Many of the University’s recent initiatives have focused on improving and extending the academic experiences which lead most directly to the intellectual growth of students and to their preparation for their careers.

Teaching and Curricular Innovations.  It is often difficult to distinguish teaching innovations from curricular innovations.  In many cases curricular changes involve novel teaching methods, such as the use of multimedia material or the resources of the Internet.  Several initiatives suggest the range of classroom innovations that students have experienced in the past few years.

Smaller classes.  The "50/25 Rule," one of the 33 initiatives, requires all classes primarily for first-year students with 50 or more enrolled to have a small-group recitation or laboratory of no more than 25 students.  The intent is to ensure that no first-year student will be "lost" or anonymous in a large course without personal contact with an instructor.

Computer and Web-based instruction.  Innovations are too numerous to list.  The range is, however, suggested by a few examples.  PHY 105 and 106 Science for the 21st Century uses a Web-based module on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence and an interactive module on neuroscience, artificial intelligence, and neural networks.  In the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics (LLL), multimedia programs for language instruction--some developed at Syracuse--have been integrated into the lower division curriculum.  Many Writing Program sections explore the implications of the new media, such as the Web, for reading and writing.  Students are taught to create their own material for the Web.  Some of them create Web sites for nonprofit organizations.  The Maxwell Global Affairs Institute operates the Global Collaboratory to train students to use advanced information technology for international interaction.

Collaboration among departments.  Curricular innovations often occur at the intersections or boundaries between disciplines.  Health and Physical Education has begun collaborating with Nursing, Human Development, Biology, and Mathematics to enhance the program of Health and Exercise Science students.  Biology has collaborated with Chemistry to establish a new Biochemistry degree, with Earth Sciences for an Environmental Sciences degree, and with Public Administration for a 5-year Environmental Sciences-M.P.A. degree.  Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering has modified its program so that students may more readily complete minors in such areas as international relations, management, and policy studies.

Liberal Arts Core.  Changes have been introduced recently to the Liberal Arts Core, which is required of students in The College of Arts and Sciences and those dually enrolled in The College and the Newhouse School of Public Communications or the School of Education.  The sequence of the writing skills requirement, now met through the two writing studios and a writing-intensive course, has been improved and a list of courses approved to satisfy the requirement of Critical Reflection on Ethical and Social Issues has been expanded.  The impact of the Critical Reflection requirement seems worthy of systematic assessment.

Writing.  Efforts to enhance the attention given to students’ writing can be found in many places.  Two examples suggest the nature of recent developments.  BIO 421 Seminar in Biology provides students an opportunity to improve their oral and written communication skills.  PSC 202 Political Argument and Reasoning is required of Political Science majors and teaches analytical and writing skills in small writing-intensive classes.  These and other courses satisfy the intensive writing requirement of the Liberal Arts Core.  However, in the eyes of many faculty members, the overall quality of student writing remains a problem, as does the level of expectations the University sets.

New Minors.  Each year the list of approved minors grows longer.  At present, there are more than 73 minors available to students.  Recent additions to the list include Neuroscience, offered by the Department of Bioengineering and Neuroscience; and Science, Technology and Society, offered cooperatively by six schools and colleges, including SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry.  These new minors join other minor programs that blend courses from several schools and colleges, such as Applied Statistics, Architecture, Cognitive Sciences and Professional Skills.

Blending Liberal and Professional Education.  To enable Arts and Sciences students to fit minors from outside The College into their schedules, the faculty of The College reduced the number of hours students must take in Arts and Sciences from 102 to 96.  To help students explore courses in other schools and colleges, the new Core allows students to use some courses from beyond The College to satisfy its requirements.  Approximately 25 courses are so approved at present.

Active Learning.  Students learn best by active learning, that is, by writing, discussing, or testing their understanding of key concepts and by actively applying new concepts to different situations.  One of the 33 Initiatives launched by the Chancellor was the commissioning of a Task Force on Active Learning, which submitted its report in the spring of 1992.  That report concluded that although there are few classes (especially in the first year experience) in which active learning practices are employed, many faculty members are keenly interested in achieving the greatest degree of student involvement in, and mastery of the material.  But their efforts have, for the most part, been in isolation and institutionally unrecognized.  For active learning to be given greater emphasis and support, the 1992 report concluded, the faculty evaluation and reward systems needed to give greater support to teaching.

