At nearly the end of the first week, it seemed appropriate to revisit why we are here. If you look back at the first day, we came here with a variety of ideas as to what we were going to do (to say the least!). The first week we hope that bubbling up to the surface is identifying what we are doing well at Evergreen, and that having done this, we might be able to translate this into an agreement on values. Perhaps the end of the second week would result in a charge for a DTF to further study and make recommendations to the faculty. Alternatively, rather than re-hash the same conversation and debates, perhaps our group (about 25 faculty) could make specific recommendations that they would carry out themselves in their programs this year, specifically around a.) advising (although we called it different things – mentoring?guiding?), b.) autonomy, and c.) breadth.

This framed our morning reading of part of the 2002 report, “General Education at Evergreen,” specifically the historical narrative of the gen ed discussion at Evergreen and how the six expectations came into being. We were sobered by the level of acrimony around the issue, and it seemed to frame our brief discussion in the morning.

In the afternoon we broke up into smaller groups to try and identify the main themes that have emerged so far and then prioritize them. In larger group discussion, it was evident that the groups also came up with a number of concrete ideas that could be implemented by individual faculty right away, as well as some that would require both broad-based faculty and institutional support. Many ideas required substantive change but some involved a reframing of what many faculty already so.

A few things stuck out for me in the day:
• I’m still struck by reading through Evergreen student transcripts on Day 2 – I’ve been here nearly 9 years and have looked at probably only a handful of student transcripts. It’s clear that we need to address clarity and the importance of student voice in them, but it is also apparent that outsiders have latched onto the credit equivalencies as a way of measuring breadth of education. Laura Coughlin’s work is incredibly important in recognizing this problem and trying to address this. Having said that, student voice in the transcript still seems so important, and better substantive self-evaluations.

• This group has recognized a need for some change, which while seemingly initiated by external concerns, also reaffirmed some of the things we have all seen. Certainly, reading through some student transcripts brought a number of concerns about how well we were serving some students (while recognizing that we serve a large number very well, indeed).

• The importance of recognizing what Tacoma and Res-Based are doing – particularly around breadth of education. It seems to go without saying, yet too often no one says it in our daily work on the Olympia campus.

• We need to be thinking about how we assess how students have met the expectations that we already present to the outside world as what we expect of an Evergreen graduate.

• My small group was brimming with ideas on how to make change happen. We had a discussion on how we can re-frame math and art and whether we value this in our own teaching. MIT program used “Math as Social Justice” – similarly we felt strongly that we don‚t think of art as just decoration or math as pure theory, but we use this in our programs – we need to recognize and redefine the ways math and art have been used to disadvantage people in society and how it can be used instead. Instead of advising, think instead of Educare “to lead out” and not proscribe solutions for ourselves and our students.