The Enduring Virtues of One Course At A Time

"Real education has more to do with developing intellectual skills than with memorizing facts. In my experience, intellectual skills are best developed through active involvement, and One Course At A Time is an ideal setting for that involvement." 

Craig Allin,
Cornell politics professor

This year marks a significant anniversary at the college. It has been 20 years since we took our core commitment to the liberal arts one step further, implementing the distinctive program we all know as One Course At A Time. Many of you were educated under this calendar and even those who graduated before 1978 understand the intensity of this learning experience. Because OCAAT encapsulates a semester into a one-month time frame, the program has had profound influence on Cornell graduates. It still attracts students today and continues to produce graduates who, according to a 1997 survey, reflect a 90 percent satisfaction rate with the program.

How OCAAT Enriches a Cornell Education

One Course At A Time allows teachers and students to concentrate their efforts. Biologist Craig Tepper, for example, can drive home important concepts in genetics theory in a morning lecture, and then follow that discussion with hands-on laboratory exercises that same afternoon.

OCAAT also allows full immersion--into Shakespeare, constitutional law, Spanish, or sculpture--with gratifying results. This calendar offers program flexibility, permitting daylong field trips as well as combinations of classroom and practicum activities in education. In a recent academic year, a total of more than 100 intensive, month-long off-campus internships were sponsored by a dozen academic departments.

We are convinced today that OCAAT is an excellent delivery system for a liberal arts education. As this framework turns 20, a Cornell student T-shirt claims "I can do anything in 18 days." As the T-shirt proclaims, we have found that OCAAT has several notable learning advantages, many of which have to do with the uses of time. The calendar has helped students learn to start and finish projects within a limited time frame and, in the words of one student, "to take care of business right now."

Some courses have had greater challenges than others in adjusting their disciplines to the rhythms of OCAAT--music, economics, physics, and calculus are examples. But the Cornell faculty has developed a proven nimbleness in fitting the programs to their course offerings, and our students generally believe that this distinctive calendar has served them well in preparing them for the pressures of careers and lives in the world. We are constantly assessing the program and always alert to new ways to strengthen it.

Substantial Reasons for Success

Why has OCAAT retained its vigor and impact after two decades? First, it offers benefits to our students. Students learn to focus their energies and meet deadlines. They can think on their feet and work well in a group setting. These skills serve them well in graduate or professional school or in the professions. Our survey of recent alumni confirmed that an overwhelming majority find that OCAAT prepared them well for whatever career challenges they faced.

Students also have found that they have flexibility and unique opportunities with OCAAT. Over 90 percent of our students complete their degree work in four years or less, many of them in double majors. Students can adjust a course of study in the middle of an academic year without being locked in for an entire semester. It is virtually unheard of for a Cornell student to be required to extend an education for a fifth year.

OCAAT offers a unique way to blend theory and practice as part of a college education. It allows students expanded opportunities for field trips and internships. Jennifer Sass '97 offers a recent illustration of the value of OCAAT. During her senior year, Jennifer took one term to serve as an intern providing staff support for a conference in Korea on Asian cooperation. In another term, she enrolled in a Cornell politics course taught in Brazil. At her commencement, she told me that she could not imagine having had that experience at any other college. She recently wrote to me that she has found herself better prepared for her job than most of her co-workers, many of whom are twice her age.

A second reason behind the success of OCAAT is that it is a distinguishing characteristic of the college. From its inception, One Course At A Time has provided our admissions staff with a very effective marketing strategy on which to hang our appeal to the marketplace. It allowed us to stand apart from every other institution in the country except for Colorado College, our highly regarded colleague institution in the Associated Colleges of the Midwest; and Tusculum College, which instituted a similar calendar in 1991.

Third, and perhaps most important, One Course At A Time seems almost custom-designed to provide the kind of education our students will need to meet the challenges of their own careers and lives in the 21st century. I believe that the following requirements for leadership will characterize their time:

• A global perspective
• The ability to learn and think in rapidly changing situations
• High-performance work skills (the ability to work effectively in crisis)
• The ability to manage change and even to anticipate it
• Comfort with technology, understanding its true value as a tool
• The ability to lead diverse groups with different backgrounds and goals
• Strong values and personal ethics

OCAAT nurtures these abilities by virtue of the intense relationships it fosters among students and faculty. A couple of years ago, when asked how well Cornell had prepared him to thrive in a fast-paced global environment, one of our graduates said, "Cornell provided me with a safe environment in which I could think out loud, challenge the accepted wisdom, and offer up a new idea. Now it has become a habit." It's like Michael Jordan: when he is asked how he can sink a winning basket under pressure, he says, "Once you've done it two or three times, it becomes routine."

This anecdote is supported by more extensive data from alumni on the outcomes of a Cornell education. A vast majority of our graduates of the past decade feel well prepared in communication, problem solving, and working in a team environment.

We are convinced that OCAAT, growing out of our deep commitment to the liberal arts and our growing emphasis on leadership and service, is an ideal educational framework for the most effective leaders of the next century.

Working To Make a Good Idea Even Better

What would we change about this landmark program? We should continue to exploit the unique opportunities it presents for students. These opportunities include:

• Off-campus study that can support preparation for life in a global society. We should continue to develop opportunities for Cornell classes to be held off campus when the off-campus location offers an enriched learning experience. Such classes range from sociology taught at the MidAmerica Housing Program in Cedar Rapids to Spanish taught in Mexico.
• Distinguished visiting faculty who can bring the outside world to Cornell. We should host visitors including international faculty and individuals who have distinguished themselves in the professions. We should seek out successful executives who can teach management and elected officials and policy analysts who can teach politics, to name but two examples.
• Internships and service opportunities that allow students to learn from experience. Internships are crucial to study in many fields. We should develop our set of internships--domestic and international--to allow students the opportunity to blend theory and practice and to learn from accomplished leaders in their chosen fields of study.
• Projects and case studies that engage students in problem solving. OCAAT offers students the chance to delve into a real problem, analyzing data, framing real options, and making choices. Such case studies and projects enrich classroom work and bring theory to life.

All these requirements for enriching OCAAT and broadening its impact require that the college gain new resources from its alumni and other friends. OCAAT, like other forms of customized private education, is more expensive to develop and maintain than larger-class formats and less individualized teaching and learning. And our new ventures cannot be funded out of existing operating funds, which are stretched to their maximum to maintain current program offerings.

Sustaining OCAAT's Evolution

When it began, some at Cornell described OCAAT as a "leap of faith" and "a tribute to a persistent vision." But I believe it is even more than that. This calendar has become a hallmark of a fine tradition-driven liberal arts college making its essential adjustments in the closing years of this century. Now we should fine-tune this proven format for learning to make it even more serviceable in the next century.

You will be hearing more about our plans for doing this in the next few months. We invite your ideas about OCAAT as that time passes. All of you are stakeholders in Cornell's success as we continue to plan how we will be spending our--and our students'--time over the next decade.

Leslie H. Garner Jr.
President