Exploring Two Worlds

Ute Wenkemann NU’11 and Jim Stellar

What happens when a student from Germany comes to an American university that features a cooperative education program?  Both are cultural adjustments, first from the home country and then from the home university.  Ute did just that.  We met over an administrative matter when she was a freshman and I was the Dean at Northeastern.  Now a few years later, after a long period of contact, we look at the contrast between these experiences as potentially instructive to how education might work better.  First, I asked Ute to write about the emotional logic (i.e. other lobe) aspects of making her first adjustment to the USA.

Coming to the U.S. was definitely not an easy decision for me. Still, I found myself adjusting really fast to the college culture. Since I switched out of the German school system when I was 15 to continue my education at an international school, I don’t know much about college/university in my home country. But I do know that interacting with professors on a personal level is a rare occurrence there. University in Germany is much more self-lead; it is more of a personal study than a school and it is therefore easy to fall behind, whereas I feel that, at an American University, one has to try hard to fail. The professors are mostly very on track and really helpful. Also, the small class sizes allow for more personal relationships between students and professors – it is less anonymous. I considered all of these aspects when making my decision to come to the US and although I knew I was going to miss Germany a lot, I decided to take the risk of getting homesick once in a while. And I do believe that the experience I’m having is definitely worth it. I t had no problem getting used to the class routine. A lot harder was dealing with the new living situation. I know now that I am not made for sharing a room with someone, but even in a single room living on campus was tough for me. When you are always on campus, you don’t really get to come home after class. I didn’t like that and I have been much happier since moving off campus. I’ve also stopped comparing everything here to Germany because things just aren’t comparable. Once I stopped comparing, things became a lot easier. 

Now let’s take this kind of adjustment and compare it to working on a cooperative education term in the well-known Northeastern program.  How is that for you?

I absolutely loved my first coop. Fortunately, my work had little to do with a normal interning position – I really felt like I was part of the team. I believe that the company I worked for does a great job motivating their employees. Almost everybody I worked with seemed enthusiastic and most of my co-workers enjoyed the work.  I did, too, and although I was living on campus for the first half of my coop, I wasn’t involved with campus life at all. I also hadn’t chosen a job from the NU database, so there were no other Northeastern students working with me at my workplace. All of that resulted in me feeling like a young working professional rather than a college student. I am very happy to have taken advantage of NU’s coop program; however, I do feel that it depends on the individual student more so than on the university whether or not a coop is successful. I was ready to work and I wouldn’t have minded to stay/never go back to school. But I know from friends that they much prefer class over coop. And I must say that, although I loved working, I also enjoy class a lot. Still, I’m ready to go on coop again in the spring and I’m hoping my next one will be just as successful as the first.

I want to pick up on your “feeling part of the team” comment.  That is typical of an immersion experience which leads to great focus and learning.  It can happen in a classroom where one gets enthralled with a teacher’s presentation and loses track of time.  How do you feel that your immersion in the work experience has been influenced by your heritage growing up in Germany?

Hm that’s a tough question. To be honest, I’m not sure if there is any connection between the two things at all. I believe a big part of why I was able to do the job I did  (and feel part of the team) was that I was not considered a typical college student at my company. My superiors and co-workers kept telling me how surprised they were about my considerably young age compared to my level of professionalism. It could be that this level of professionalism (or maturity?) is tied to me leaving my home country at age 19, which obviously required a certain amount of independence and the ability to grow up a little faster – because I really didn’t have anybody around anymore to take care of me. Overall though, I feel that every hard worker could have achieved the same degree of “belonging” at my company. It was just a great place to be and it would have been just as great for any American student.

One of the “otherlobe” aspects of experiential learning is stepping out of one’s comfort zone and then perhaps re-establishing to facilitate that immersion we characterized as “feeling part of the team.”  So much of what we seem to do automatically as people involves setting up contexts and expectations.  But moving between cultures is invaluable to having that dual perspective on a problem.  In another post, that issue was discussed.  Here we would focus more on the duality of the perspective as being useful to learning.  Note that a physical object, like a glass, is easily identified as a cylinder even thought it could look like a circle if viewed only from the top.  By being in two countries, we believe that this dual perspective is constantly activated and makes for a richer understanding of activities in each, such as communications, marketing, management, etc.

One thing that often characterizes change is the inability to change back once it has happened. It’s the same here: Every experience, be it moving to a new country or starting a new job, adds to our overall knowledge of the world and the more knowledge we accumulate, the more impossible it becomes to disregard the things we have learned. A child that knows nothing about math will easily believe that 2+2 = 5, but as soon as it learns that 2+2 is 4 in the context of a math class where that equation is embedded in a whole system of logic, the child is unlikely to ever be able to believe that 2+2 = 5 again. In a way, that is also a sad truth since sometimes, it is easier to see things the one-dimensional way. However, in a world where multi-dimensional information is just a couple of mouse clicks away, we probably can’t afford to close our eyes from the many dimensions there are. Being comfortable in a global environment (whether in the real world or on-line), knowing what is “truth” as in the algebra example above may well be due to a gain in otherlobe knowledge outside learning of the straight forward facts and theories.  Good programs in higher education pay attention to both.

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We have been TACEd

Jim Stellar and Rick Porter

TACE is the Thailand Association of Cooperative Education.  It aims to spread co-op throughout Thailand and is doing a pretty good job.  We just finished a 4 day in-country Institute with them, working practically 24/7 with 40 dedicated professionals in Bangkok and are posting this from Hong Kong where we will attend the World Association of Cooperative Education meeting (WACE).  WACE, you may know, is now the world-wide parent organization to the Global Institute on Experiential Education that we and Tim Dononvan run with other faculty on the island of Martha’s Vineyard in the early summer.  That program has helped 39 Colleges and Universities design and implement plans for experiential learning.  We two brought a lot of that collected experience to TACE to further their train the trainers program. They brought a lot of experience too having been at it for more than a dozen years.

