Abstract
Support from the Henry Luce Foundation allowed a team of Centre College faculty to develop multiple integrated programs connecting the study of Asia to the environment: the Centre Summer Language Institute (CSLI), the Asia & the Environment Lab (A&E Lab), January term courses abroad, student summer research and internships abroad, and student dissemination of research. Each of these high-impact practices (HIPs) alone has been empirically demonstrated to enrich student experiences, but when linked in succession through a scaffolded framework, student learning was synergistically magnified. The personal growth, academic interests, and career trajectory of students who completed all stages of the scaffolded program were profoundly transformed. These experiences took place over a nearly 2-year period, culminating in the dissemination of student experiences to a national academic audience. We describe the guiding principles, programmatic structure, local and international partnerships, and challenges and successes of implementing our program of scaffolded HIPs. Throughout, we also share key feedback of those students who completed most or all of the full suite of scaffolded experiences.
Highlights
Social-environmental challenges are globally ubiquitous, making the coupling of Asian studies and environmental studies appropriate but critical
Given the college’s support for high-impact practices like research, internships, and study abroad, we see a great deal of success in the completed components of this scaffolded approach to high-impact student learning experiences
If the student experiences in the second grant period remain on par with those from the first, we will remain motivated to seek out funding while continuing to support the student experiences from start (CSLI) to finish
Summary
Social-environmental challenges are globally ubiquitous, making the coupling of Asian studies and environmental studies appropriate but critical. Both areas present complex problems requiring interdisciplinary approaches and insights, whose solutions require a range of methods working in harmony. With research demonstrating the correlation between college enrollment and involvement in high-impact practices and higher levels of civic engagement later in adulthood (Newell 2014; Myers, Myers, and Peters 2019), laying effective educational foundations is a critical first step in addressing our global predicament. We offer our interpretation of Centre College’s program, and we use as support anecdotal evidence for the successes in our approach to scaffolded high-impact practices. It comes as no surprise that we see these qualitative, personalized student narratives as the most valuable results of our larger project
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