Engaged Learning at Miami

Greetings to all of the admission blog followers! One of my favorite things about being the President of Miami University is the time I get to spend interacting with students – and they never cease to amaze me! I was particularly impressed with two recent conversations I had with two very different student groups and I thought I’d take a moment to tell you about them and about engaged learning at Miami. Not sure what we mean by engaged learning? It’s a concept Miami excels at and it is best explained when put into real life examples like those below.

Earlier this week my wife Valerie and I spent some time with 30-40 first year students in the Morris Residence Hall lounge. We had a great conversation about a variety of topics; they asked a lot of good questions about the future of Miami University, and I asked them a few. When I asked how many were involved in an organization of some kind, about 3/4 raised their hands. I then asked how many had had some research experience with their professor outside of class and at least 2/3 raised their hands, and they raised them with gusto! Miami is well known for providing research opportunities to students at the undergraduate level, but I was quite impressed that 2/3 of these first-year students have already participated in a research project.

This is just one example of engaged learning at Miami – guiding students to develop their own belief system which prepares them personally and intellectually for lifelong learning; actively engaging students in discovering new knowledge to enable them to think critically, make informed judgments and act ethically; and creating a vibrant campus learning community that blends out-of-class learning opportunities and involves everyone in promoting students’ learning.

I also recently spent some time with the Psych 212 student section leaders, which was another great experience. Once a week, these Psych 212 section leaders lead the Psych 111 small section groups in an effort to facilitate discussions and create an atmosphere of engaged learning. These section leaders range from sophomores to seniors, from finance to zoology, and they did not earn the highest grade when they took the Psych 111 class. Rather, they were chosen because of how they participated in class. We had a terrific conversation about creating a culture of engaged learning and I challenged them to help us help new students develop an understanding of what it means to be an engaged learner.

This is just a small piece of what Miami has to offer students and a great example of what we do best. Come visit us in Oxford – you will be happy that you did!

Dr. David Hodge
President