{"id":16198,"date":"2020-09-04T14:00:53","date_gmt":"2020-09-04T20:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/?p=16198"},"modified":"2020-09-08T11:11:58","modified_gmt":"2020-09-08T17:11:58","slug":"a-look-back-at-a-forward-thinking-model","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/2020\/09\/a-look-back-at-a-forward-thinking-model\/","title":{"rendered":"A Look Back at a Forward-Thinking Model"},"content":{"rendered":"

CC\u2019s Block Plan Celebrates 50 Years, and Counting<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The origin of the Block Plan is typically told in the manner of a promising joke, the kind you know will take a while to unfold, but whose punch line is worth the wait.<\/p>\n

Three professors walk into a bar. <\/strong><\/p>\n

The bar was Murphy\u2019s, a dive on the north end of Colorado Springs. It was 1968, a gray and gloomy November afternoon, ahead of the regular happy hour crowd. The three Colorado College faculty members sipping beer in a booth were Psychology Professor Don Shearn and Political Science Professors Tim Fuller and Glenn Brooks.<\/p>\n

A few months earlier, Brooks had been tapped by CC President Lew Worner to head up a comprehensive campus self-study as a preamble to the college\u2019s 1974 centennial.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe reason we had gone there was to discuss what we thought we had learned from that undertaking,\u201d Fuller recalls. \u201cIt was a casual conversation, kind of a bull session.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"History<\/a>

History Professor William R. Hochman displays his enthusiasm for a point made during class at Colorado College. Photo by Ben Benschneider<\/p><\/div>\n

Talk inevitably turned to a persistent complaint. \u201cWhat the self-study produced was a certain kind of agreement among all the different elements on the campus that their time was fragmented. People were being asked to devote themselves to a lot of different things at the same time,\u201d Fuller says. \u201cSo we talked about this notion of fragmentation of time and energy.\u201d<\/p>\n

In those days, a conventional semester schedule had everyone juggling multiple classes simultaneously. Introductory courses might have a hundred students. And even \u201csmall\u201d classes \u2014 say, 40 students \u2014 typically met for only 50 minutes three times a week.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was really getting frustrated with class size,\u201d Shearn recalls. \u201cAnd I wanted to have students have a discussion, and continue that discussion. That\u2019s what prompted the remark at Murphy\u2019s: \u2018Why don\u2019t you just give me 15 students and let me work with them? No bells; no interruptions.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Not a punchline, but a \u201ceureka moment\u201d in the development of short, intensive blocks in which students and faculty devote themselves to single subjects in succession, says Associate Professor Steve Hayward. The English Department chair is creating podcasts and a film, and overseeing publication of books commemorating the Block Plan\u2019s 50th anniversary this year \u2014 officially, Labor Day.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been a pressing and sometimes poignant task, as participants in the creation of the college\u2019s most distinguishing feature disappear into history.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been working on it two and a half to three years,\u201d Hayward says. \u201cWe had to get it off the ground really early; we were aware that many of the people we needed to talk to were in fragile health, and we could miss them.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd we did miss some.\u201d<\/p>\n

Economics Professor Emeritus Ray O. Werner died in March 2018. An effective, articulate critic of the plan, Werner is remembered as one of several opponents who \u2014 feeling the discussion was fairly and fully made \u2014 moved to implement the Block Plan immediately after faculty formally approved it.<\/p>\n

History Professor Emeritus Bill Hochman, who memorably described the Block Plan as \u201cplaying a series of sudden-death overtime periods one right after another,\u201d died in March 2019. And, at 89, Brooks \u2014 whose visionary leadership made the plan a reality \u2014 has lost much of his eyesight to macular degeneration.<\/p>\n

They\u2019re part of a generation of faculty that came of age during the tumult of the \u201960s, a time of cultural ferment \u2014 and openness.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a period of considerable upheaval in the country, with the counterculture movements, conflict over Vietnam, and civil rights \u2026 and also, it was an era of interest in experimentation in educational reform,\u201d Fuller says.<\/p>\n

The Block Plan \u201cprobably couldn\u2019t have happened, and happened so fast, if it had not been the late 1960s,\u201d Brooks recalls in an oral history of the plan. \u201cThe culture of the time was very much in favor of change in education.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was that spirit of openness and innovation, rather than discontent, that spurred the campus-wide reflection that birthed the Block Plan. A number of faculty, notably the late Political Science Professor Fred Sondermann, encouraged Worner to use CC\u2019s centennial as an occasion for reflection as well as celebration. \u201c[They] went to the president and said, \u2018As we approach the centennial we should not just celebrate, but we should say what we plan to do in the second century,\u2019\u201d Fuller recalls.<\/p>\n

Brooks took it from there.<\/p>\n

\u201cI proposed that, instead of setting up a committee, the college should operate more like a committee of the whole. The faculty should get as many people involved as it could,\u201d he recalls. \u201cA lot of that was pretty innocent, I suppose. I wanted this populist approach to changing the college \u2014 and to reflection about the college.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"President<\/a>

