The CTE’s Faculty Book Club launched the academic year with The Heart of Higher Education: A Call to Renewal by Parker J. Palmer & Arthur Zajonc. 90 Faculty from across the university read the book over the summer, and 60 of them convened on August 23 for a lively dinner and some unexpected activities. Rather than debating the merits of the book, which would be academic readers’ first instinct, participants enjoyed a brief immersion in contemplative and experiential learning.
Modeled on the Freshman Reading Experience, the annual Book Club gives participants a chance to read a common book about higher education, then meet, discuss and share ideas with colleagues. This year’s book, The Heart of Higher Education, promotes integrated learning in all disciplines—learning that engages students in mind, heart and body. The book’s central question is this:
How can higher education become a more multidimensional enterprise, one that draws on the full range of human capacities for knowing, teaching, and learning; that bridges the gaps between the disciplines; that forges stronger links between knowing the world and living creatively in it, in solitude and community?
Most of us already recognize one model of integrative education in the many service learning courses taking place throughout campus. In those courses, students integrate their lived experiences in community settings with their academic subjects. But integrative learning can be built into any course. In fact, one of the book’s authors is a physicist. The book set many of us thinking about how we might incorporate integrative learning into non-service learning courses.
In order to inspire that kind of thinking, faculty members at the Book Club dinner were first invited to a brief guided meditation and reflection on the joy they feel in teaching. They then exchanged stories about a time they felt joy in the classroom, or a story about a student whose life they had profoundly affected. And then they set to work drawing or writing haikus that expressed some big question about teaching and learning they had been thinking about for years.
Thus immersed heart and mind in their own integrative inquiry, and engaged in excited conversation with peers, faculty experienced for themselves what integrative education could mean.
For a model of one integrative experience in the classroom, check out John Nelson’s short teaching video at our short videos page.
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