Alumni Profile - Jack Greene, CJ'73

As a graduate of the College of Criminal Justice, Class of 1973, and a fervent advocate of Northeastern University’s world-renowned cooperative education program, Jack Greene is keenly aware of the concerns of his fellow alumni.

He’s heard about the unfounded notion that the university is moving away from its bread-and-butter program. He’s conscious of the anxiety encompassing some alumni that mistakenly believe co-op is not as vital a component of the Northeastern educational experience as it once was.

In actuality, much of the hubbub is simply misguided. Whereas cooperative education will remain the driving force, the other components of the experiential learning program – student research, service learning, and global experience – are requirements that assure a well rounded educational experience outside of the classroom.

“You have to broaden the palate,” said Greene, who became Vice Provost for Experiential Learning after eight years as Dean of the College of Criminal Justice. “We have changing students, changing workplaces, a changing world.”

The university’s Academic Plan, unveiled in 2007, strives to further integrate experiential learning and classroom instruction, and the core curriculum now requires all undergraduate students to formally reflect on how the experiential component benefited their understanding and knowledge.

“Labels are always difficult,” Greene said. “In the world of symbolic communication, language always precedes change. People change a particular set of words or set of ideas, and that set of ideas tries to capture the imagination of people and draw them in.”

What Greene and other Northeastern administrators want alumni to realize is that experiential learning has been the way of life for Northeastern students dating back 100 years, when the co-op program was developed, and has been markedly improved and streamlined over the past decade or so.

“The idea is the integration of what happens in the classroom and what happens in the experiential component of the student’s education here. … They might be in study abroad, they might be in service learning, they might be in research projects with faculty members, they might be in cooperative education. It’s not just that we hope that they stick to learning, we’re going to make it a much more active process. A process that says we’re going to engage you and ask you a couple of questions: What did you learn in class and what did you learn in your field experience, and how similar and dissimilar are they and why?”

The answers to those questions can help students realize the potential and value of a well-rounded education, understanding that when they receive their diploma they’re already at an advantage.

So when the “experiential learning” label became commonplace around campus and Northeastern made a calculated effort to expand its educational component outside of the classroom, the red flags flew.

“Co-op is still the elephant in the living room, and we’re not abandoning that,” said Greene, who earned his PhD from Michigan State University in 1977. “But we’re trying to round that out so that there are other options there. … I don’t care what the label is. What I care about is, is this a good experience? Does the student benefit, and how do we know that the student benefits? I think that’s a very critical thing.”

In integrating the four components of the experiential learning model with superior classroom instruction, the average Northeastern student is at a far greater advantage than one who matriculates at a university that doesn’t employ experiential learning.

“I think what we’re trying to do is get an umbrella framework around very discreet things,” Greene said. “Co-op is not the same as service learning, nor should it be. Service learning is not the same as study abroad, nor should it be. But all of them provide an experience to individual students, whether they’re living in Rome or living in Roxbury.

“It doesn’t matter to me. They’re in a different milieu than the one that they’re in at home, generally speaking, and they’ve taken on some other responsibilities, and those responsibilities are helping [the students] think about who am I, what am I supposed to be doing here, how do I advance my own set of interests in this circumstance that I’m in?

“I think when students go into the study abroad program, people only see the classroom aspects of that. But they have to go to dinner somewhere, they actually might have to order a meal in a different language. They might have to understand the conversion rates between Euros or Yen, or wherever they might be. And they might have to learn some other cultural differences that are part of that.

“Students come back and say, my life was changed. It’s a tremendous kind of high to say my life was changed by this experience. It’s powerful. We just want them to reflect on that and we want to help structure those experiences so they can be maximally impactful for the students.”

Greene has had the unique perspective of encountering co-op as both a student and administrator. He’s seen both the benefits and shortcomings, but he’s amazed at how the program has evolved over the years.

“As we reach out to alums we want to reassure them that co-op is not going away from this institution. It’s just going to be allied with other series of things that co-op might actually help leverage for us.

“We have nurses who are in hospitals in Guatemala and Costa Rica providing front-line health care to places that don’t get front-line health care. We’ll that’s a service learning activity, too, and that’s a pretty powerful thing to people who want to go out and change the world.

“That might not have been seen as a traditional co-op. Co-op can’t always be in the business world, it has to be in the governmental world, in the social world. There are real jobs, real problems, real experiences for people who are so inclined. We’re not pushing people in those directions, they self-select. They know what they want.”

So, the label may have changed, but the mission toward an all-encompassing education remains unaltered.