First-Year Courses.  Many schools and colleges at Syracuse mandate that first-year students participate in special courses that introduce students to university life in general and to the discipline they will principally study.  They also foster close contact with faculty members in that discipline.

In most of the professional schools the first-semester courses required of students are 3-credit, semester-long courses.  For example, the College for Human Development requires all its entering students to take CFS 101 Human Ecology.  This course serves as a "gateway" to the college in that it  helps students to understand themselves and their relationships with others and provides a snapshot of the interrelated issues of human development.  The School of Management requires all entering students to enroll in SOM 122 Perspectives of Business and Management.  The primary objectives of this course are to examine the role and responsibility of management in society and to develop communication, teamwork, computer and research skills.  Similarly, in Engineering and Computer Science, first-year students all enroll in ECS 101 Introduction to Engineering and Computer Science to get an overview of the disciplines in the college and an introduction to professional standards.  In the Newhouse School of Public Communication, Com 100 First Year Seminar is a mandatory non-credit course in which faculty advisors introduce their incoming students to the school and to the University and give them a personal introduction to higher education.

The largest first-year course is CAS 101 Freshman Forum seminar in The College of Arts and Sciences, organized in faculty-led sections of 15 students each.  It carries one credit and consists of 8 class meetings, plus at least one cultural event and a dinner (commonly at the faculty member’s home).  As a new common element linking all the Forum sections, a Freshman Lecture and associated events, add a special, shared intellectual dimension.  In September 1997, Stephen Jay Gould, Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology at Harvard University, was the inaugural lecturer.  The remainder of the seminar content varies among the sections according to the approach chosen by the faculty member.  One goal is to deepen the students’ intellectual experience in their first year by providing a more personal encounter with a faculty member than is usually available in standard courses.

Despite the variety of first-year seminars and the varied pedagogical philosophies that prompt them in the various schools and colleges, all are dedicated to easing the student’s often perplexing transition from high school to university life.  Indeed, student perceptions concerning the benefit and effectiveness of first-year courses and seminars are quite high; they have become a highly regarded aspect of first-year experience at the University.

Special Programs.  Syracuse University offers a number of programs that provide undergraduates an opportunity to excel academically in stimulating environments.  Of these, the all-University Honors Program and the Division of International Programs Abroad (DIPA) are the more long-standing.  The Soling Program and the Undergraduate Research Program (URP) are more recent developments within The College of Arts and Sciences.  All accept students from all schools and colleges, and all speak to the issue of how Syracuse University highlights the concept of "a student-centered research university."

All-University Honors Program.  Honors is like a small college within the University.  While students pursue their chosen academic course of study in their individual department, the Honors Program offers intellectual challenge and curricular enrichment through special advising, seminars, honors courses, special cultural events, and close contact with faculty and other honors students.  The program is open to those students who maintain a grade point average required to graduate cum laude or better.  It is one of the few truly campus-wide undergraduate programs; it is open to students in all of the University’s undergraduate schools and colleges and in the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry (ESF).  Approximately 850 students are enrolled in the Honors Program, of whom approximately 200 are in the upper division, working towards their honor’s thesis.

The program offers more than just a set of special courses and a thesis; it creates an environment in which learning takes place synergistically.  Because it combines the classical independent research model for knowing and understanding the world with close interaction with faculty members, it exemplifies many of the desired traits of a student-centered research university.  The program does regular self-assessment of its activities and has  established that Honors students are more likely to stay in school,  more likely to go on to graduate or professional school, and are very successful at finding satisfying jobs.

The Soling Program.  The Soling Program, endowed in The College of Arts and Sciences by a member of the Board of Trustees for whom it is named, creates an environment in which learning happens in cooperation with other students.  Instead of supporting enriched courses within majors, Soling offers its own courses in which problem-solving teams interact weekly in an electronic classroom.  The Soling Program extends the idea of student research to include problem-solving and design.  Typically, Soling students from professional schools and from liberal arts form interdisciplinary problem-solving teams.  They take on real-world problems that require knowledge of more than one discipline, and work on them for a semester or longer, on or off campus.

