are in varying degrees under design and construction. Preliminary results, coupled with the creativity and commitment of the faculty and staff driving them, suggest that they are effective ways to realize integrated education at Santa Clara.

By specifying learning communities as a particular vehicle Santa Clara should use to foster integrated education, this recommendation gives a sharper focus to several Strategic Plan goals, including 1.A.2 (connect curricular and co-curricular programs), 2.A.1 (refine the Core Curriculum), and 2.A.4 (provide systematic opportunities for students to integrate the various dimensions of their lives).

The literature on learning communities indicates that they have the potential to make a powerful contribution to student learning. Santa Clara’s experiments to date, while showing somewhat mixed results, have been encouraging enough to expand our commitment to learning communities. Given the central role on-campus living plays in the experience of most Santa Clara undergraduates, we should place a special (though not exclusive) emphasis on residential communities. We should also emphasize those particular aspects of learning communities that are most conducive to encouraging and enabling students to integrate different areas of knowledge and different ways of knowing and being in the world.

This will require the articulation of clear goals for learning communities and careful assessment studies that help us understand what works best—and what does not work—in achieving the learning outcomes Santa Clara desires. Our previous assessment efforts in this area, along with our current efforts to research "best practices" in learning communities, will provide a good foundation for future assessment efforts. The scope and premise of the learning community initiative for fall 2000 make it essential that Santa Clara put in place a well-designed assessment plan soon.

Community-based service learning is a distinctive aspect of a Santa Clara undergraduate education that reflects the philosophy of education and vision of the role of Jesuit higher education in society that are expressed in the Strategic Plan. This self-study recommendation, like the previous one, gives a sharper focus to several Strategic Plan goals, particularly 2.A.4 (provide systematic opportunities for students to integrate the various dimensions of their lives).

There is a growing body of research on the impact of experiential learning on the undergraduate experience. The Eastside Project, as one example, is recognized nationally for its innovative approach to community-based service learning. Drawing on the analysis in Appendix B of the community learning outcome, and assessment already underway at the Eastside Project, the University should undertake a comprehensive assessment of the ways in which student participation in activities beyond the classroom shapes their overall learning experience, and use this information to develop and improve other experiential learning programs across the campus.

Recommendation 3: Make student advising and learning assistance a vehicle for promoting integrated learning.

This recommendation reflects the potential of the new Drahmann Advising and Learning Resources Center to contribute directly or indirectly to the accomplishment of Strategic Plan goals 2.A.1 (refine the Core Curriculum), 2.A.2 (strengthen the curricular coherence of degree programs), and 2.A.4 (provide systematic opportunities for students to integrate the various dimensions of their lives). Just as importantly, it also responds to the finding reported in this chapter that there is room for improvement in the current advising system.

The new center brings faculty and staff together to collaborate in support of student learning. An important part of the Provost’s reorganization, the center should provide leadership for a more systematic and public discussion and study of the assessment tools already in place to make advising and learning assistance even more vital structures of integration.

Recommendation 4: Assure that the emerging centers of distinction create stronger connections linking faculty scholarship, student learning, and off-campus programs.

This recommendation is intended to advance Strategic Plan goal 2.B.1, which calls for developing the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, the Bannan Institute for Jesuit Education and Christian Values, and the Center for Science, Technology, and Society into "centers of distinction that contribute to the University’s academic quality, impact on society, and national recognition." As this quotation suggests, the centers face a particular challenge in relating the academic work the University to the rest of society. This challenge is also reflected in the "University Mission" passage which states that "It is primarily through discovering, communicating, and applying knowledge that we exercise our institutional responsibility as a voice of reason and conscience in society."

Although this challenge is central to Santa Clara’s understanding of the role it wishes to play in society, accomplishing it has proved to be more difficult than once imagined. As the experience of the Ethics Center has demonstrated, it is all too easy to compartmentalize a center’s programs, with off-campus programs becoming severed from on-campus programs. This poses the risk of depriving off-campus programs of academic sustenance and, in turn, depriving on-campus programs of invigoration from real world experience. The dialogic role envisioned for the centers of distinction will require continual nurturing if it is to be fully realized. As we try to construct bridges across faculty scholarship, student learning, and off-campus programs, we must make them meaningful (in the sense that they have real value to all parties) and sustainable (in the sense that they have some coherence and continuity).

Recommendation 5: Realize more fully the learning opportunities represented by the diversity of the University community.

This recommendation builds on two Strategic Plan goals: 1.C.3 (increase diversity) and 2.B.4 (increase the effectiveness of multicultural programs).

Chapter III discussed Santa Clara’s commitment to increase diversity of its community of scholars, providing evidence of progress on this front: the high percentage of students of color, the proportion of faculty who are women, and the ability to recruit Jesuits from a diminishing pool of qualified candidates. Results from the fall 1998 surveys, although somewhat mixed, suggest that the Santa Clara community is committed to helping students, staff, and faculty of color.

While much more progress needs to be made, it is important to recognize diversity as one of Santa Clara’s current strengths and to find creative ways to take advantage of this diversity as an educational resource for the entire campus community. Students nationwide and at Santa Clara who report greater connections with multicultural issues also report more satisfaction with their overall learning experiences. The creation of the new Center for Multicultural Learning (CML), along with the Ethnic Studies and other programs currently in place, offers tremendous potential to integrate multiculturalism into student learning. The CML can also take a lead role in assessing this formative element of the learning experience. This assessment should include the areas cited in the recently funded "Building Partnerships for Diversity" grant proposal: the recruitment and retention of diverse students, staff, and faculty; increased multicultural emphasis in the University curriculum; and more effective multicultural programs through greater coordination of resources. The CML should monitor changes in responses to the HERI senior survey and consider administering on a regular basis some version of the climate survey piloted in spring 1999 by a faculty-staff team from the University’s Counseling Center and Psychology Department.

Some of the questions that require further study and discussion, and on which we would appreciate advice from the WASC visiting team, include:

• How can Santa Clara create and nurture learning communities in ways that result in stronger evidence of integrated learning than has been found to date in the Freshman Residential Community?
• How can Santa Clara use its new Advising and Learning Resources Center to promote faculty development and program development around advising and integrated learning?
• How can Santa Clara build stronger links between scholarly work and service to society through its emerging centers of distinction?
• How might Santa Clara take fuller educational advantage of the diversity that already exists on campus?
• What additional performance indicators would be most useful in assessing how well Santa Clara is fostering the education of the whole person in a learning environment that enables students to make connections among different forms of knowledge, understanding, and experience?

Please direct comments to wasc@scu.edu : Copyright © 1999 Santa Clara University