ExCollege celebrates 50 years of student inclusion, curriculum expansion
March 10This year, the Experimental College (ExCollege) at Tufts University marks its 50th anniversary since it established its first course on comparative literature in 1964. After marking a new wave of interdisciplinary learning in liberal arts education, the program has continued to expand and adapt to the needs of student and faculty alike.As far as we know, we are the oldest experimental college in the country, said Robyn Gittleman, director of the ExCollege. We are very much the program that people come to ... [when one] wants to start something up.Associate Director of the Experimental College Howard Woolf discussed the origin of the program.[Experimental College] was a term that had been known in higher education as [a] way ... to try things outside your bylaws, basically, Woolf said. And the first suggestion on [the] part of the faculty was ... [for] a way to teach courses that our departments wont let us teach right now. And thats how it began.What started as a program aiming to expand course topics soon became a way to incorporate community members and students into the teaching process. Today, these voices are key elements of the ExCollege, according to Woolf. It remained a faculty playground ... for a few years, he said. And then something interesting happened ... Within the first year in change, the faculty who were involved decided students should [also] be intimately involved in the planning and running of the place, and they invited students to be on the ExCollege board. Additionally, within its first few years, professionals from the Boston area began to teach courses through the ExCollege.These [ExCollege Instructors] were largely people who were activists in the greater Boston community, Woolf said. [They were] working on issues such as womens sexuality, bussing issues in Boston at the time [and] neighborhood inequities.In 2014, the ExCollege continues to examine modern-day issues from an academic perspective. This semesters courses cover topics such as transgender studies, Obamacare, the democratic transition in Libya and the participatory culture within social media.Rebekah Stiles, a program assistant for the ExCollege, said she believes it is important to have a curriculum that is up-to-date in terms of current events.We can be very immediate about whats happening, regarding contemporary world, culture, social [and] economic issues, Stiles said. We can be there at the front line.In addition to bringing in instructors from outside the Tufts community, within its first five years, the ExCollege began allowing students to teach classes, according to Woolf.That was ... an idea that, for Tufts, was quite ... radically [and] culturally [different] in education let students teach courses, he said. And that proliferated like mushrooms. There were 20 to 30 student-taught courses for a number of years and that program kind of split into two parts.Now, students are able to create and teach elective courses offered to all Tufts students, and are also able to teach in either the Explorations or Perspectives programs, which offer peer advisory courses to first-year students.In the Explorations and Perspectives programs, upperclassmen can create their own courses, where they are able to act as both instructors and advisors for freshmen. Explorations courses cover a variety of subjects, while Perspectives courses focus more specifically on topics in film and media. Both programs provide important guidance to new students from peer and faculty advisors, according to Woolf.Over the years weve had a few longitudinal studies done, and students who have gone through Explorations or Perspectives have done better, Woolf said. Theyve had an easier time of it. Theyve got[ten] their sea legs under them more quickly.The leaders of Explorations and Perspectives classes also benefit from the programs. Senior Kaveh Veyssi taught a Perspectives course titled The Business of Hollywood, and says the experience was a positive one. Learning about [the material] and having to do all this research for the class was, personally, a great thing, Veyssi said. It was essentially an outlet for me to share what I [had] learned.A subcommittee of two students and one faculty member interviews prospective instructors for ExCollege courses, according to Stiles. The ExCollege board, which consists of five faculty members and five students, makes the final decision.Everybodys vote is exactly the same, student board member junior Marcy Regalado said. And there will be times [when] Im sitting in a board meeting and a student will sway, easily, an adult in the room.This kind of student-faculty dynamic makes for a department where the student opinion is appreciated, and where new programs can be nurtured and old programs can continue to thrive, according to fellow student board member junior Kumar Ramanathan.I think all of those perspectives are really necessary in that these faculty members ... have a unique perspective on how teaching happens at Tufts and whats being offered, Ramanathan said. The students do the same thing from the learning side. And then theres [the] staff at the ExCollege, who really have the experience and the history ... they know what works [and] what doesnt work.12
