campus
Wyatt Wyatt 07
campus
We must redefine, “A Coker student solves big problems.”
As the complexity all around us increases, what else but a liberal-arts based education can provide what’s needed to solve these problems in an innovative, creative manner? We must continue our focus on what we have been doing, while at the same time evolve our model to account for increasingly complex environments. Liberal arts content and skills are invariant – the means by which they are delivered cannot be. The challenge is to seek ways to make this experience even more complex and more integrative, and to, perhaps, combine it with more experiential forms of learning.
06
We must redefine what we mean when we say, “A Coker student lives long, happily, and well.”
In order to be ready, our students must be healthy and ready to meet our everchanging world. We must also prepare them to be more fiscally fit than they presently are. Our students will not truly be considered ready until we include fiscal fitness, as well as physical fitness, as part of our efforts.
05
We must redefine what it means to be student-focused.
One goal of a college should be to provide legendary student-centered service. While students play varying roles in the teaching/learning experience, the “student as central focus” must be our model. We must take this model and make it distinctively Coker, molding it to fit our culture while ramping up our efforts to provide a student-centered learning experience.
04
We must redefine our intention when we affirm, “A Coker student has multiple educational options.”
Perhaps it is time we consider redefining our levels of programming and, yes, even the type of programs we offer. According to The College Board, college graduates earn 80% more on average than high school graduates. Over the course of a person’s lifetime, the difference in earning potential between a high school graduate and a college graduate is more than $1 million. Earning potential increases with each degree a student receives, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. This means a scan of our educational boundary and a detailed examination of our current offerings and our pedagogy to determine which areas need to be strengthened, expanded, or reconfigured.
03
We must redefine our claim, “A Coker student learns by doing.”
We have the ingredients to re-conceptualize our current offerings, while creating new requirements to more fully engage our students. Let us, as a community, decide that our students simply must have more experiential learning and deserve more opportunities to practice the skills we have taught them.
02
We must redefine our assertion, “A Coker student makes all the difference.”
A redefined student of Coker College must have the opportunity to experience the difference he or she can make. At the end of the day, we want our students to be ready – to be prepared to serve, to act, and to do. We can prepare them, but let us not do so by today’s standards of ready, but rather by our own re-definition of what ready means to this great institution.
01
Finally, we must redefine our promise when we say, “A Coker student is ready for the world.”
Being declared “ready” now requires individuals to possess a global mindset. In addition to our core liberal arts studies program, we must work to create and implement more and more diverse international study opportunities for all students. We must secure funding for these endeavors, and we must work to implement meaningful learning outcomes for these experiences. Equally important will be internationalizing our own campus, increasing our international recruiting efforts, and providing faculty exchange and cultural awareness opportunities on our own campus and in the town of Hartsville.
[re]defining ready W W W. C OK E R .E D U
THE QUARTERLY OF COKER COLLEGE , HARTSVILLE, S . C . - C O M M EN TA RY
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