On October 27, 1997, the Wagner College faculty adopted the Wagner Plan for the Practical Liberal Arts. One of the goals for the new educational program was to create a culture of achievement among undergraduates. By linking “learning by doing” to a robust liberal arts curriculum, the Wagner Plan emphasizes active, applied and collaborative learning. The plan expressly emphasizes the linkage of classroom “texts” with the immediacy of fieldwork. By stressing evaluation and reflection within thematic clusters of courses, the plan calls for deeper learning through immersion. The combination of thematically linked liberal arts courses and field-based learning results in greater breadth, depth, and integration within the undergraduate educational experience.

            Toward this goal, the Wagner Plan is founded on a series of Learning Communities, beginning with the First-Year Program, extended by the Intermediate Learning Communities during the sophomore and junior years, and culminating with the Senior Program. Wagner’s undergraduates thereby develop into reflective practitioners within their chosen professions.

THE SENIOR PROGRAM

            By the end of the senior year, all students must successfully complete a learning community with a reflective tutorial in their major. The Senior LC is a summative experience that contains the following elements: a summative major course and an RFT that includes a field-based practicum and final written project

            Reflective practice is the central goal within the chosen field. For instance, biology majors engage in a senior program that asks them to develop a senior field project demonstrating their competency as reflective practitioners in biology. The same holds for each of the respective majors. In the Senior Program, majors engage in a variety of different field projects, meet together in a reflective tutorial, and take a summative course that normally runs concurrently. In some cases, work leading to the senior experience and reflective tutorial may start in the junior year.

            As the ultimate goal of The Senior Program, all senior students bring together the breadth of a liberal education and the depth of specialized knowledge into a real world applied practice. The critical question for each student becomes: “What does it mean to practice this discipline in a reflective and responsible manner within a pluralistic society?”

STANDARDS FOR THE SENIOR PROGRAM

            Each major program has designed a Senior Learning Community composed of at least two courses:

• A Summative Course (usually 1 unit)
• A Senior Reflective Tutorial (usually 1 unit)

            The Senior Program maintains the following minimum expectations:

• A senior project involving applied learning, leading to a final project, written thesis, and presentation;
• Summative course content in the discipline;
• An experiential component with 100 hours of field or applied work;
• Experience in the practice of the discipline as a profession;
• In-class reflection on the connections between course content, experience, and professional practice.

            While each department has designed the program to meet the particularities of its discipline, typically the Summative Course houses the senior project and the summative content in the discipline. The Senior Reflective Tutorial houses the experiential component, provides training in the practice of the discipline, and is the site for in-class reflection.

            In some unusual cases, students may successfully petition to complete less than 100 hours (8-10 hours per week on average) of applied work. For instance, a student in literature may opt to write a novel as her senior project. While considerable effort is required, the student may opt for public readings of the novel, chronicling audience reaction and testing literary theories of “authenticity, text, and audience.” These public readings likely total less than 100 hours, but the overall value involved in writing a first novel would lead to an exception to the field work minimum, and the public readings are an appropriate “field” experience for this specific craft.

ARCHETYPES FOR THE SENIOR PROGRAM

MODEL ONE

            In this conventional model, all senior students in the major program enroll in a summative course and a reflective tutorial. The entire program is contained within one semester. The senior field project would be completed within that semester. Students receive two units within the major.

MODEL TWO

            In this model, a large department would need multiple RFTs, possibly built around different levels of expertise. For instance, Business Administration majors may enroll in a summative course in the major, possibly Management 401, Business Policy and Strategy, but the different RFTs may then be thematically developed around the concentrations within the major: marketing, finance and accounting, and management.

MODEL THREE
Sharing RFTs between allied majors

            Small departments may choose to offer a combined RFT with an allied department while linking it to a separate summative course in the major.

MODEL FOUR
Sequenced Senior Program

            The sciences and some related disciplines rely on experimental research for the senior project’s applied work. Time and sequence are essential elements to this process. In these cases, laboratory research may begin as early as the summer preceding the senior year, and most certainly, no later than the Fall term. This model may begin in the Fall with a summative course and follow with an RFT to process and evaluate the research in the Spring term.

MODEL FIVE
Blended Learning Communities

            Some departments may choose the LC course in an applied area — although stressing a method of disciplinary research and application. These courses may be alternating each year and in small departments, they may be necessary for students other than seniors to enroll in them for major distribution requirements. These students would not be enrolled in the designated LC course as part of an LC nor as part of the senior program; however, the senior majors in the course would be a common cohort sharing an RFT. (This is a transitional model established to serve majors with a small number of students. It will be reviewed in 3 years.)