But that is not why we write.  As you know, we are both devoted fans of learning from experience and see cooperative education where the student works full time for pay for at least a semester as the most authentic and substantial of all of the forms of experiential education.  It was lovely to be with a group of people, representing a Nation, who operated with the same basic belief.  We all worked very hard, prying into concepts, but they were so polite and open that we became friends.  This happens too on the Vineyard, but not with 40 people at a time.  That it happened there for us is a testimony to the genuineness and dedication of the participants and the wise strong leadership of Professor Wichit, the driving force behind the introduction of meaningful cooperative education in Thailand.

But that is not why we write.  We write because we were both blown away by the model.  It is very different from anything we have seen anywhere.  TACE operates under the wing of the government.  Indeed the Minister of Education for the country hosted a dinner for us on the night of our arrival and attended the closing ceremony.  We are used to universities and colleges cooperating at the Vineyard Institute.  But back at their home institution they compete.  Private universities compete for students, for faculty, and for prestige.  It even happens to some extent in publics.  I can see that now from having switched.  Yes, universities will do joint programs, but only with a government so involved as Thailand can one get such depth and potential power.  That is why we say we were TACEd.  Co-op, study abroad, and other forms are supposed to shift the student’s perspective and give her/him a chance to examine their chosen field and career path and even knowledge itself from another perspective from the one they know – being a student all their lives.  The same perspective shift has just happened to us.  Coming from America with its emphasis on individual accomplishment and on outdoing —rather than supporting—others, whether the person or the institution, it is just impressive how working together, trading best practices and testing new ideas across institutions and regions of the country has filled us with hope for co-op in Thailand and for the country itself.  Any place, town, state, or nation has its people as its best asset.  Thailand is trying a powerful experiment using the collaboration of academics and industry in a co-op program with the organization of a national effort, TACE, to try to leverage this most important resource.  We will certainly follow them with great interest.

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Math, Molecules, and Woman

Rimma Pivovarov NU ’10 and Jim Stellar

I first met Rimma when she was a prospective student interested in mathematics and I was Dean of the College at Northeastern University.  Now she is about to graduate and has developed a second interest in biology.  She is seeking admission to graduate school in a Ph.D. program.  But she also had significant experience with cooperative education.  So my first question is as follows: 

What were the experiences on coop that led you to develop/deepen your interest in graduate school and how did it help you achieve your current focus?

As a math major at Northeastern University the coops I was originally offered were mainly in finance or education.  These two tracks weren’t enough for me because ever since my childhood I had an interest in medicine; I decided to see if I could find an internship linking healthcare and mathematics.  I ventured out into a new field during my coop search, computer science, and took a computer science coop in a genetic testing company.  Although I enjoyed the 6 months of IT work, I wanted to delve deeper into the biology behind my programming.  I discussed this idea with you and with your help started my second coop at the lab of a chemistry professor who was studying protein dynamics on campus.  With two diverse coop experiences behind me, I began to see where the intersection of mathematics and biology lay.  I attended lectures around Boston on different combinations of the disciplines and discovered bioinformatics.  Using some of the contacts I made at my prior coops I found work at the Harvard Medical School’s Center for Biomedical Informatics - where I have been for almost a year. Thanks to my three coop experiences at Northeastern University I have found the research work that I am excited about. I have developed passion for bioinformatics and I am eager to make my own significant contribution - I plan to begin my own graduate research next year.

This story really shows how experiences, successively put together, can lead to the focusing of a general interest into something that is much more specific and mature and can better lead to a graduate admission, not to mention any papers or other accomplishments accumulated along the way.  Now I want to go more personal and ask about your feelings in coming to this decision to apply to graduate school.  As a woman from an ethnic background, how did the work provide you with something the study did not (if it did) that helped you make this career decision?

In my culture education is extremely valued and for as long as I can remember I’ve been pushed to be great by my parents. I was always expected to be a good student and succeed academically.  Although I believe much of my initial success (getting into Northeastern University, deciding on an interesting and challenging major, etc.) is due to my upbringing, I think my coop experiences have brought me much further than my classroom success could. I believe my work experience has been crucial to my decision to continue my academic career as it taught me to have confidence in my abilities.   My first coop job was the first place I worked on my own, made my own decisions (which I had to rationally defend to my boss), and where I learned that my opinion had true value.  In my classroom experience I was taught theories and basic knowledge but many pieces only made sense later, with application. With coop, the application came as early as sophomore year of college.  After experiencing how all my knowledge could be relevant to out-of-school projects I began to look at all my following classes in a different light: instead of pure memorization school became more about imagining real-life applications.  If I had not been given the coop opportunity I do not believe I would have had the confidence in my own knowledge to chose graduate school so quickly after finishing my bachelors…if at all.

As a woman in science did you feel that this confidence boost was any more valuable to you than if you had been, for example, a man from the majority culture?

Yes, I think the confidence boost was especially important to me as a woman.  Choosing a career in science sometimes means choosing to be the only woman in a 10-person weekly lab meeting.  I am not sure I realized that when first deciding on a scientific career path and it was intimidating to try and not let it bother me.  Fortunately, with the votes of confidence I earned during my coops, sitting as a lone-female doesn’t seem that scary anymore, it’s rather empowering.

We want to call your attention to the way confidence built from experience interacted with career planning, influencing content learning which in turn reinforced the experience itself.  Some of these effects may be more pronounced in populations that are not traditionally associated with careers, like women from minority cultures working in math and science.  But rather than make a diversity argument, we want to focus on the thinking itself using an often noted comment by Albert Einstein that he thought kinesthetically, e.g. getting the feeling of what the world might be like if he was riding along on a beam of light, only to sit down and work out the mathematics later, proving the impression was right.  Howard Gardner calls this kinesthetic thinking - one of his multiple intelligences.  When doing the “math” on ones career development and future direction, it is often helpful to have these kinesthetic-based computations from experience upon which to reflect while making the decision.   We also note that this kind of thinking is not only about careers.  In our original reference, Einstein used it to figure out relativity.  The proof from mathematics and physics experiments came later leading to perhaps the most famous equation in the world: e=mc².  The trick in higher education is to find how we can develop and test programs that maximize this kind of dual thinking for many different purposes.

