For More Information Contact:
Connie Cross, (CSB) 612/363-5407
Greg Hoye, (SJU) 612/363-2672
The College of Saint Benedict and Saint John's University have been awarded $450,000 from the Bush Foundation for an innovative new program to enhance student learning.
The program, Extending the Classroom Walls, incorporates classroom study with student learning in residence halls, off-campus internships and field trips. Its purpose is to deepen and enrich student and faculty interaction. Under the program, students, faculty and staff members will form multi-disciplinary "learning communities" to create an intense focus on a subject, or group of subjects for a semester-long learning experience.
One such learning community will create a residence in the Twin Cities for students doing senior-year internships. Another will provide a historical and biology-based field trip to the southeastern United States.
"Thanks to the generosity of the Bush Foundation, the advantages of our residential, liberal arts communities are even more realized," said CSB President Mary E. Lyons. "This funding catapults our colleges onto new frontiers of teaching and learning, thus accelerating our students' readiness for challenges beyond graduation."
The concept of learning communities has been put into practice at only a few other institutions of higher education, notably Evergreen College in Washington state.
Extending the Classroom Walls was developed by a group of CSB/SJU faculty and staff in 1997. The Bush Foundation granted the full budget request, and will provide $150,000 a year for the next three years to fund the new project.
The College of Saint Benedict for women and Saint John's University for men are partners in liberal arts education, providing students the opportunity to benefit from the distinctions of not one, but two nationally recognized Catholic, Benedictine, residential undergraduate colleges. Together the colleges challenge students to live balanced lives of learning, work, leadership and service in a coeducational environment.
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