Valerie De Jianne NU ’05 and Jim Stellar

Valerie was in the first group of students at Northeastern University when I was Dean to win a 21^st Century Scholarship.  She and her peers were selected from the best students in the Freshman class and were given a alumni donor-based tuition scholarship of $5,000 a year for the remaining 4 years of their undergraduate program (remember the Northeastern coop-based program can be 5 years), She was also given a $5,000 account in the Dean’s Office that could be used for an experiential project.  To get access to that account, the student has to first develop an experiential project with a faculty member as a project mentor and meet with the alumni donor about once a year as a general life-skills mentor.  I have asked Valerie to answer a few questions as this experience is an example of a program targeted at the “other lobe of the brain” and may be an example to our thinking. 

Valerie, let’s start with you describing what you ended up doing as a project after you won the scholarship.

I have to admit; I did struggle with this for a while.  During my time at Northeastern I was studying not only Communications, but also Education and Art.  I recall having ideas in each discipline that I was interested in exploring or testing with the help of this program, but when it came to academic research (what it seemed to me like most of the other scholars were employing in their own projects), I felt like a fish out of water.  After much debate, I decided to pursue what I felt most passionately about in the hopes it would result in a better representation of my work than something that felt difficult or forced to me.  I decided to couple my digital photography lab with a photography project on the beauty of The Garden State.  I wanted to showcase the beauty of my home state in a place where its perception was so surprisingly negative.  I traveled home whenever possible to capture the different seasons in the area surrounding my home.  I printed a series of 12 13 x 19” digital photos of rural, agricultural, and shore scenes that I thought would be the most surprising to anyone who thought of New Jersey as an industrial, smog-filled, and unappealing place.  They are currently hanging in the College of Arts & Sciences Building. 

Thanks, now please describe how you interacted with the faculty member and the donor and what you got from each of them that contributed to your undergraduate studies.

Since I had not chosen a project related to my core discipline, I had a difficult time finding a member of the Art faculty interested in working with me to the extent that I had hoped.  This was absolutely fine, as my relationship with you more than made up for it.  The relationship with my alumni donors (a husband and wife) and with their family members was by far the most valuable part of the experience for me.  Prior to receiving the scholarship, I remember I was considering transferring.  This program gave me the cohesion and inspiration I was lacking from my experience at Northeastern up until that point.  Being exposed to the lifestyle of such thoroughly lovely and successful people gave me an entirely new perspective on what life could hold and my own potential.  It invited me outside my very small world and let me look back in on it.  It forced me to think on a different level and to strive for a new level of achievement that I knew existed, but could never have truly realized without the experience and opportunity this program and its generous donors afforded me.

Notice the value of mentoring here.  Richard Light said in his book that what college students really want is a mentor.  Why?  Well for one thing we are just better at reflection, judging, and evaluating when we are with others, even just one other person.  That is the classic other lobe phenomenon that probably got its start in early human evolution when we began to interact and working in teams conferred a big advantage.  This 21^st Century Scholarship program, of which Valerie was an early participant, was specifically designed by us to produce that mentoring.  Another key feature was that the mentoring was by an untrained, non-academic, but powerful member of the university community – an alum who was a donor.  It turned out here (and in most pairings) that these two really challenged each other (in a nice way) and Valerie grew as a result.  She was able to explore ideas about what she might do with the major she had in a world where unless you are going into the field as a teacher, much of what you use is background and the ability to learn stuff.  The combination of a calling out to a higher level of performance, intimate and ongoing reflection, and personal support from someone who likes you, is very hard to beat in terms of higher education programs.  But the fact is that many programs of experiential education where students are placed in real world environments of cooperative education, unpaid internship, service, undergraduate research, abroad programs, or combination of them, deliver in just this way.  The very open-endedness is the key to their power.  The real world nature is the key to their success.  Sooner or later, we are all headed in to the real world where we will learn.  Why not get there earlier?

Agreed.  The experience as a whole did seem like a leg up and I will always consider it to be the most valuable part of my experience at the University.  I came out of it with a broadened perspective, clearer path, and primarily a confidence that I would never have conjured on my own.  In my case, it had to be given.   

