Connected Communities: TAMU-CC's Core Curriculum Program (FYLCP)
Introduction
The following page will share the history of the development of TAMU-CC's University Core Curriculum Program and its evolution into the First-Year Learning Communities Program. TAMU-CC's learning communities unique structure and integrative model of learning has served first-year students in their transition to the Island University for thirty years (1994-2024).
Higher Education Reform (1980s- 1990s)
A movement in higher education reform in the late 1980s and early 1990s, that challenged institutional leaders to make the undergraduate experience at public univerisities more engaging, inclusive, and connected. The National Institute for Education advocated for three key changes; institutions should devise smaller communities of learning within institutions, offer opportunities for more frequent and meaningful interactions between faculty and students, and students with peers, and to design curricula to be more connected, integrative, and inclusive.
As a result of the court case, LULAC v Clements (Richards) 1987, the South Texas Border Initiative formed in response to address the inequities and barriers to access higher education in historically underserved regions of South Texas. The landscape of higher education in Texas from 1990 until the early 2000s experienced profound shifts. The influx of funding enabled various stakeholders to better, design, develop, and implement program offerings, expand campus services in an attempt to serve the historically underserved. The Kellogg Commission on the Future of State and Land Grant Universities (1993, 2001) provided a series of recommendations to public and land grant institutions (like those in the A&M system) to address the need for system change. The commission made clear that the undergraduate enrollment at public universities was projected to increase, and that the student population would grow more diverses in terms of race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and varying degrees of college preparation and readiness.
Strategic Plan: Implementing a Program to Serve Students
In reviewing TAMU-CC' s Strategic Plan in 1994, reflects a concerted effort to revise the university's existing mission to reflect the legislative mandate to create a four-year comprehensive university, and the needs of South Texas. Outlined in the document are 12 goals that demonstrate a committment to addressing needs that reflect the demographic charcateristics of South Texas.
Among some of the goals, include:
- A committment to teaching excellence
- Concern for student's academic and personal development
- Expansion of facilities, student services, and academic programs
- A committtment on behalf of faculty and staff to learn and understand the Hispanic culture and history of South Texas, and demographic shifts
- Developing a sense of community among students, faculty and staff
While the strategic plan does not full reflect a model of HSI- servingness as contemporary scholars would conceptualize it, the articulation of the impact of demographic shifts in the Hispanic population as central to serving the region are present.
The strategic creation of the University Core Curriculum Program, is one of the means through which the institution could enhance educational opportunities for historically underserved students, ease their transition to university and engage in a unique first-year experience to help them matriculate through TAMU-CC.
Envisioning a Unique Core Curriculum: The TAMU-CC Experiment
TAMU-CC's development into a four- year instution came about at a historical moment in which higher education on a national level was being reformed at the same time the infusion of support from the South Texas Border Initiative sought to expand educational opportunities in South Texas.
An integrative core curriculum model of teaching and learning in the form of learning communities was an innovative pedagogical practice to be implemented at TAMU-CC, a regional public university in South Texas. Since the 1970s, learning communities and integrative core curriculum programs were almost exclusively offered by private, highly selective liberal arts colleges.
Designing a program specifically for first-year students to participate in this model was revolutionary and the first of it's kind in South Texas. By creating this program with the intention to engender a sense of community among freshman students, the program helped to entench a new institutional identity that was crucial to TAMU-CC's foundation as a comprehensive four-year institution.
Although planning for the shift to a four -year comprehensive insitution began as early as 1990, the Unviversity Core Curriculum emerged from a series of eight faculty taskforces that formed in the Fall of 1992 and concluded in 1993. The Undergraduate Studies faculty task force solified a 46 semester hour program. TAMU-CC offered five Bachelor's Degrees; Bachelor of Arts, Bachelor of Fine Arts, Science, Music, Business Administration, Interdisciplinary Studies, and a Bachelor of Science in Nursing. The University Core Program served as , "an administrative home for students with 30 semester hours of credit and those who with more than thirty hours who have not yet officially declared a major. " (TAMU-CC Undergraduate Course Catalog, 1994-1995). Students were assigned faculty advisors to offer support with course selection and other academic interests, and the "principal feature of the UCP is the extensive, direct involvement of the University faculty, both as teachers and mentors." (TAMU-CC Undergraduate Course Catalog, 1994-1995).
The core curriculum course content were tied to a University Theme: Toward the Urban Environment. This theme would provide a focus for the coursework of the core, and provide a shared contextualized discourse for the the university community. A critical part of the core were Triads (or learning communities) that served as the integrative learning model, and specificaly designed for freshman. All first-time in college students were required to enroll in their first two semesters. Triads consisted of large classes (200 students) in a core subject area (History, Political Science, Art, Music) an English Composition course and a Freshman Seminar. Both the English Composition and Freshman Seminar were taught in smaller groups of 25 students. These small cohorts enabled students to share common intellectual and co-curricular experiences.
All first time in college students were required to enroll in a Freshman Seminar in two consecuive semesters. The course curriculum centered on university orientation issues, critical skills, crtical thinking and creative synthesis. Each Freshman Seminar was taught by a Seminar Leader, experienced faculty members and master learners who underwent specialized training to serve as mentors, advisors, and general resource individuals to the students in their seminar courses.
