In Pursuit of Excellence

Ask 10 people on the street to define academic excellence and, in addition to some strange looks, you’ll likely get 10 completely different answers. Ask 10 people at Willamette and you’ll hear words like collaborative, creative, engaging, exciting, diverse, vital and active. But, what exactly is it? How do we define academic excellence?

It’s not an unusual question among Willamette’s faculty and staff. In fact, Carol Long, College of Liberal Arts interim dean, held a series of faculty dinners last year to help define academic excellence. “At first, each faculty member had his or her own definition,” she said, laughing at the memory. “The problem is that excellence is a cipher and has no content itself. It gets defined as we go along. But we agreed that academic excellence means intellectual engagement, openness to new ideas and the hands-on involvement of students.”

For Thabiti Lewis, assistant professor of English, academic excellence is akin to good jazz. “Academic excellence, like good jazz, constantly evolves,” he said. “It’s a bold, experimental collaborative effort between ideas explored, conveyed and expressed in the classroom and in one’s research. It requires loose play between seemingly disparate tunes (teaching and research) that together, with proper timing and cooperation, become a seamless product.”

According to President Lee Pelton, academic excellence isn’t just an idea. It’s who we are and what we constantly strive to be. “Academic excellence is the core of what we do,” said Pelton in a recent interview. “It’s the essence of what we promise our students. Academic excellence is what prepares our students to be active participants in a democratic society and assume leadership roles in their work, their communities, their nation and around the world.”

Academic excellence, in fact, is so important at Willamette that “strengthening academic excellence” is the number one goal of the University’s long-range plan. The plan states: “We must invest in people, programs and facilities that strengthen academic excellence in each of our schools and colleges.”

Collaboration
While academic excellence may be difficult to define, the elements that set the stage for it are not. Collaboration and openness to new ideas are two key elements. For Jenny Orr, associate professor of computer science, it means trying out new ideas in the laboratory and in the classroom and working with students on senior and independent projects. “Academic excellence is the desire and ability to seek out new knowledge and to explore and exchange ideas,” she said. “The only way we can grow personally and as a society is through the discovery of new and better ways of thinking and functioning.”

This kind of creative exploration is exactly the purpose of Willamette programs like the Science Collaborative Research Program (SCRP), which provides funds for student-teacher research projects, and the Carson Undergraduate Research Grant, which offers support for students to undertake independent scholarly, creative or professional research.

Allison Ervine ’04 and Caitlin Hansen ’04 wrote and illustrated two children’s books for their Carson project. The project, which culminated in a reading and a lesson for second graders, affirmed for Ervine that she wants to be a teacher. “Doing the Carson project has given me greater confidence and showed me that I absolutely love being in the classroom with the kids.”

That kind of excitement and engagement is important for Willamette’s faculty too. One goal of Willamette’s Long-Range Plan is to provide faculty with more opportunities for research, collaboration with students and other activities to keep teachers fresh and engaged. Rhetoric Professor Robert Trapp finds this kind of stimulation in the work he’s doing with debate students in former communist countries such as Kazakhstan, Macedonia, Romania, Lithuania and Poland. For the past three years, he’s been taking Willamette students to Eastern Europe and pairing them with foreign students in debate competitions. He believes teaching debate, and the critical thinking skills that go with it, may help solve many of the problems the emerging countries face. “These students are so thirsty for debate you can’t believe it,” said Trapp, his voice rising with excitement. “They see the potential that debate holds for their countries, the practical application of it, and they’re very excited.”

Selectivity
More students are applying to Willamette than ever and those students have higher g.p.a. and stronger SAT scores. In 1999, for instance, 44.3 percent of freshmen applicants to Willamette were in the top 10 percent of their high school class; in 2003, that number jumped to 50 percent. The median high school g.p.a. for the current incoming class is 3.85. Nearly half have a g.p.a. of 3.75 or higher. The mean SAT score this year is an impressive 1240. Because we had a record number of applications – 2,164 – our admit rate decreased from 83 percent last year to 74 percent, which means we’re more selective about who becomes a Bearcat.

Willamette faculty continues to be competitive, ranking fourth nationally in the number of faculty Fulbright grants received in the last decade.

Another key element is a diverse student body and faculty. “Diversity is a defining characteristic of being excellent, especially in an academic environment where diverse ideas and perspectives are so important to intellectual growth and maturity,” said Pelton.

Lewis agrees. “One finds academic excellence where professor and student are unafraid of embracing creativity and the unorthodox. Paramount to achieving this is diversity in pedagogy, faculty, staff and student populations.”

Incoming freshman Sinead Brien said, ”If I were to design my ideal university, it would have excellent academics and small classes.”

Small classes are a hallmark of Willamette’s academic excellence. “Our very small average class size is a measure of our academic excellence,” said Pelton. “So is our 10-to-1 student-faculty ratio. It means more discussions than lectures and more student-faculty collaboration.”

Pelton is understandably proud of Willamette’s academic excellence. However, he’s not content with the status quo. “Academic excellence is an ideal to be strived for always. As long as we stay on a steady course toward that ideal, we will do fine.”

- Bobbie Hasselbring