Warren Wilson College Develops New Center for Experiential Learning
Ana Risano | September 16, 2021
Quinn Bonney
New students hanging around the firepit waiting for the event to begin.
The new Center for Experiential Learning (CEL) bridges the gaps between academics, global and community engagement and work at Warren Wilson College (WWC). CEL, situated in the Log Cabin, aims to seamlessly integrate all aspects of the Warren Wilson experience for students.
Associate Dean of Community and Global Engagement, Anna Welton, brings light to why there is a need for a hub where students and faculty can engage with experiential learning.
“There is a need for the center because we have these wonderful offerings that are components of the Warren Wilson education and are experiential in nature, but they can sometimes be sort of fractured from one another and they’re not well integrated,” said Welton. “Students have all of these separate checkboxes that they need to attend to, like the (community engagement) pegs ... and (the experiences) can feel sort of siloed in terms of the student experience.”
In short, Welton said they are working towards the integration of work and engagement with the academic curriculum so that they happen by accident instead of burdening the students.
Paul Bobbitt, dean of work, calls CEL “a one-stop shop for students when it comes to all facets of their experiential learning at Warren Wilson outside of a formal academic classroom setting.”
The goals of CEL circulate around the student experience, the connection between different areas of WWC and providing a location for collaboration. For students, CEL is a wealth of resources, according to Bobbitt, and it brings together aspects of WWC without diminishing any of its parts.
Welton and Bobbitt both commented that CEL is motivated by student learning outcomes and lifting up the student experience, but it also provides the opportunity for communication to happen across faculty.
Bobbitt noted that CEL allows for a place where work supervisors and professors can come together to develop a common language around what they do and to acknowledge that learning happens in all aspects of the WWC experience. Along with this, they can engage in developing meaningful experiences for students.
Provost Jay Roberts provides an example of how CEL better serves students through explaining how a class may incorporate academics, engagement and work.
“A faculty member, working through the center for experiential learning, could be imagining how they could design an off campus study experience that was an immersion experience with students that had research components to it, community engaged learning components to it and possibly even the development of tangible work-related skills, all together,” said Roberts.
To put it simply, CEL aims to make experiential learning opportunities for students that are “deep, pervasive and inescapable,” as stated by Roberts.
To learn more about CEL and engage in conversation with faculty and peers, attend the Fireside Chats, which occur every other Thursday night from 6-7:30 outside of the Log Cabin.