• Introduction
• Definitions and Models
• The Five Models
• Currents and Causes
• Creating Learning Communities at GMU: Institutional Climate
• The Precursors
• Two Early LC Versions: BA/SIC and Core
• The Mason Topics Program
• New Century College: Coordinated Studies Model
• The Upper Levels
• Faculty Challenges: The Need for Faculty Development
• Outcomes and Benefits: Students
• Outcomes and Benefits: Faculty and the Scholarship of Pedagogy
• Conclusion
• Endnotes and References
• Printable Text of Article

© Copyright 2000 by Ashley Williams. The right to make additional exact copies, including this notice, for personal and classroom use, is hereby granted. All other forms of distribution and copying require permission of the author.

Two Early LC Versions: BA/SIC and Core

Although there was little or no awareness of the term "learning community" at George Mason in 1987, a group of faculty launched what would later be described as the first LC initiative that year. Again, Funds for Excellence monies from the State Council of Higher Education in Virginia helped support innovation in teaching and learning through the creation of BA/SIC (BA/BS, Integrated Curriculum), a general education cluster course program. Evans Mandes (Institute of the Arts), who co-directed the program, recalls the purpose of BA/SIC was "to foster a sense of intellectual inter-relatedness and social interaction" among students and faculty (personal communication). In its two-year existence, BA/SIC offered two-, three-, and even one four-course cluster for first- and second-year students. One of the lessons of this initiative, reports Rosemary Jann (English), who directed the program in its second year, was the importance of ample faculty planning and coordination (personal communication).

BA/SIC gave way for the planning of a pilot of a Core curriculum launched in 1990. A feature of the Core initiative was a linkage between a first-year composition course (FYC) and an interdisciplinary Western culture course. Faculty teams teaching these two courses collaborated in planning and designing several joint assignments. Funded in part by a grant from the Fund for Improvement of Post Secondary Education (FIPSE), these teams included faculty from George Mason and Northern Virginia Community College, where the linked courses were also offered. As with the cluster course arrangement which preceded it, the linked experience of the Core pilot taught faculty the need for adequate planning time and the importance of communication and collaboration.

While some curricular innovations came and went at George Mason during this period, for example, BA/SIC and the Core pilot, I suggest that each of these initiatives contributed in several ways to institutional readiness for the creation of sustainable LC programs. First, these developments contributed to the climate of change and dynamism necessary to nourish innovation. Secondly, each endeavor educated at least some faculty and administrators in the need for extending "up front" planning time for collaborative efforts. Thirdly, these initiatives helped individual faculty to develop networks of relationships with colleagues beyond their departments, to develop experience in cross-disciplinary collaboration, and, in some cases, to develop strategies for dealing with the changed classroom dynamics created by cohort programs.

The Precursors

The Mason Topics Program