Student Experience Trip

New: Follow the Student Experience Trip from its blog and discuss it at the online forum! The restricted blog (to Caltech IPs) can be found by following this link.

General Information

To follow up on the Student Experience Report, eleven Caltech undergraduates will be visiting a number of Caltech's peer institutions. This Student Experience Trip is designed to examine the culture and atmosphere of other colleges and universities, study specific aspects of student life and the student experience, and produce a student-authored report.

Specific aspects of student life and the student experience the students will focus on include:

  • - The presumptive future Student/Campus Center at Caltech
  • - The presumptive future rebuilding of the North Houses
  • - Residential Life programs
  • - Housing programs, including logistics, maintenance, and student services
  • - Other non-academic aspects (e.g. visual and performing arts, athletics)
  • - Undergraduate education and academic programs
  • - Institutional support for higher teaching quality and student feedback on academics
  • - Better self-understanding of Caltech through comparison with other modes of education
  • - The role of student self-governance

SET and the associated report will recommend student priorities to student leaders and communicate these priorities to the other relevant parties at Caltech. The written document will provide continuity between generations of student leaders to better achieve student goals and represent the student body.

SET Team

The following eleven students will be visiting schools from August 31, 2008, until September 13, 2008. They are receiving administrative support from ASCIT, the IHC, Student Affairs, and Caltech at large.

Pre-SET Preparation

The SET Team is looking for people to help with preparation for the trip. If you are interested, please talk to anyone on the SET Team or contact CaltechStudentExperienceTripSPAMFILTERDELETETHIS@gmail.com. Note that this is also open to people not on campus over the summer, since much can be done coordinating by email.

The gist

  • - Read old student life reports, summarize, and list their action items
  • - Pre-interview administrators over the phone before scheduled face-to-face meetings
  • - Research targeted school websites
  • - Research schools and interview administrators from schools we can't visit due to them being on the quarter system
  • - Investigate interesting points about schools we don't have time to visit (ex. Reed)
  • - Interview RAs about their undergrad experience, especially those from targeted schools
  • - Interview young faculty about their undergrad experience, especially those from targeted schools
  • - Interview SURF/MURF students who attend targeted schools
  • - Contact and collect information through a survey from graduate students who attended targeted schools
  • - Interview Caltech administrators to learn more about their positions
  • - Develop contacts at targeted schools through friends of Caltech students at these places
  • - Study housing systems and arrange for on-campus housing through Tom Mannion
  • - Find students meeting certain characteristics to meet with on-site, specifically students with an abnormally large course load similar to that taken by Caltech students
  • - Report findings to student body through this website

The details

Preferably, there is no information that we could find online or through phone interviews that we will not know before the touring group leaves Caltech. There are factors such as the culture and atmosphere of schools that we need to be on-site to learn about. Everything else can and should be investigated beforehand.

There are on-campus interviews to be scheduled, specifically with RAs, but with grad students in general who have attended schools that we are planning to visit or are interested in but can't visit. (See the Itinerary section below) The grad students get a weekly spam from the GSC, so we'll need someone to write up our request and liaise with the GSC to get it out there.

We need to contact the people we are going to be meeting with in person to interview them a few times prior to meeting them in person. We also need help setting up the questions to be asked at the face-to-face interview, as well as develop a standardized set of information to gather from each school prior to the Trip.

We need people to visit the school websites and write summaries of administration structure, note additional persons of interest that are not equivalent to any Caltech administrative position and have slipped past our notice, and point out interesting claims or facts on their website for the touring group to investigate on-site.

We need to talk to the student body to figure out who has friends at which schools we plan to visit. We need to identify students of interest and make contact before the Trip, and the more people who can be tapped to help us out at the targeted schools, the better.

The conclusion of this phase of the project will result in a binder of collected information about these schools. This will be available for future student leaders to use as they see fit.

First Four Weeks

The focus during this period will be on creating a better understanding of Caltech, its organizational structure, and the operation of the Institute.

The purpose is to prepare the SET Team prior to starting their investigation of other schools. Once the Team understands how Caltech operates, they can focus their attentions on maximizing their effectiveness while accomplishing their goals.

Weekly Meetings:

  • - Overview of How Caltech Works (6/29)
  • - Focus on Student Affairs: Who's in Charge of Which Student Activities (7/6)
  • - Focus on Development/Business and Finance/Trustees: How are Student Activities Funded and Where do they fall on the Chain of Priorities (7/13)
  • - Physical Infrastructure and How it Influences the Student Experience (TBD)

Second Four Weeks

The focus during this period transitions to targeted schools of interest to SET.

The purpose is to prepare the SET Team prior to their departure. They will go in-depth to study the schools they will be visiting.

Goals include:

  • - Investigating Housing options
  • - Studying comparative Student Affairs organizational structure
  • - Contacting student government individuals
  • - Pre-interviewing individuals of interest
  • - Weekly status updates of Staff and Team research

Weekly Meetings (not necessarily in this order):

  • - The Oxford-System (Harvard, Princeton, Yale)
  • - Olin and MIT
  • - How to get the most out of Schools of Similar Size that have nothing in common with our focus (Swarthmore, Amherst, Bowdoin)
  • - Final Wrap-up

SET Retreat

Scope of Investigation of Individual Schools ##

We will schedule meetings with equivalents to the following Caltech positions:

  • - ASCIT
  • - ARC
  • - House Governments (not the IHC, since the equivalent is inter-fraternity government, which is purely about coordinating parties and bailing the frats out of trouble)
  • - Vice-Provost of Teaching and Education (Hunt)
  • - VP of Student Affairs (Sargent)
  • - Assistant Vice-President of Campus Life (Mannion)
  • - Housing Director (Chang)
  • - Counseling Center (Austin)

Additionally, we are considering hosting panel discussion in a few cities with the Alumni Association to discuss our thoughts and experiences on the Trip with Caltech alumni to solicit additional feedback and to provide greater continuity with opinions of former students.

We will be at these schools during their first few weeks of the school year, which is probably the most exciting, energetic (read: unrealistic) period; this is understood. Anyway, if we're going to compare ourselves to these schools, we might as well take them at their best. That's what Peter Daily recommended regarding making comparisons with other schools' board plans.

Mornings and afternoons will be spent in official meetings and selected student interviews. Lunches will be at school cafeterias or other culinary facilities. Dinners will be with hosts or possibly school administrators or Caltech alumni. Later evenings will be available to the touring students to interact with 'regular' students around dorms. Daily reports need to be filed by each student at the conclusion of each day. These reports will be faxed to Caltech the following morning via the administrative offices of each school we are visiting.

Itinerary

August 31 (Sunday)
Travel: Los Angeles to Boston

September 1 (Monday)
Visit: Olin College of Engineering

September 2-4 (Tuesday-Thursday)
Visit: Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

September 5 (Friday)
Visit: Williams College

September 6 (Saturday)
Travel: Boston to New Haven

September 7-8 (Sunday-Monday)
Visit: Yale University
Travel: New Haven to Princeton

September 9 (Tuesday)
Visit: Princeton University

September 10-11 (Wednesday-Thursday)
Travel: Princeton to Philadelphia
Visit: Swarthmore

September 12 (Friday)
Visit: Haverford

September 13 (Saturday)
Travel: Philadelphia to Los Angeles

Future Parts of SET

A number of schools are being considered for future visits. They include:

Acknowledgements

SET is funded by a generous grant from the Moore-Hufstedler Fund.

Resources

Specific SET Documents

Supporting Research

Category:Trip