WHAT WE DO. WHY WE DO IT.

Our work with campus partners seeks transformation of structural practices at Georgetown.

We work with a broad group of researchers and practitioners at Georgetown University who are responsible for our strong track record of support for student access and success, curricular and pedagogical innovation, educational and workforce scholarship, and social action. We focus on better understanding the consequences of our current practices and designing and testing new models of action and impact. We are supporting efforts to grow the diversity of students who have access to Georgetown and to build a more equitable community that both better supports and learns from this expanded pool of excellence.

OUR PROJECTS.

REGENTS SCIENCE SCHOLARS PROGRAM

Leverages the success of Georgetown’s curricular innovation and wrap-around supports to address the critical shortage of underserved and first-generation college students in the sciences.
Read more.

STUDENT BELONGING STUDY

Uses a novel micro-narrative research tool to surface attitudes of belonging among first-generation students at Georgetown. Read more.

EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING AND EQUITY STUDY

How can Georgetown support experiential learning across the curriculum and co-curriculum, from entry, through career exploration, first job and beyond? Read more.

ADMISSIONS PRACTICES

Seeking to better understand the relationship between students’ admissions’ profiles and measures of success at Georgetown. Read more.

REBUNDLING A GEORGETOWN DEGREE

Deliberately thinking about how the fundamental components of an undergraduate degree (credit, cost, time, learning and instruction) do interact and how they could interact. Read more.

MORE IN THE WORKS.

MORE ON OUR PROJECTS.

REGENTS SCIENCE SCHOLARS PROGRAM

The Regents Science Scholars Program (RSSP) leverages the success of Georgetown’s curricular innovation and wrap-around supports to address the critical shortage of underserved and first-generation college students who successfully complete degrees in the sciences. RSSP is an extension of two campus programs: Georgetown Scholarship Program (GSP) and Community Scholars Program (CSP).

RSSP tests new models of curricular support. Our hypothesis is that the most relevant disparity in the breadth of high school science educations encountered by our students is not content but context: (1) To what purpose is the education targeted? and (2) What scope of opportunity and ownership of their education is available to students?

To test this hypothesis, we purposefully focus on high-end intellectual practices found in authentic research opportunities through the utilization of Course-based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CURES – or as we term them – pop-up laboratories) that are available students in their transition from high school to college.

RSSP is also testing the efficacy of online modules designed to help students who struggle in foundational courses transition successfully to upper-level coursework. Our hypothesis is that the hierarchical nature of knowledge disadvantages throughout their educational career students who underperform in introductory-level courses. Thus, we have designed these modules to focus on skills and threshold concepts that form the essential tools for success in the hierarchical curriculum typical in the sciences.

This is a joint project with The Designing the Future(s) Initiative. For more information please visit The Regents Science Scholars Program website.

STUDENT BELONGING STUDY

In an effort to better understand student experiences at Georgetown as our campus engages with and addresses issues of educational equity, The Hub launched a study on attitudes of belonging among first-generation students. Literature shows that first-generation college students encounter hurdles as they seek to develop a sense of belonging on campuses with a disproportionate percentage of students who come from families with greater experience in higher education and greater economic and social capital.

For this research, we are using SenseMaker, a new software that helps individuals interpret their own stories and then aggregates these annotations into a network model that reveals larger patterns. The methodology involves collecting large numbers of short stories that, together, create a nuanced picture of a given topic, in the same way that many pixels come together to produce a clear image. 

SenseMaker also enables action. Instead of asking, “How do we create a culture of X?” it allows us to ask, “How do we create more stories like this and fewer stories like that?”

Our work using SenseMaker follows a three-step process: (1) In spring 2018, we piloted a preliminary version of the tool with 58 first-generation undergraduate students at Georgetown. We spent the summer analyzing the responses to the micro-narrative tool. (2) In fall 2018, we will conduct focus groups with students to help us refine the tool for broader dissemination this year. (3) Upon receiving feedback from students and stakeholders on campus, we will launch a large-scale survey to surface attitudes toward belonging among first-generation college students here at Georgetown.

Ultimately, the results of this work will be used both for internal improvement to first-generation student support services and to share with other college campuses seeking to understand ways to support first-generation students on their campuses.

This is joint project with The Designing the Future(s) Initiative, in partnership with The Georgetown Scholarship Program. For more information please email Molly Morrison (mtm101@georgetown.edu). 

EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING AND EQUITY STUDY

The experiential learning research project takes an in-depth look at Georgetown’s experiential learning landscape and grapples with the following questions:

  • What is the impact of experiential learning in a student’s educational path (how is it transformative, determinative, or influential in pursuing future choices)?

  • What are the learning outcomes of experiential learning in a student’s overall education (desired and actual)?

  • What would it look like to require that every student will have had at least one transformational global learning experience in order to graduate? (See working definition, below)

  • What would a more robust and networked ecosystem look like at Georgetown – one that supports experiential learning, faculty-led coursework and curricular opportunities, as well as immersive and integrative co-curricular programs?

Through our research, data gathering and analysis, our goal is to better understand the answers to these questions as we get closer to answering how experiential learning might be transformative in a student’s undergraduate education.

This is a joint project with The Designing the Future(s) Initiative. For more information please email Mark Joy (mwj8@georgetown.edu).

ADMISSIONS PRACTICES

The Hub is seeking to better understand the relationship between students’ admissions’ profiles and measures of success at Georgetown. For this predictive analytics research, we are partnering with the Office of Admissions, the Registrar, and the undergraduate advising deans of the schools for access to applicant/student data. We are conducting both quantitative and qualitative analyses of the available admissions and student data and plan to extend this work to look at post-graduation trajectories at a later date.

REBUNDLING A GEORGETOWN DEGREE

There is increasing misalignment at Georgetown between the institution’s assumptions and student behavior in bundling the fundamental components that make up an undergraduate degree (credit, cost, time, learning and instruction). This misalignment is contributing to and exacerbated by the budgetary challenges that the University currently faces and only compounds the pressure put on Georgetown to address the unsustainable rising cost of tuition.

Rebundling explores how new forms of learning and equity come together, which involves taking a structural and economic look at Georgetown’s current undergraduate degree model. Rebundling posits that Georgetown is at the limit of its current degree model and needs to shift to a slightly different paradigm in order to deliver a Georgetown degree that addresses three goals:

  1. Expanding Learning: Building on the  University’s tradition of excellence we must respond to the need to teach to a wider range of capacities in expanded learning contexts.

  2. Equal Opportunity: We must ensure that all students have both flexible and focused paths available to them and we are well-positioning faculty and staff to support them.

  3. Affordability: We must find ways of controlling the costs of providing an increasingly relevant and equitable education, to ensure affordability for both lower income and middle income students. 

Deliberately thinking about how elements of rebundling, such as credit, cost, time, learning, and instruction, interact today and could interact in the future, will put Georgetown in a better position to truly address the triple imperative of quality, equal opportunity and affordability. We will examine these possibilities in the coming months through development of a concept paper, as well as engagement in thought exercises and workshops.

This is a joint project with The Designing the Future(s) Initiative. For more information please email Mark Joy (mwj8@georgetown.edu).