Instead of the classical research model, the program fosters interdisciplinary team problem-solving.  Instead of a thesis, Soling students produce a portfolio that contains the finished product together with a description of how the team attacked its problem and reached its goal.  Instead of a thesis defense, Soling teams make end-of-semester multimedia presentations to an audience drawn from the campus and the community.

The program’s approach supports the University’s goal to make the undergraduate academic experience more than just taking courses.  Students spend many hours in the newly renovated and equipped 3000 square foot Soling Center specially designed and equipped to support its mission.  It is located on Euclid Ave. in immediate proximity to DIPA and the University Internship Program.

The program undertakes regular assessment of its students’ learning successes and failures.  Of students doing one semester in the Soling program, 90% graduate; 100% of students doing two semesters or more graduate.  The Soling Program publishes a newsletter each semester directed at program graduates, keeping them abreast of what is going on in the program, inviting them to continue to participate as project sponsors, asking them to help recent graduates get jobs, and asking for feedback about the value of their Soling experience.  Students inevitably report that being in Soling played a major role in finding and holding good jobs.

Undergraduate Research.  All schools and colleges at Syracuse have traditionally offered research opportunities to their majors and do so more today than in the past, especially in the sciences.

The Undergraduate Research Program (URP) of The College of Arts and Sciences extends that process by maintaining an up-to-date description of research projects in the sciences, social sciences, and the humanities available each semester.  It links qualified, interested students with the faculty who generated the projects which may then be worked on for credit by qualified students from any college or major.  Satisfactory completion of each project carries from one to six hours of academic credit in The College of Arts and Sciences, depending on the needs of the project and the student.  Faculty are attracted to the program because it handles the administrative over-head of identifying the students and awarding the credit, while offering them a chance to extend their teaching by matching them with self-selected, highly-motivated students in an apprenticeship model.

URP, which supplements department-based research opportunities, has been small, with under twenty students a term, and has always offered many more research opportunities than it could fill.  Because of its small staff, it has never had the resources to undertake self-evaluation.  A plan is being drafted to develop a closer relationship with the Soling Program and other offices and thereby serve a larger pool of students.  Plans are also underway to extend the scope of the program and link it more closely with other "hands-on," out-of-classroom educational opportunities.  These plans include the development of a Center for Undergraduate Research and Innovative Learning within The College of Arts and Sciences.

Division of International Programs Abroad.  Syracuse University’s Division of International Programs Abroad annually sends more than 1500 students from over 100 institutions to foreign countries for a semester or year of study abroad.  Approximately 50% of participating students are from Syracuse.  Programs are offered in Florence, Italy; Madrid, Spain; Strasbourg, France; London, England; Harare, Zimbabwe; and Hong Kong, China. Direct placements at universities in France, Spain, Czech Republic, England, Australia, Japan, Germany, Israel, Russia and Italy are also available for students with more advanced language skills.  The faculty who instruct classes abroad are from both the U.S. and the host country.  Although there are not any language prerequisites, students must take 5 credits of the host language while abroad.  Internships are available for students with at least a B average and work-study positions can be arranged with program advisors.  DIPA also typically offers about 30 topic-oriented summer programs in a variety of countries.

DIPA evaluates each course taught abroad every time it is offered and it regularly surveys all students upon completion of the semester or year.  In these and other surveys, students have voiced tremendously positive reactions to the study abroad experience and continue to utilize the opportunities DIPA has to offer on an ever-increasing basis.  Also, the DIPA programs are regularly reviewed by the Commission on Higher Education of the Middle States Association.  Approximately 95% of the Syracuse students who participate in a DIPA program ultimately graduate from the University.

Graduate Student Preparation.  While much of the campus attention has focused on undergraduates, a significant development has taken place in the conception and delivery of graduate education.  Programs have been put in place that not only better prepare graduate students for future professional positions as teachers; they also enable them to be better teachers of undergraduates while still graduate students.

Each semester, more than 750 Master's and Ph.D. students work as teaching assistants or classroom instructors, or as teaching associates who have full responsibility for courses, laboratories, or large-course recitation sections.  Their assignments involve working with Syracuse undergraduates as teachers, advisors, and role models.

