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• The Meyerhoff Scholars Program at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, originally designed to address the very low representation of African-American men in the sciences, has since, under the direction of Ernestine Baker, expanded to serve other under-represented groups. Karen finds the program striking for its expectations of high achievement, its insistence that the "group matters most" (so that individuals are encouraged to bring others along with them, as they move forward), and its focus on persistence and determination (rather than brilliance) as the keys to success. Those who teach in the program "lay out realities" for the students, making it clear that they must "work harder than they ever have before"--which for many of them involves a major cultural shift. What lessons can be learned from the enormous success rate of the Meyerhoff Program, that might be applicable to Bryn Mawr?

• Programs in supplemental instruction, such as those first initiated at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, adopted in many community colleges, and most recently showcased at Trinity College in Connecticut, involve the training of upperclass undergraduates, who receive weekly support to offer 2 hour/week sessions that are NOT remedial, but model from the first week of classes what students need to do to perform well, rather than intervening later, after they begin to do poorly. The leaders attend all lectures, and design sessions in which the work is revisited (so there is no burden on the students to identify--as a struggling students often cannot do--where they need help). The focus is less on what was taught than on how to learn, how to explain the reasoning which lies behind each answer that is given.

• Bowdoin College hired a staff member to improve the success of underachievers. She decided that peer tutoring was not useful (pairing a student who is genuinely disoriented with one who mastered the material easily generally does not work well). The premise of the Bowdoin model is that tutors are most effective when they can figure out how students learn. Mentors are trained to identify how students approach material, and to show them what is required to learn it more effectively.

Karen concluded with a number of figures indicating the very high percentage of students who earn grades lower than 3.0 in the introductory science and math courses here.

In discussion, several successful interventions were described. For instance, requiring porfolios in a General Chemistry class encourages work on a weekly basis, so professors can help students move through the semester in a "more measured" way. By asking for "recipes" for doing a problem, students learn to pay attention to what they are doing. By requiring essays that report on how students' habits have changed, professors can get an eye-opening look at how they struggle throughout the semester, and help them figure out BEFORE it is "too late" what is it they need to be doing differently.

Kaye Edwards, who directs the Multicultural Students Program at Haverford, participated in a tutorial on supplemental learning at Trinity. Based on the model she learned there, she is now offering "guided learning groups" at Haverford. The sessions are structured to be very interactive and focused, with repeated emphasis on "why one thinks" in a certain way, "why the answer is" what it is. Students spend surprisingly little time "on task," and one goal of these sessions is to help keep them on target.

Questio were raised about whether a focus on supplemental learning only reifies teaching methods which are ineffective in the courses themselves. Maybe we should make introductory science classes more interactive? Smaller? Re-think the relation between the size of the course and what is taught? The emphasis on coverage? (With inadequate study skills, students often have a problem keeping up with the volume.) Is there a way to make learning more self-paced? To increase feedback? To vary the kinds of feedback offered and sought (such as a student's verbal performance in small groups)?

Why has the model of the post-bacs, who form a community of learners, not caught hold among our undergraduates? There are multiple relaxed group sessions in labs, but many of our students still consider themselves independent scholars, who have no interest in the success of the group as a whole.

Good supplemental learning is largely dependent on teachers who are willing to become engaged with their students; programs which have expanded beyond this cadre of professors have been less successful.

It was also argued that we are skirting a structural problem here: there are reasons why certain groups perform less well in the sciences, and it is important for students to learn why. Without such a recogntion, putting the responsibility on individual students to "work hard!" sidesteps the larger cultural assumptions which reinforce poor performance.

The premise of all of these interventions is that all students, whatever their preparation, can do well. Does the Bryn Mawr faculty agree with that claim? If so, we need to seriously re-think our emphasis on assessment, laying aside talk about curves and grade inflation, and rhetoric about poor student performance.

This conversation continues on the On-Line Forum and will resume in person next Thursday, February 13, when Katherine Park, a Historian of Science from Harvard, will ask "Was There a Renaissance Body?"

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