Enkelejda Demika NU ‘09 and Jim Stellar

I first met Enkelejda at a high school science fair and immediately noticed a combination of the classic education hunger of an immigrant to US with that kind of intelligence that is at once academic and instinctive (e.g. otherlobe).  We met repeatedly over the course of her study at Northeastern and continue to talk after she graduated.  Her story offers another insight into what has become an interesting theme recently in this blog about the power of experience (including being abroad) to push student development, whether it is a US student with little international experience going overseas or it is an international student or student of immigrant origins coming and working in US.  Both experiences, we assert in this blog, drive otherlobe brain circuitry and a different dimension of professional development than simple academic learning of facts and theories.

Enkelejda, let’s start with how your experiences outside the US shaped your interest in Education.

Albania is a country who has gone through communism, overturning of the communism who led to a chaos, later on to civil war and now to politicians who are power hungry. Through all these tough times there was one thing that I, as well as my peers I’m sure, was getting encouraged and lectured on and that was to study as hard as I could so one day I could compete for an opportunity of scholarship to study abroad, because that would have been my only way out to success: I was 8 years old.

Thanks.  Now talk about your first few months at Northeastern.  How was your adjustment?  What were some significant experiences you had in college in the beginning?  How did you decide on a major?

I attended an urban high school; my graduating class was of 100 students more or less. Just like any other urban school, my high school suffered from lack of funds but had very dedicated teachers who were willing to work out of their hours to help students. Thus, I was used to a very understanding, warm and kinship environment, I graduated with high honors. After high school I was accepted to Suffolk, Northeastern, and Boston College. I ended up picking Northeastern for their co-op program (as we will talk more about it later in the blog). Entered Northeastern as a political science major, mostly because was told that it would help me prepare for Law school as it was and still is one of my future goals (although later on I learned that English majors have the highest acceptance rates in law schools).

My first semester at Northeastern (out of lack of experience and personal guidance) I took 5 core classes, so I struggled my first semester. But it was not only because of all my intensive classes that I struggled. It was also because I graduated from a small high school where I knew everyone and I entered this big University where I didn’t know anyone. That was a little bit intimidating. Most of the students in my classes came from private or prestigious high schools and I started to think that I was no match for them and could not do as good as them. So my confidence started to decrease a little. At the same time I was not enjoying my political science classes, the next semester I took an introduction to Criminal Justice class and I absolutely loved it, I saw the curriculum of CJ and I noticed that it offered, law classes, criminology etc…Thus I decided to change my major. As I continued to take CJ classes I started doing very well because I really enjoyed learning for that subject and by that time I had met and made friends, professors were very welcoming and down to earth and although Northeastern was this big University I started feeling at home, I gained my confidence back and I absolutely enjoyed my major and my years there.    

How did having an immigrant heritage play into your having a period of lacking confidence and then regaining it?  Was your immigration status a driver in the sense that you wanted to prove something or was it an inhibitor as you felt you could not compete with native-born Americans on their own turf?  People might not know since you write well, but I know you have a slight accent.

Since I can remember I was never an insecure person and I never felt as an inferior to anyone, this includes being back in my country or when I moved in USA. Being an immigrant didn’t have anything to do with my lack of confidence period; I believe graduating from an urban high school had a play in my confidence at that time. As we all know urban high schools are not the strongest as they lack tremendous funds, so in that sense I felt as I could not compete with students who had graduated from private or suburban high schools. My immigration status was definitely a driver to do well, but not because I wanted to prove anything to anyone, it was the driver because as I explained in the first paragraph, back home there aren’t a lot of opportunities and here in U.S. if you have the will power the opportunities are endless. So I was and still am eager to explore all these opportunities.

Provost Stellar, I am glad that you brought up the slight accent part, I do have an accent but I have never though of my accent as a drawback, actually it was just the opposite, it was an advantage. When my peers would hear me speak for the first time and hear my accent they would ask questions and be more interested on who I was and what my part of the world was like and to tell you the truth that actually boosted my confidence because I had this knowledge of a world that they didn’t know of and at the same time I am adapted to my peer’s world (American) culture. But I also believe that which country you migrated from has a lot to do with how people perceive you. As I mentioned above, I have never felt as inferior because I was taught that way, but when I moved here I was also socially accepted even though I was from a different part of the world and have a slight accent, I adapted to the American culture easily just as my peers adapted to me. Unfortunately, there are a lot of immigrants coming from other countries that are not as easily accepted in the society and it is harder for them to adapt to the new culture because in a sense they get isolated. And to tell you the truth, I do like having my accent, but what I don’t like is being called an immigrant (even though I am). I feel the way I do because I have spent as many years in US as I have in Albania if not more, and I have adapted to the American culture just as same as I know the Albanian culture, Albania is my nationality and I absolutely love my homeland but I wouldn’t say I feel any less for America. So by being called an immigrant it categorizes me as a person of a different and one single homeland, when I really feel that am a person who has two homelands, because both countries Albania and America have shaped me to become the person that I am today.