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Undergraduate research - introduction achieved. Now what?

Ashley Pira NU’12 and Jim Stellar

As a Freshman, Ashley wrote a post on March 25^th that attracted a good deal of comment back to me about how students approach professors and the trepidation they feel while at the same time making the point that students have a lot to offer professors in assisting in their research. Now she has not only achieved that research entry, she had a scientific presentation, a poster at the Society for Neuroscience meetings this fall.  This is an accomplishment that is normally achieved by a masters-level graduate student who is on her/his way to a doctorate.  So, first let us find out what Ashley did as a scientist.  Tell us about the work.

During the spring semester, I continued to help out with projects, and ended up co-presenting at Northeastern’s Research and Scholarship Expo with a graduate student on estrogen’s effects on cocaine sensitization.  Then I stayed over the summer and continued to work in that professor’s lab mostly helping out with ongoing projects on maternal behavior, cocaine addiction, and autism.  The largest contribution that I made was toward another graduate student’s project on the effects of prenatal exposure to valproic acid and its potential importance on the neurobiology of autism (presented at Society for Neuroscience 2009).  In doing so, I also learned how to operate the functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) machine.  Toward the end of summer, I began still another project with a more senior undergraduate researcher on stress levels of rodents during fMRI imaging.  The stress levels were determined by measuring the frequencies of ultrasonic vocalizations during acclimation, a process that prepares the animals for the fMRI scan.  Finally, throughout the summer I also worked on an intravenous self-administration of cocaine project, which is an ongoing project in a lab that collaborates with our lab.  Finally, this fall I completed a directed study course with my primary professor on the effects of neurosteriods in psychological disorders and autism.  I did a literature review and wrote a summary review paper.  During the next semester, I will continue research on the effects of prenatal valproate with a graduate student and lab technician, and I will learn how to do Western Blots.

Very impressive.  Now tell us what it feels like to be part of a high-profile research team but still be a sophomore?  Do you or they ever notice on a daily basis?

I am both grateful and honored to have this wonderful opportunity at such a young age.  Most undergraduates do not get to work with fMRI or run their own projects, etc.  So, while it feels great to be part of something so high-profile, I want to maintain a sense of gratitude toward those who have helped guide me and I really appreciate the dedication to undergraduate research that I’ve experienced at Northeastern.  The other lab members do not seem to notice anymore that I am a sophomore because I’ve been around for over a year now.  If I’m helping out on with a project, I think that they expect and know that I’ll be there without question. 

I encourage the reader to go back now and read (or re-read) what Ashley said in her first posting about needing to work to have confidence to ask a professor to do research.  All of that is gone and she is now a full member of the team.  I know this from the inside, because my lab was that collaborating lab at Northeastern that she mentioned above.  What has replaced it is a confidence in herself that is so strong you see her saying above that she is guarding against not being grateful.  This is what happens to graduate students, in my long experience of training them.  The settle in, assume the role, and work.  When undergraduates behave like graduate students, as Ashley has, then they step up and accomplish.  It is this kind of accomplishment, driven by attitude, that permits undergraduates to assemble a record that allows them to get into the best medical schools.  From my lab group at Northeastern, the last 6 undergraduates to go to medical school went to Stanford (twice), Yale (twice), U. Pennsylvania, and NYU.  The last 4 to go to Ph.D. programs in Neuroscience (with full support) went to BC, UC Irvine, UCSD, and Harvard.  At the time, Northeastern was ranked by US News as about 100, yet these students were achieving what I saw my students achieve when I taught at Harvard (1978-1986).  How do they do that?  The differences between us are smaller than we think.  Gladwell makes that point in Outliers.  Experiential education can transmit the message of accomplishment and confidence to a student, just like getting into one of the best universities in America can do.  After that point, it is just a matter of time-on-task and building a record.  But this is the old professor talking.  We have right here a student who is in the midst.  Let’s ask her what she thinks of what I just wrote.

The power of experience is evident, not only in Northeastern’s continually better ranking, but also in the power of the students that graduate. In addition to reading, studying, taking exams, and being active in campus life and activities, “real-life” experience and pursing passions are also a huge aspect of everyday life.  Though I haven’t been on an official “co-op” yet, I’ve already been exposed to so much.  Even discussing with upperclassmen that have gone on a six-month co-op or two, it’s easy to detect that sense of pride when they explain that they’ve worked for Merck, or the Aquarium, or whatever it may be.  The sense of pride is blatantly obvious, and that’s the point.  Students graduating from experiential education programs learn in the classroom and “by doing.”  They go above and beyond and have impressive resumes to show for it, which makes their experience significantly comparable to attending a school like Harvard, or any other highly ranked school. 

Let’s keep this going.  As you know and some readers know, I taught at Harvard Department of Psychology for 8 years (1978-1986) as an Assistant and then Associate Professor.   I have often said that what I saw undergraduates at Northeastern accomplish by being serious undergraduate researchers was very similar to the confidence and vision for themselves that I saw in my Harvard undergraduates.  So, how do you feel about that vision for yourself now vs. last year after you have made this strong beginning? 

Working in the lab has certainly boosted my confidence about the future.  As a new lab member, I was more timid and unsure of the things I was capable of.  Now, after about a year and a half of experience, I feel enabled and accomplished.  Over my recent Christmas vacation, I shadowed a surgeon at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Jersey.  The time I spent in the OR and with the residents was exhilarating, and it made my thoughts about attending medical school extremely real.  And, when anyone asked me about Northeastern, I proudly told him or her about the lab and the projects I’ve been involved in. They were really impressed. My experiences truly have opened my eyes to endless opportunities, and I now believe that, with continuous hard work, I have an equal chance of getting into medical or graduate school as anyone else.  It’s a great feeling.

