Dartblog

The Reverend Kent Dahlberg has written in with an informative comment on the collection of data in order to make decisions.

Rev. Dahlberg and his wife Denise have worked in campus ministry with Dartmouth students and professors since 1988, while raising their three children in Hanover. Following his degree in Biology at the U. of Illinois in 1980, Kent did graduate work in theology at the International School of Theology in California and at Westminster College at Oxford. He is currently establishing an independent ministry at the College called Integrare, which focuses on integrating faith into life at Dartmouth and beyond. Kent’s wife Denise is the women’s coordinator for the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, which involves some 65 Dartmouth athletes on 14 of the 20 women’s varsity teams.

Our son Ethan went to Williams College (2002-2006) and so we got to know that institution from the inside. In some ways Williams is very similar to Dartmouth and in other ways it is quite distinct. In any case, Williams regularly surveys its alumni at five-year intervals to see how their undergraduate education is holding up over time. How is it serving them in the “real world”? What elements of their Williams experience are helping them most? In what ways do they wish Williams had better prepared them for what they are doing now (or have run into)?

From these thousands of alumni surveys, two consistent education themes emerged:

1. Williams College grads wish they had developed an even stronger ability to write clearly, concisely and well.

2. Williams College grads wish they had developed better presentation skills and confidence in public speaking.

As a result, Williams has been adjusting the school’s teaching, course projects and classroom experiences across the curriculum to bolster these two dimensions in particular. I don’t think Williams was previously negligent or below-average in its approach to students’ writing skills and public speaking. Rather, as that school’s obviously bright, capable and accomplished graduates go through life they find there is still plenty of room for improvement in a basic area: communicating effectively, in their professional work as well as in their personal lives. And so, Williams is striving to be creative and intentional, re-aligning its faculty and educational priorities accordingly.

While Dartmouth is now in its fifth year of trying to develop a means to assess the quality of student writing, Williams seems to have decided, pragmatically, to trust the wisdom of its recent alumni in bolstering its writing and speaking education.

Will the Little Ivy get it right the first time and augment the writng curriculum exactly as requested by her graduates? Probably not. But the school has made a start, and Williams faculty members can correct their aim as time goes on. My bet is that they will be ahead of Dartmouth by the time the College on the Hill develops the perfect assessment method.

Note: A five-year-out questionnaire seems like a good idea for Dartmouth, too.