Page 4 - Laker Connection Spring 2013

President’sMessage
Our institutional mission serves to guide our practices
and improve our efforts to foster learning for our students, faculty, staff
Dr. Thomas J. “Tim” Hynes, Jr.
and community. Our mission statement reads in part: “Clayton State University cultivates an environment of engaged, experienced-based learning, enriched by active community service that prepares students of diverse ages and backgrounds in their lives and careers.” In fact, our business is all about learning.
Future President John Adams in 1751 appears to be the first American author to conclude that practice makes perfect. A later refinement—that only perfect practice makes per- fect—has been attributed (as so many other statements have been so attributed) to the great American philosopher Vince Lombardi. Whatever the source of the statements, it is clear that applied and experiential learning are important to our institution, and we believe an essential part of our institutional mission.
Contemporary educational applications of experiential learning are often associated with the work of David Kolb, and his landmark work in 1984. There Kolb defines experiential learning as “the process whereby knowledge is created through the transformation of experience. Knowledge results from the combination of grasping and transforming ex- perience.” For Kolb, experiential learning includes four important elements: concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualization, and active experimenta- tion.
To understand the value of such learning, it is indeed important to consider the ways in which experiences must be framed so as to assist students in converting experiences into real learning. The experience alone is a necessary, although not a sufficient condition for learning consistent with academic program goals -- in a laboratory setting, in a work- place, with groups of students guided or coached by a faculty or staff member. It is not enough to simply place a student in a science laboratory of an internship within the trans- portation industry or place a nursing student in a hospital setting. Experiential learning requires more than simply giving students a chance to spend time at the state capital or at a city or county government office. Our success in experiential learning requires part- nerships with colleagues in the public and private sectors. Our success requires collab- orations that help set learning outcomes and expectations for our students, and provide the conditions in which that learning can take place. These are just the kinds of partner- ships that build on the history and traditions of this institution. The stories you will read here, and many more, establish the following: when our university and its faculty and staff serve as stewards of place, we contribute to ways in which the dreams and aspira- tions and needs of our students and our communities are made real.
Dr. Thomas Hynes President
2 THE LAKER CONNECTION