Inaugural Conference of The Mosakowski Institute for Public Enterprise- Program

Program for University Research and the American Agenda: Discovering Knowledge, Enabling Leadership. The Inaugural Conference of the Mosakowski Institute for Public Enterprise.

Public, Private and University Collaboration: Applying a Retrospective Study of the Central Massachusetts Bio-Medical Cluster, Cluster Project Summary for Mosakowski Institute

Three Clark faculty members are studying the development of the Worcester Biotechnology Cluster for any lessons it might hold for current efforts to catalyze the growth of a sustainable energy/green jobs cluster in Worcester or elsewhere. Mary Ellen Boyle (GSOM), Jennie Stephens (IDCE/ESP), and Jing Zhang (GSOM) have conducted extensive in-depth interviews and combed the literature of cluster development to produce several articles and working papers.

From Dartboards to Dashboards: The Imperative of using Data to Improve Student Achievement

Mosakowski Institute for Public Enterprise: Video Recording from 11/3/2011 event featuring Aimee Guidera, "From Dartboards to Dashboards: The Imperative of using Data to Improve Student Achievement"

Designing a Liberal Arts Curriculum that Develops the Capacity for Effective Practice

A new agenda has been coalescing for residential liberal arts education in the United States. At its core are various forms of experiential learning that had long been relegated to the margins of institutions in which pure intellectual achievement was largely separated from, and prized above, practical application of knowledge. Recent years have brought growing student interest in opportunities to engage in experiential learning, including community service, internships, student-faculty research partnerships, study abroad, or co-operative education. All types of colleges and universities have been investing in these programs and in curricular modifications intended to begin integrating them into a coherent educational program. With support from several major associations, foundations, and research collaborations, this twenty-first century reframing of the aims of education has included a persistent call for better evaluative data to gauge the extent to which college students are actually meeting learning goals that faculty are being encouraged to specify more fully.

American Challenges

In the autumn of 2008, with the United States facing myriad problems both foreign and domestic and entering the final stage of a historic election, The Boston Globe asked Mosakowski Institute Director Jim Gomes to write a series of op-ed pieces about critical issues on the nation’s agenda. The result is the six columns collected here in American Challenges. “When I wrote these pieces,” said Gomes, “the country had entered a period of great uncertainty. So much of what had been taken as a given in the last half of the 20th century, from broadly shared prosperity to the health of our political system to America’s place of leadership in the world, was being called into question.” These columns appeared in the Globe between October 27 and December 1, 2008. Together, they touch upon many enduring questions about the public enterprise in America.

Survey:

In June of 2010, at the African American and Juneteenth Festival in Worcester, Massachusetts, Clark University administered a survey directed toward African American residents of the city of Worcester. In the survey, residents who attended the festival were asked to rate the quality of life in the City, public services, and local government and political representation, as well as leadership in the local African-American community. This report presents and analyzes the primary findings of the survey.

Investing in Community Colleges of the Commonwealth: A Review of Funding Streams

Community colleges play a pivotal role in Massachusetts’ higher education system. They award associate’s degrees, offer an affordable pathway to a bachelor's degree, and provide access to higher education for underserved populations. Community colleges also offer workforce development and industry certification for those entering the world of work, those who are currently employed but need more training or retraining, and those who have been dislocated from their careers by the global economic crisis. To increase access to both college credits and improved work skills, community colleges provide remedial or developmental education to ensure all students can pursue a program of study (Dougherty & Townsend, 2006; Mullin, 2010b).

Liberal Education, Effective Practice, and Diversity

This session will be based on three presentations that focus on the relationship between liberal education, effective practice and diversity from different perspectives. George Kuh will present data indicating that the educational benefits of "high impact" learning experiences (such as experiential education and undergraduate research), which are significant for all students, are often greater for students from underserved and minority backgrounds than for their majority counterparts. Armando Bengochea will discuss the ways in which an emphasis on effective practice can enhance the educational experiences of students of color within a liberal arts curriculum. Steve Stemler will report on research showing that including practice-oriented criteria in assessments of student achievements and capabilities can assist colleges and universities in identifying and educating minority students with high potential to succeed both in college and beyond college.

Designing a Liberal Arts Curriculum that Develops the Capacity for Effective Practice

A new agenda has been coalescing for residential liberal arts education in the United States. At its core are various forms of experiential learning that had long been relegated to the margins of institutions in which pure intellectual achievement was largely separated from, and prized above, practical application of knowledge. Recent years have brought growing student interest in opportunities to engage in experiential learning, including community service, internships, student-faculty research partnerships, study abroad, or co-operative education. All types of colleges and universities have been investing in these programs and in curricular modifications intended to begin integrating them into a coherent educational program. With support from several major associations, foundations, and research collaborations, this twenty-first century reframing of the aims of education has included a persistent call for better evaluative data to gauge the extent to which college students are actually meeting learning goals that faculty are being encouraged to specify more fully.

