"The classroom is still the primary location where learning happens," Ambrose says, but he has also "had great conversations where the kids have benefited tremendously in the dining hall or the pub. That's where it's just like parenting; at some level, just being around matters." So do much more structured facets of education outside the classroom at Hamilton: study abroad and off-campus, community-based service learning, student-faculty research, athletics, even advising, which in an open curriculum such as Hamilton's plays a critical role in students' academic success. All are dependent on the participation, expertise and enthusiasm of faculty members.
One aim of Hamilton, in fact, is to "give students the tools they need" to make their entire college stay an extended education, Dean of Students Nancy Thompson says. "The opportunities outside the classroom that students choose to take advantage of can be significant learning experiences. They can help develop leadership skills and their own sense of what they're interested in and passionate about. So we encourage students to 'own' their overall Hamilton experience."
A time-honored path to that end is study abroad, which officially
dates to the creation of the Junior Year in France Program a half-century ago and now includes opportunities to study in China, Spain, India, Japan and many other countries; there are 160 options on Hamilton's list of preferred programs. Faculty members and administrators not only direct or otherwise take part in many of those programs; they also are responsible for working with students to plan their study abroad so that it fits not only their interests but also their academic calendars, often working a year or more in advance.
"One of the things we start with is what students want academically
and culturally while they're away," says Drogus, the associate dean. "Do you want a place that is somehow related to your area of study? Then, do you want to have a cultural experience that is very different than what you have in the United States? Do you want something in your comfort zone, or do you want to stretch yourself? We help students think through their options."
Craig Latrell, associate professor and chair of the Theatre Department, who studies Asian performance, has accompanied students to Southeast Asia on Emerson Grants twice in recent years, traveling to Sumatra, Bangkok, Singapore and Borneo with them. "The work we did together and the experience the students had was invaluable as they confronted different cultures," he says. "They always come back changed. Living in other cultures deepens them as people and gives them more experience from which to draw in their creative work."
An appreciation for diversity can be taught much closer to home as well. At the Levitt Center, Owens-Manley works mostly with upper-level students on activities and courses that provide them with practical experience in the community, such as Project SHINE, Students Helping In the Naturalization of Elders. "Community work can be kind of messy, because it's done with real people," Owens-Manley says. "People don't follow scripts." Nevertheless,
she says, some students find that community work "validates" their college experience; others are drawn down unexpected career paths such as teaching or working at nonprofits.
"And for a whole, wide range of students," she says, "just being
exposed to some kind of diverse cultural experience—such as the
refugees and immigrants that we have here in Utica—begins to shape their understanding of the world in a way that wasn't apparent to them before. It ends up being a positive experience for almost everybody."
Such a balance is not struck by magic; it is achieved by the College
over many years and through the work of many people. Jean
D'Costa recalls that when she began teaching in the 1980s, "I found resistance among many students to entering into experiences that did not belong to their own class and place in American society."Over the next decade, she says, "there was a greater interest in the wider world." She attributes that shift not only to curricular changes in the '80s that introduced such disciplines as women's studies, but also to the growth of Hamilton's study-abroad programs.
Yao notes that diversity on the campus itself is just as crucial to a
full educational experience. "And, given that, a diverse faculty is particularly important in that it brings different perspectives to the production of knowledge and research — and therefore to what gets taught," he says. "It changes the range of possible subjects, and it
expands the perspectives on more traditional subjects."
Such dimensions give the campus community a wealth of resources that belies its size and setting, faculty members say, and make them eager to become resources themselves — through advising, research collaborations with students and, in Ambrose's phrase, "just being around." Cryer notes that "that seminal moment, that epiphany that can direct a student's life, that may happen in line at Opus, it may happen upstairs in McEwen — you just don't know. But that's one of the joys about teaching at Hamilton. You can teach in all those different spots." And Rick Decker points out that the Computer Science Department, like many, is "small enough so that we know every major and we talk about them constantly…. Here, the fit is exactly what I wanted. The emphasis is on teaching, and the students are your life."
