Students and faculty gathered Friday afternoon to envision Tufts in 2020 in light of potential trends that could affect the future of higher education.
Over lunch in the Chase Dining Room at Carmichael Dining Hall, tables of faculty, administration and student representatives debated "Tufts in the Year 2020," the theme of this year's Feedback program organized by the Experimental College (ExCollege).
The discussion touched on topics such as pre−major advising, the growing emphasis on pre−professional training, standardized testing and the role of teaching in the tenure process.
A similar event was held a decade ago discussing what Tufts would look like in 2010, and organizers wanted to replicate that conversation.
"Those things [predicted 10 years ago] haven't necessarily come to fruition today, but some of their predictions have actually come true," senior Ally Gimbel, a member of the ExCollege board, said in opening remarks to the program. "We want to mimic that and talk about what Tufts is going to look like in 2020 with everything changing economically and socially in the world around us." Gimbel is also the outreach director for the Daily.
In his keynote address intended to start off the discussion, Provost and Senior Vice President Jamshed Bharucha expressed his belief that the future of education would be one of increased integration, whether between research and teaching, across disciplines or between undergraduate and graduate study.
Bharucha noted that his own personal experiences with students showed that their long−term retention of what they had learned in college is often minimal.
"The dirty little secret about learning is that we forget," he said. "As educators, we forget that students forget."
Pointing out that students often distinctly recalled their work on a thesis or when partnering with a faculty member on research while forgetting what had been taught in lecture, Bharucha expressed his belief that integrating "active learning" more seamlessly into teaching was the solution to improving education in the future.
"One of the things that makes retention of learning more robust is … involving the students in the process of the discovery of knowledge," he said. "Integration of teaching and research means that faculty members need to find more ways to bring students into their area of study and give them some ownership."
Bharucha later told the Daily in an interview that he firmly believes that this balance and integration of the two are possible.
"I feel very strongly we should hold our professors to the highest levels of teaching excellence so that tenure is not assured if somebody is not committed to undergraduate teaching," he told the Daily. "My vision for the future for Tufts is that the faculty be passionate teachers and thought leaders in their fields."
The second theme Bharucha emphasized was globalization and the growth of technology.
"Your experience here at Tufts is going to be much more globalized and international than today," he said.
Learning how to adapt to this new technology, Bharucha added, would be critical to the future of education.
"There will be seamless engagement in the cyber world," he said. "I think what that means is that as educators we will not be able to fight all this information coming at you … we're going to have to join it and be part of this live stream of information."
Bharucha later expanded on this idea of the challenge technology poses to educators.
"Technology is going to be much more advanced, and students are going to be more easily distracted … because they'll have the whole world at their fingertips," he told the Daily. "It's going to be important for us as teachers to join our students in their use of technology, so that will require some innovation in how we teach."
Bharucha highlighted, however, the fact that a tremendous opportunity presented itself along with the challenge.
"It should become easier for teachers to incorporate global experiences and other cultures into their teaching," he told the Daily.
Associate Director of the ExCollege Howard Woolf at the end of the roundtable discussion summarized some of the sentiments he had heard as he was making his rounds from table to table, including the suggestions that it should be mandatory for senior faculty to be pre−major advisers and that standardized tests should be avoided.
Director of the ExCollege Robyn Gittleman at the end of the event told the Daily that she was pleased with how the event went.
"I think it went well," she said. "It's great that we had so many students and faculty at the same table, as well as faculty who didn't know each other."
Bharucha said that the discussion at his table was a success. "It was a great discussion … It was great to get student's feedback — it's always important for me to get students' feedback," he said.
He also lauded events such as Feedback that make an effort to create opportunities for faculty and students to interact.
"[Such events] are tremendous … in fact, some of the students at the table were saying we should do this more often," Bharucha said.