Engaged Learning: Enabling Self-Authorship and Effective Practice

There is now broad consensus that higher education must extend beyond content-based knowledge to encompass intellectual and practical skills, personal and social responsibility, and integrative learning. The college learning outcomes needed for success in 21st century life include critical thinking, a coherent sense of self, intercultural maturity, civic engagement, and the capacity for mutual relationships. Yet, research suggests that college students are struggling to achieve these outcomes in part because skills needed to succeed in college are not those needed to succeed upon graduation. One reason for this gap is that these college learning outcomes require complex developmental capacities or “self-authorship” that higher education is not currently designed to promote.

Toward the Equitable Distribution of Enriching Educational Experiences: Faculty Engagement with Racial Minority Students

Peña, Bensimon, and Colyar (2006) noted: “Not only do African Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans have lower graduation rates than [do] Whites and Asian Americans, they also experience inequalities in just about every indicator of academic success – from earned grade point average to placement on the dean’s list to graduation rates in competitive majors” (p. 48). While these and other racialized outcomes disparities cannot be attributed to a narrow set of explanatory factors, one thing is known for sure: College students who are actively engaged inside and outside the classroom are considerably more likely than are their disengaged peers to persist through baccalaureate degree attainment. Furthermore, engaged students typically accrue the desired outcomes that are central to liberal education. This is especially true for engagement in what Kuh (2008) refers to as “high-impact” educational experiences – study abroad programs, learning communities, undergraduate research programs, service learning opportunities, and summer internships, to name a few. Unfortunately, racial minority undergraduates are considerably less likely than are their White peers to enjoy the educational benefits associated with these experiences.

Effective Practice and Experiential Education

The central challenge to educators in the liberal arts as in all areas of study is transfer of learning i.e. how can we design learning environments and instruction to that students will be able to use what they learn in appropriate new contexts? Alfred North Whitehead described this as the problem of ‘inert knowledge’ nearly a century ago and Dewey noted that instruction which helps students reproduce what is studied on exams might not produce the depth of understanding that allows for recognizing the relevance of what is known to a particular situation and the ability to apply it. Knowledge that is not conditionalized (i.e. in which the learner does not know when where and why it is to be used) is inert.

Academic Intelligence is not Enough! WICS: An Expanded Model for Effective Practice in School and in Later Life

Is there a psychological basis for teaching and learning in the context of a liberal education, and if so, what might such a psychological basis look like? Traditional teaching and assessment often emphasize remembering facts and, to some extent, analyzing ideas. Such skills are important, but they leave out of the aspects of thinking that are most important not only in liberal education, but in life, in general. In this article, I propose a theory called WICS, which is an acronym for wisdom, intelligence, and creativity, synthesized. The basic idea underlying this theory is that, through liberal education, students need to acquire creative skills and attitudes to generate new ideas about how to adapt flexibly to a rapidly changing world, analytical skills and attitudes to ascertain whether these new ideas are good ones, practical skills and attitudes to implement the new ideas and convince others of their value, and wisdom-based skills and attitudes in order to ensure that the new ideas help to achieve a common good through the infusion of positive ethical values.

Bioremediation with White-Rot Fungi at Fisherville Mill: Analyses of Gene Expression and Number 6 Fuel Oil Degradation

Extracellular enzymes that white-rot fungi secrete during lignin decay have been proposed as promising agents for oxidizing pollutants. We investigated the abilities of the white-rot fungi Punctularia strigosozonata, Irpex lacteus, Trichaptum biforme, Phlebia radiata, Trametes versicolor, and Pleurotus ostreatus to degrade Number 6 fuel oil in wood sawdust cultures. Our goals are to advise bioremediation efforts at a brownfield redevelopment site on the Blackstone River in Grafton, Massachusetts and to contribute to the understanding of decay mechanisms in white-rot fungi. All species tested degraded a C10 alkane. When cultivated for 6 months, Irpex lacteus, T. biforme, P. radiata, T. versicolor and P. ostreatus also degraded a C14 alkane and the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon phenanthrene. Gene expression analyses of P. strigosozonata indicate differential gene expression in the presence of Number 6 oil and on pine and aspen sawdust.