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Sense of Community on Small Campuses

Jared Hobson — Wed, 18 May 2016 14:18:21 +0000

Many students trying to find the right college view small campus size as a drawback. But when college admissions expert Mark Montgomery visited Trinity University, he was struck by the sense of community and neighborliness he found at this small institution.

TRANSCRIPT:

I’m here on the campus of Trinity University and it’s a small place. It’s only 2,400 students or so, and I just want to highlight the advantage of going to a small place where people recognize you. I was in a session this morning with an academic dean who was presenting on the curriculum and I went up to him afterwards and introduced myself and said hi, asked him a couple quick questions, and then left, had lunch. And I was wandering around the campus later and I’m just walking down the path and here comes that same academic dean. He walks right up to me and says, “Hi, Mark, how are you? How’s your day been?” Starts asking me a few questions and I start asking him questions, we have a little 15 minute interchange, I learned a lot more about Trinity.

Small but Big Community

That would not happen on a very large campus. I’ve been on this campus maybe five or six hours, and already, somebody like him notices me. What would it be like for a student who is on this campus every day for a semester, how many people would they run into like that, whether it’s students, whether it’s faculty, whether it’s administrators? They’re going to see you over and over and people are going to say, “Hey, hi, how are you?”

People worry sometimes about a small school, that everybody’s going to be all up in your face because you can’t be anonymous. You know, one of the problems with American society today is we’re all kind of anonymous, and I don’t know that that’s a good thing. I think that these kinds of environments where people would come up to me after five hours, meeting me for a few minutes and then coming up to me five hours later and saying, “Hi, how are you?” That’s the kind of thing that would only happen on a small campus like this.

So if you’re looking for that intimate experience where you really want to be somebody that people know, you don’t want to be just a number, come to a place like Trinity, it’s really awesome, it really feels great when people recognize who you are and take an interest in you as a person. So think about that.

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Admissions Adviser on Stetson University

Jared Hobson — Fri, 08 Apr 2016 14:16:56 +0000

Expert educational consultant Mark Montgomery reviews Stetson University in sunny Florida. If you’re trying to find the right college, this one may be it with its myriad opportunities for leadership and community engagement.

TRANSCRIPT:

So I’m here on the campus of Stetson University in DeLand, Florida, central Florida. And when I visit colleges I try to meet with admissions officers if I can to just get a sense. To kind of get the quick and condensed version of what they’re looking for. And what they offer as an institution. And so I sat with two admissions officers today and asked them, “So what are the three things I need to know about Stetson University?”

The Size of the School

So the first one is the size. The size of the school is small, it’s a little bit under 3,000 students, and the size offers two advantages. Academically, there’s a lot of connection between students and their faculty. Stetson still requires a senior research project of all their majors. Business is a little bit different. But all majors are required to do a major research project in their senior year.

So that’s one aspect academically. And then the other piece is that in terms of size, the leadership potential or possibilities for students is much greater. Because they have fewer students. So if they have 100 clubs, well, they’ve got 100 presidents of all those clubs. So it’s possible to really gain substantial leadership ability, or experience, on a campus as small as this.

Location, Location, Location

Second thing that they mentioned was location. Because it’s in a small town, it’s not tiny but not in the middle of nowhere. It’s about an hour from Orlando and about 30 minutes from Daytona. So that there are possibilities for things like internships. As well as the connection with the community because of its location here in central Florida. And you should also add that it’s Florida. So it’s warm and you can wear flip-flops most of the school year. Right now it’s a little bit chilly here in January, but it’s actually a quite cold day for Florida.

Get Involved

And then the third thing they talked about was engagement and the possibility to be really engaged. This is a Bonner Scholars school, so they have a strong community service program and they actually recruit kids who have a strong background in community service. They actually put the Bonner Scholars in with the honors program students in a separate dorm. So engagement is a big part of this school and what it means in the community.

So three things: size, location, and engagement. That was what I was told to remember about Stetson. And then you can also remember that this is the rock pile. This is sort of a symbol that every school has some sort of a rock that’s sort of the anchor of the school, but here at Stetson they decided recently to add a whole bunch of rocks because it symbolizes that from many rocks, we have a community of rocks here at Stetson University. So fun place to visit; I enjoyed my visit very much.

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Sierra Nevada: A Hands-On Education

Jared Hobson — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 16:30:05 +0000

Tucked away in the mountains, on the shore of Lake Tahoe, is Sierra Nevada College. During a recent visit to Nevada I had the chance to take a very brief tour of the college. The best part of the visit was getting to hear from faculty, and staff, who work at the college about what sets Sierra Nevada apart from other colleges. They talked to us about what the goals of the education are on their campus and how their students use a “get your hands dirty” education. The students here don’t just sit back and listen, they dig right in.