You are really Albanian-American.  Maybe that hyphen is your advantage, being between two homelands.  I like that formulation.  You are right about the word “immigrant.”  I am going to try to stop using that word in my communication here at Queens where so many students are like you (40% they say are born outside the US).  This incredible diversity is a great strength of Queens as it leads the institution into a global perspective in a most powerful way, but we have to know how to leverage it, particularly if we want to educate the whole Queens student with academics plus relevant experiences.  Let’s stop here and maybe pick up some reactions from readers. 

Jim Stellar is tweeting

I decided to try the experiment about which Ashley Stempel and I wrote about in a post in late December.  Follow me on Twitter at ProvostStellar. The idea is to talk about Experiential Education and particularly about ideas for implementing it at a great public university, CUNY Queens College (where else?).

After a period of time, Ashley and I plan to write another blog post here about how it is going.  I am sure she will include a few funny stories where she tried to “teach an old dog some new tricks.”  More seriously, we in this blog family can assess if Twitter is a good medium for the stated purpose.

Susan Salk and Jim Stellar

Susan is a professional writer and we became friends at our previous jobs.  Recently, we began talking about the blog and how interesting it is that animals and humans seem to be able to communicate well. People think you are talking about dogs when you say that, but nothing represents this interaction better than horses.  Sue sent me the following note after a recent talk.

As a professional writer, some the biggest strides I’ve made in communications have taken place on horseback.

While approaching a 2-foot six-inch jump astride Diana, a Thoroughbred, for example, we move at a slow gallop, (a canter, in equestrian terms), and our brains and bodies work together toward a common goal of clearing the fence cleanly and safely. Neither of us wants to fall, and we know this.

As the ground zips past and the jump comes into focus, Diana moves her ears from an “I’m listening” position (one ear forward, one back) — the recognized signal among equestrians that the horse is paying attention to rider signals — to a both-ears-forward position, indicating she is locked onto the jump ahead.

I make several moves to signal her I am readying for take off, moves she has come to recognize over years of working with humans — I shift to a “jumper” position, leaning slightly forward, and off the saddle, and simultaneously shorten the reins and ready to give the signal she should “take off.”

That signal, a squeeze of both legs around her midsection, is called “asking.” As in, please, Diana, can we leave now?

The funny thing is, you can ask, and maybe she’ll listen, and depart the ground at precisely that moment, or maybe she won’t, instead, making up her own mind.

Many riders in my barn have joked that the human-horse decision making process is never so evident as it is before the decision to jump. One barn friend once said, “That’s when I really realize there’s two brains at work here.” That same rider has shaken her head and laughed at how differently she and her horse “judge distance.”

Horses, to those of us who spend time with them, are a lot like children. They exhibit jealously — try feeding one horse a carrot in front of the herd. Depending on personality, a horse will start banging on his stall, or nickering, or pawing the ground, all saying, “Where’s my carrot?”

When I rediscovered horses and riding in adulthood (I’d spent many early years as a rider) I began relearning how to communicate with the horse. Natural flight animals, horses are most comfortable in a herd, and possess a similar mentality as a popular crowd might in a high school setting.

To meet a horse, you do not reach out to pat them on the head as you would a dog. Although some will tolerate this, others will extend their heads high up, out of reach. Instead, the greeting involves putting human nose to muzzle, and allowing the horse to inhale your breath.

I don’t know if in these first instances a horse can size you up the way businessmen might over the firmness of a handshake, but as one who has been at the lowest end of the pecking order, probably for being too nice, and not showing leadership, I have been nipped and swiped at with front hooves.

As I grew more confident, I was able to stand up to some bad behavior. A turning point with one horse, who nipped me constantly, leaving bruises on both of my forearms, occurred one day after I decided to run and throw myself against him. At 100 pounds, I didn’t make much of an impression on his 1,100-pound bad self, but it was the start of me trying to show dominance, and the nipping soon stopped.

