Best Practices Conference in June, 2001

Centre College

Participants:

• Ken Keffer
• Nancy Lackey
• Milton Reigelman

Project Title: Orientation and Re-entry

Project Description:

Centre College is a small liberal arts college (1050 students) located in a small town (18,000) in a small, dry county (25,000) in the small, land-locked state of Kentucky (4 million). As all liberal arts schools, we try to create an academic and social experience for our students that is challenging and intense. Our location away from urban centers perhaps makes it easier for us to do this. Our graduates are known for their loyalty to their alma mater: we have led the nation in percentage of alumni giving for fourteen of the past sixteen years.

When we initiated our own residential study-abroad programs a decade ago, it took us a few years to convince many of our students that they should study abroad. We won that battle--about two-thirds of our graduates have now studied abroad--partly because of the shape our residential programs took. Typically, our students travel to a foreign site with other Centre students. Although a few do home-stays, the vast majority live in apartments or flats with other Centre students. A Centre professor they are likely to know serves as the program's director, orients them to studying abroad, and teaches some of their courses. Even though they may be living in London or Strasbourg or Merida or Quito, they soon feel comfortable enough. In our ten-year experience, only one or two students have returned before the program has ended, and all the anecdotal information is extravagantly positive, as one would expect. Over the years, different directors have used various strategies to get the students immersed in the foreign culture, but this has been difficult to do, given the shape of our programs.

Quite frankly, we do not think we have done a very good job, on the whole, of preparing our students for their study-abroad experiences. And we have done almost nothing in the way of re-orienting them back to campus life after their journeys. We seek tactics and ideas from other institutions.

Typically, once students are selected in the prior spring, they meet two or three times as a group with the faculty member who will be serving as director. But mostly, these meetings are to handle administrative matters such as course selection, airplane tickets, what to take, and the like. Some directors have tried to do more than this, with mixed success at best. Students are so bound up in the academic and social demands of campus life that it is difficult to get them to shift their focus. We have tried everything from a regular course to informal dinner meetings--but again, with very limited success, we believe. Perhaps the most successful preparation we give is a required, year-long freshman humanities course that is grounded in the classical world and pays a good deal of attention to art analysis and serious music.

We have done almost nothing to reorient students back to campus after their abroad experience. This seems to us a real missed opportunity.

Finally, we would raise the philosophical issue of whether orientation and reorientation is an anachronistic concept, based on an earlier reality where traveling abroad was an arduous undertaking to cultures that were less tied together than they presently are.

Participants:

Name: Ken Keffer

Title: NEH Distinguished Professor of the Humanities and Professor of Modern Languages

E-mail: keffer@centre.edu

Presentation: Orientation and Re-entry at Centre College: A Minimalist Approach, Saturday, 9:00-10:30

Biographical Information: Ken Keffer has worked as a carpenter, portrait painter and professor of modern languages. He has twice directed Centre's year-long residential program in Strasbourg, France. This month his first book, A Publication History of the Rival Editions of Montaigne's Essays, is being published by Mellen Press. At present, Ken Keffer is NEH Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Centre College.

Name:Nancy Lackey

Title: Vice President and Dean of Student Life

E-mail: lackey@centre.edu

Presentation: Orientation and Re-entry at Centre College: A Minimalist Approach, Saturday, 9:00-10:30

Biographical Information: Nancy Lackey has been at Centre College for 15 years, serving also as Associate Dean, and Director of Residence Life and Counseling during that period. A graduate of the University of Virginia and Mary Washington College, Ms. Lackey holds degrees in Counseling, Student Personnel Administration, and Geography.

Name: Milton Reigelman

Title: Professor of English & Director of Study-Abroad Programs

E-mail: reigelma@centre.edu

Presentation: Orientation and Re-entry at Centre College: A Minimalist Approach, Saturday, 9:00-10:30

Biographical Information: Milton Reigelman teaches humanities and American literature and directs international programs at Centre College, where he has served as associate academic dean, vice-president for planning and resources, special assistant to the president, and acting president. He was a senior Fulbright professor in Poland and Czechoslovakia in 79-80, in the U.S.S.R. in '87, directed the Centre-in-France program in 96-97, and has just returned from directing the Centre-in-London program.