Educational entrepreneurship at Stony Brook: strengthening public education, public health, & a public university - Perspectives

Liberal Education, Wntr, 2002 by Richard P. Keeling

JASON RICHARDSON, now a senior in high school on Long Island, can remember the precise moment when his mother arrived in the auditorium in which he, as a junior, was midway through a presentation on safer sex and teenage pregnancy. "Well, there's a lot more I could say," Jason told his audience, "but my mother just walked in." Most high school students could probably understand Jason's comment and the passing awkwardness of his mother's presence, but few would have the opportunity to share his experience. He was, at sixteen, giving a talk at a conference on the campus of the State University of New York at Stony Brook, and his listeners included (in addition to his mother) not only other high school students and Stony Brook undergraduates with whom he had taken--for college credit--a course on teen health issues, but also university faculty and staff, other parents, and representatives from his high school. "Yeah," he says, thinking back. "It was a pretty big deal."

It was a big deal for his mother, Cynthia, as well. A lifelong activist with an engaging, warm manner and an intimidating list of awards, citations, and leadership positions in community organizations, she had worked hard to create educational opportunities for her son. "As an African American male, he is, point blank, at risk," she explains. "I want to put positive things in front of him all the time, and he needs people besides Mom and Dad to do that, too." Having attended an orientation program at Jason's high school about a new partnership-based learning model that linked Stony Brook and its resources with area high schools to address critical health issues for young adults, she pushed to get both the school and her son involved. She succeeded on both counts. "When my son goes to college, it will be because he's had strong role models who have encouraged him, helped him stay in school, and kept him involved."

As for Jason, planning for college is his first priority now; still sorting out career options as different as law and the theater, he feels that the Stony Brook experience opened doors for him and gave him greater confidence in his own abilities. "It was fun, but also serious, and you definitely had to approach it like a college class," he recalls. "You get a real preview of college life." Cynthia Richardson has made sure he can stay involved in the program--even to the point of driving him almost an hour each way to Stony Brook for the class one evening each week. "The program there is like an educational family, and a very supportive one," she believes.

Adaptive Learning

On Long Island, adaptive learning has taken root. Stony Brook University has been able to give new meaning to the idea of a public university through learning models that explore the articulations between high school and college while empowering both high school and college students to test drive new material -- adapting content, skills, research projects, and experiences to fit the realities and challenges of their own lives and the needs of their communities. David Ferguson, director of Stony Brook's Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching (CELT), notes proudly that projects like the one that brought Jason Richardson to campus "make us more worthy of the title of a 'public university."' By bringing high school and college students together to study pressing health questions, highlighting their contributions as creators of new knowledge, and making their accomplishments public, the university goes "beyond the usual outreach activities, which are viewed as supplemental enrichment for the students...thi s takes us to a different level of involvement." And of adaptive learning.

Colleges and universities of various types have for years--and for decades, in some cases--worked in their communities to solve problems (service learning projects), strengthen educational systems, or conduct research. But the Stony Brook program is fundamentally different from its predecessors--and very promising in its results. Consider these points:

* Stony Brook was able to leverage very small amounts of money awarded through mini-grants (some of them small enough to be called microgrants!) to create an issue-oriented learning program on campus, a new minor for undergraduates, a cooperative educational activity involving area high schools, and a variety of research opportunities for both high school students and its own undergraduates.

* High school and college students, working together, become collaborative learners. The "older" undergraduates serve as mentors; they clarify expectations about college while guiding high school students in their research projects and supervising their preparation for presentations. Jason Canales, a 2001 Stony Brook graduate now enrolled in the School of Law at the University of Miami, writes: "Working with the high school students provided me with insight on the ideas and opinions of a younger generation and also allowed me to convey my experiences and notions of health, AIDS, drugs, etc. with the students in a formalistic teacher-student approach."