With Diana, I followed the advice of the famed horse whisperer Monty Roberts after reading his bestseller, “The Man Who Listens to Horses.” Roberts describes a moment in the relationship between horse and rider in which the horse acknowledges the human as a member of the herd.

That moment is called “joining up.”

In the barn one day with Diana, I decided to go through the exercise Roberts suggested. In a show of animal dominance, I turned my back on Diana, first trying to wave her away. There was more to it than that, but, moments later, as Roberts said would happen, Diana approached me at a slow walk, head lowered to the ground. This, he says, is a horse showing subservience.

Soon after, Diana stood very, very close to me with her muzzle near my neck, the gesture mimicking the way herd animals stand together.

There are so many little moments of communications discovery I have made over the years with this horse that I’m not sure what makes me happier, the riding, or the interpersonal relationship. 

Notice how both rider and horse learn from experience of each other.  How can such a rich interaction take place?  Notice the joy from the communication.  This joy is a positive sign and tells me that the interaction is taking place to compute how to move the team forward.  In this case one team member is literally riding another.  But in the world of humans, we might say that at this moment, one person carried the presentation or the thinking of the group forward.  How satisfying is it to earn the respect of one’s peers in carrying the group forward?  That is such a powerful experience that if you have it a few in a particular field, it could make that your career choice.  This exactly happened with me when I first entered a research lab in my junior/senior summer and loved it.  I loved the ideas and the people.  I was so pleased when I could say something that the group liked in a laboratory meeting.  How parallel is that to the joy of riding – and the mutual joy of the interaction? 

Exactly, Jim! I think the joy of learning and gaining competency, in the lab, or in the barn, is enhanced by the experience of learning to communicate with those around you. In the lab, other partners “join up” with you, your thoughts, your discoveries, and similarly, in the barn, Diana quite literally “joined up” with me, accepting me as a herd member as you were accepted as a lab partner of equivalent, or greater, value. In both cases, we learned to lead a group (or a horse) over time spent in the joyful endeavor of learning, hands-on.

Tamara Buchanan NU’07 and Jim Stellar

When I was Dean at Northeastern, Tamara worked a little in my research laboratory but came to me with a proposition.  She noted that one of the Universities goals was to encourage diversity and accomplishment, particularly in pursuit by undergraduates of premedical and biomedical pre-professional careers.  So, she asked me how she could raise $23,000 to have a Boston city-wide event with a person who spoke from example about how an African American can rise from inner city schools to become a renowned neurosurgeon at a major university.  It worked; somehow she got the money and had a truly inspiring event.  I know as I attended.  Then she went on a personal journey to the country of Belize where she witnessed firsthand how medicine struggles to serve people from 3^rd world countries.  This was an inspiration to her.  I have asked her to talk as a black woman interested in a biomedical career about these two events.  Then, together, we will have some comments on motivation, confidence, and how these two different but inspiring experiences operated on her thinking beyond the classroom.

Let’s start with the Ben Carson event.  Tell us what went through your mind in organizing it and how this experience impacted your growth as a person.

At the time when the idea to plan the event came into fruition, I was working as a pre-medical regional director for American Medical Student Association and functioned as the chapter president for the Northeastern University campus or “pre-med club” as we were also known. As a club we decided that we needed to have a large scale pre-medical conference to continue our efforts of providing knowledge about applying to medical school, community service and test preparation options as well as having keynotes to speak about how they ended up in their current profession. Jim, do you remember speaking at our very first conference? For this next conference I had the idea to have Dr. Ben Carson as a keynote. Dr. Carson was an inspiration to me for at very young age and I felt that his message and “Think Big” philosophy would be an excellent theme for the conference and one most students can relate to. The planning was not easy and the entire chapter worked fervently to make it happen despite the many setbacks we faced.  While planning this event I was in my final year at the university. I felt myself growing in many directions while learning the bureaucratics of event planning at my university. The notion to cancel the event came to mind because of the obstacles that kept arising.  In the end, the event ended up very successful and well attended. We were also proud of being able to open the event to the community as a Northeastern sponsored event. Looking out into the audience while doing Dr. Carson’s introduction I saw really young students sharing seats in the front row, many people sitting in the back on the ground and people sitting on the window panes of our filled to capacity ballroom. It made me realize how influential and inspirational this humble man has been to so many. And I was grateful to share the experience of meeting one of my childhood role models with the Northeastern and Boston community. At that point something changed in me and I knew that I needed to work closely with the younger generation and continue to help them realize that anything is possible with hard work and persistence, as people like Dr. Carson and you Jim have continued to help me understand.