Sierra Nevada is a very small school with only about 450 undergraduate students. Some students might be turned off by the idea of such a small cohort but for students interested in active learning, and engaging with their mind and their heart, it might be a good fit.

The faculty spoke of how they knew their students. Not just their names, but really knew about them and their goals and learning styles. The main goals of the campus are to provide students with: a liberal arts foundation (not just for a first job but for the rest of their life), professional preparedness, entrepreneurial thinking, and sustainability. You might feel like you are at summer camp, or ski resort, with the wood buildings and beautiful wood furniture but there is a deeper purpose on this campus. Some of their popular and unique programs include outdoor adventure leadership, sustainability, digital arts, entrepreneurship, and ski resort management.

If interested, do your research. It may not be the right fit for everyone but for the student who gets excited about the outdoors, small classes, close professor relationships, and sustainability this could be a good fit.

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Student-to-Faculty Ratio: Unintended Consequences

Jared Hobson — Tue, 06 May 2008 14:45:45 +0000

Colleges cite their student-to-faculty ratios and average class size as indicators of the intimacy and quality of the educational experience they offer to students. Rankings systems, such as those employed by US News & World Report and Newsweek, include these statistics among their variables. I’ve been writing about these statistics and what they mean (see these links for more about ratios and class sizes). And I mentioned in a video blog post that these statistics have unintended consequences.
So what are the unintended consequences?
The first one is that students can get shut out of courses that they really want to take.
Why? Because administrators want to ensure that they have a low average class size, they limit enrollment in some courses. Which courses are the ones requiring a cap? Why, the popular courses offered by the best or most popular professors are often in high demand. But contrary to the laws of economics, administrators will choke off supply–for the sake of keeping the average class size small.
Students flock to register for popular courses. But administrators do not want these popular courses to become the odious “large lecture courses” eschewed by rankings systems, parents, and college counselors. So they cap the course, and dozens–sometimes hundreds–of students can be denied access to these courses. One result is that the administration then has to devise a fair system of allocating these scarce resources to the students who “deserve” them most. It may be that seniors get preference. Or majors. Or some other system. This problem is compounded at small colleges that have fewer faculty and more limited teaching resources. It is much more difficult for small colleges to add sections and courses, because of the laws of economies of scale: no scale, no economies.
The second unintended consequence is the proliferation of adjunct instructors.
Keeping in mind that keeping class sizes low means that a university needs more instructors to teach more courses, a college administration can blow its budget if it’s not careful. The most expensive instructors are the ones who work full-time, have been around for ages (they have lots of experience), and draw expensive benefits (like health care and retirement plans). The cost of adding a new tenure track professor can easily add $75,000 to $150,000 onto the budget. However, if we ask an adjunct to teach a course or two, an administrator can pay them as little as $1500 to $3000 per course (!), and the budget is not saddled with those pesky benefits. So at some colleges, perhaps 25-30% of all courses are taught by adjuncts.
This is not necessarily horrible; for some adjuncts can be much better teachers than some of the tenured professors. They may teach for the love of teaching, not because it’s a necessary evil in order to fuel their research habits. However, adjuncts are rarely considered wholly a part of the college community. They rarely have their own offices, they are harder for students to reach, and are not generally the professors that invite their students over to their houses for dinner (a modest dinner for 15 hungry students could take a huge bite out of that $1500 paycheck!).
So, while student-to-faculty ratios are important, and while people like me like to guide students toward colleges where the average class size is small, there is no escaping the fact that there is no free lunch. Low ratios and small classes beget their own set of administrative problems that can have a very negative impact on a student’s educational experience.
As a parent or prospective student, then, what questions should you really be asking when you investigate colleges?
In addition to asking about student-to-faculty ratios and the average class size, try these as follow-on questions:
Regarding student-to-faculty ratios: What percentage of students are locked out of courses they want to take? What is the system for allocating slots in popular courses? Is this problem greater in some majors more than others? Which are most affected?
Regarding small class sizes: What percentage of courses are taught by part-time faculty or adjunct professors? What is the ratio of tenure-track faculty to adjuncts? Which departments have the highest percentage of adjuncts?
Choosing a college is a tricky business. While the internet has provided us with access to enormous amounts of information, we may still be unaware of how to interpret all this information.
This is why so many families are turning to people like me to guide them through the college selection process. There is no substitute for expertise. And if you are going to spend $250,000 on a college education, shouldn’t you be asking the right questions to help you spend your money wisely?

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