Colby Invests in Downtown Vibe

The New York Times: "Colby is joining a number of smaller colleges that are taking a role in revitalizing flagging downtowns. If colleges are marketing distinctive academic programs and high-quality campus amenities to compete for increasingly discerning students, so, too, are they trying to leverage off-campus assets ... Colgate University, for example, with roughly 3,000 undergraduate students, owns a historic inn with a tavern, a bookstore and a movie theater in the Village of Hamilton, N.Y. Its efforts began in 2000 and have picked up in recent years."

"In Waterville, Colby College is drawing on a fund-raising campaign, cash reserves and debt financing to pump some $82 million into the redevelopment of five major projects on Main Street, about two miles from campus. The first to open was a 200-bed residential hall for students and faculty in 2018, Colby’s only off-campus housing. Across the street, it spent more than $5 million renovating a long-vacant bank building, then dangled low rents to woo an outlet of a Portland-based pizza pub and a software company looking to train local workers. An artisanal chocolate shop with a cafe is on the way."

"And nearby, the college is building a 53-room hotel and restaurant, a visual and performing arts center, and an arts collaborative with studio spaces. All of the buildings will stay on the city tax rolls ... The new residential hall, funded in part by the Harold Alfond Foundation of Maine, is intended to put more feet on downtown streets and strengthen town-gown relations. Students must commit to community volunteerism as a condition of living there. And a 3,800-square-foot meeting space on the ground floor is open for use by community groups and city commissions."

Grades Best Predict College Success

Sage Journals: "High school GPAs (HSGPAs) are often perceived to represent inconsistent levels of readiness for college across high schools, whereas test scores (e.g., ACT scores) are seen as comparable ... We found students with the same HSGPA or the same ACT score graduate at very different rates based on which high school they attended. Yet, the relationship of HSGPAs with college graduation is strong and consistent and larger than school effects. In contrast, the relationship of ACT scores with college graduation is weak and smaller than high school effects, and the slope of the relationship varies by high school."

"Grades are assigned based on a potentially wide-ranging array of tasks, measured over time, capturing academic knowledge, skills, behaviors, and effort and incorporating teacher judgment ... The fact that grades are based on a wide range of factors with judgment from many different teachers makes them potentially highly variable across contexts. At the same time, the fact that they are based on a large number of raters (teachers) across a wide range of relevant tasks could actually make them very reliable as indicators of academic readiness for college, where students will also be asked to do a range of tasks with different expectations assessed by many different instructors."

"There is no reason to believe a priori that tests would necessarily be more reliable than grades as predictors of college performance. Standardized tests assess students on a narrow range of skills (mostly a subset of what students learn in English and math classes) in one type of condition (a timed test), whereas colleges expect students to have broad knowledge and skills across many subjects and to show consistent effort in different types of assignments over months at a time."

Wesleyan Tour: Order out of Chaos

Arriving a half-hour early for our Tuesday noontime Wesleyan University tour, we were greeted by one, and then another, chockablock-full parking lot. Calling into the admissions office, seeking guidance, we were told of a third, much larger lot, on the opposite end of campus. We arrived there after a twisting, winding, what seemed like a five-minute drive, all our careful timing now out the window.

We were certain we would miss our tour, until we spotted a path that appeared headed in the right direction and indeed cut a nearly direct line back to the admissions office. This adventure turned out to be something of a metaphor for our Wesleyan experience.

The campus was quiet that day, likely owing to the cold, gray, drizzly, February-in-Connecticut weather. This quiescent impression was summarily disrupted when we opened the dark-red front door to the bright-yellow admissions building. A swarming, standing-room crowd of at about 80, mostly engrossed in animated conversation, awaited a tour, now just seconds away.

Led outside by three Wesleyan undergrads, with a fourth straggling slightly behind, we were reminded that visiting colleges during high-school winter break is a popular idea.

The guides briefly introduced themselves, and we were told to choose whomever seemed most compatible. We went with the straggler, a senior named Paul, in part because he said he was from Paris, France, and yet had a perfectly neutral American accent. He also requested that we distribute ourselves evenly “because we have feelings, too, you know.” A sense of humor helps when touring college campuses.

