Feature: A New MSU Residential College Focusing on Arts and Humanities

            MSU’s new residential college offers students a new global and interdisciplinary emphasist on arts and humanities.

            In Fall 2007, students choosing to attend MSU will have a new option—a new residential college that combines a global and interdisciplinary emphasis with a residential living-learning setting to enhance the undergraduate experience in the arts and humanities at MSU.

            Its mission is to weave together the passion, imagination, humor, and candor of the arts and humanities to promote individual well-being and the common good.

            The College, which will open to students in Fall 2007, will provide the supportive environment, small faculty-student ratios, easy access to faculty, and opportunities for mentoring that have characterized MSU’s highly successful James Madison College and Lyman Briggs School, which provide residential programs focusing respectively on public affairs and the natural sciences.

            In keeping with MSU President Simon’s Boldness by Design initiative, the RCAH recognizes both the importance of a supportive living-learning center to an optimal undergraduate experience and the need to equip students to live and work effectively as global citizens of the twenty-first century.

            The communication and writing skills, visual literacy, and sensitivity to culture and transcultural change developed during their studies in the RCAH will equip graduates for a wide range of careers in the creative arts or in global or community service, as well as for academic careers in the arts and humanities. The RCAH also will provide an excellent foundation for those wishing to pursue graduate study in law, medicine, or other specialized fields.

            “The rich interplay between the diverse range of arts and humanities offerings here at Michigan State will become more fully realized by way of RCAH’s integrated and experiential approach to learning,” says MSU President Lou Anna K. Simon. “The College’s unique curricular approach of creating individualized programs for each student—paired with its commitment to foster an engaging living/learning environment—will provide an exciting, new opportunity for students.”

A FLEXIBLE AND INNOVATIVE CURRICULUM

           Through a lively combination of integrated seminars, tutorials, creative workshops, and civic engagement activities, students will study the complex ways in which history, language, visual culture, music, and ethical reflection are woven together.

            While all RCAH students will graduate with an interdisciplinary major in the arts and humanities, the curriculum is designed to be flexible, encouraging students to tailor their studies to their own interests and abilities through elective pathways to other majors and specializations. Working with a faculty advisor, students will complement their RCAH core studies with courses from outside the College that cohere in a way relevant to each student’s career goals. Possible pathways include:

            Language and Culture

• Childhood and Society
• Art and Public Life
• Nature and Culture
• Technology and Creativity

            The curriculum is designed to facilitate pursuing a second major or specialization if students desire. A student studying criminal justice, for example, might find the foreign language study and cultural understanding provided by the RCAH curriculum of great value in his or her career. Another student might incorporate studies in digital media into the Technology and Creativity pathway. Students interested in music or art may also enroll in performance or studio classes while majoring in the RCAH. As a result, no two programs will be identical, and students will be prepared to apply and adapt their skills in creative ways.

WORLD LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY

            As part of their studies, students in the RCAH will become proficient in a foreign language, both to develop understanding and respect for other cultures and to enable them to communicate and build connections with people from other cultural backgrounds. To that end, a World Language Proficiency Center, housed within the College but shared with other MSU language departments, will provide language assessment services and help students plan a strategy for developing the required level of competency. In addition, the Center will provide access to foreign language television, foreign newspapers and books, and other resources.

            Students also will participate in a variety of language immersion experiences, including study abroad and local study away programs.

            “The goal is to integrate language learning into the lived experience of students,” says Acting Dean Stephen Esquith. “This may be through conventional means like world language tables and study abroad programs, but also through co-curricular activities—plays and performances and other student-initiated programs that will emphasize the value of a multilingual approach to our living and learning together.”

            The foreign language element has sparked wide interest among prospective students, according to Scot Yoder, Assistant to the Dean and RCAH faculty member. In addition to pursuing commonly taught languages such as Spanish, French, or German, a number of students have expressed interest in learning Chinese or Arabic, languages that are becoming increasingly important on a global scale.

            “Fluency in a foreign language used to be the exception to the rule, but is rapidly becoming the expected norm for many college graduates,” says MSU Provost Kim Wilcox. “RCAH provides students with not only language, but cultivates immersion opportunities, and will enhance our graduates’ chances for success in the global environment.”

ENGAGED LEARNING           

            A key element of the RCAH curriculum will be that of engaged learning, i.e., students will be active learners rather than passive recipients of knowledge. For example, all students will gain hands-on creative experience in workshops taught by faculty or visiting artists in such areas as creative writing, poetry, painting, music, or theatre. In the process, students will experience the excitement, the pleasure, the improvisational nature of learning as their new skills are internalized.

            A related concept, civic engagement, or active involvement in the community, also will play a critical role in the College. While MSU has a rich heritage of outreach and service in which students often have played a vital role, the Residential College seeks to engage students on every level and in every area.

            Students will have the opportunity to work in schools, refugee centers, community centers, and other venues. The goal is not service per se, although service will occur, but rather a reaching out, with mutual cooperation and learning between students and those with whom they work.

            “One of the goals of the Residential College is to integrate community service and civic engagement into the curriculum and the major as a whole, not just into one particular course as a module or an extra credit experience,” Esquith says. “This kind of active experiential learning can shape how students approach their other creative and intellectual work.”

            A hallmark of the RCAH will be its collaborative nature, as the College works with other MSU departments and colleges as well as with community partners. Students also will collaborate as they work with each other, with faculty and staff, and with members of the community in their civic engagement activities.

            Such collaboration will be important in preparing students for future careers and professions. “We work in groups; that’s how work is done in the world,” says Esquith. “We’re teaching the value of listening to other people’s views and being able to engage with other people as collaborators in a common project.”

A STATE OF THE ART FACILITY

            About 125 students are expected to comprise the inaugural first-year class, with a goal of about 500 total students within four years. Students will be housed in the newly renovated Snyder-Philips complex. A new three-story facility connected to the two dormitories will house faculty and administrative offices, an art studio, music practice rooms, an art gallery for displaying visiting artist and student work, and even a small theatre for student performances and creative initiatives. Classrooms and seminar rooms, as well as the World Language Proficiency Center, will be equipped with the latest in educational technology.

            In addition, a wireless coffee house will provide ambiance—as well as a quick latte or cappuccino—and a new state-of-the art dining facility will feature an ever-changing menu, with choices ranging from world cuisine to cook-to-order stations to traditional Midwestern comfort food.

SHAPING THE FUTURE           

            In a College that stresses student engagement, it comes as no surprise that students have been involved from the very beginning in discussions about the proposed College, serving in focus groups and on design and planning committees. And they will continue to help shape the College, helping to plan the following year’s curriculum, organize co-curricular activities, and develop the College’s governance structure. In so doing they will both utilize their developing skills and further hone them for use in the wider community and beyond.

            As stated in an RCAH planning committee report, “Students, faculty, and community partners in the arts and humanities have the power to focus critical attention on the public issues we face and the opportunities we have to resolve them. The arts and humanities not only give us the pleasure of living in the moment, but also the wisdom to make sound judgments and good choices. The mission, then, is to see things as they are, to hear things as others may, to tell these stories as they should be told, and to contribute to the making of a better world.”

            Carol A. Cole, ’75 (Social Work), ’96 (English), is the office administrator in the Residential College in the Arts and Humanities.  For more information about the new college, visit  www.rcah.msu.edu.