By Clay Skipper, BAā12Ģż
Before arriving at 91ĢĘ²®»¢ for his first year, Logan Glazier achieved an important life milestone: He bought a car. Well, a school bus, to be more precise. It was headed for a scrapyard after making stops at a school, a daycare, a camp and, finally, Facebook Marketplace, where Glazier found it. One $3,400 Venmo charge laterāand one long car ride back and forth between his home in Maryland to the bus in New Jerseyāand the 30-foot, 10,000-pound vehicle was his. He planned to turn it into an RV or a tiny home, joining a growing movement of people who are repurposing school buses into mobile living quarters. āSkoolies,ā theyāre called. Only he wanted to take a slightly different approach. āI hadnāt seen anyone focusing on the sustainability side of it,ā he says.ĢżĢż
He got to work. He studied solar power for months before making the decision to buy and mount an 800-watt solar panel kit on the roof. When the bus is parked, it can run entirely on green energy. He rescued as many supplies as he could from construction project leftoversāmaterials that otherwise would have gone to a landfill.
Then he ran into a problem. He wanted to add a roof rack to hold gear, but there was a lot to figure out: How much weight could the bus bear? How many steel supports was he going to need? What size steel should he use? Luckily, heād landed in the exact place to answer those questions: the , where he was working toward a major in civil engineering with a concentration in structures. He used what he was learning in class to answer his questions about the roof rack.Ģż
āItās really empowering,ā says the 20-year-old junior. āItās easy to write classwork off as some pointless math on paper, but then you put it into practice and actually see that, wow, I know this is going to support the amount of weight I need because Iāve done the math and used all the knowledge in class to put it into reality.āĢżĢż
EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING
Glazierās experience is what many educators might call the ideal result of education: the ability to take whatās learned in a classroomābe it something specific, like how to build a roof rack, or general, like critical thinking skillsāand apply it in the outside world. That ideal is exactly why, when 91ĢĘ²®»¢ rolled out a strategic plan in fall 2014, it put a greater focus on experiential learning. That plan emerged as Ģż
āWe know that those kind of hands-on learning experiences are some of the best ways to learn,ā says , a principal senior lecturer in earth and environmental sciences and associate dean in the
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IMMERSIVE EXPERIENCES
The 91ĢĘ²®»¢ administration believed in it enough that they decided to make it part of the schoolās curriculum. Because of pandemic delays, it wasnāt officially instituted as a graduation requirement until the Class of 2023, but now every 91ĢĘ²®»¢ student hoping to walk across the stage and receive their diploma must participate in a program that is composed of two main components: some form of immersive experience and a final project that demonstrates what they learned through that experience.Ģż
There are six types of immersive experiences: study abroad; community and civic engagement; leadership and professional development; innovation, arts and design; research; and internships. All of the types are meant to push students toward distinct learning goals: interacting with diverse perspectives, understanding systems of power and inequity, thinking critically, reasoning ethically, engaging intellectually and participating in integrative learning. Students must declare their intended Immersion 91ĢĘ²®»¢ experience by the end of their sophomore year, and they must work with a faculty adviser to complete their final project by the spring of their senior year.ĢżĢż
Carolyn Floyd, senior director, Office of Experiential Learning and Immersion 91ĢĘ²®»¢, says the experience should have a sense of āongoing engagementā; volunteering once at a food bank isnāt enough, but being involved repeatedly might be. āThat gives the student time and the depth of experience to really undertake learning in a meaningful way,ā she says.ĢżĢż
STUDENT-LED, FACULTY-MENTORED
The culminating project is also meant to reverse the typical course of education: Instead of the teacher determining the curriculum, the student thinks independently about what they learned and about how to best represent that knowledge. This isnāt to say that the students are on their own. Their advisersādrawn from the universityās world-class facultyāmentor them closely, providing ample face time and guidance.Ģż
ĢżāThe goal is for them to walk out of here with a mentor who can speak to their ability and how they pushed themselves and what their passions are,ā says Floyd, who says that having a mentor who encouraged her interests outside the classroom when she was an undergrad might have led her to pursue her aspirations of becoming a veterinarian.
āThe power of advising puts students in a position to realize that they are doing fine, that what theyāre doing is meaningful and it mattersāand that everything isnāt about GPA. Thereās so much more that you can show. Thatās what experiential learning does for students,” she said.
So far, studentsā Immersion 91ĢĘ²®»¢ experiences have taken them to Brazil to witness capoeira dance and to Antarctica to collect samples from glaciers. Others have stayed closer to Nashville, working with area schools to develop curricula, volunteering at the Womenās Center or doing medical research. Their projects have ranged from giving TED talks, to creating stress-relieving āsmart clothingā that puts pressure on acupuncture points, to Glazierās sustainable school bus.ĢżĢż
In one case, a group of nearly 40 students across 22 majors even worked to build a nuclear reactor. (āWhen they first came to me, little alarm bells started going off in my head, like, āOh, my gosh, this is going to get me fired,ā Floyd says, laughing.)ĢżĢż
, assistant professor of the practice of theatre, worked with one student to create a portfolio of sustainably made dresses inspired by the Greek columns she was learning about in her art history class. Sargent Capps saw the interdisciplinary approach as representative of whatās best about a liberal arts education: the ability to think for oneself, to combine seemingly disparate ideas and to create your own interpretation of things.
