Learning Outcomes

Genetics Learning Community and Undergraduate Program

1. Self-Advocacy & Resilience

The self-advocacy movement was started by people with disabilities, especially people who had been in institutions and state schools, because they wanted their basic rights like everybody else. But before they could exercise their rights, they had to fight for the right to be heard and to have choices in their lives.

Self-advocacy is for everyone. We must ask ourselves as advisors, "Have we taken the time to learn what that person wants or might need? Does he/she know their responsibilities and their rights as students? Are they facing an issue that they could use some help with? What can he/she say for themself, and how can we help them express more? Are we just assuming that they want what we want for them?"

By answering these questions, we help students learn how and when to fight their own battles, ask the right questions appropriately, and earn self-respect. These are a part of the emotional maturation we strive for in the Genetics program.

Self advocacy and resilience is encouraged and developed by having students explore their Worst Case College Scenario and working on solving other's Worst Case Scenarios in groups. Student also role play with faculty about grades, missed exams, etc.

2. Social Skills

Although college students have accumulated many social skills though a lifetime of educational and recreational activities and personal relationships, they may not know how to apply these skills in a professional environment.

Our job as advisors is to make sure that students learn not only the skills themselves, but how to use them to their advantage, and become effective and well-adjusted team players.

Social skills are developed by encouraging students take courses in a clustered fashion, and are encouraged to participate in group discussion and work. Students also work with peer mentors and interview faculty to develop social skills. Social activities play a vital role in the learning community as well.

 

3. Resourcefulness

"Who ya gonna call?"
"GHOSTBUSTERS!"

This may seem like a childish example of the value of resourcefulness, but if you'd ever been slimed, you'd beg to differ.

Teaching students how to become resourceful individuals is one of the best ways to help them mature without the pain of constant trial and error. Resourcefulness is the ability to act effectively or imaginatively, especially in difficult situations. College is FULL of difficult situations.

Life is, too.

Resourcefulness is related to self-Advocacy because it is also a sign of resiliency, which is the positive capacity of people to cope with stress and catastrophe. It is also used to indicate a characteristic of resistance to future negative events.

Students today have not been set up to fail, and sometimes people learn by failing more than succeeding. This generation of students have been taught to avoid failure and have been sheltered from it, even in the smallest amounts. The program wants to show students how to avoid failure while demonstrating that failure "which doesn't kill us, makes us stronger".

Resourcefulness is emphasized in GEN 110 in exercises which help students explore their resources, such as the Resource Scavenger Hunt and Behind the Genes interviews with faculty, who are often some of the best resource point-people for students. Students also participate in on-campus and off-campus field trips, which helps them develop a sense of adventure when it comes to finding their own resources.