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In September 2009, faculty, students, staff, and administrators at Wagner College gathered for a two-day symposium to revisit the Wagner Plan for the Practical Liberal Arts. Implemented in 1998, The Wagner Plan provides a curricular and campuswide framework for all institutional activities focusing on Wagner s core mission and values. Since its inception, the Wagner Plan has grown and evolved, so campus leaders designed the 2009 symposium to review its development. Recognizing the need to include a wide variety of stakeholders in the conversation, the symposium brought together faculty, students, staff, and administrators to discuss the plan's past and to begin developing its next iteration: The Wagner Plan 2.0.
One of the insights that came out of the symposium was a recognition of how well faculty and staff have been working together to provide true support and mentoring for our students' career development. As a result of the symposium, the Career Development staff began to explore how the Wagner Plan reinforces our objectives of preparing students for their eventual careers, what we can learn from our students in order to improve our services and, given current economic conditions, what new efforts will be required to enhance our students' ability to discover their life's work.
Located on Staten Island, Wagner College's proximity to Manhattan has been a long-standing attraction for students interested in research, community service, and internships. Capitalizing on location and placing a premium on "Learning by Doing," the Wagner Plan integrates several high-impact educational practices into a robust curriculum: learning communities for first-year, intermediate, and senior students; experiential learning in various forms, including service learning, practica, internships, and community based research; and reflective tutorials (RFTs), where students use structured reflection to amplify and connect the learning experience.
The Wagner Plan provides students with a solid foundation for becoming lifelong learners and active members of their professional communities. First-year students participate in a First-Year Learning Community, a set of three courses linked by a common theme. Faculty incorporate a thirty-hour experiential learning component that engages the students in the local community through research and service or field trips, and orients students to New York City's many resources. The Intermediate Learning Community (ILC) encourages students to make connections between different disciplines. Two courses are combined to...