Look out, slackers

FREMONT, Neb. — The student sitting slumped and mute near the back of a Midland Lutheran College classroom better beware.

College leaders are on to you, bub, and they are rolling out a plan meant to make underachieving oh-so-difficult.

Starting next year, every Midland freshman will be required to finish an internship by graduation. Every class on Midland’s campus will eventually feature at least two weeks of hands-on experience and a healthy dose of student-led presentations and discussions.

Worst of all, you’ll be encouraged — strongly encouraged — to pick not one major but two.

Slackers never had it so bad.

“Students are too used to thinking, ‘I don’t own this knowledge. I’ll do this to please my parents and ... to get this piece of paper when I graduate,’” Henry Smorynski, Midland’s academic dean, said of most college educations.

“But when you leave college, you need to work quickly. You need to problem-solve. You need to adapt. And that’s the paradigm shift we’re interested in.”

Midland’s radical curriculum shift is meant to help students prepare for a working world unrecognizable to their grandparents. Today’s college graduates, for example, can expect to change careers at least a half-dozen times before they retire, Midland leaders say.

The new plan is also meant to spark a Midland comeback after years of financial struggles.

The Fremont school appears to desperately need that turnaround: Head count enrollment plummeted to 716 students this year, continuing a 25 percent drop since 2003.

“We’ve gotten into a rut, and every so often we need to repackage to excite everyone,” said Alcyone Scott, a longtime English professor and chairman of the faculty.

Says Smorynski: “This school needed a jolt.”

The curriculum meant to provide that jolt is expected to be gradually rolled out starting in the fall semester of 2010, though that timeline — and some elements of the plan itself — might be altered by President Ben Sasse, who was named the school’s new leader on Tuesday.

Sasse said he generally supported the plan, though he would review it along with all other aspects of Midland Lutheran during a five-month internal review.

“There’s lots of energy at the school” for the new curriculum, Sasse said. “The idea that we should get students more engaged in the world ... is a pretty exciting piece of this.”

Next fall, students in all freshman-level classes will spend only 12 weeks inside the classroom. The two other weeks of the semester will be used for hands-on learning — a marketing class might design a business plan for a local insurance company, for example, or a public health class might split into teams and debate the pros and cons of health care reform.

A similar curriculum will be expanded to upper-level courses as next year’s freshmen proceed through college.

Scott is already testing the new curriculum in one of her English courses, asking students to adapt a book into their own screenplays, act them out and then hold a classroom Academy Awards ceremony.

“The trick is to get students engaged in learning as opposed to consuming,” she said.

The hands-on learning won’t end there. All freshmen who enter Midland next fall will be required to find and finish an internship by the time they graduate.

Smorynski envisions future students signing on to intern at Fremont and Omaha-area hospitals, banks and nonprofits. The school is developing a program to help place the students in internships, he said.

All the practical learning is coupled with the goal that each student major in at least two subjects.

Many majors will be compressed to 30 credit hours, meaning that students can easily major in, say, business and psychology and still graduate in four years.

The overarching goal is to offer students a broad yet deep education. The business-psychology major, for example, could either go into business with an understanding of psychology, or become a psychologist who knows business.

The other goal: Shake professors and students out of their traditional collegiate roles, with professors standing at the front of the room and lecturing and students sitting near the back and listening. Or not listening.

The new curriculum emphasizes that professors should be a “guide on the side” instead of a “sage on the stage,” Smorynski said, stepping aside to allow students to drive the discussion and debate one another.

Jillian Kinzie, associate director for the Center for Postsecondary Research at Indiana University, said Midland’s changes closely follow what researchers have known for decades: Students hit the educational jackpot if their schools emphasize things like internships and student-led class discussions, she said.

The Midland faculty seemingly agrees. The new plan, put to a vote, won 88 percent support from Midland’s professors.

Midland leaders admit that the changes are easier now, when the school is struggling financially.

The school sliced $1.1 million out of its $16 million total budget in 2006, controversially lopping off large parts of the music, theater and journalism departments and creating an uproar that led to the resignations of the school’s president and executive vice president.

Enrollment has continued to slide since then, an ominous sign for a private college that brings in the vast majority of its money from tuition.

But an aggressive fundraising push is beginning to bear fruit, said outgoing interim President Stephen Fritz, and will offset some of the lost revenue.

Steven Bullock, chairman of Midland’s board of trustees, said several major donors had lined up to help the school fund new programs — and potentially ramp up enrollment — after Sasse, the new president, completes his extensive review of the school.

Before Sasse’s appointment, Midland leaders said they were counting on the new curriculum to spark new interest and stop the enrollment slide.

“I recognize the value of this,” said Fritz. “Presidents are always looking for a competitive advantage. I believe we have one here.”

Contact the writer:

444-1064, matthew.hansen@owh.com

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