The East St. Louis Center*
Southern Illinois University
1966 – 1982
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THE
STUDENT — There
are 101 students
in the Experiment in Higher Education who are representative of young
people
from ghettos everywhere. Their families are generally poor and
handicapped
by undereducation and unemployment. All of the E.H.E. students live in
the East
St. Louis area. They perform at substandard levels on standardized
tests of aptitude and achievement. Their high school records further
reflect
their lack of academic success in the conventional educational
system.
In some respects, the
students of E.H.E. are similar to typical college
freshmen. They are recent high school graduates, fifty percent male,
almost
all single, and average about nineteen years old. At another level
their
similarities to their middle class counterparts are striking. They
value
and aspire to the same goals and objectives as most college freshmen.
They
indicate a strong preference for professional occupations, generally
among
the service professions. Ninety-eight percent of them intend to acquire
a college degree, and almost one third want to do graduate work.
THE FACULTY AND STAFF . . .
THE CURRICULUM — Curriculum is a misnomer in E.H.E., for it is not the usual collection of courses as taught at other universities. Course content focuses on knowledge and information which helps the student understand his environment. The community, then, is his "classroom." The curriculum represents, within Southern Illinois University, the direct equivalent of the University's general studies program on the freshman and sophomore levels. Using an interdisciplinary approach, the program is encouraged by the student's positive response to concepts he can understand as relevant to him as an individual member of the American society. The academic setting includes daily small group seminars. Under the guidance of the seminar leader the discussions allow the student to relate course content to his own experiences. The process makes it easier for him to bring an academic vocabulary into agreement with his own language. Moreover, the seminar becomes the place where academically oriented research projects are worked on to the end that what is learned is immediately put to use by resolving the assigned research problems. Lectures and seminars are augmented by colloquia led by staff, staff and students, or outside speakers. E.H.E. stresses close relationships between project staff and students. Consonant with the experiment's curriculum and staffing procedures, we have attempted to merge teaching and counseling; the entire staff, therefore, teaches and counsels. Intermediate communication skills workshops are offered to all students. At the same time advanced workshops are offered in response to the programmatic philosophy of allowing staff and students to freely select their academic involvements. Curriculum planners foresee and provide for individual student needs and academic preferences within the program itself. In providing a different approach E.H.E. has never "geared down" standard educational materials. On the contrary these materials have been re-examined and reorganized in view of their relevance and importance to the modern world. E.H.E.'s aim is to present content vital to any young American in terms of a truly contemporary perspective. Beneath this conviction lies a more basic one – that the single most detrimental factor in the development of these students is lack of exposure to dominant social and economic forces of the general American culture. In addition to the first two years of college, in 1967, E.H.E. incorporated into its program structure the last two years of high school. This was accomplished when an Upward Bound precollege program was introduced. ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE
— The American College Test was one of the
instruments
used for measuring changes in academic potential and achievement. The
test
was administered to each student upon entrance and again at the end of
the first academic year. The initial scores tended to be quite low with
the average score for the group at 13. On the second administration 49
percent of the students showed an improvement of at least one standard
composite score. Thirty-four percent showed a decline in overall test
score
while 17 percent scored at the same level. Despite the decline, only
three
students failed to show improvement on at least one of the four
internal
tests of the battery. For example: 54 percent showed improvement on the
English subtest with the average improvement being three standard
units.
In social studies 54 percent showed improvement with the average score
increasing by 5 standard units. Forty-six percent showed improvement in
math and 45 percent in natural science with the average gain being 4
standard
units on each of these tests.
*From: EXPERIMENT IN HIGHER EDUCATION, a brochure EHE
published in 1968. Updated: December
19, 2001
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