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Tuesday, February 28, 2012

The Beginning of the End

This is the start of my last semester here at Prescott College and there is a sense of accomplishment and fear.  I am beginning my senior project which is a culminating project and a way for me to display my competence.  My competence here at Prescott College is Social Justice Education and I am also receiving a double breath in Outdoor Pursuits and Human Development.  I believe the Senior Project process to be an excellent way of displaying ones knowledge and confidence in their learning.  The ideas that I had for my Senior Project have transformed over time and when it came down to putting it all on paper I had tremendous help from my advisor and faculty members.  

As I started to dive into ideas about what I could do for my Senior Project I realized that the possibilities were endless.  At that point I had to start sifting through my ideas and really think about what is important and why I want to do it.  My background is in education so I thought that would be a good starting point.  I also wanted to contribute to something that had profoundly changed me and given me so much.  The process of working with my advisers was a learning process, but I really dove in leaving no stone unturned.  With the help of my advisor and lots of pondering I finally came up with a wonderful idea that would not only be in my area of study but would also give back to my community.

Through my senior project I hope to discover how faculty and instructors design their classes to best meet the mission statement and the graduation attributes, voted on by the cross college faculty.  My senior project will consist of creating diagnostic tools such as rubrics and interview questions to assess how faculty members are meeting the desired graduation attributes in courses and through graduation.  If we are asking our students and peers to critically analyze our ever-changing environment, then I think it is important to have our faculty and instructors do the same.  These diagnostic tools will be used to benchmark where we are currently, understand how we can improve and set future goals for evaluating student success.

Social Justice is important to me and Prescott College.  I hope that through my Senior Project I will help promote more Social Justice in other departments.  I believe that continuity through out all of our departments is very important and will help students gain more perspective into what others are doing and what the school promoting.  With the recent adoption of these graduation attributes I think the school is bringing more diversity of learning and creating obtainable learning targets for students to meet in the classroom and  as a graduate.  


~Eric Davis, 02.2012

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