So, what does this all mean?  We think that mastery is important and not just in the classroom where many variables are controlled, but in real world situations where things can go wrong and people must prove themselves.  High-end undergraduate research does that because labs and other forms of serious scholarship by faculty are real-world operations (e.g. they may require raising of funding from grants).  They are populated by people (e.g. postdoctoral fellows) who may be much senior to an undergraduate and to whom they must prove themselves.  The best experiential undergraduate programs, produce this mastery, different in every discipline.  Why is this important?  Because people don’t do things they think are stupid and it seems stupid to some (or at least beyond their reach) undergraduates to think of becoming a surgeon.  But if a student shows full mastery of a situation like a lab, then their minds can open up to thinking seriously about the possibility of going on to do great things.  This is how the emotional circuitry (otherlobe) works to support cognitive circuitry and make ambitious career planning real.  As “Yoda” said to Luke Skywalker in the famous movie scene where he (but not Luke) lifts the fighter out of the swamp, “Do. Or do not … There is no try.”  Now that is otherlobe thinking.   

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Building a Confidence Growth Curve through Work Experiences

Alisa Duhaney NU ’08 and Jim Stellar

Sometimes the work experience begins before College. In the case of Alisa, we have that example and can see how that work experience is built upon by a Cooperative Education work experience and finally experience on a regular job.  The field is in the medical area, but the lessons are for all students growing from experience. 

First high school….

In high school in New York, I was in the Medical magnet which had a health awareness program called the Wellness Center. It allowed students to continue the volunteer work/practicum beyond the requirements, get college credit, and CPR/EMS training/certs. We volunteered between classes to visit other schools and elderly homes to consult and teach about nutrition and health (skipping class excused was a big motivator). Although it was voluntary, it was comparative to a real job: we had to comprise a schedule of which students would go to which elementary or event that week, dress professionally under our lab coats, prep our materials and team the day prior, check in with the team Captain, thank the on-site facilitators after the event, even train our peers, etc. We organized travel to the site, set up, and handouts with no teacher supervision most of the time. It didn’t seem intense at the time; it was something we just did. I participated from 9th - 12th grades. My doctor (PhD) was the head of the program, and the main facilitator and mentor. Her office was attached to a classroom and was always open. She trusted our intelligence and judgment. After we returned from an event, we stormed her office and told her about our day (just like coming home from work).  

Participating in the Wellness program throughout my secondary education years was the beginning of my understanding of work ethics, personal motivation, and team work. The foundation of work ethics began by taking what I’ve learned supervised and applying it to when I taught it unsupervised. Personal motivation was always tested, as some events were held on the weekends. It was a choice to wake up early on a Saturday; if the choice was to sleep in, be expected to provide an answer to your team on Monday (especially to the program director during recap).

How did your co-op experiences at Northeastern as an undergraduatecompare to this experience? 

I actually did not begin at Northeastern.  I entered college in 2003 as a biology freshman at St. John’s University in New York. This step was important as I stopped being shy, and through personal motivation stood up (figuratively) and applied as a transfer student.  I went off alone to a new city to Northeastern to learn neuroscience and participate in a co-op that would launch my professional career. I was happy that I made the decision, and thus this was my exciting event, which got the ball rolling.

I was able to do 1 co-op. I worked as a Clinical Research Assistant at a Schizophrenia Research Clinic, looking at effective treatment drugs as possible factors in metabolic disease occurrences in low-income/homeless patients.  Here I learned: self reliance (confidence) and decision making. I worked with another co-op student who was a little strong willed. Let’s just say despite my calm warning and advice, she ended up deleting a large amount of data. As she was figuring out how to retrieve it feverishly on her own, after quick contemplation I felt the best decision was to inform the coordinator (I presented it as an honest mistake as a team and for a plan to figure out the next steps). After the event and a few weeks of fixing, the PI mentioned that I was a good leader, based on my response to the situation. He reminded me to take command and delegate the other co-op student. I’ve never received this type of responsibility before. I was given an array of opportunities and thrived.

During my evaluation by the coordinator (who also served as a great support), I was informed that although I did an excellent job, I must learn to be self-reliant and not feel to need to report my status for every task. If there was an issue, I was expected to work independently and make a wise decision without the coordinator or PI approval. Co-op opened my eyes to my flaws and unveiled my potential.

What happened after graduation?

After graduation, I worked at a neuroscience company doing pre-clinical research.  I soon realized that this was the real world and I didn’t have mentors, I had bosses. I worked with another strong willed co-worker who trained me in my role. There were bets amongst my other co-workers to when I would quit! (Please keep in mind, my co-workers were most supportive nonetheless, but just felt I was in an interesting predicament). I didn’t quit. I won because I was the last to judge, the first to listen – we are friends now – work ethics speak volumes (this opened friendships with the other co-workers as well). It was my first lesson in office politics. I resigned, because I needed something more intellectually. I learned research is my first love in any form. I did both clinical and pre-clinical research, and finally decided clinical was my home. Co-op was a good comparative.

What lessons did you bring to your permanent job from your co-op experiences?

If I didn’t have co-op, I feel there would have been a gap in terms of experience and direction. In thought, I believe, if my first job taught me the fundamentals of office politics, it would be my foundation for every job thereafter. However, my first fulltime job in Boston gave light to the fact that there are employers who want their employees to succeed and will guide them if necessary. In that light, I sought almost instinctively for that good learning experience. If I wasn’t confronted and told that I can be a good leader, I need to work on my decision making, and be more self reliant – would I have handled my second job with stride?

