Heeding the Call
The "Call to Action"
Maps the Road
to a Revitalized Co-op Program
By Daniel Penrice
Northeastern-as people here like to say, and almost everyone else agrees-is
the world leader in cooperative education. Ninety years after introducing
a co-op plan for engineering students, the university offers co-op programs,
run by full-time professionals, in virtually every field of undergraduate
study. Approximately 6,500 N.U. students now go out to work each year for
about 1,850 co-op employers, while, according to a recent survey, sixty
percent of the class of 1998 either went to work full time for one of their
co-op employers right after graduation or declined a job offer from a former
co-op employer. The survey also revealed that ninety-six percent of respondents
would recommend a co-opbased education to a friend.
Yet even as the university touts its leadership in the field, the talk
around the campus concerning co-op these days is all about change and new
directions. As early as in his first state of the university address, in
September 1996, President Richard Freeland declared, "The world leader
in cooperative education must lead in reinventing co-op for contemporary
conditions." Since then, Freeland has been making the redesign of
co-op a central priority in his effort to establish N.U. as the national
leader in "practice-oriented education."
Last summer, co-op came into particularly sharp focus when, after co-op
vice president Robert Vozzella announced his retirement and acting co-op
dean Kristin Woolever left her post to take another job, Freeland and Provost
David Hall began meeting with the co-op faculty, college deans, and the
Faculty Senate Agenda Committee to chart a new course for the program.
Then, after the appointment in September of former math department chairman
Richard Porter as acting vice president of the co-op division, Freeland
and Hall presented the university faculty with a highly ambitious plan-developed
through their discussions with the co-op and academic faculties-for reinvigorating
co-op. Hall assumed day-to-day leadership of the change process for the
whole university. In December, the leadership team for implementing the
plan in the co-op division was completed by the appointment of Robert Tillman-a
twenty-three-year veteran of the co-op faculty-as acting dean of co-op.
Titled "Call to Action on Cooperative Education at Northeastern University,"
the reform plan, as Hall recently told a quarterly gathering of senior
university officials, is "not just about changing co-op but also about
a transformation of the whole university." With a combination of sometimes
urgent motivational rhetoric and painstaking administrative detail, the
Call to Action plots what from some angles, at least, looks like a revolution
in undergraduate education at Northeastern.
Yet whether revolutionary or merely reformist, the new plan for co-op
promises significant-and nearly immediate-change in N.U.'s signature program.
How the Call to Action came to be sounded, what it says, and what its effects
will be reveal much about the direction of the university as it enters
its second century.
If northeastern is the leader in co-op, why does co-op at Northeastern
have to change? The answer is implied in Freeland's notion of adapting
co-op to "contemporary conditions."
Almost from its beginnings, cooperative education has had two distinct
rationales: to connect classroom learning with practice, and to enable
students to finance their educations. Yet with the steep rise in the cost
of higher education that began in the 1980s and continues to this day,
co-op no longer offers a means of earning one's way through college. As
co-op's value as an "earning experience" has declined, its worth
as a "learning experience" has required closer scrutiny. In recognition
of this reality-as well as of co-op's centrality to N.U.'s identity and
mission-a series of university committees, beginning in the late 1980s,
examined co-op at Northeastern and called for, among other things, more
integration between co-op and academics.
The committee reports on co-op were piling up on the shelves by the
time Freeland arrived on the scene in 1996. Noting their oft-repeated recommendations,
the president also began to ponder N.U.'s competitive environment. With
more and more colleges and universities offering co-op or other forms of
experience-based education, Freeland imagined other institutions telling
students, as he puts it, "You don't need to go to Northeastern and
spend five years and have all the hassles of co-op when you can come to
UMass or BU and do it in four years and have some internships." Besides,
Freeland says, "Other institutions that already were doing co-op-places
like Drexel and Cincinnati and others-were starting to raise the level
of their games. They were debating the same issues that we had been debating
for nine or ten years, and they were starting to take action."
By the spring of 1998-with a revitalization plan launched the previous
fall threatening to result, in his view, in insufficient progress-Freeland
decided that "something fairly dramatic needed to happen." That
summer, Freeland and the university's newly appointed provost, David Hall,
began a round of discussions intended to spark the kinds of changes that,
in the past, had only been talked about. These discussions led, quickly
and almost ineluctably, to the Call to Action.
The heart of the Call to Action can be found in its first two stated
goals: "Strengthening Co-op as an Educational Experience" and
"Strengthening Co-op as an Employment Experience." The plan aims
to enhance co-op's educational dimensions by forging closer links between
co-op and the classroom, and between the academic and co-op faculties of
the university. It also seeks to improve co-op itself by, among other things,
ensuring high-quality jobs for all students and raising the level of the
service that the co-op department provides to students. To link these and
other goals to concrete measures, the Call to Action outlines a series
of objectives, each to be accomplished by means of specific tasks and timelines.
Under "Strengthening Co-op as an Educational Experience,"
the Call instructs the colleges and the co-op division to collaborate not
only on integrating the learning that occurs on co-op and in the classroom
but also on creating new organizational structures for co-op. These new
structures include two key innovations: a system by which the colleges
and academic departments will have a direct hand in the management, supervision,
and evaluation of co-op coordinators; and the "co-location" of
co-op coordinators (meaning that coordinators will divide their time between
offices in the colleges to which they are assigned and their offices in
the Stearns Cooperative Education Center). Meanwhile, the colleges have
been given a mandate to review their own organizational structures so as
to make co-op more central to their curricular structures, personnel policies,
and decision-making processes.