Now, let’s turn to your personal experiences in Belize but focus again on what went through your mind and how this experience impacted your growth as a person.

After graduating I did a three month internship at a biotechnology company during the summer.  I knew I wanted to do some international volunteer work before finding a full time job, since I had decided that I was not ready yet to head straight to medical school after undergrad. I found a really amazing organization named Cornerstone Foundation in Belize Central America during my search, and decided that’s where I will move that fall. The organization has programming in Women’s health, HIV/AIDS awareness and youth programming that supported the San Ignacio community. I saved a significant amount of money from my internship and used it to travel to Belize. It was an amazing experience from beginning to end. I shared a house with three other volunteers from different areas of the globe. I learned a lot from them about their home life and aspirations. Together we learned more about Belize, its healthcare system, the culture, and how the individual work projects we did impacted the community. During the two and a half months I was there the only book I brought with me to read was Tracey Kidder’s Mountains beyond Mountains. It was amazing to read about the work Dr. Paul Farmer continues to do in Haiti.  It helped me to also understand that I wanted to now incorporate human rights efforts into my future career. I believe every student should go abroad after college and do volunteer work, especially if you are interested in a career in the biomedical field. I grew a lot in ways I can’t even explain that summer. My experience not only made me a more humbling person to other people’s struggles but shaped the way I view my future career. I hope in the future to work in ways that impacts the way we view healthcare and health policies as well as human rights and social justices’ efforts on a global scale. I also hope to continue to help young people realize that there are so many resources out there to help them achieve whatever goal they want to pursue. Some of these greatest resources are mentors and role models, so it’s important to seek them out.

We think this growth would not have happened if it were not for these experiences married to content impacting what we have called in this blog otherlobe thinking.  Notice that they all happened in a group context.  The social environment associated with a work project, is a powerful teacher not only of the soft skills and team work that makes what the business community call “work readiness” in a college graduate, but it leads to deeper thinking, like reading Kidder’s book about Paul Farmer and his work in Haiti, which is so freshly relevant after the tragedy there.  Because these thinking processes are separate (Tamara says, “I grew in a lot of ways I can’t even explain…”) and because some of the growth is personal, it is easy to dismiss its impact on content and ignore the value of an academic – gut instinct conversation between the “lobes” in the brain. 

We neuroscientists know that the communication between brain areas and between entire regions is limited by connections between nerve cells traveling at a relatively large distance compared to their size and going relatively slowly compared to electricity. So, it makes sense that specialized circuits would struggle some to talk to each other.  Yet this is, in our opinion, the essence of personal growth, of maturity, of settling on a career, of being able to see the big picture or patterns that escape less mature and younger people.  So, how do we design higher education, after we get them to allow such experiences, so that students can get the most out of them, encouraging the reflection that is needed?  And how do we do this especially where it is needed most, in populations and groups that are either not sure they can do it (master a field) or may not even know what it is.  Talk to us.  We will respond.

Ruth Wyshogrod (NU ’10) and Jim Stellar

On January 3, I posted an e-mail that Ruth wrote from Israel about her coop abroad program experience and how deep it impacted her.  Well now she is back and the culture shock she is experiencing in return, which is not uncommon, we can take in this blog as a reflection of the operation of the otherlobe thinking, now happening in reverse as the adaptations made to being abroad (and the learning from them) require new adaptations back to what was until recently home.  This is a complex story, but to begin, I have am just going to ask Ruth to describe it for us.

Next week (1-25), I will have been back in the States for one month, and I still do not think that I am completely over my reverse culture shock. In a way, for me, it is not entirely “reverse” culture shock. I was born and raised in Israel, and though I had not lived there since age 11, and had some adjusting to do when I got there as well, I feel as though I am now reentering American society anew. I get by easily in the United States. My English is perfect, I love the academic world that I am currently immersed in, and I belong to a tight-knit Jewish community which understands, at least to a certain degree, the deep connection that I feel with Israel; and it is precisely this deep connection that holds me back from feeling like I will ever fully feel at home in America, even once the culture shock fades. 