The TA Program.  Syracuse University established the TA Program of the Graduate School in 1987 to provide a summer orientation for new teaching assistants.  While this is still a fundamental purpose, the program’s role and responsibility have broadened considerably.  Today, working in partnership with the 60 academic departments that appoint teaching assistants and teaching associates, the program offers a variety of services: academic year professional development seminars; a year-long course for selected international TAs titled "Oral Communication in Teaching"; an outstanding TA awards program; a mid-semester feed-back survey; and a teaching consultation service.

The Teaching Assistant Orientation Program provides an all-University, twelve-day summer orientation for the approximately 300 new TAs entering Syracuse University each year.  Held each August, the orientation has three major components: 1) a five-day international program; 2) a four-day, general program for both national and international TAs, focusing on teaching; and 3) a three-day period for training and orientation by sponsoring academic departments.

The International Program consists of intensive language testing and evaluation, practical assistance from the Office of International Services and general sessions on such topics as "Teaching American Students," "What is a TA," and "Culture Shock." Each of the week’s activities is designed to help ensure a smooth transition to life at Syracuse University and more generally to American culture.

The general program balances large-group seminars led by Syracuse faculty members and small-group workshops led by 24 teaching fellows, who are outstanding, experienced TAs.  Faculty members address such general topics as "Ideas for an Effective Presentation," "Teaching at the University Level," "Diversity Issues in the Classroom," and "Encouraging Active Learning."  In the popular microteaching exercise, teaching fellows videotape presentations delivered by each new TA, and then lead small groups in constructive critiques.  Other small group exercises offer new TAs opportunities to lead discussion groups, attend concurrent sessions devoted to specialized teaching situations (laboratory instruction, designing a syllabus, critiquing in the arts), and discuss classroom problems that new teachers typically face.

The three-day departmental component introduces TAs to graduate and undergraduate curricula and departmental practices, and provides initial orientation to their assigned teaching duties.

Teaching fellow evaluations from 1992 to 1997 indicate that the orientation program is highly valued by the new teaching assistants.  No indicator in this time period is below 4.5 on a 5-point scale.  In the same time period, the new teaching assistants have rated the orientation between 3.8 and 4.4 on a 5-point scale for being worthwhile overall.

Future Professoriate Program.  In 1992, the Graduate School began giving greater attention to Ph.D. students headed for university teaching careers.  Through grants approaching $1 million from the U.S. Department of Education’s Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE) and The Pew Charitable Trusts, it launched the Future Professoriate Project.  Initiatives included a higher level pre-doctoral appointment¾the teaching associateship¾involving an independent teaching experience, and a faculty mentoring program leading to a Certificate in University Teaching.  By 1995, 52 departments distributed through 11 of the University’s thirteen schools and colleges were participating, with over 199 faculty teaching mentors.  By 1996, 425 teaching associates were currently in or had completed the project.  In a first assessment of 32 of the first generation to complete their degrees, 25 held faculty positions, five were in nonacademic positions, and two were doing additional graduate work.

Library.  Because of the library’s centrality to the overall quality of the University and student’s academic growth, its role in the development of the student centered-research university is widely recognized.  In a period of restricted resources, increasing demand for services, and the uncertainties created by changing technologies, the library is striving to maintain some flexibility in forecasting what facilities and resources may be required to support the learning- and student-centered research university, while maintaining an appropriate balance between the teaching mission and the specialized research needs of faculty and graduate students.  It faces the further task of balancing resource allocations between staff support and collection building, including the provision of a wide range of electronic resources.

Impact of Budget Changes.  Budget cuts have resulted in personnel reductions of almost 15%, partially offset by the appointment of various grant-funded positions in preservation and Special Collections.  The acquisitions budget has remained relatively constant in actual dollars, hovering in the vicinity of $3 million for the last five years (thanks to annual 5% increases offsetting budgeted cuts in acquisition funds).  Far more serious has been the effect of inflation, which has led simultaneously to a dramatic decrease in serial titles received and an increase in the cost of continued subscriptions.  The library also faced the undesirable necessity of allocating increased funds to leases and other contracts for electronic resources, thus further reducing funds available for traditional print collections.  The demands of public service on a diminished staff have also reduced the amount of time available to librarians for collection development work.  A number of public service units are stretched to the limit in trying to provide the best possible service for users.

