Academics at DU: Intense, Personal and International

The University of Denver’s academic environment is steeped in tradition and advanced by innovation. Although the institution’s history is rich with visionary leaders and significant advancements, few stretches in the University’s timeline have been as transformative as the last decade, particularly for academic initiatives in undergraduate education. And, if Chancellor Robert Coombe’s vision is to be realized, the next decade will see similar seismic shifts and improvements for graduate and professional education.

The Undergraduate Experience

“The undergraduate experience today is vastly different from what it was a decade ago on a number of fronts,” Provost Gregg Kvistad said. “The first is intensity.”

Thanks to a $10 million gift in 2002 from DU alumni Tom and Cydney Marsico, the University was able to invest in a fundamental change of its undergraduate program. According to Kvistad, DU explored and tested a number of different ideas that would dramatically improve the undergraduate experience, and each one of them involved ratcheting up intensity. Greater intensity requires more faculty, and this gift allowed DU to create 44 more full-time appointed faculty positions. “That was the first step in providing a more personal, intense undergraduate experience,” he said.

Perhaps nothing embodies that intensity so much as the institution’s celebrated first-year seminars, where students connect with a mentor who prepares them for the rigors ahead. “Experientially, the intensity is felt as soon as students arrive on campus,” Kvistad explained. “Even before classes start, first-year students are assigned to an adviser with 14 other first-year students, and they take their first-year seminar together.”

In the interests of capitalizing on momentum generated by the Marsico Initiative, the University also has taken steps to re-imagine its general education requirements. In spring 2009, the Faculty Senate and Undergraduate Council approved a new common curriculum that reinforces student learning outcomes called for by the initiative. These outcomes were shaped by the institution’s vision, values, mission and goals.

The new common curriculum, the creation of a campus-wide faculty committee that worked throughout the year, will go into effect in the 2010–2011 academic year. It continues the University’s emphasis on writing while striving to cultivate analytical and scientific inquiry through courses that span the traditional liberal arts disciplines. Just as important, it introduces a writing-intensive advanced seminar, capped at 15 students, into the curriculum. Similar to first-year seminars, advanced seminars will allow students to pursue topics outside their majors while benefitting from highly personalized instruction. In advanced seminars, students will be called upon to integrate and apply knowledge and to reason effectively.

Other improvements in undergraduate education emphasize global awareness. As Kvistad noted, “We’ve changed the writing curriculum completely; we offer experiential learning opportunities, internships, service learning. But probably the most dramatic change is the study abroad opportunity.”

The most recent Open Doors report, issued by the Institute of International Education, finds that DU ranks second highest in the country among doctoral institutions in the number of students participating in study abroad and international experiences. In fact, DU sends nearly 75 percent of its undergraduate students abroad for study. The national average is in the single digits.

Carol Fairweather, director of study abroad programs, attributes this success to an initiative established eight years ago: Cherrington Global Scholars.

“This program took a tremendous commitment from the University because it is quite expensive,” she said, explaining that, for the price of normal tuition, students may participate in any of the 150 international programs offered. DU pays for their travel to and from the site, for their visas and sometimes for health expenses. Students who receive financial aid, scholarships and even housing grants may apply those dollars to their international experience.

“I don’t know of any other university where students get these benefits,” Fairweather said. The University budgets more than $10 million annually for the study abroad experience.

Thanks to the program, the culture on campus is changing. “Students who travel abroad understand what it’s like to be so far from home, to see things from a different cultural perspective and even to be part of a minority population,” Fairweather said. “It also gives them empathy for the international students on our campus.”

Eric Gould, vice provost for internationalization, sees great opportunities ahead for international study. “As study abroad becomes more and more a natural part of gaining a liberal education at DU, so faculty and academic units want to integrate it better into the curriculum. We’re trying to make the whole experience more rigorous for students, both academically and in terms of gaining intercultural experiences,” he said. In addition, the program is striving to ensure that students can integrate their study abroad course work into their majors and minors.

As a result, requirements are changing. Students will be asked to keep an online portfolio of their academic and cultural experiences for assessment purposes. They will be required to take at least one course in the history, society, economics or culture of the host country, along with at least one course in their major or minor.

Gould and his office also are working with the Center for Multicultural Excellence to propose a minor in intercultural studies, which will be developed by faculty in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, where the minor will be housed. It will offer credit for in-depth analysis of the region where a student is studying, for a detailed reflection on an international service learning project, or for a multicultural community engagement experience in the United States, such as work on a reservation or in an inner-city environment. In addition, the study abroad office plans to hire a program coordinator of international community engagement and service learning. This individual will develop long-term academically based service learning options for the Cherrington program.

Revisiting Graduate and Professional Education

In his fall 2008 Convocation speech, Chancellor Coombe committed the University to a concentrated effort to improve graduate education: “I’d suggest that it is high time that we devote at least an equal amount of attention and resources to [graduate students], and to the faculty scholarship, research and creative work on which they rely. After all, together these represent more than half of all our annual net revenue and a still greater proportion of our reputation and stature in the academic world.”

The first step in these efforts was taken in spring 2009, when the University created two new positions to benefit the graduate and professional programs. Where once they were served by a single vice provost for graduate studies and research, they now will be served by two associate provosts, one responsible for research and one responsible for graduate studies.

Barbara Wilcots—a DU alumna, an associate professor of English and a former associate dean of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences—was chosen to be the new associate provost for graduate studies. She will oversee graduate admissions, graduate financial aid, doctoral fellowships and efforts to enhance graduate program quality, including initiatives to make international study and research efforts increasingly available. Just as important, Wilcots will work closely with deans and faculty members to promote opportunities for collaboration and interdisciplinary programming.

As Kvistad sees it, such collaboration is the future of graduate professional education in the United States. “The premise behind this position is that the old disciplinary boundaries are simply becoming less relevant, and that we need interdisciplinary strategies, particularly in the areas of law, business and international studies,” he explained.

Changes to the graduate-level experience are particularly challenging because of its decentralized structure. Each college and school runs its own programs, making it difficult to make sweeping changes across the institution. Rather, advancements will be made unit by unit but also in programs that cross disciplinary boundaries. In some cases, changes will include the addition of faculty. “We have already made commitments to the Daniels College of Business and the Sturm College of Law for the funding necessary to increase their faculty numbers,” Kvistad said.

Kvistad has set his sights on making sure that graduate and professional students realize value for their investment in their education. “What is the value proposition that underlies graduate education today?” he asked. “It is an expensive thing to do. In the professional areas, employers need to be convinced that a DU graduate degree is a valuable thing for an employee to have, and students need to believe that a University of Denver degree is worth the expense. The only way that can happen is if it truly is.”

DU, he added, is well positioned to address the value question convincingly. “When we are successful, we will have an array of graduate programs, many of them interdisciplinary in nature and of the highest quality possible,” he said. “The goal is not necessarily to increase the size of our graduate programs. In some cases, we want to offer very intense niche programs that attract the very best students, that are taught by the very best faculty and that offer plentiful financial aid. We do not strive to be a large university, but we do want to be absolutely excellent in everything we do.”