Dean Wolfson to lead 3-college collaboration

Following the completion of her term as associate dean of the college at Wellesley, Adele Wolfson will assume the new position as director of the 3-College Collaboration on July 1. Announced last year, the 3-College Collaboration aims to increase academic collaboration and communication between Wellesley, Olin and Babson, building on the three colleges' geographic proximity and complementary educational strengths.

Wolfson noted that a great amount of collaboration has been going on between faculty, staff and students. She hopes to raise the profile of such exchanges, bringing them to a higher level by using the academic strengths and distinct perspectives each institution brings.

"I think what we can do is really raise the profile of some of the exchanges and collaborations [that are already happening], and to plan something that goes beyond just allowing for students to take classes or for faculties to teach together and collaborate, but really look at what it is that we each bring to a particular project and try to create something new and exciting," Wolfson said.

The Grand Challenges Summit, which seeks to address issues of national security and sustainability, will take place on April 21. According to Wolfson, it is a perfect example of in-depth collaboration between the institutions where each school can bring its own distinct perspective.

"[The summit] began at an engineering kind of view point. It was obvious that there were things that a liberal arts perspective and an entrepreneurial perspective could bring to that," Wolfson said. "That's the kind of thing we'd like to do more of, where we identify a specific problem or a specific area of interest and see where it is that we can really use three different sets of perspectives to really understand it."

Wolfson also contrasts the 3-College Collaboration with the Wellesley-MIT cross-registration program. Wolfson points out that 3-College Collaboration goes far beyond cross-registration and fosters a deeper collaboration among faculties in three institutions to find new approaches in education.

"[For MIT], it is about opportunities for our students to take classes there. It is not so much that our faculties and their faculties collaborate on new approaches to education or to new programming. There are some faculties who have research collaboration over here but it really is almost entirely about cross-registration," Wolfson commented. "Whereas the Olin and Babson connection has a cross-registration component to it, but it also has this side which is going to be real collaboration among people at all levels of the institution and the opportunities for the faculties of all three places to talk about teaching and to talk about fields that they are involved in. I think that will happen in a much more active and vibrant way than what's happening so far with MIT."

Wolfson briefly described the committees that will be created to aid the collaboration between the three colleges. On each campus, separate committees will talk about their needs and what they hope to gain from the other two schools. Different from the steering committee, which would likely be composed of two representatives from each campus, these committees will implement those needs and make cross-institutional decisions. However, she emphasized that everything is still speculative.

Wolfson also envisioned the primary goals of her new job, which she will take up in early July. "We talked about the fact that there are already a number of things going on. Maybe the first thing I need to is just to make an inventory of what's already happening and see which ones are being successful, which ones need more support and which ones aren't going any places," Wolfson said.

Wolfson also listed established models across the nation where 3-College Collaboration can gain valuable lessons. The models include four liberal arts colleges' collaboration in the Amherst area of Western Massachusetts and the Claremont colleges collaboration in California.

"I think we can look at some of these established consortia and see what we can learn from them or not. I think the fact that we have three very different institutions really gives us opportunities that don't even exist in some other places. I think I will be spending a lot of time talking to people in other places [and as well] as people here to see what it is that they hope to get out of the collaboration," Woflson concluded.

Students also voiced their opinions and suggested changes that could be made to the collaboration. "I think the shuttle should run on weekends as well. On weekends I usually have projects to work on in Olin, so I have to get rides from my friend in Olin. That's kind of inconvenient," Irem Yoruk '12 said. Yoruk is currently taking a product design class in Olin.

Besides schedule changes that she proposed, Yoruk also suggested more information flow between students at Wellesley and Olin. "I think students should be informed of events at Olin. This way we can know more people there and get useful information." Yoruk said.