School on a Macro Scale
On January 28th, the scheduling process began with new, special courses offered to freshmen, sophomores, and seniors. Student’s gathered in the auditorium as faculty enumerated them with information about selective courses for next year. Traditional offerings of Entrepreneurship, Engineering, and Marine Science made a return, as well as new course offerings such as travel intensives to Germany/Poland and France, as well as the introduction of Architecture as a new macro course to run alongside Entrepreneurship and Engineering. Hawken has increased a focus on these unconventional courses due to the vast experiential learning opportunities they provide to students. Placement into these courses is highly-selective and by application only. Applications for these courses were due February 13th, 2019. Applicants eagerly await March 1st when they find out if they were selected into the courses they applied for.
On the January 28th assembly, it became apparent that Hawken is establishing more of a focus on “macro” courses such as Entrepreneurship, Engineering, and Architecture, which harvest, according to the school’s website, “authentic problem solving in the real world”. Macro courses act as immersive experiences in which students are asked to interact with real world issues as they would if they were a professional in a specific industry. Additionally, the current and future macro courses in place today are based on the very first macro course every offered at Hawken: Entrepreneurship, a semester course that emphasizes the high pressure situations experienced by real entrepreneurs by putting students into real-world situations as consultants for businesses. Students are given a task and a problem to solve by a business, and it is their job to not only propose a solution, but to do so under strict deadlines and other factors which replicate the high-intensity work of entrepreneurs. Danny Ecker ’20 commented on his Entrepreneurship experience by expressing his opinion that “Entre feels less like a classroom and more like an authentic work experience.” He says this is especially noticeable during time spent at the Gries Center, where Entrepreneurship is primarily based. During this time at the Gries Center, Entrepreneurship students can be found engaging with the real world conducting interviews, communicating with their business partners, and compiling their findings to present to their businesses. Sidney Kuri-Poor ’20 finds that many of the businesses she has worked with actually take the advice of the students, especially the smaller businesses. She enjoys that she has the opportunity to have a real effect on a business and feels these experiences give her a taste of the business world.
Similar to Hawken’s Entrepreneurship program, the Engineering program also offers the immersive, project based learning favored in Entrepreneurship. Engineering is structured similarly to Entrepreneurship, in which students work with area engineering firms to offer solutions to their real engineering problems. Engineering began during the 2018-2019 school year as a macro course, formerly conducted during the intensive for students. Engineering students, like Entrepreneurship students, work to solve the unsolved problems presented to them by engineering firms, replicating a real world work experience that engineers have. This course involves important communications between peers and the partner firms, presentations of ideas and findings, as well as prototyping of projects. This course teaches students fundamental skills that engineers possess, such as strong problem solving skills, communication skills, and data analysis/modeling skills.
Building off of the foundation for macro courses created by Entrepreneurship and Engineering, Hawken will introduce the new Architecture macro course, taught by Ms. Zielinski, who currently teaches and coordinates the Architecture and Design course, as well as teaching the freshman Physics, Humanities, and Design (PhD) course. This course follows in the footsteps of Entrepreneurship and Engineering due to its emphasis on solving real world problems and the important collaborations with area businesses and architects in need of design solutions. According to the course description, this course will be based primarily at the Gries Center in order to observe and study the architecture of University Circle and emphasize the real world implications of many architectural designs put into place in our community.
Each year, Hawken offers a slate of international travel intensives which are popular with students. In the upcoming school year, Hawken will offer travel intensives to Germany/Poland, France, and to the Caribbean island of Tobago. However, as amazing as these opportunities seem, they’re not available to everyone. Each of these intensives involves a competitive written application process conducted by Mr. Tate and a fifteen member committee who decides who will go on each trip. Mr. Tate likens this selection process to “fielding a baseball team. You cannot have an entire team of pitchers as it is necessary to have a variety of skill sets on the team.” The selection committee operates on an equitability of opportunity system, taking a holistic approach to each applicant in order to create a student population to most effectively teach a specific course. While Mr. Tate believes that many of the students who do not receive a spot a trip are more than qualified, the selection process hopes to achieve a variety of personalities, backgrounds, and expected contributions to the course. Enthusiasm in the trip is considered based on how well a student can advocate for their placement on a trip, as well as how well they display their unique personalities and qualifications for these trips in their application. Other factors at play in the decision making process include a student’s discipline and academic standing in the community, as well as age, in which rising juniors and sophomores may be given preference for a travel intensive in anticipation of their return from the trip and their willingness to share their experience with others in the community. The goal of diverse viewpoints in each course is emphasized, but with more qualified applicants than available spaces in each course, tough decisions must be made on behalf of the Selection Committee.
The Germany trip will involve an in-depth study of the Holocaust and students will have the opportunity to visit the Auschwitz concentration camp as well as meet with Holocaust survivors to hear their accounts of their experience. This intensive will take place during the spring 2020 intensive with Mr. O’Connor and Dr. Hagen, and students will engage in preparatory coursework through the analysis of two books prior to the trip. For French students, the immersive trip to Paris and Lille will allow students to quickly develop their French speaking skills as well as gain more insight into French culture. This course, offered in the fall of 2019, will involve homestays with students from the Marcq Institution in Lille, as well as an exploration of popular tourist attractions of Paris. This past fall, French students welcomed students from the Marcq Institution into their homes for a week and a half in October, and this trip will allow some of these Hawken students to reunite with the student they hosted during their homestay. Students will attend classes at the Marcq Institution and will be immersed in the French lifestyle with their host student. A group of approximately 15 students will travel to France for the entirety of the intensive with Madame Brennan and Madame Eisenhower. Finally, Hawken will again offer the rotensive Marine Science course, led by Mr. Cawley. Preference is given to rising seniors, as this course often serves as a capstone course for many Hawken students. This course involves a study of marine life through field exploration and research through Hawken’s new partnership with The Sprout Experience, an organization which aides people trying to engage in immersive learning experiences. The rotation course involves a study of biology and marine life, while the intensive allows students to study marine life in Tobago while also doing activities like scuba diving.
Hawken continues to offer immersive learning experiences for its students, and the latest slate of innovative courses exemplify Hawken’s dedication to experiential learning. The way Hawken conducts courses like Entrepreneurship has opened a pathway to immersive and authentic learning applicable to the real world that cannot be gained through a conventional classroom. These courses replicate a real world workspace for students similar to the ones in which students may be working in during their future careers. Travel intensives expand the conventional classroom to the world through the study of cultures by immersing students in said culture. Unconventional education through these programs are what allow Hawken to continue to educate students with an integrated knowledge of the real world and the classroom environment.