Priorities:William Jewell College Strategic Priorities

Priority 1: Redesigning Curry Hall

What We Found

William Jewell recently hired a new president and her new focus is rebranding William Jewell. Recently, she approached our University Innovation Fellows group and asked us to rethink a massive space in our administration building.

Goal

We want to make this area an extension of the Pryor Learning Center (a study building on campus). Refitting it with newer technologies, what the incoming students what to have, and what old students feel it needs. We also plan to propose using the vacant area above the floor to extend on the project even more.

Next Steps

Week

Ask students, "If you could have a 4th floor of the PLC, what would you want in it?"

Gain ideas for designing from the internet and elaborate on them to fill William Jewells campus and community.

Month

Present to the Board of Trustees/Administration Team

Seek out funding.

Receive approval from administration.

Year

            Have a newly renovated and furnished extension of the Pryor Learning Center in Curry Hall

Priority 2: Incorporating Design Teams in the Science/Engineering Departments 

The research that takes place on Jewell's campus is mostly individualized and only lasts a couple semesters. Our engineering department is only a year old and hasn't had enough time or initiative to grasp design teams yet because the students are still so young. But, teams include teamwork, leadership, and responsibility which leads to success as individuals and as groups.

Taking Initiative

Taking initiative on this project will require a lot of personal relationships. Over the next couple years, students could work alongside professors rather than underneath them in a class. If students come to professors with project ideas, there will be a lot more involvement and passion for the projects.

If students go to professors with projects, then they will enjoy the work. If they get shadowed during their research and replace themselves, they will feel much more inclined to act in a professional manner and explain their research thoroughly to those who will take their position. This will also allow the research to be continued over the years. We would like to get this idea out to students so that projects they're passionate about are integrated into the programs and they will hopefully be able to recruit mentees better to continue to fully develop projects that benefit themselves, professors, and the school.

Difference

A blog we found (http://blog.invisionapp.com/how-to-design-your-design-team/) laid out how a business design team runs: there is the small group of directors, below them are the senior designers, and in the lowest section are the junior designers that are newest to the team. We thought we could redevelop this plan in terms of a science design time. We decided to do this in more of a ladder format rather than a pyramid. At the top of the ladder is the mentor/professor that leads the team and provides the tasks and goals of the group. The mentor brings in someone who they believe would benefit their team and teaches them the tasks while making them aware of the goals. The experienced researcher will then be heavily involved in teaching the newest researcher the ropes. Overtime, this would become a cycle as seniors graduate, juniors and sophomores ascend up the ladder, and freshmen fill empty positions. There are many benefits to our prototype such as continuous innovation to the research being done, practicing team-building, and learning through teaching.

Priority 3: Creating a College of the 21st and 22nd Century 

     Kansas City currently has some of the fastest internet in the United States. Thanks to Google Fiber and excellent city planning the high-tech industry in the KC areas has been rapidly expanding in recent years. Recent developments on the William Jewell campus and points of pride for the college are also focused on tech utility. In fall of 2013 the college opened its Pryor Learning Commons, a bookless library and collaborative space for its students and faculty. In 2014 it unveiled its Jewellverse initiative which vastly improved the college's wifi capabilities and equipped every student and faculty member with an iPad. The college's 24/7 innovation suites contain a free-to-use 3D-printer and digital media editing suites. The recent trend in the campus environment has been to be as tech savy as possible, yet with all of this technology being used on campus the only degree program in technology is the school's recently added interactive digital media degree. 

     Interviews with faculty, alumni, and students have shown that interest is high in the Jewell communiy for an increase in availability of computer science courses. Similarly, businesses such as Cerner are hard pressed to find locally-grown computer scientists. It is with this information that the 2015 Fall cohort is proposing a route to increase the presence of computer science courses on the William Jewell campus while simultaneously connecting William Jewell students to the best universities in the world.   

What do we mean by this?

    edx.org is a website that was co-founded by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University. It allows the general public to take courses from the founding institutions as well as many other world-class universitites for free or at very low costs. The current version of this plan for technology course expansion has three phases. 

Phase 1

    One of the many computer science courses offered on edx.org is Harvard's famed CS50 which immerses students in different programming languages. Our goal is to create a system in which students can enroll in the certificate verified CS50 course and complete the graded course to receive P/F credit. The ideal program would send a professor and student to Harvard over the upcoming summer to take part in the CS50 education course through the Harvard Extension school and a single student every summer thereafter. The course would be structured as a tutorial style class, students watching the lectures and beginning their coursework outside of class and meeting twice a week to collaborate on their projects. At the the end of the semester the group would complete a project to improve campus. 