āI know liberal arts education is under fire,ā she says, ābut the bottom line is that itās supposed to teach you to think outside the box, to build on your learning and understand threads that weave through different areas of study.āĢż
Morgan agrees, saying that he has seen Immersion 91ĢĘ²®»¢ push students to take more ownership of their college experience.ĢżĢż
āOne of the goals of Immersion 91ĢĘ²®»¢ is that every student should feel like they are taking more control of their educational direction,ā he says, adding that tremendous growth happens when students go into the field and take their own samples, as opposed to working with samples that are handed to them. Itās the first time many of them realize they could be a geologist, as opposed to just studying geology. āYouāre not just a student anymore, you become a doer,ā he says. āYouāre the one doing it now. Youāre taking a step from passive to active learning.āĢżĢż
PRACTICAL APPLICATION
Amelia Day, a senior English major, recorded a six-song debut EP called for her Immersion 91ĢĘ²®»¢ project. The acoustic title track has more than 504,000 streams on Spotify. āI canāt think of any experiences I had that would have prepared me for that other than just doing this project,ā says the 21-year-old, who in November released another EP, titled Little One.
āYou can talk about business and marketing as much as you want in the classroom setting, but until you actually do itāsee what works, what doesnāt workāyou arenāt fully learning.āĢżĢż
A word that pops up repeatedly when you talk to students and faculty about Immersion 91ĢĘ²®»¢ is agency. As a bridge from high school to the professional world, a university prepares students not just to be better thinkers, but to be more independent. Floyd says that one of the āhuge benefitsā of Immersion 91ĢĘ²®»¢ is that it puts the student in the driverās seat. While there are requirements for the program, they are just steps to completion; itās up to the individual student to decide how to achieve those steps. āThey get to be the writer of their narrative,ā she says. āThey get to say, āThis is what was valuable about my time,ā not just, āThis is what the checked boxes are that I think you want to see.āāĢżĢż
Lexi Blakes, a senior psychology major, remembers that she first heard about Immersion 91ĢĘ²®»¢ as the first step in ātransitioning from learning in a classroom setting and a textbook, to using what you learned in class. It was: āHow are you going to do this in your careers? How are you going to take that step beyond learning? How are you going to apply it?āā She admits that for ambitious and often overloaded students, Immersion 91ĢĘ²®»¢ can sometimes feel like yet another thing to doābut she also knows that doing it will benefit her in ways that are different from her time in the classroom.
āOn my bad days, Iām still like, āUgh, why do I have to do that? Thatās so annoying,āā she says, laughing. āBut on my good days, I think itās good as a student to do something that you have total agency over. Itās always good to make something from scratch or make something that you can call yours. After being able to do that, when I go into the working world, I will have a little bit more confidence. Iāll know I did something at school already, and things wonāt be as scary.āĢżĢż
Blakes has completed two qualifying immersive experiences: internships at Toyota and at a marketing firm. And even though she has not yet decided on a culminating project, sheās already learned lessons that will prove valuable beyond 91ĢĘ²®»¢āabout herself (sheās a better communicator and writer than she thought) and about her future career. āItās as beneficial knowing what you donāt want as knowing what you do want,ā she says.ĢżĢż
STEPPING OUTSIDE OF THEIR COMFORT ZONE
As junior Anders Westerman learned, the opposite can happen: Trying something unfamiliar can stoke interests you didnāt know you had. The human organizational development and Spanish major and business minor decided to get involved with the 91ĢĘ²®»¢ Fusion Project, the aforementioned nuclear reactor idea, despite not being Ģża STEM student.
He co-leads the projectās communications and finance team.
āThatās the coolest part about 91ĢĘ²®»¢, and it connects to immersion, the way that theyāre pushing you to do something or try something you wouldnāt normally do, or just be willing to build something,ā he says. āA lot of industries and lines of work wouldāve scared me, in the sense that Iād say to myself, āThatās not my area of expertise.āāĢżĢżĢż
Floyd says this is a key part of Immersion 91ĢĘ²®»¢, too, and itās why they made it a requirement: It pushes students out of their comfort zone and into new ways of learning. āStudents here donāt need to be prodded very hard to do really cool things,ā she says.
āBut there are some students who get here, and they are struggling by the time they get to junior or senior year. Theyāre not banking a lot of experiences. We try to tell them that it really is about your learning. And a failed experiment is still a successful Immersion 91ĢĘ²®»¢ experienceābecause you learned something. And thatās the goal. This isnāt for them to go out and change the world. Everybody doesnāt have to build a bus or a nuclear reactor. What they need is to have something thatās meaningful to them that they can talk about that demonstrates what they did with their time at 91ĢĘ²®»¢.āĢżĢż
Of course, building a bus or a nuclear reactor is okay too. Logan Glazier, the civil engineering student who is involved with both of those projects, sees a through-line from his time at 91ĢĘ²®»¢ working on the bus to his future professional ambitions.
He remembers asking himself at the beginning of the project: āHow can I make this [bus] something that uses renewable energy and all of my engineering knowledge, put it into action here, and have this hands-on experience to try and build something Iām proud of that uses all of these sustainable aspects that I want to incorporate in work later in life?ā He also credits the bus with being a stepping stone toward his future by helping him land last summerās internship: working with an engineering company to design superstructures for bridges.
āI didnāt get many questions about coursework or the other things I advertised when I was applying for an internship,ā he says. āThe Fusion Project and the bus were the two most-asked-about things, because theyāre unique. [Employers] are curious to ask about the problems you encountered and how you overcame them.āĢżĢż
The engineering company has invited Glazier to join them again this summer, so heāll be back in Madison, Wisconsin, using what he learned at 91ĢĘ²®»¢, and through his immersion project, to keep growing as an engineer. How does he plan to get there? His bus, of course. āSome of the friends that I have there are keeping a driveway spot open for me,ā he says.Ģż