In my current job, not only do I have more opportunities than before, but a supportive boss. It’s like I defaulted to my co-op environment, but with more experience and practice. Many students are able to have up to 3 co-ops; it’s amazing that my 1 co-op was still out of the odds amazing. If 1 co-op yields so much, I’m elated that 3 co-ops would have brought me to my career peak even sooner! My foundation at high school gave me a good running start in a co-op that allowed me to continue the sprint.

One of the lessons here is that the prior experience with work (we both agree) helped make the single Cooperative Education experience at Northeastern enough so that an idea of what it took to be a leader in a technical company could emerge.  Notice the critical role of mentoring in the job environment and how those experiences carry over and cumulate.  Also, we want to make the point that this personal growth has to be married to content knowledge (which we did not discuss) that develops in the classes as well as on the job.  It is that marriage that brings power to career development. When that happens, especially in college, the result is an impact that can last throughout the early part of a career.  This lesson is particularly important in putting a young person on what can be seen as a confidence growth curve that lets them know they are studying the right field and pursuing the right profession.

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International Cooperative Education - A job that Exceeds Expectations

I got this e-mail below in the fall from Ruth Wyshogrod (NU ’10) and with some deletions of names and a little light editing on which we have agreed, I thought it had to be posted on the blog as it represents the kind of serious position a student can have in work abroad and the kind of growth that can come from it.  She will be back in classes at Northeastern in the Winter term.

  -Jim Stellar

I write you this e-mail as I take a break from work at my office in Herzeliya Pituach, an office park outside of Tel Aviv. For over a month now (although it has actually been much less because of all the Jewish holidays) I have been working at ———, a business and foreign affairs consulting firm, started by a former Deputy Prime Minister and Member of Knesset —– ——-. —– was an active participant in the Oslo Peace Process, and initiated the Geneva Peace Initiative. Though he is still active in the Geneva process, he officially left politics a year ago and opened this company. It is relative new, therefore, and very small - only 7 people total. The disadvantage is that things are often disorganized or informal, but this has been an advantage for me, as I, without even an undergraduate degree, have taken part in several important meetings where decisions were made that significantly impact the company and its partners. I had my doubts about working for a for-profit company, as ultimately I had to choose between working here or at the Peres Center for Peace in Tel Aviv, a well-established non-profit that does all sorts of peacemaking activities. I weighed my options and decided that, since I already have experience in the non-profit world, this would be an interesting experiment - and that is what co-op is for, isn’t it?

I liked the company because it combines the aspects of international affairs and business that interests me, that I first became interested in during Professor ———-’s Microfinance seminar last year. This is a little “bigger” than microfinance, but I see a connection. The company for which I work in Israel, in many cases, attempts to pursue business ventures that have some form of a global cause or benefit. For example, the company is working with the Gulf States to export Israeli agricultural technology and healthcare cooperative systems. They are also working on bringing this technology to the West Bank by using connections in the Palestinian government. Of course, they still seek a profit, and so not every single project is globally-motivated; but the company does not work with rogue states or companies who do business that supports terrorism, etc. I find my work to be not always that engaging, but overall very relevant to my studies. Recently I have been researching potential electoral candidates in European federal and state elections, for a company that runs elections campaigns, as well as doing some translation of the former Deputy Prime Minister’s articles.

Working in Israel does not feel like “international co-op”, because I simply feel that I am at home. I have been here since July, and have been grappling with some identity issues, trying to understand if I am more Israeli or more American, or at least which culture I identify with more, or if trying to define such a thing is even possible. I haven’t come up with many answers, only more questions… but that’s OK, since I am still only 19 years old… Living in Tel Aviv seems almost as natural to me as living in Boston. I’m sure the fact that I speak the local language, in more than just a literal sense, has a lot to do with it. I live right near the beach, and about a 15 minute walk from Yaffo. Every morning I run on the beach, training for the Nike Human Race, a 10k night run at the end of October that takes place in various cities worldwide, including Tel Aviv. I am taking dance classes at a local studio, and volunteering at the Arab-Jewish Community Center in Jaffa, where I tutor Arab children with their homework… so I get to use my Arabic a little bit too. Next week is Sukkot, and Israel gets a week of vacation, so I am going to Istanbul for 5 days with some friends.

As I have heard happens while on co-op, and especially abroad, I feel a little disconnected from Northeastern. Although I still have 3 months here, I am a little worried about the adjustment back - to schoolwork, to America, to life as a college student… though ultimately, I’m sure I will be fine.

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To Tweet or not to Tweet – a Provost’s quandary

Ashley Stempel NU’10 and Jim Stellar

This is a bit weird.  Ashley, who is a repeat blogger with me on this site about social media, is going to ask me questions about my comfort level using social media as a serious administrator at a large institution of higher education (CUNY Queens College) when I am in conflict about it.  OK, Ashley, first question.

Before I begin asking questions, I think it is important to somewhat outline my stance on Twitter and other social media. Back on June 28th, we wrote a post (Engagement as an Invaluable Education Tool: A Lesson from Social Media) in which you spoke about the anthropological roots of human communication and interaction. You shared a Nature article that suggested human history truly emerged once we began living in groups large enough to foster the communication of ideas, implying that humans are built to engage with each other for the purpose of our group (and perhaps individual) development. If that once small group is now the entire globe, thanks to technological advances in communication, then how can we keep the interaction going? How can we continue exchanging information and ideas without missing out on what someone who is thousands of miles away, while still in our “group,” has to contribute? Part of the answer, I believe, is in the successful use social media like Twitter. These entities break down geological and time constraints that once restricted the possibility for global communication.

In nearly every conversation in which I defend the use of Twitter, I point out that although Twitter is an abstract medium with multiple potential uses, there can be correct and incorrect ways to use the platform. It merely depends on what your intention is, and who your audience is, as well. While I understand you are not against the use of Twitter, you are still not positive it can be useful for someone who is in a serious administration role at a large academic institution. My first question for you, Jim, is if you took on the role of “Tweeting Provost of CUNY Queens College,” who would you consider your audience?

