An innovative LED video wall programmed to create different backdrops for the musical Hairspray. A solar-powered cell phone charger. A graphic novel about a Chinese-American civil rights advocate.
These are a few of the many projects Stanford students have created in the past year. Experiential learning—learning through active engagement, often outside the classroom—has grown over the last few years as an important component in the Stanford undergraduate experience. The 2010 Study of Undergraduate Education at Stanford (SUES) recommended increasing experiential opportunities in order to bring together "ways of thinking with ways of doing." Furthermore, at a time when online learning is growing and becoming widely available, the transformative, in-depth learning that occurs in experiential environments truly distinguishes the undergraduate experience.
This year's student production of the musical Hairspray is a great example. Set in 1960s Baltimore, it prompted discussions about civil rights in the past as well as today. Its need for a variety of stage settings also led undergraduates James Sherwood, '17 (who produced the show); Matt Lathrop, '16; Stephen Hitchcock, '18; and their group L.I.T.E.S. (Lighting Innovation and Technology Education at Stanford) to create a spectacular 20-by-40-foot video wall with 20,000 LEDs—and the students built it at a fraction of the cost of its commercial equivalent! Lathrop wrote the software as part of his computer science capstone project, and through careful integration with the action on stage, the video wall greatly enhanced the performance. I enjoyed our students' production more than the professional production I saw many years ago.
Experiential learning develops adaptive skills. Success usually comes after setbacks, but learning from failure is enormously constructive. So we offer many ways to merge the intellectual with the experiential.
For example, in Engineering 40M: An Introduction to Making, students spend part of the course learning circuit theory and then begin making things, such as a cell phone charger that runs on solar power and an electrocardiograph to monitor heartbeats. In other courses, student teams have developed smartphone-controlled quadcopters, small, unmanned search-and-rescue aircraft, and basketball-throwing robots. In addition to merging theory and practice, these experiences build teamwork and collaboration skills.
Such opportunities abound throughout campus. This spring, as part of a creative writing course, a group of students collaborated on American Heathen, a graphic novel about the life of Wong Chin Foo, a 19th-century Chinese-American activist. Producing the 160-page book required extensive historical research, as well as determining the narrative arc, developing thumbnail sketches, drawing, inking, coloring, lettering and editing. In the process, they also addressed how to represent troubling aspects of the protagonist's behavior as well as the prevalent racism of the period.
This fall, we will begin a new experimental program: Stanford in New York City (SiNY). Twenty students—11 juniors and nine seniors representing 16 different disciplines—will live, work and study in the city. For many of our students who have never lived in a big city, SiNY will be true cultural immersion. They will intern at different NYC organizations and explore the city's vibrant arts culture through courses such as Divided America as Seen Through the Lens of New York City and Off the iPhone and Into the City: Creating a Photography Project. My bet is that living and studying in the "city that never sleeps" will be an incredible opportunity for experiential learning.
In the university's Founding Grant, the Stanfords stated the university's mission: "to qualify its students for personal success, and direct usefulness in life." In this century, experiential learning—merging "ways of thinking with ways of doing"—will be an essential component in the education of tomorrow's leaders.
John Hennessy was the president of Stanford University.