Set on some 316 sweeping acres in workaday Middletown, Connecticut, Wesleyan counts itself among a set of smallish, highly selective (3,000 undergrads; 16% admit rate), New England schools -- Amherst, Williams, Tufts, Colby, Bowdoin, Bates, Middlebury, Hamilton, Trinity, and Connecticut College -- against which its Cardinals also compete in a spectrum of Division 3 sports. School “spirit” may not manifest itself here in the way it might at Division 1 schools, but it definitely has a presence.

This was most evident in the unusual location of Wesleyan’s football field, smack dab in the middle of its quad. This makes it just about impossible for even the sports-averse to ignore the Cardinals in the football fall, or come spring, when the field is converted into a baseball diamond. A similar effect is achieved in the school’s spectacular athletic center, where casual passersby cannot miss goings-on in the sparkling Olympic-sized swimming pool or gleaming basketball court, set behind giant plate-glass windows. An impressively aggressive hockey game was exploding on a glistening ice rink as we walked by.

By deftly inserting its own idea of “spirit” into the daily lives of its students, Wesleyan makes an unmistakable statement about its omnivorous philosophy of college life.

Some might call it quirky, an adjective that often is ascribed to Wesleyan. It is, after all, a predominantly liberal arts school (philosophy is its number-one major), that places great value on the arts. Our very first tour stop was Wesleyan’s arts complex, where from the outside, through a giant window, we could see students clustered around canvases, learning how to be artists.

Everyone is encouraged to at least dabble in something -- painting, sculpting, dancing, acting -- because, well, you just never know where it might lead. Our tour guide confided that it led him to never attempt sculpting again. The point though, is that he tried it, which goes to the heart of Wesleyan’s unusual organizing principle, the so-called “open curriculum.”

Unlike most other schools, which apply some structure to academic requirements (e.g., core, major, elective), Wesleyan leaves it up to students to decide what to take. If you don’t want to study math, foreign language -- or anything in particular at all -- that’s cool. Of course, you do have to engage in something, but every choice is yours; you can even design your own major if you’d like, provided you can make a case for why it makes sense.

This may sound borderline chaotic, or cause for concern that having so much freedom could be paralyzing. After all, if you are welcome to dive deeply into what you already like, you may never come up for air. If you can avoid what you believe you won’t like, you might miss out. Or, you could wind up wandering all over the place and never find true north.

Wesleyan addresses these potential pitfalls simply, by making sure you are not left entirely to your own devices. Each incoming student is assigned a pre-major advisor based on information from your common app. Once your specific area of academic interest comes clear, a major advisor is assigned (and more than one for double or triple majors). A peer advisor simultaneously provides a reality check on your chosen course load, helping to navigate and create balance between the relative demands of different professors, for example. A fourth advisor, a dean, is like your “mom or dad” on campus, helping with any personal issues. If you need a thesis advisor, you’ll get one of those, too.

Wesleyan’s dueling libraries meanwhile offer an intriguing study in contrast. Situated directly across from each other, the stately, brick, columned, dark-paneled, marble trimmed Olin Memorial Library is the quiet one. Its main room, through which we were led, is militantly muted, but the Smith Reading Room, which we dared not enter, is so deathly silent that even a cough will earn dirty looks, according to our guide. On the other side of the street, the Brutalist-design Science Library is exactly the opposite: noisy conversation is not only allowed, but encouraged.

Wesleyan is not necessarily known for its sciences. Engineers can complete their first three years there, but cannot earn a degree without two more years at either Caltech, Columbia or Dartmouth. On the other hand, the stat is that 85% of pre-meds who maintain at least a 3.5 GPA at Wesleyan are admitted to the medical school of their choice. By the way, Wesleyan also offers a five-year combined BA and Masters degree option in natural sciences, mathematics, and psychology, with the fifth year’s tuition waived.

For all its alleged quirks, Wesleyan is quite orderly. As we traversed the campus, seemingly in a straight and lengthy line, it turned out that we had in fact walked in a near-perfect square, right back to where we had started. The campus is as wide open as its curriculum, and its student population relatively small, underscoring its grand, yet somehow understated, impression.

John Wesley, the 18th century Methodist leader for whom the school is named, would no doubt be pleased to see his namesake school still upholding its 19th century founding values of community, service and the liberal arts.

He might be surprised, however, that Wesleyan is today non-denominational and 55% women.

We were just happy to find our car, resting comfortably where we had left it on the opposite side of campus. It seemed fitting that we made our way back without relying on the shortcut that earlier had saved our day, instead improvising our own circuitous, less-traveled, Wesleyan-esque route.