Because I talk to members of the academic hierarchy all the time, I would want to use Twitter and social media to do something else - to talk to members of the important base of the academic pyramid, the students, faculty, and staff.  But these are different groups and it seems daunting to try to talk to them all at once.  The 20,000 students at Queens are really our customers (or maybe our clients) and the potential for an intergenerational conversation about Queens is exciting. Then there are the faculty members who do research and the key work of developing and delivering the curriculum. They come in many types, ranging from tenured professors who might head important committees to others who might have the only point of contact with the institution be around the course(s) they teach. Finally, the staff members do the real work of running the College, some of whom I see every day and some I might never meet in years.  I fear that I will not have the time to devote to the rich and cross connecting conversations that might erupt as these groups begin to share perspectives in this media.  I worry about creating more disappointment than positive energy by tweeting.

Your dilemma, here, is that you wish to engage with the vast groups of people at your institution with Twitter, but are afraid of not being able to devote enough time to do so. However, what is worse, limited engagement or none at all? It goes without saying that it would be humanly impossible to sit down and have coffee meetings with as wide of an array of people you would ideally want to connect with at Queens. When using Twitter, communication is usually as urgent as you are able to make it (Twitter can also work as a great tool in crisis communication). Messages are short and precise (each message is restricted to 140 characters).

So for your desire to communicate with many people in a limited amount of time, Twitter could be an ideal solution. Not only would you have the valuable opportunity to broadcast messages and engage with many people, but ultimately you decide how often you participate. You can choose to either post messages that you feel are imperative to your followers, or respond to those posted by people you choose to follow. Using Twitter can also give you the chance to engage with interesting people who may slip through your fingers in the bustle of your day-to-day schedule.

The effectiveness of your presence on Twitter depends on who follows you, and ultimately, that will be dictated by the type of messages you post. Which leads me to my next question; what type of messages would you share using a Twitter account?

I figured I would have to share everything that was not either confidential (e.g. individual budget decisions) or boring (e.g. what I had for breakfast).  What I know of Twitter from past conversations with you and others is that one has to be completely honest in such a social networking forum or one can get ripped apart.  People will say bad things about you in Twitter, but others will either defend you or accept your defense of yourself if it is honest.  I have heard stories about CEOs of companies who have gotten in trouble with the customer base and use Twitter to make an apology and have data discussions to repair their reputation.  But it would be even better if we could use Twitter or social media to work with our students/faculty/staff/alumni to invent the future of the Institution.  At Queens College, the administration tries to do that anyway. The question is whether we should have one of us out there on Twitter or whether the current process of engagement is sufficient or even better at avoiding the downside of chaos. I am still nervous about doing it.

It is true, companies like Comcast are using Twitter to address and take action to relieve customer complaints. But another aspect of social media is that it is merely a great STARTING point for conversations, but eventually these conversations must be moved into real-time to make them stick. Social media is just an alternate angle to begin a conversation, make a friend, or develop an idea. There must be a concrete end-point.

Also, having an ethical stance on Twitter or in any communication in general is certainly important. But when you say you would “have” to share everything not confidential or boring that is not necessarily true. In fact, it may be overkill. To begin, you must decide if you want Twitter to represent you, Jim Stellar, as a real person who happens to be Provost of Queens College CUNY, or if you want the account to reflect the office of the Provost at Queens College CUNY. From there, decide on a few communicational goals you have for the Queens community and then our next step will be to decide how to most effectively achieve them using the medium.

Ashley and I are going to stop here, for now.  But since this is a real event (Jim is really considering using Twitter), it would be a good moment for readers weigh in with comments.  We may come back and talk again about how social media taps into the otherlobe thinking we feature in this blog, or how it ties into education, but for now, let’s stay on this topic.  Comments are welcome!

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Impact is the Point in Study Abroad

Dawn Anderson and Jim Stellar

Dawn Anderson started out in my former Office when I was Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Northeastern University where we were developing study abroad options for our students interested in experiential education. She ended up directing that study abroad office and then moved to do the same thing University-wide when the program appropriately moved to the Provost’s Office.  Now she has left

Northeastern (like me) and we are beginning to think together about the key features that impacted the student (or students learning).  What follows is her 1st piece in this blog.

After directing a study abroad program for a number of years, one of the most fascinating observations each term is the dramatic transformations students experience as a result of briefly living abroad.  Many times they return much more confident in their abilities, self-possessed and aware. There is a calmness that blankets them as they transition to life back on campus, finalizing re-entry requirements of the program and reintegrating into the life they left while beginning a new term.  A common evaluation response is that their participation in the programs was one of the most valuable learning experiences so far as an undergraduate student.

Understandably, many study abroad applicants are eager and anxious about living abroad.  It is the first time that many of them will live in another country, away from family and friends and away from their comfort zones.  Some have absorbed their families’ anxiety about having limited connections but the rebellious stage encourages them to push through it.  Some are determined to go no matter what and others are following friends abroad and/or satisfying requirements.  All will leave their comfort zones and that, I believe, is at the root of the transformation.

Russian psychologist, Lev Vygotsky, introduced the concept of the zone of proximal development.  People can improve and/or develop new skills with appropriate guidance.  Jeff Howard of The Efficacy Institute expanded the concept to Zone of Development (ZOD), where people experience situations that stretch beyond their comfort zones but not too far.  Staying in the comfort zone, he calls Zone of Accepted Practice (ZAP), is familiar territory.  It offers little to no challenge that serves as a safety net for those who fear failure and lacks the tension (new situation that clashes against current perceptions) that must exist to encourage personal evolution.  If not careful, people can exist in the ZAP mode limiting their options in a time of change and evolving technologies.  I believe that study abroad informs students of their areas of ZAP and exposes them to a regular routine of challenging this tendency to rely on it.  It is difficult to see when they are home submerged in their ZAP because even when they face challenges, there are enough distractions making it easier to compartmentalize, set aside, avoid dealing with that issue.  But when students are abroad, they are more aware than ever of their vulnerability and are often forced to deal with the realities of that state.  It can be a matter of survival as they are not around family and friends to lean on or absorb/share some of the sting of a, for example, potentially traumatic experience.

