 SAGES
emerged from several years of deliberation about curricular design
and course requirements for Case undergraduates. The impetus for
reform was generated by three major reports issued in 2001: a comprehensive
review of the University's general education requirements, conducted
by the Committee on Educational Programs; “Education through
Experience,” a report by the President's Commission on Undergraduate
Life; and a task force report, written
by faculty members from the College of Arts and Sciences, that proposed
the basic design for SAGES. After a series of faculty forums, the
College approved a three-year SAGES pilot in January 2002. Nine months
later, 150 entering students—from
the Schools of Engineering, Management,
and Nursing as well as the College of Arts and Sciences—were enrolled
in SAGES seminars.
When Case President Edward M. Hundert
took office in January 2003, he called
for full implementation of SAGES by Fall 2005, and announced the
creation of the Presidential Fellows program to attract seminar leaders
from the professional schools and the larger community. That summer,
a University-wide task force offered the most comprehensive statement
to date of the rationale for SAGES, as well as a set of strategies
for achieving full implementation.
A SAGES Manifesto
Like its predecessors, the SAGES task force addressed two questions
about the undergraduate experience
at Case. What do we hope for from our
students—intellectually, socially,
and ethically? And what sort of curriculum
will prompt students to share and achieve these aspirations?
The answers constituted a SAGES manifesto:
As the Case undergraduate develops into a learned member of
society, he or she should be able
to conduct scholarly research or
pursue other creative endeavors,
first under the mentorship of our
faculty, then as independent scholars
and ultimately as mentors to those
who follow. ... Achieving this ambition
requires that the student master
essential skills while a member of
our community. Ultimately a Case
student should, well before graduation,
be able to define a problem, critically
research background material, and communicate an effective argument
or response to that problem. The response could involve written
or oral presentations or any number of artistic endeavors that
seek to affect the thinking of other people.
Along with other leading research universities,
Case had concluded that seminar
instruction, especially during the
first semester of an undergraduate
career, was the best means of
realizing this vision. An influential
endorsement of the seminar approach
had appeared in the Boyer Commission's
1998 report, “Reinventing
Undergraduate Education: A Blueprint
for America's Research Universities”:
The focal point of the first year should be a small seminar taught
by experienced faculty. The seminar should deal with topics that
will stimulate and open intellectual horizons and allow opportunities
for learning by inquiry in a collaborative environment. Working
in small groups will give students not only direct intellectual
contact with faculty and with one another but also give those
new to their situations opportunities to find friends and to learn
how to be students. Most of all, it should enable a professor
to imbue new students with a sense of the excitement of discovery
and the opportunities for intellectual growth inherent in the
university experience.
In the same spirit, the Boyer Commission declared that research
must be integrated into the undergraduate
experience—that students,
under the guidance of faculty mentors,
must create knowledge, not merely absorb
it. Such research activity would culminate in a senior capstone
project, in which students demonstrated the knowledge, skills,
and habits of mind they had acquired throughout their college
experience.
The ideas of this larger reform movement helped inspire the creation
of SAGES, and they provide a context
for exploring the program's essential
features:
- SAGES introduces all undergraduates
to the seminar approach in their
first year. Unlike most "freshman
seminar" programs, however, SAGES doesn't stop there. The
First Seminar is followed by three
additional seminars—two of
them interdisciplinary, and one typically
centered in a student's major field
of study. In this way, SAGES places
active, inquiry-based learning at
the heart of a Case education.
- SAGES
students develop essential communications
skills over several semesters by
participating in seminar discussions,
giving presentations, and writing
intensively. In the SAGES program,
writing is not an isolated activity.
Instead, it partakes of the intellectual
vitality of the seminar (and, ultimately,
the capstone) experience.
- Under
SAGES, every undergraduate has a faculty
mentor from the moment he or she
arrives on campus. The First Seminar
leaders double as advisors to the
students they teach, introducing
them to the culture and resources
of the research university and
establishing close relationships
with them from the very first semester.
- The
SAGES curriculum, in combination
with Case's strong and distinctive
majors programs, offers our students
the best of the small-college experience
along with the opportunities of a
research university. As a result,
these students are better equipped
to move into postgraduate training
and the job market and to become leaders in their fields.
- SAGES students explore
the vast cultural and scientific
resources of University Circle. They
attend special lectures and presentations,
and pursue research opportunities,
arranged through SAGES' partnerships
with major institutions such as the
Cleveland Museum of Art, the Cleveland Botanical
Garden, the Cleveland Institute of
Music, and the Cleveland Museum of
Natural History.
- Case faculty members teach
all First Seminars and most subsequent
seminars. In addition, students have
opportunities to learn from guest
scholars, and from professionals
in diverse fields, who have been
drawn to Case by the Presidential
Fellows and Dean's Seminar Fellows programs.
- The
ultimate goal is for all Case students
to gain experience in defining a
problem and then developing a response
to that problem, whether this involves research or artistic
creation. SAGES accomplishes this goal by having all undergraduate
students complete a capstone project—individually or in small
groups—under the guidance of faculty mentors.
By these means, SAGES fulfills the educational mission of
the research university as described
so powerfully in the Boyer Commission's
report:
The research university owes every student an integrated educational
experience in which the totality is deeper and more comprehensive
than can be measured by earned credits. The research university's
ability to create such an integrated education will produce a
particular kind of individual, one equipped with a spirit of
inquiry and a zest for problem solving; one possessed of the
skill in communication that is the hallmark of clear thinking
as well as mastery of language; one informed by a rich and diverse
experience. It is that kind of individual that will provide the
scientific, technological, academic, political, and creative
leadership for the next century.
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