President Lloyd E. “Lew” Worner. Photo by Ben Benschneider<\/p><\/div>\n

Brooks \u201chad this broad conversation with the faculty around the question, \u2018How can we do what we do better?\u2019\u201d says History Professor Susan Ashley, whose book, \u201cThe Block Plan: An Unrehearsed Educational Venture,\u201d will be published in conjunction with the anniversary. \u201cIt was a very good question. It allowed them to really think of something completely new without untethering from their mooring.\u201d<\/p>\n

One obstacle quickly became apparent.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople felt pulled apart by the conventional semester system,\u201d Brooks recalls. \u201cThey were jumping from one place to another and doing too many things. There developed a fairly quick \u2014 I won\u2019t call it a consensus \u2014 but a dominant point of view: There ought to be a better way to organize ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Political<\/a>

Political Science Professor Glenn Brooks discusses the new Colorado College Plan. Photo by Ben Benschneider<\/p><\/div>\n

By early 1969, that \u201cbetter way\u201d began to look like the answer to Shearn\u2019s frustrated question during that catalyzing conversation at Murphy\u2019s: intensive blocks in which faculty and small groups of students could focus on a single course.<\/p>\n

During the summer that followed, Brooks engaged the campus community with detailed memos that encouraged reflection on three crucial questions, Ashley says: \u201cCould we do it, should we do it, and if we were to do it, how would we do it?\u201d<\/p>\n

And the whole thing began to seem possible. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t have given it a nickel\u2019s worth of chance when I made that comment at Murphy\u2019s,\u201d Shearn says. \u201cBut when I saw Glenn Brooks working \u2014 he\u2019s a very thorough guy, he listens well \u2014 and as the weeks went on, I thought, \u2018This could really happen.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDon had the original idea,\u201d says Brooks, who emphasizes a team effort in bringing it to fruition. \u201cMy part was to add some structure to it and figure out how to make something like that work. The underlying principle was a group of students signed up to work with one professor full-time, where the professor would have pretty much full control.\u201d<\/p>\n

Opposition centered on concern that single blocks were too short for students to digest, reflect, and embed knowledge.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was only three weeks, and then students moved on to another course,\u201d says Philosophy Professor Emerita Jane Cauvel, one of five influential senior faculty members who endorsed a hybrid plan for classes shorter than semesters but longer than blocks. \u201cI felt they would lose a lot of what they learned in one block when they moved on to the next.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the alternative was developed and vetted, the Academic Programs Committee modified Brooks\u2019 original proposal for 10 three-week blocks to nine 3.5-week blocks with a block break. It was that plan that 58% of faculty approved on Oct. 27, 1969.<\/p>\n

What had seemed a pie-in-the-sky notion nearly a year earlier had become the college\u2019s radical re-commitment to its central mission: providing a top-flight liberal arts education. Brooks again took the lead in making it reality.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey had to find 100 rooms in which to have classes all at once,\u201d Hayward says. \u201cAt other universities you can use the same room for three classes a day. At CC it\u2019s thought of as a \u2018course room\u2019 that you can inhabit for the duration, this revolutionary idea of a classroom as a space to be made, not a space that exists. The Block Plan is a way of taking control of time \u2014 that\u2019s how Glenn Brooks talks about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shearn claimed an attic room in Palmer Hall, a floor above his office. \u201c[Brooks] wanted every faculty member to have a course room so you could be in there all day and not be interrupted,\u201d Shearn says. \u201cI put some couches in there, a coffeemaker, doughnuts. This was a 24-hour-a-day place; the door was always open.<\/p>\n

\u201cI could get up there at 7 in the morning and students would be in there talking. I built a self-instruction neuroanatomy program on 35mm slides. They\u2019d be punching the buttons, looking at pictures, memorizing names.\u201d<\/p>\n

The plan was ideally suited to field trips. Shearn recalls taking students to a winter conference on brain research in Vail, Colorado, where a student\u2019s family provided lodging. \u201cThey would intensively research one presenter in advance, and then talk with these presenters [at the conference]. It was a shock to these guys how much these kids knew.\u201d<\/p>\n

That kind of single-minded focus \u201cput an end to what we call time-stealing, in which individual students had to make decisions about neglecting some courses in favor of more demanding ones,\u201d Brooks says. Attendance quickly improved, because every day counted for so much, Fuller says.<\/p>\n