Often students return to campus, after successfully navigating a different culture and learning a new language, very confident that they can handle problems back at their home campuses.  Their reactions to challenges with say, registration, are not as intense because they’ve learned that problems will come and can be resolved with time, diplomacy and patience.  They learn to approach challenges empathetically, because they spent a semester or two viewing the world through foreign eyes.

As international educators, we are essentially preparing students for controlled chaos.  We know their perceptions about the world and their place in it will be challenged on multiple levels.  As they begin the cultural adjustment process, a phase that starts during pre-departure, they will be challenged with things from interpreting visa requirements to familiarizing themselves with international airline rules.  Although still at home and often assisted by parents who must produce information for applications, I encourage parents to allow their child to do as much of the work as possible during the application process.  It will set the tone for what is expected of them abroad and get them use to resolving their own challenges without parental help.  What a valuable skill for today’s future leaders.

This is great, but I want to ask you to do one more thing and relate Howard’s ZOD (or Vygotsky’s zone of comfort) to the issue of minority involvement in Study abroad.  I know this issue of underrepresented groups in study abroad is something about which you have written nationally as part of a NAFSA Newsletter. Not that long ago in this blog, a student and I wrote a post called “A Black Woman Runs in Haifa”  about a shift in her perspective that occurred when she was on study abroad.

Students from “minority” communities face many cultural barriers that prevent them from even considering study abroad as a valuable educational option.  Not only do they lack role models or community support for this type of experience, they tend to be advised by trusted educators and family members with the same limited scope.  Some educators and parents will even discourage it, dismissing it as an unnecessary expense or a delay towards graduation.  This always worried me because it is the students that come from isolated or segregated communities that need the exposure most.  It is imperative that international educators understand this and factor it into their outreach initiatives.  Under-represented students perceptions about the world will be challenged on multiple levels as they are able to witness and experience first-hand, the realities that had previously been filtered through individuals whose views were shaped in a different time and by different realities. 

More importantly, while abroad, these students get to evolve in ways they could not in the United States, stretching parts of themselves beyond their comfort zones and creating the necessary tension that encourages transformation.  After arriving in their host country, for the first few weeks, many parts of themselves will be operating in the ZOD as they struggle to communicate, familiarize themselves with the new environment and local customs and get to know people they will encounter.  They will become observers again experiencing a vulnerability that is similar to a child who must rely on the more experienced for basic needs.  After a few weeks, when sights and sounds aren’t so new and the challenges of communicating subsides, their daily practices become routine and these once challenging tasks will move to the students Zone of Acceptable Practices.  Increase confidence, increase global and cultural understanding and a heightened reliance on self resources are products of study abroad which increases self efficacy and in my opinion can undo the affects of under exposure due to living in a isolated and/or segregated community.

The very concept of a ZOD (or ZAP for that matter) is an example of the operation of what we call in this blog, “other lobe” thinking.  Note how its operation is challenged not so much by talking or academic classes but by direct experience when the person is in the flow of the situation. Here is where those brain circuits activate and begin computing the meaning of experiences, some of which do go back to the classroom and facts and theories learned in the field of study.  The trick is to somehow marry these changes to what is being delivered academically so that the student has the capacity to operate on the question with both the cognitive intelligence and the emotional intelligence functions converging.  Abroad programs which do that are even stronger than ones that do not.  These kinds of programs, where both lobes of the brain are engaged have the power to transform and that power can be very significant in individuals from diverse populations where that self-confidence discussed above can be an issue.

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Other Lobe Thinking as It Applies to Rules:  To Follow or Not to Follow

Cynthia Bainton and Jim Stellar

As administrators we complete tasks, manage projects, and lead people with the goal of fulfilling the missions of our institutions.  Doing these things requires organization and to organize we depend upon rules.  Rules are intended to keep order.  So when a rule creates chaos, then it is not serving its intended purpose.  That chaos might be a breakdown in organization or it might be the uncomfortable feeling that an individual has when asked to follow a specific rule.  This is where the limbic system comes into play, where the “other lobe” thinking is functioning, where experience and learning from experience can be the best teacher.

In his TED lecture on “Loss of Wisdom”, Barry Schwartz references Scott Simon’s apt statement that rules spare you from thinking. Indeed, it takes less effort to follow a rule than to question (think about) whether or not a particular rule bears following.  Furthermore, if one should choose to not follow a rule in a typical administrative hierarchy, one risks being reprimanded and subsequent emotional distress.  However, following a rule that one feels is not right may be equally emotionally distressing.

We have all had co-workers, subordinates or even bosses that can be described as “rule followers.”  While this trait may be linked to the possession of other admirable qualities such as attention to detail, thoroughness, consistency, and reliability, the inability of individuals to be flexible may have the unintended effect of forcing others to work around them. What we all need in direct reports are people who know how to follow rules (and even orders) but also know how to be flexible when the situation warrants it or even point out when the leader has made a mistake.  So how do you set that environment? Joseph Raelin, a professor at Northeastern, describes the notion of “leaderful practice” in a book he wrote when an organization is established that distributes leadership throughout, where people think for themselves as well as follow rules. 