UCCP Founders 1995
Back row (L-R): Dr. Blair Sterba Boatwright, Dr. Robb Jackson, Dr. Robert Wooster, Dr. Sam Logsdon. Front row (L-R): Unknown, Dr. Marilyn Spencer, Dr. Pamela Meyer.
Welcoming the Freshman Class of 1994: TAMU-CC Pioneers
Welcoming the freshman class of 1994 ushered in a new era at the Island University. With a new Director of the University Core Curriculum, Dr. Marilyn Spencer at the helm, and with the enthusiatic support of the university president, Dr. Robert Furgason, stated in his welcome message published in the newly renamed Island Waves student newspaper, "For our new freshman students, the core curriculum program is something that most univeristies would love to implement, but can only dream about." (Island Waves, Volume 2, Issue 5) With the support of the First-Year Writing Program led by Dr. Robb Jackson, the freshman triads were launched and students engaged in the experiment. The goal of the UCCP was to provide a foundation of skills and information literacy that would enable graduates to assume leadership positions as future professionals in a 21st century world.
As with all new academic programs and teaching innovations, challenges are to be expected. The incoming class was comprised of 500 students who were eager to begin their educational journey at the Island University. The insitution hired over 70 new faculty and new facilities were still under construction as students arrived to campus. According to Dr. Robert Wooster, long time collaborator and lecturer in the freshman triad (learning communities), Boy, we were stumbling for a while. The poor students, they were being guinea pigs, because we didn't really know what we were doing! We [Lecturers] didn't really know what we wanted. We had a general idea about how we wanted to help students, but over time, you got to know people who worked with you within the Seminars, and it was those people that helped me become, I think, an even better teacher. Just the [teaching] experiences with them, the insights they had because we shared students. [i] would listen to them, where you [I] wouldn't listen to other people, because you knew, they know what's going on here [with students]. And so to me, it was great fun. Always was always great fun. We were giong to be likfe the frontier, the borderlands, and make our own way, whether it was a success or a failure. (Dr. Robert Wooster, personal interview).
As the integrative engine of the Freshman Triads, the Seminar courses served as the lynchpin for helping students to see the connections among the core courses, and to providing academic, social and advisory support. As academic spaces, the Freshman triads were central to getting students to embrace this new model of learning, and all curricular efforts to reinforce this were implemented. Additionally, as with all new academic programs, the university core program had to prove itself to be financially viable to be sustained. From 1994- 2000, with the support of Washington Center for Improving Undergraduate Education, program leadership was able to offer additional professional development to all participants and demonstrably proved that student retention increased as a result of these integrative learning experiences. "We celebrated and shared every success , no matter how small , because we believed in what we were doing. You had to really believe in it, and we did. [As the director of the core] I never did anything alone, its was all of us."(Dr. Marilyn Spencer, personal interview).
A Student's Journey: Freshman Seminar and Other Hassles
However, student perceptions and experiences are critical and not all students embraced the interdisciplinary integrated model of learning, and especially the Freshman Seminar course. A series of articles published by students in the Island Waves reveals that the Freshman Seminar course requirement was heavily criticiized. Students expressed confusion concerning the purpose of the course and its utilty in supporitng their efforts in other linked courses. A first-year student, Samantha Slaughter expressed her concerns in a series of Island Waves articles and galvanized oter students to express their views. These concerns did not go unnoticed by the Univeristy Core Curriculum Committee and its faculty participants and efforts to revise the curriculum for the Freshman Seminar course, simplify the registration process via block scheduling and developing more explicit connections among the triad courses were among the top priorities.
2000- 2024: The Evolution of the UCCP to the FYLCP
In 2000, the University Core Curriculum Program experienced a shift in leadership. Dr. Marilyn Spencer resumed a faculty role as a professor of economics in the College of Business. Dr. Pamela Meyer, one of the participating lecture faculty in the freshman triads took the lead. By 2003-2004, Dr. Carlos Huerta (Core Curriculum Director), and Dr. Susan Wolff- Murphy (First Year Writing Program Director) assumed co-directorship roles under the new program name, the First Year Learning Communities Program. The program rose to prominence as a nationally recognized program when it was recognized by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board as a recipent of the Star Award and made a contributing insititutional member of the National Learning Communities Consortium.
From 2000-2015, the First Year Learning Communities Program operated as an independent program. By 2015, the program was reorganized into the Department of Undergraduate Studies and then eventually became part of the newly formed University College. University College was dissolved in 2021. The program is now part of the Deparment of Interdisciplinary Studies housed in the College of Liberal Arts. To view the most recent iteration of the program, please visit: https://www.tamucc.edu/liberal-arts/departments/interdisciplinary-studies/first-year-learning-communities/index.php
The creation of the University Core Curriculum Program in 1994, paved the way for an innovative, interdisciplinary model of learning unique to a regional public university in South Texas. The program's history and evolution over the last thirty years can help researchers, scholar-practicioners and commuity members to be aware of the committment to innovative teaching and learning, not designed for institutions like ours by a few committed folks has helped shape the educational journeys of thousands of students at the university.