From listening to all the presentations on Thursday, I think its safe to say everyone had great ideas. The main goal was how to incorporate community engagement into Furman's school curriculum. There a number of ways to go about doing this, but 1st and foremost, Furman's small population helps incorporating these ideas much easier. As I said during my presentation, Furman as a liberal arts college should be nimble enough to make change and incorporate community engagement. We have a good student to teacher ratio and have a manageable student population. One of the ideas I heard from one of the presentations on Thursday that I particular liked was from the group BSU. As funny and a little bit radical as their presentation was, they made critical points that I agree with regarding this topic. For their model of liberal arts school, they stated that staff and students are to equally participate in all decisions, whether it be student conduct, academics, or government. This goes hand in hand with popular sovereignty, and is critical for the students learning as they adapt to be leaders making decisions, not uncultivated and trained technicians who cannot think freely for themselves. I think this whole process of community engagement is about the students being able to take charge and think for themselves. Throughout school life, too many times teachers hold their student's hands and baby them. This will not help them in their life. I find it funny how I agree that teachers and students should make decisions together, but during my presentation, I spoke about the exact opposite. I spoke about how the teacher is the leader and the expert, and as I quote Shane Herron's words, "They need to be able to crack the whip," to get their underlings in control. This, in a way, is what Walter Lipmann believed. He believed that the person in charge is an expert, and that students play a reduced role in the learning process. Also, I liked some of the ideas from presentation day about starting the engagement process. Some groups said that they would have a panel of teachers who would debate and talk about community topics, then the students would go out and solve these problems. Another group made a suggestion I agree with when they said they would combine freshmen writing and reading seminars into one action class. This was my favorite idea I heard from all the groups because it didn't ask for a radical change in the curriculum.