Another argument in support of questioning the validity of rules is that of creativity.  Barry Schwartz (in “Loss of Wisdom”) cautions us that while rules prevent disaster, they insure mediocrity.  He also states that practical wisdom comes from interacting with people.  When a college or university sends one of its students to work, they begin to learn this practical wisdom. Robert Sternberg, Dean of Arts and Sciences at Tufts University referred to this as practical intelligence which can operate on problems that are not well defined (as in an academic test) and that are context specific ,  It is part of his WICS (Wisdom, Intelligence, Creativity Synthesized) model of developing skills and attitudes in college.  This concept was discussed in a conference last year at Clark University on “Liberal Education and Effective Practice.”

Does that mean that we are encouraging people to break rules?  No, we are encouraging people to question the validity of a rule that does not hold up to that person’s logic, in other words to engage one’s emotional intelligence.  In his book Blink about which a post appears in this blog, Malcolm Gladwell argues that we “thin slice” (his words) situations and circumstances all the time with a rapid, probably emotional intelligence, analysis.  We think that is the operation of  “other lobe” thinking and that it leads to practical wisdom.  We think that it is best taught in context, on the job, but with some reflection to make sense out of what happened before it is forgotten. Some institutions require reflection courses to accompany the experiential education component and these can become particular helpful to students by providing a safe environment where they can discuss with classmates a particular ethical dilemma they experienced in the workplace and the instructor can facilitate a discussion of the various actions the student could have chosen to pursue.

This post may seem to some to be a departure of the theme of learning from experience in higher education and it may be.  But we want to follow this kind of “otherlobe” thinking into all arenas.  Besides, it is in organizations that most of us work and for which College prepares.  It is the goal of experiential education to prepare for application of content knowledge to just those circumstances.  Finally, we have argued here repeatedly, that there is something about the emotional logic circuits (as well as sensory and motor too) that may be very useful for making these kinds of logical evaluations about where to follow rules and where to set them aside.  Once we understand the practical wisdom of that decision, we will be in a much better place to design programs in colleges and universities to help our students learn even more than we currently teach.  Then, not only will business be happier with the work force we are training, but we bet the core academic indicators – critical thinking and creativity – will be enhanced as well.   

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Thought Control

Caroline Crocker ‘03 (Williams College), Ph.D. program at John Jay College at CUNY and Jim Stellar

Through a friend-of-a-friend connection, I met Caroline and found her to have an interesting point deriving from her studies of the Social Psychology of Criminal Justice that nicely illustrates the operation of what we have been calling in this blog the logic circuits of the “other lobe of the brain” versus the cognitive circuits classically instantiated in the content and structure of higher education.  The contribution of these “other lobe” circuits are perhaps just beginning to be broadly recognized as underlying the different but important kind of thinking that goes on in experiential education.  But suppose you could make these processes collide.  Would that highlight the differences?  Let’s try it with a story from Caroline.

Individuals often find it difficult to control their thought processes. For example, a person trying to fall asleep the night before a big interview may be unable to keep thoughts of the interview out of her mind. Similarly, individuals attempting to quit smoking may have trouble avoiding thoughts of cigarettes. To explain why we are often unsuccessful at controlling our thoughts, Daniel Wegner (Ironic process of mental control, Psychological Review, 1994, 101:34-52) developed the theory of Ironic Processes of Mental Control. According to Wegner’s theory, the reason we often fail to banish thoughts of Dunkin Donuts while on a diet is because attempts at mental control, and thought suppression efforts in particular, involves two simultaneous mental processes. To make sure that you are not thinking of donuts, you must fill your mind with distracter thoughts and simultaneously monitor your thoughts to see whether your goal (i.e., avoiding thoughts of donuts) has been achieved. Although trying to come up with distracter thoughts requires cognitive resources and conscious effort, the monitoring process is automatic—it is effortless and it occurs outside of conscious awareness. The two processes work well to achieve the desired mental state when a person has plenty of attentional resources. The problem occurs when cognitive resources are depleted (e.g., a person is engaged in multiple tasks at once).  Without adequate resources, the search for distracter thoughts is disrupted but the automatic monitoring of the mind for thoughts of donuts continues undisturbed. The continuation of the monitoring process inadvertently brings the search target (i.e., donuts) to mind. Not only do the thoughts of donuts come to mind, these thoughts may come to mind even more easily than they would have under normal circumstances (that’s the “ironic” part).  Thus, thought suppression can have the exact opposite effect of what is intended by the individual.  These failures of thought suppression are particularly likely with emotional information. Not only is emotional information easier to bring to mind than neutral information, it is harder to find thoughts that are adequately distracting when trying to suppress emotional information.

The monitoring discussed above must come from a different brain area which is capable of enormous processing but a different kind of processing that is not compromised by the cognitive load. It seems effortless. That makes the point about there being two processes in the first place.  If this discussion sounds abstract, let us see how Caroline applies it to her research on jurors.

I am applying theory on thought suppression to jurors’ cognitive functioning during a trial. As news reports about a case may contain information that will not be admissible at trial, the trial judge may ask potential jurors during jury selection if they will be able to ignore anything that they have heard or read about the case. Wegner’s theory suggests that if jurors try to suppress inadmissible information while also trying to pay attention to witness testimony and attorneys’ arguments, the inadmissible information may have a bigger impact on jurors’ verdict decisions than if the judge had never asked jurors to ignore this information. In other words, if jurors learn that the defendant has a prior record, and then actively try to ignore this information, they may be even more likely to vote guilty than if they had not tried to suppress the prior record information.

The boomerang effect described above makes the point with which we started -  that the two processes are not only different but can conflict.  The same two processes exist in all aspects of life, including higher education.  Of course, the point for higher education is not about any conflict between them or trying to suppress something, but it is about making sure that when we attend to both the cognitive process of learning facts and theories and the more instinctive process that learns from the experience perhaps in a different way. If we can separate these two processes not only on the basis of brain areas that mediate them (an idea discussed elsewhere) but in terms of the social psychology of how humans interact, than maybe education can learn how better to drive student learning, engage students with knowledge and growth over a lifetime, and the other lofty goals that they support.

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