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Case Western Reserve University has awarded nearly $1 million to undergraduate initiatives—including enhanced chemistry and engineering labs, service learning opportunities in modern languages and a variety of new interdisciplinary programs—to help implement recommendations from the President's Commission on Undergraduate Education and Life (PCUEL).

The PCUEL report suggested Case could best serve students and aspire to national and global leadership by organizing undergraduate educational and extracurricular programs around the philosophy "Education Through Experience." Experiential education also is one of the main tenets of the University's new vision.

This is the second year for PCUEL funding.

With the largest award given this year, $500,000, the chemistry department in the College of Arts and Sciences will transform its upper-division undergraduate laboratories into state-of-the-art facilities. With the addition of new equipment, new experimental exercises in mass spectrometry, separation sciences, surface chemistry, photophysics and spectroscopy and chemical kinetics will be added to analytical and physical chemistry courses.

A $150,000 award will enhance the undergraduate laboratory experience in the Case School of Engineering by upgrading the Glennan 308 circuits laboratory and integrating the laboratories for and teaching of chemical, materials and macromolecular engineering courses.

With a $78,000 grant, the Center for Music and Technology will expand the size of its facility and add equipment, software and other resources to improve technology-based teaching and learning, particularly for undergraduates studying music education and audio recording. Updated tools also will allow students and faculty to develop more sophisticated digital media projects.

In collaboration with the Office of Student Community Service, the department of modern languages and literatures will use a $56,000 award to expand experiential learning opportunities to include volunteer projects in Spanish and Russian-speaking communities in Greater Cleveland, a one week spring break "immersion" program in the French-speaking Canadian province of Montreal and a two-week winter break "immersion" in Latin America.

Modern language volunteer activities will include oral history projects, community surveys and health education sessions, among others, with Hispanic youth on the near-West Side of Cleveland and with elderly Russian immigrants on the East Side.

French-speaking students will provide service in education and outreach to senior citizens and homeless with the chaplaincy at McGill University in Montreal. Spanish-speaking undergraduates will volunteer in public health projects-possibly linked with ongoing efforts in the schools of dentistry, medicine and nursing-in Latin America.

With a $45,000 PCUEL grant, the School of Nursing will team up with the Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences to develop an innovative, integrated BSN/MSSA dual degree. The interdisciplinary program will utilize ongoing connections between the two Case schools and Cleveland public schools and the city's health department to provide a variety of experiential learning opportunities. In addition, the degree could draw upon and add to a proposed interdisciplinary health clinic on the West Quad.

In another interdisciplinary project, the theater and dance department will use a $36,000 award to develop a major in theater and society. The concentration will blend course work and hands-on activities in theater arts with sociology, anthropology, social work, psychology, political science and modern languages. Working with the Office of Student Community Service, undergraduates will create performances to investigate social issues or to educate Cleveland schools and communities.

Another PCUEL award, $29,000, will provide undergraduates with hands-on research experience at the intersection of law and literary theory, particularly in the domain of international intellectual property covered by copyright.

In order to raise the level of undergraduates' skills in using mathematical computer-based tools, the mathematics department will use a $25,000 grant to develop the University's first online undergraduate course, "Math 110: Mathematical Software and Communication." The one-credit course focusing on technical software packages currently is taught face-to-face in a computer lab and is limited to 20 students. With Math 110 available online, the course would be open to up to 700 undergraduates.

Return to the online edition of the 8-28-03 Campus News.

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