So right now I am experiencing readjustment on two levels: the first, the typical reverse culture shock that a student feels when they have just returned from a meaningful experience abroad. I just worked for a high-profile ex-politician for six months. I lived in the heart of one of the greatest cities in the Middle East. I volunteered with several wonderful community organizations, I attended lectures at the University and museums, I made lifelong friendships and enjoyed the great nightlife. These are all adventures that any student in another country can have, and they all leave a powerful lasting impact; and then the student returns to America and realizes that not much around them has changed as much as they have. I expected this to happen, and prepared myself for it. I prepared myself to feel a little bored and “in a rut”, for lack of better words, and then prepared to counter those feelings with a positive attitude. This has worked over the past month, though it is starting to wear off. Like most students who return from co-op, I am having a hard time adjusting back to the work load in my classes, but this is something that I simply have to overcome, and I have no doubt that I will. I am more concerned about the boredom, the lack of excitement - and this, I believe, is something unique to students who go abroad for co-op. This, of course, I will also overcome, because I am not actually bored. I am very busy with classes, extracurricular activities, and the small remainder of free time I have is devoted to reconnecting with friends. The main difference that I notice seems to be that, in Israel, I went to sleep every night feeling fully content with the activities of my day, feeling that they were truly meaningful. In Boston I often feel as though I am working hard for that feeling to come in the future, but do not necessarily feel it now. To me this is a cultural difference between the U.S and Israel.

Thanks.  Now please comment on what you think it means that you were raised in Israel for the first 11 years of your life.  Did that unusual familiarity help make the transition to Israel particularly deep for you?

As I wrote above, the transition “back” into Israeli life was not so quick, and so easy. Sure, it was significantly easier for me to adjust to life in Tel Aviv than it was for my American counterparts. I spoke the language fluently and I had full familiarity with and understanding of the culture. But the issues that I struggled with in my adjustment were deeper. I had to cope with the fact that everyone my age in Israel was serving in the army and I, an Israel, was not. Everyone I met and interacted with was older than me for this reason, too. I had to cope with the fact that even though I was Israeli and had all these lovely childhood memories of holidays with my family, my parents and siblings were not there to celebrate Hanukkah with me, because they do not actually live there anymore. Even though I have visited Israel every summer since I moved to the States, all my memories were still in time from 6th grade. It was a rude awakening to be in Israel long enough to realize that, of course, Israel too has changed, and everything is not as it was in 6th grade. This was a good and a bad realization. At times it made my adjustment more difficult, especially in terms of relationships with friends and family, but at times it was great, because ultimately I loved being a young student living in Tel Aviv, and was able to embrace that. Once the adjustment period was over, my connection with Israeli was reestablished in a way stronger than I could have ever expected. I am now certain that I want to live there after college, because I am certain that it is my home and I understand the implications of that fact for my overall happiness. 

Ruthie and I agree that the adjustment to living aboard is made on two levels, one of which is the automatic, instinctive, gut-level thinking that we have been calling “otherlobe thinking” in this blog.  It is not under conscious control, but makes itself felt as Dawn Anderson and I wrote some time ago about getting out of one’s comfort zone. 

Jim is reminded of a story of one of his teachers in graduate school in psychology explaining that the rules of classical conditioning (think Pavlov’s dogs) are the rules of emotional conditioning. He also remembers one of his teachers saying how he and a colleague had conditioned themselves to salivate by pairing a tone occurrence with a squirt in the mouth of something sour to study how long the salivation would continue after the pairing was discontinued (this is called extinction).  What the teacher discovered was that it took a long time for extinction, including their entire spring vacation week. Despite trying hard consciously not to salivate, they did and missed the vacation. 

So, what we think happened here is that Ruthie conditioned herself to Israel, got used to it. That phenomenon was almost certainly made stronger by her long early history living in Israel and supported by its attraction for her.  Just like the example of the salivary conditioning, but on a much more personally significant level, these circuits need to re-adjust.  The conscious mind is also learning as it verbalizes the story it is experiencing from the emotional circuits.  Then, we suggest, that verbal experience feeds back to the otherlobe where the conclusion comes from - that perhaps Israel, not the US, is really the right home.  Such a summary judgment is really what got this blog started with the Descartes Error neurology book by Damasio.  The dance between the two types of thinking is critical and plays into all forms of experiential education where students are learning by doing, traveling, interacting with their own past interests, etc.  Here is where higher education could be more focused in leveraging the interaction in abroad programs by having students mix with others upon return, give presentations to others who may yet want to go, and generally think with academic professionals as well as with friends about what the `experience means for career or even home location.

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.

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.

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.

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.