By Sarah Binder
MOUNT VERNON–He’s looking through the lens of higher education.
Jonathan Brand, president of Cornell College, hopes to reimagine the study of liberal arts at one small, private college.
In a time of escalating student loan debt, talk of an education bubble and higher demand for workers in hands-on trades such as manufacturing, information technology and health care, enrollment at small, private liberal arts institutions across the country has declined.
During recent years, small schools around the Midwest have been forced to close. According to InsideHigherEd.com, the number of small, private colleges in 1990 was 212; in 2009, it was 137. As part of an ongoing strategic planning process, Cornell College is trying to prove liberal arts still have value.
“If you’re only trained for a particular vocation, then you’re prepared to exist in the world as it is, but you’re not prepared to change the world,” Mr. Brand said. “I think that’s a pretty powerful case for the liberal arts.”
Mr. Brand was inaugurated as president of Cornell in April 2012. Since then, he’s taken on a strategic planning process, a shift from nine to eight terms per year and major improvements to the campus, including $12 million in renovations of the Thomas Commons, the school’s student center.
Although he has become a staunch advocate for small liberal arts colleges, Mr. Brand was educated at much larger, public schools. He earned a master’s degree in French literature from the University of Michigan and a bachelor’s degree in history and French from the University of Wisconsin-Madison before attending to Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., for a law degree.
“I look at it in the lens of what I didn’t get and what my wife didn’t get and how we could be better served,” he said.
A major shift in the concept of a liberal arts education, Mr. Brand said, is that it is no longer believed that all learning takes place in the classroom. Extra-curricular activities, including study abroad experiences, internships and other work, on-campus clubs and sports are increasingly valued for the life lessons they can impart.
Cornell leaders believe their institution is uniquely positioned to provide both types of experiences because of the One Course at a Time (OCAAT) structure.
On the OCAAT plan, also known as the block plan, Cornell students focus on one course for a three-and-a-half week period, spending three to five hours in class per day. That schedule makes it easier to spend a month or two studying abroad or completing an internship.
For example, Ben Greenstein, chair of the strategic planning committee and a geology professor, uses the block plan to take a class to the Bahamas each February for a hands-on learning experience.
One of Mr. Brand’s goals as president is to quantify how that structure works. Last year, he taught a class on OCAAT to experience the more intense pace of education.
“What we need to establish is that the block system prepares students uniquely for post-graduation,” he said.
Overall, colleges have improved when it comes to assessing students when they arrive and when they graduate, he said, but they need to study experiences and outcomes on a course-by-course basis.
An initial draft of the new strategic plan has been presented to Cornell’s board of directors, and Mr. Greenstein said he hopes the final plan will be approved in May. The plan is based on five strategic themes, each with a committee working on them. Major strategic goals include reimagining the liberal arts experience; preserving the campus, which is entirely listed on the national register of historic places, while allowing for a growth in resident students and marketing the school.
“It’s not going to be up to Cornell to sell the entire nation that liberal arts are the way to go but it is up to us to show how we are relevant,” Mr. Greenstein said.
It has been somewhat of a challenge to move forward on certain projects, such as campus renovations, while the plan is still being developed, Mr. Greenstein said.
“You’re sort of building a plane while you’re flying it,” he said.
For now, Mr. Brand is just enjoying settling in as pilot.
“I really value being at a place where the people feel good about what they’re doing,” he said. “If you really spend time with faculty and students who care, and your job is just to help them do better; that’s incredibly personally rewarding.”
