Choice Matters:

1
Choice Matters

• A First in 2009 Initiative
• for Enhancing Miami Universitys
• First-Year Experience

2
Spring 2002 Committee

• Hoyt Brown
• Jeannie Brown Leonard
• Jennie Dautermann
• David Doyle
• Jackie Elcik

• Carolyn Haynes (co-chair)
• Mike Mills
• Denny Roberts (co-chair)
• Lee Sanders
• Kate Schaab

3
2002-03 Committee

• Mary Jane Berman
• Hoyt Brown (coordinator)
• Mike Curme
• Gail Della Piana
• Steve DeLue
• Yildirim Dilek
• Dan Early
• Jackie Elcik
• Carolyn Haynes (co-chair)
• Howard Kleiman

• Kathleen Knight-Abowitz
• Enid LaGesse
• Cindy Lewiecki-Wilson
• Gabriel Lofton
• Peter Magolda (coordinator)
• Kristen McCartney
• Denny Roberts (co-chair)
• Judith Sessions
• Elizabeth Stanley
• Ben Vodila

4
Institutional Challenges

• President Garland set goal for MU to be premier
  university in its class by 2009.
• MU is losing high-ability and multicultural
  students to other institutions.
• Students are not perceived to be challenged
  intellectually and academically.
• Students are perceived to spend too much time on
  co-curricular, extra-curricular and social
  endeavors.

5
Faculty Challenges

• Faculty perceive MU to have history of top-down
  initiatives.
• MU faculty are disheartened about prospects for
  institutional change, recent budget cuts and
  bulging class sizes.
• Miami Plan Foundation courses are
  largecontaining many students with varying
  abilities and interest levels.
• Faculty increasingly are asked to do more and
  more (e.g., research, service, grant writing,
  recruiting, advising, teaching).

6
Student Challenges

• Soaring tuition costs greater need to work to
  pay off debts.
• Increasing concern for a return on their
  investment.
• Stiffer competition for top-level jobs and
  placement in graduate and professional schools.
• Higher emotional stress.
• Perception that many majors and leadership
  activities lead to greater post-graduation
  success.

7
Provosts Charge

• To improve the holistic experience of Miamis
  first-year students, connecting existing programs
  and strengthening the interaction between Student
  and Academic Affairs.
• To place special emphasis on enhancing First in
  2009 goals.

8
Choice Matters

• A unifying theme and vision that advances
  intellectual challenge by helping students,
  faculty and staff make explicit and purposeful
  connections among parts of the curriculum and
  between the curriculum and other aspects of the
  collegiate experience.
• It endorses the idea that everyone should make
  purposeful decisions about their lives and
  reflect carefully on the relationships among
  those decisions.

9
Founding Assumptions of Choice Matters Vision

• Learning builds cumulatively and emerges through
  intensive engagements during a students entire
  education, so links are important . . .
  throughout the college years, among courses,
  between general education and the major, between
  traditional in-class and experiential learning,
  between formal and informal settings (AACU
  Greater Expectations).

10
Founding Assumptions (contd)

• Cognitive learning is enhanced when students are
  also provided purposeful opportunities to develop
  interpersonally and emotionally.
• Faculty, staff, administrators, and students must
  all communicate and work together to improve the
  entire first-year experience.
• A strong first year will provide strong
  foundation for the next four years at college.

11
Choice Matters is . . .

• Not meant to be a Pollyanna slogan
• Not intended to be a marketing scheme
• An easy-to-remember way of encapsulating the
  complex and broad-based goals of an
  intellectually challenging and enriching
  first-year experience.

12
Choice MattersFive Broad Themes

• Set high expectations about learning for yourself
  and others
• Make purposeful decisions and focused use of time
  and resources
• Take risks to promote learning in a diverse and
  complicated world
• Work with others to deepen your understanding of
  self
• Integrate and reflect critically on knowledge
  gained from diverse experiences

13
Choice Matters Objectives(already underway)

• Promotional materials and information during
  Summer Orientation
• Learning Goals worksheet incorporated into
  Summer Reading Program discussions, corridor
  meetings and first-year advising sessions
• Mega Fair
• Developmental advising emphasis in residence halls

14
Choice Matters Objectives(already underway)

• Student organization intervention
• Public endorsements by President and Provost
• Pamphlet sent to all faculty
• Appointment of Co-Coordinators for First-Year
  Experience (Pete Magolda and Hoyt Brown)
• Presentations to all Student Affairs Directors
  and Department Chairs

15
Choice Matters Objectives (already underway)

• Departmental/divisional discussions about grading
  criteria, enrollment management and right-size
  classrooms (COAD)
• Plan and institute University-wide, First-Year
  Seminars that are challenging, enhance diversity,
  and involve active learning. Pilot 8-10 in
  2003-04 and gradually increase as resources
  allow.

16
First Year Seminars

• Purposes of First Year Seminars
• Seminar Parameters
• Pedagogical Assumptions and Objectives
• Implementation Strategies

17
Future Choice Matters Objectives

• Create a FYE Website.
• Revise campus tours, Red Carpet Days, and Open
  Houses to emphasize academic learning.
• Audit and revise publications and other marketing
  campaigns to stress intellectual learning.

18
Future Choice Matters Objectives

• Involve more faculty in Summer Orientation and
  FYI planning and implementation to enhance the
  emphasis on academics.
• Enhance programming for Harrison and Oxford
  Scholars.
• Develop more divisional and departmental honors
  programs.
• Expand opportunities for faculty development
  (teaching MPF courses in challenging way, working
  with first-year students).

19
Future Choice Matters Objectives

• Plan Summer Reading book three years in advance.
• Increase faculty participation in the Theme
  Learning Communities courses and programming,
  especially the Courses in Common TLC.
• Offer awards and incentives for participating in
  the FYE.

20
Choice Matters General Outcomes

• A more intellectually engaged, challenged student
  body
• A faculty that is engaged actively in
  undergraduate teaching, especially in first-year
  seminars and MPF courses
• A university climate that supports and rewards
  intellectual and academic challenge and that sets
  high expectations of students, faculty, staff and
  administrators
• Increasing communication and collaboration
  between Academic and Student Affairs faculty and
  staff

21
Questions to Consider

• What aspects of the Choice Matters vision are
  most relevant to ORL?
• How can we further involve ORL in the first-year
  experience?
• What can the Choice Matters initiative do to
  support ORL and its agenda?

22
Contact Information

• Peter Magoldamagoldpm_at_muohio.edu(513) 529-4950