What an awesome time of year to gaze out our windows and see the second blooming of our trees into brilliant colors. Bloomings are only a season a way it seems and we can miss them if we don’t take time to look. Tonight and tomorrow, we invite you to carve out some time to see what has been blooming on our campus that has engaged us as a community of learners & educators.
Dr. Baxter-Magolda, from Miami University Of Ohio, will be working with us to best understand the nature of student development, while in college and from her unique scholarship of how students continue to develop after college. Using the metaphor of a House, Kent State University is a place in time where these students call us home. Each of our divisions, colleges, units, or offices provide ‘rooms’ for students, staff, and faculty members to engage and support each other for mutual learning benefits. As people who live in the house we are the ones who invite others in, walk people to other rooms, or prepare others to leave the house when they are ready by opening doors and helping other look through windows.
If a house, we need one roof– in KSU’s case it is our 21st Century Undergraduate Learning Philosophy. This roof has 4 interlocking dimensions of Knowledge, Insight, Engagement, & Responsibility. The structures we have in our classrooms, our advising sessions, our residential halls, or our administration need to fully support student development in these 4 dimensions. Tonight & tomorrow, we will listen, talk, reflect, and engage each other for action to understand the house we have, perhaps tear down some walls, and learn how to walk through the doors to the “excellence” we have worked for.
