A College For Tough Times -- Success is Not About Family Income

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An important tool for assessing CHC post-graduate performance has been the communications from the graduates themselves, usually in the form of emails back to the CHC director and to IUP faculty.

Indiana, Pennsylvania (PRWEB) June 18, 2009

Robert Cook, a 1964 graduate of IUP, is the benefactor of the IUP's Cook Honors College (CHC) and spoke on the occasion of graduating the 10th class at the Cook Honors College there. Cook said that the "Secret Sauce" at IUP is the fact that its faculty actually teaches and that the proof of that power wasn't clear until the Cook Honors College began, 14 years ago, to attract top student from the ranks of those families without big money. As evidence Cook cites the fact that, in the first ten years of graduates, top scholarships increased 36 fold, including a finalist for the Rhodes, Marshall and Truman scholarships, seven Fulbrights and four Goldwater scholarships, the nation's top science award, in five years. Cook said, "One thing that establishes the reputation and even defines a top university like Harvard or Stanford, or even Penn State and Virginia, in the eyes of our society is the number of top academic scholarships that its graduates earn."

Cooks remarks were to an IUP 2009 graduating class of 1,603 students, with 67 students from the honors college. Separately, Cook said, "The CHC has top kids, with enormous academic potential but little family money. Most work part-time to help pay their bills. Each CHC student is required to perform community service yet they still outperform national peers academically, by any measure. They are taught by the same faculty that teaches everyone at IUP and they attend, with everyone else, the many classes required by IUP for graduation. Of course, they are taught critical thinking skills and superior communications skills in a dedicated honors environment."

The curriculum is one proven over many years in the United States and abroad, and refined only slightly as lessons became obvious. It involves critical thinking skills developed in the framework of the Western Intellectual Tradition. The curriculum for honors is called Core at IUP and consumes much of the first two academic years of a CHC student. Students study the thinking and writings of many of history's great thinkers beginning with the Greeks and Romans. Plato's Allegory of the Cave is taught early and later there is an emphasis on the major Enlightenment thinkers. For example, if democracy and the social contract are topics, the writings of Hobbes are one place to look for strong opinions and of Rousseau another; if the topic is money and economics, then go to Adam Smith, and so on. Much of the curriculum is team taught by Professors from various departments so that the dance, the sociology, and the theater of a period lends flavor to the study of a person's thoughts by surrounding those thoughts and writings with at least some understanding of the environment in which great thinkers lived and wrote.

"It makes sense that if IUP faculty teaches honors kids so well, and they demonstrably do, that they will do a better job at teaching the bulk of students who have, perhaps, fewer academic talents and ambition than CHC kids than would any old university where teaching assistants teach everyone but the superstars."

As an example of the adjustments needed to get recognition of top performance by CHC students, Cook cites their Achievement Fund, a philanthropic program that encourages study abroad and support for top internships by providing financial support for such efforts. "In the early days of getting the CHC going we found that one constraint that accompanied family financial struggles was that our CHC students were very insular in their views. Intelligence and critical thinking skills were necessary, but not sufficient," Cook said. "After a few test cases, we concluded that a semester, or even a summer studying or serving in another country, or working in a competitive internship, gave our students a much more sophisticated view of the world, and helped them reason more broadly, critically. That benefit proved invaluable in helping students compete for the big scholarships that define success at IUP's CHC. Still, it is a work in progress."

Another unique and powerful combination for honors students at IUP is the fact that IUP has well respected graduate programs from the various departments that award Masters and Ph.D.s. When students emerge from Core and move full time into the IUP academic mainstream, they are seasoned critical thinkers and communicators well prepared for demanding work in their subject majors and IUP meets them with faculty that loves to teach and encourages top level performance. Scholarly papers by emerging CHC students are encouraged and mentored, thus improving chances of earning a top academic scholarship.

Costs at IUP are quite low on a national scale. At about $12,000 per year for Pennsylvania residents, students can earn a four year degree from IUP at less than the cost of one year at one of the Ivies or at a top liberal arts college and many of our students are granted scholarships or financial aid, lowering their costs even more.

"To enable assessment and improvement at the Cook Honors College and in IUP generally, tests must be made of how well the CHC emphasis on critical thinking performs for graduates in the crucible of working and competing in the real world. There is strong indication that it works well when CHC students must compete with others from more prestigious, more expensive universities. One of IUP's history students and a member of the CHC community, Laura Heiman, was recognized recently by King's College London as a top performer there, and was the only student from a US public university so recognized," said Dr. Charles Cashdollar, history professor emeritus and Distinguished Alumni of IUP.

"An important tool for assessing CHC post-graduate performance has been the communications from the graduates themselves, usually in the form of emails back to the CHC director and to IUP faculty." Cashdollar said. "There was often a substantial financial sacrifice that accompanied that four year degree from IUP, and families want to know it was money well spent. For the director of the CHC, Dr. Janet Goebel, it is confirmation that it is still effective. For parents of prospective students, it is at least some indication that their money will be well spent at IUP."

It's been sixteen years since the first student entered IUP's Cook Honors College. Mistakes were made and lessons learned. Any case that there is strong correlation between family income and academic potential has been dispelled by the performance of the graduates of IUP's Cook Honors College. In fact, the challenge of executing superior performance may be enhanced by the fact that students are accustomed to hard work and demanding time management that flows from a need to have a part-time job while performing extensive community service in the midst of learning within a challenging curriculum. "We think that it is important to find and educate those financially challenged but academically talented students to be outperformers, whether in Western Pennsylvania or across the nation. The model has evolved and is well documented and taps one of our country's best remaining pools of potential societal superstars," Cook said.

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