\"Classics<\/a>

Classics Professor Owen Cramer<\/p><\/div>\n

The approach suited Lorna Lynn \u201980<\/strong>, now an internal medicine physician in Philadelphia. Her daughter, Anna Lynn-Palevsky \u201918<\/strong>, who recently earned a master\u2019s in epidemiology from Harvard, also graduated from CC, and her son, Jacob Lynn-Palevsky \u201922<\/strong>, is currently enrolled.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Block Plan allows you to be really immersed in a subject, so you start to think in that discipline,\u201d Lynn says. \u201cI remember my first course was physics. I was riding my bike up Uintah Street to get some things from King Soopers and I found myself thinking about gravity and acceleration, and I thought, \u2018Wow, I\u2019m thinking about physics while I\u2019m riding my bike.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd that happened in most classes. It\u2019s the immersion and the discipline that allows you to really understand different ways of looking at the world, and the small class size that allowed professors to really get to know their students, and to see who had a particular promise that should be nurtured.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nelson Hunt \u201971<\/strong> benefited from the plan, too, though it meant he would have to shift from a semester schedule to the Block Plan for his final year. \u201cIt looked worth trying,\u201d he recalls. \u201cI just wasn\u2019t sure I wanted to be the guinea pig for that particular year.\u201d The schedule ended up curing his procrastination, improving his GPA and embedding a skill he needed for the legal career he envisioned.<\/p>\n

\"Political<\/a>

Political Science Professor Tim Fuller and Dean Dick Storey talking with a third person, back to camera.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cIt did what I really wanted it to do in the real world \u2014 made me able to organize, plan, and write quickly, clearly, and well,\u201d he says. \u201cThat was a skill I was able to develop throughout my entire career at CC, but particularly that senior year.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the Block Plan also created an unanticipated problem when Hunt applied to law schools \u2014 admissions offices that didn\u2019t know what to make of his transcript. His first round of applications went nowhere. Four years later, after serving in the Coast Guard and then re-taking the LSAT \u2014 and after CC\u2019s approach was better-known \u2014 he was accepted into law school, the beginning of a long career as a Washington attorney, prosecutor, and judge.<\/p>\n

The plan was likewise both boon and burden to faculty in the early years, taxing some disciplines more than others.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor some of my colleagues, it was a setback,\u201d Brooks concedes. \u201cTo some extent in mathematics, but probably more in foreign languages. It was very intense.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some \u201cpoured old wine into the new bottles,\u201d he says. \u201cWe still continued to lecture more than we admitted to.\u201d Others seized the opportunity to completely revamp courses, understanding that form, of necessity, would drive content.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m sure some professors never left their yellowed notes,\u201d Shearn says. \u201cBut for a lot of us, we had to move quickly and make adjustments, because the discussion might go on all day.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou had to start out looking at the material differently,\u201d Cauvel says. \u201cWhat is most important? What can you leave out? It was good because you had to re-think your courses. So in that sense it was really valuable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, many professors found the plan \u2014 teaching eight blocks a year with one block off \u2014 physically and emotionally exhausting. \u201cThere\u2019s an intensity and excitement about being with the students every day, but then there is this rupture,\u201d Cauvel says. \u201cThey go away and you don\u2019t see them for a couple of years.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFaculty generally felt the Block Plan was extremely demanding, and to make it work you simply had to have time to prepare and also had to have time to maintain your professional life, which feeds the courses you teach,\u201d Ashley says.<\/p>\n

Efforts to lighten the teaching load led to several reductions in the number of teaching blocks; today, most faculty teach six, and have three blocks with no formal teaching assignment \u2014 \u201ca real escape valve,\u201d Ashley says.<\/p>\n

Reality changed the vision in other ways. Originally intended as a holistic scheme that integrated courses with residential life and a leisure program, what Brooks still calls \u201cThe Colorado College Plan\u201d quickly became synonymous with its defining feature, the academic block. Residential life exists now largely as its own entity; the amorphous leisure program never hit its stride.<\/p>\n

The latter was \u201can attempt to answer the question of what we wanted the intellectual and cultural tone of CC to be like,\u201d says Classics Professor Owen Cramer, who was involved with the program early on. \u201cWe wanted a college culture that wasn\u2019t just course-taking. What were we going to do with the part of the day we\u2019re not in classes?<\/p>\n

\u201cBut it was already clear in the \u201970s, that it was going to be very hard to sustain that tripartite vision of college life … nobody really understood the leisure program.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet the academic block \u2014 the radical innovation that became synonymous with Colorado College \u2014 endures, the answer to a question put by a frustrated professor in a dive bar on a gloomy November afternoon more than a half-century ago.<\/p>\n

Three professors walked into a bar.<\/p>\n

They came out with an idea, which became a vision, which became a plan, and then a reality shaped by the crucial question Glenn Brooks posed: How can we do what we do better?<\/p>\n

Give faculty 15 students and let them work. No bells; no interruptions. It was the end of what Shearn calls \u201cthe sterile classroom.\u201d Instead, he says, \u201cwe became part of nature, talking about and moving through the experience.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Learn about the origins of the Colorado College Block Plan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1388,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[114],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-16198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-summer-2020","tag-features"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1388"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16198"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16198\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16490,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16198\/revisions\/16490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}