Physical facilities.  Bird Library, the University’s primary library facility, was extensively renovated in 1991, providing a single interior entrance, an extended hours study area, stair access throughout the building, and collections organized in a coherent call-number sequence.  The changes improved virtually all library operations and access to library resources, and positively affected the behavior of users, a problem noted in the 1988 Middle States review.  Another major problem presented in that review, the need to renovate and reconceptualize the Science and Technology Library in Carnegie Library, has not been addressed.  The Board of Trustees has given preliminary approval for renovation planning.  It is complicated by issues relating to the retention of branch libraries or their consolidation into a unified science library for the whole campus.  A transition in library leadership scheduled for summer 1998 creates some delay in this planning but also provides the opportunity for more careful consideration of the implications for the library of changing educational technologies.

The present Carnegie building has no growth space for existing collections, while various innovative schemes have been used to extend available collection space in Bird Library into the next century at most.  Fortunately the University has a remote storage facility with space for installation of compact storage shelving for lesser used materials, thus easing space concerns in both libraries.  Completion of the lengthy project of reclassification of the Dewey collection, following judicious weeding, will further aid overall space allocation and dramatically improve access to print collections.

Impact of technology.  In the past decade, the Library has changed systems twice, first to NOTIS in 1991(including the bar-coding of the collection), and more recently to Voyager from Endeavor Information Systems, Inc., in June 1997.  The latter shift was forced by the University’s transition from mainframe to client/server environments, but it allowed the Library to expand considerably its access to a wide range of electronic resources beyond its library catalog.  Currently it includes over 100 databases and 100s of full text journals.  The Library has also installed and substantially upgraded a local area network connected to the University’s networking infrastructure, providing access to CD-ROMs as well as an internal office network.  It has also made the transition from terminals to individual workstations with a total of over 200 personal computers.  All these developments have led to increased pressures for extended training in the use of these resources by the Library’s diminished staff.  The training of the staff itself has been an additional burden, usually requiring sacrifices in other tasks.

Findings.

Finding 20.  The curricula revisions and pedagogical initiatives of the past half-decade have strengthened the attractiveness and effectiveness of many courses and programs of study.  Some faculty and students continue to ask, nevertheless, whether the level of work required, the quality of writing demanded, and grading standards are sufficiently rigorous, especially in introductory courses.  The innovations have begun to challenge one of the findings of the 1992 report of the Task Force on Active Learning: ". . . there are few classes (especially in the first-year experience) in which active learning practices are employed."  With the increased attention now given to teaching, and spurred by the student-centered vision, it should be possible to stimulate fresh approaches to teaching and learning that emphasize active involvement of students and cooperation among them.

Finding 21.  The attention given to first-year students through smaller classes and the Gateway and other introductory courses and seminars, such as the Freshman Forum, has done much to bring students into closer relationship with senior faculty members.  Through these and other program developments, the University has addressed one of the strongest criticisms of the 1988 Middle States visiting team, that the University, particularly members of the faculty, did not know the students very well.  These developments have strengthened one of the University’s core values, caring, through the increased attention which faculty give to students individually.  In spite of the gains, however, the degree of personal contact between faculty members and students in some of the large programs of study remains problematic.  Most faculty members do not have a good over-all understanding of life on campus for students, especially in their first year, or the contributions that student activities may make to the overall education of students.

Finding 22.  The renovation of Bird Library has addressed many of the previous sources of frustration for faculty and students alike.  It is now attractive, comfortable, convenient, and more efficient for both users and staff.  The promise of the new Voyager on-line catalog for access to the University’s own collections as well as globally accessible information is very great.  The growth of the uses of technologies and multimedia sources promises a far larger library role in the teaching and research missions of the University.  The greatest perceived needs of the library are a comprehensive renovation of the Carnegie Library building to provide a new vision of a teaching and research library for the next century, the resources necessary to adapt flexibly to changing technological needs, and sufficient personnel resources to realize that vision.