College creates task force to assess student performance across concentrations

Fall 2010 marked the end of a four-year long institutional initiative to evaluate and generate a long term plan for academic departments and the overall academic environment at Wellesley.  Comittees developed to evaluate the overall academic experience as well as three task forces to evaluate the Sciences, Arts and Foreign Languages and Literature.

Presidents Kim Bottomly and Diana Chapman Walsh charged the groups with carrying out a comprehensive overview of the academic environment and creating recommendations to be carried out over a short and long term time frame.

"The Academic Planning Committee was created by President Bottomly with the charge of considering the College's goals for its educational and research mission and developing an academic plan for the years ahead.  The questions it was asked to consider included: What educational programs should we have at Wellesley College?  What are the benefits of interdisciplinary courses, and what are their disadvantages? Should there be more of an emphasis on the faculty's scholarly activities?  What should be our essential short-term and long-term academic priorities?" Dean of the College and Provost Andrew Shennan explained.

The first task force to be created was structured around art and was created in the fall of 2006. The project culminated in a report which came out in the spring of 2008. Following this was the Academic

Planning Committee's report which was started January 2008 and was released fall 2009.

The committee set broad recommendations and proposed initiatives to start in the 2009-2010 academic year and continue through the 2011-2012 academic year. It also set out long term goals for the College.

"As the members of the committee (10 faculty members plus myself) took up this charge, one overriding theme emerged: ‘to revitalize Wellesley as an intellectual and creative community, and to stimulate, both for faculty and for students, a deeper and more vivid engagement with ideas and with the many forms of creative activity pursued on campus,'" Shennan explained.

The recommendations of this report could be applied to all departments and the academic community as a whole. To strengthen the first-year experience the committee recommended creating and expanding first-year seminar course offerings. The committee recommended establishing more collaboration and creating a formal program surrounding these courses.

The committee also wanted to increase academic year and summer research opportunities for students and encourage introducing research knowledge, procedure and enthusiasm early on in a student's career.

Another area of investigation surrounded majors. A guideline for majors was created using broad methods for assessment by evaluating their robustness, consistency, coherence, support and community. The committee determined that the two degree offering limited many students and advises changing the policy to allow students to pursue two majors and a minor or one major and two minors.

In the 2008-2009 academic year a task force was developed around to evaluate the science programs. The committee found in their report, which was published in the summer of 2009, that the sciences need to continue to close the performance gap between white students and students of color, collaborate with other institutions, strengthen introductory courses and stress student research opportunities.

Adele Wolfson, Director of the Three College Collaboration and Professor of Chemistry points out that many of the recommendations are already completed, such as hiring a new Science Center Director, or in motion, such as closing the performance gap.

"We have introduced supplemental instruction over the past four years which has produced results. We have hired more minority faculty because mentors and role models are proven to be important. We also belong to a consortium who works on bridging the gap. It is very much on the forefront," Wolfson said. Wolfson worked extensively in her previous position as a dean to tackle this disparity.

Introductory science classes at Wellesley were identified as either too easy for those majoring in the sciences or too difficult for those who did not have a substantial background or desire to pursue the subject beyond the introductory level.

 "I loved Chemistry 120. I quickly made the transition from a high school to a college science class. After class we had to email the professor a question. This forced us to look back over our notes and be constantly immersed in chemistry," Becca McClain '13 said.  "However, people would avoid chemistry and physics if they don't want to major in it."

Changing the way that introductory classes work across the science department is an identified goal from the committee. The committee recommended to: "engage in department/program discussion, implementation and evaluation, but also science-wide discussions of new approaches and new/revised courses that model how science works."

Budget cuts and funding problems could impact the success of these recommendations. However, Wolfson stresses that many of the recommendations do not require additional funding but rather prioritization and time commitment. "In the past few years we have been more careful with priorities and have not been able to try everything. We will not be able to immediately take on large construction projects like a new building," Wolfson said. "You have to think to do this first. The planning is now more planed out."

The foreign languages, literature and cultures and their relationship to area/cultural studies was the final task force report to come out this past fall. The report identified ways to strengthen the foreign language and cultural exposure while students were on campus and abroad.

"[We were trying] to think of ways we could encourage more Wellesley students to leave the College with a very high level of proficiency in one or more foreign languages; and how to enhance the level of proficiency that students attained in their study of one or more foreign languages," wrote David Ward, a task force member and chair of the Italian Department. "The task force felt that now more than ever students graduating from a College like Wellesley need to be able to communicate and work in a foreign  language."