Phase 2

     Upon successful implementation of phase 1 the program would increase the accredited-courses offered at Jewell through CS50. Programs like R and statistic for hard sciences and Ruby for beginners. If phase 1 went exceptionately well, it would be possible to include non-computer science classes to increase the diversity of courses offered at Jewell. 

Phase 3

    Upon the completion of phases 1 and 2 and the culture of computer science has increased on Jewell's campus a degree program in computer science will be created. By offering a degree in computer science the college will enhance its position on the midwest and national stage and produce talented graduates with skill sets that fill the computer science needs of companies in the Kansas City area and beyond. 

Priority 4: Interdisciplinary Communication

Tactic 1: Building Relationships

Building relationships with leadership and faculty will allow for a means of entry into the faculty communication circle. Reaching out to faculty and attend a faculty meeting to open conversation about how William Jewell College can move from "polydisciplinary" - in which students are simultaneously engaged in many disciplines - to truly "interdiscplinary" - in which faculty and students connect disparate ideas and have investment in programs beyond the department.

Tactic 2: Pitching Interdisciplinary Ideas

Communicating between areas of study and departments for the purpose of collaboration will benefit the community by expanding the effects of the liberal arts approach at William Jewell College. Inviting faculty from other departments to lectures, shadow a class, collaborate on curriculum, and share ideas are the objectives of interdepartmental communication. For example, if a class is discussing a subject that relates to that of another discipline, it could be enriching to bring a faculty member from the other department to speak on the subject. Furthermore, if a department had a program that could be of interest to a student outside the major, faculty to faculty communication could facilitate communicating this program to their students.

Tactic 3: Unifying Silos

As students have expressed, they feel comfortable communicating with faculty in their own discipline, but are hesitant to contact those who are not in their disciple. Breaking down silos that block communication could aid in encouraging students talking to faculty in other disciplines. As William Jewell is a liberal arts institution, it is a goal of the college to create well rounded individuals who value critical thinking. This goal can be facilitated through accessibility to the whole faculty, not just those in one's department.

Priority 5: Effective Campus Communication

William Jewell College is a small campus with just 1100 students. Combined with centralized campus "heartbeats" like our digital library and student union, Jewell is a place in which one feels as if they are always plugged in to campus community. Ironically, Jewell campus initiatives have had a profoundly difficult time relaying information and motivating the student body to attend events. This, combined with the small size of the college, can produce lackluster engagement at events. In short, serendipity and word of mouth are both relied upon and coming up short when it comes to campus communications.

Tactic 1: Define an Ideal Solution

Our overarching goal is to be able to reach every student on Jewell's campus fully digitally. This will require a multi tiered approach: A centralized calendar with all campus activities that is readily accessible and easy to add events to is a starting point. From there, organizational mechanisms that allow the events to be easily sorted by type and time is a necessary component. Yet this vision needs to include at a glance features such as the capacity to see what is happening at "Jewell Today" or "Jewell This Week." Fast, relevant, easily accessible information. As an incentive, we want to capitalize on an individuals desire to be in the know by having auxiliary resources including description of campus clubs and their leadership, brief descriptions of events, and clarify what might be happening on campus not relevant to students. For example, a Trustee meeting or debate tournament--something that is not essential for students to know but may help explain what is happening and give a sense of context. While having information accessible is nice, sometimes it is not enought. This is why our vision also includes a network with a texting service, and push notifications to iPads from a scheduling app organized by student life. It is essential our concept work around the Jewellverse initiative in which each student has an iPad. This platform will be ideal for our final vision.

Tactic 2: Build Momentum and Prove a Need

The above goal is a good one, but it could never be feasible in the immediacy for cost and logistical reasons. As such we would like to first create a first iteration of our larger goal for centralized communications. This could simply include a "Jewell Today" function on the Student Senate website with a "Jewell This Week" link beneath it. While the Senate Website does not have the capacity for push notifications, another Jewell app does, and the Provost of the college has already given us permission to use that to link to senate's website weekly. By offering a single push notification (released at the same time weekly when students and staff are typically comingling over cookies) with a link to a source of information, we hope to create a habit of referring to this somewhat rudimentary app often. If we can prove students use this, hopefully we can get the funding and logistical backing to create a more elaborate version of our plans.

Tactic 3: Create a Communication Mechanism Between Campus Leaders

Separately, student leaders often find themselves working within a bubble without knowledge of other activities on campus. This is why we would like an organizational platform for working between campus leaders. This would allow collaboration on similar projects and avoid over programming students with too many activities one week and too few the next. Finally if campus leaders are aware of what is happening on campus in other spheres, they can communicate to the groups relevant to them and hopefully spark a culture of give and take by attending other groups events.

Related Resources

William Jewell College

William Jewell College Strategic Priorities

Fellows

Alex Holden

Gretchen Mayes

Trevor Nicks

Benjamin Shinogle

Macy Tush

Bradley Dice