To achieve its other major goal of "Strengthening Co-op as an Employment
Experience," the Call to Action lays out a series of objectives and
tasks to be carried out by the co-op division. The most important of these
are aimed at assuring both high-quality co-op jobs and a high level of
service to students. In addition, the division is charged with making information
about co-op jobs available to all undergraduates and strengthening relationships
with co-op employers. To these ends, the Call directs co-op administrators
to develop new standards of expectations, incentives, and systems of accountability
for co-op coordinators.
For all the dryness of its details, the Call to Action envisages major
change in how many individuals and organizational units around the university
do their jobs. In so doing, it challenges some cherished views while holding
out the promise of exciting new departures-not only for Northeastern's
flagship program but also for its entire educational enterprise.
"Classroom and co-op have historically existed in separate worlds,"
the Call to Action proclaims. "Most of our classes have not found
ways to make reference to our students' co-op experiences. Students on
co-op have typically been cut off from the university, the faculty, their
fellow students." To remedy this situation, the Call mandates the
creation of "a comprehensive educational program in each college that
can shape the learning experience of every student who attends Northeastern."
Citing "some useful experiments" in integrating co-op and the
classroom that have already occurred within the university, the plan calls
on the colleges and the co-op division to "pursue aggressively"
more innovations along these lines.
One example of the kind of experimentation that the Call to Action aims
to advance has involved a collaboration between a chemistry professor and
a member of the co-op faculty who works with biochemistry and biology majors.
Professor Thomas Gilbert of the chemistry department and assistant professor
Veronica Porter of the co-op department recently surveyed co-op employers
and the N.U. students who work for them in the pharmaceutical and biotech
industries. By identifying the particular skills, both technical and nontechnical,
that these co-op employers and employees see as most critical to success
on co-op jobs, Gilbert and Porter's study helps to delineate precisely
how classroom education and the workplace skills that students learn on
co-op combine to prepare students for careers in these fields.
Gilbert says he speaks for a "significant fraction" of the
academic faculty when he opines that such efforts to bring co-op and the
classroom together are "long overdue." Yet even those who support
the idea of integration point out that it will be easier in some colleges
and disciplines than in others. Professor John Cipolla, chair of the department
of mechanical, industrial, and manufacturing engineering, expresses a widely
held view when he says, "I think there is a greater connection [between
co-op and the classroom] in those professional schools where you really
are teaching in a practice-oriented discipline." More precisely, many
members of both the academic and the co-op faculties say one of the tougher
aspects of systematically integrating co-op and academics will be to devise
new work-integrated learning models in the College of Arts and Sciences.
Perhaps the biggest challenge of all, however, in increasing the interaction
between co-op and the classroom will be in persuading some faculty of the
feasibility, or even the need, of so doing. "I think there's a really
strong informal, undirected connection between education in the classroom
and education in the workplace," says professor of finance Wesley
Marple Jr. of the College of Business Administration. And yet, he predicts,
attempts to formalize this connection are "not likely to be hugely
successful, given the diversity of co-op assignments and the diversity
of faculty teaching undergraduates."
Over in the co-op division, many faculty members say that what students
value most about co-op are primarily career-development skills that are
different from anything teachable in a classroom. As associate professor
of cooperative education Ann Galligan states the argument, "Students
often see co-op as very separate from what they do in the classroom, and
'integration' happens in the student."
In spite of such views, the Call to Action says that co-op-while having
its own unique educational contribution to make-must be tied in certain
formal and visible ways to academic education. As part of its larger plan
to create new organizational structures for co-op that reflect its role
in a practice-oriented education, the Call mandates that college deans
and academic department chairs be made "full and equal partners"
with supervisors in the co-op division in managing and evaluating the work
of co-op coordinators. Personnel reviews for coordinators are to assess
their contributions to students' "learning experiences" and "the
quality of co-op placements in relation to students' educational goals."
Co-op coordinators will soon see an even more concrete transformation
in their day-to-day routines. Asked to name the major symptoms of the disconnect
between co-op and the classroom at Northeastern, Provost Hall replies,
"Number one, that the coordinators are in Stearns and the academic
faculty are in their various departments." Reflecting this concern,
the Call to Action directs the colleges and the co-op division to "produce
a co-location plan by which, wherever practically feasible, [co-op] coordinators
would be provided offices in the colleges to which they are assigned, while
retaining space in the co-op department."
Of all the provisions in the Call to Action, it is this piece of seemingly
mundane administrative detail that has so far generated the most discussion.
Already fully in effect at the College of Computer Science, and partially
at the business college, co-location promises to be the most visible expression
of the new relationship between co-op and the classroom. More than just
a matter of where the forty-nine members of the co-op faculty report for
work (although for these individuals, as well as for the deans who must
find room for them, it is obviously an issue of tremendous practical concern),
the subject of co-location is connected to much larger questions about
the place of co-op within the mission and structure of the university.
President Freeland-who calls himself "a strong believer in the
proposition that the organization of an activity needs to reflect its function"-invokes
this connection in saying that when co-op functioned primarily as an "earning
experience," it made sense to separate co-op from the colleges. Yet,
as he observes, "The wall of separation that was historically created
between co-op and the classroom has had exactly the effect that you would
expect it to have, which is lack of understanding of what the other side
does, and a tendency to see it as not contributing to what 'we're' doing."
Thus co-location is meant not merely to change where certain functions
are performed but to close a fundamental gap in perceptions about the role
of co-op.
How wide that gap can be is apparent in discussions with co-op and academic
faculty members. Co-op faculty speak of co-op as an academic discipline
concerned with "cognitive, affective, and behavioral learning."
Referring to the list of competencies ("effective thinking,"
"effective communication," "information literacy,"
and "interpersonal skills") that form the core of the Academic
Common Experience, N.U.'s general-education program, Richard Canale, associate
professor of cooperative education, asserts, "That's the stuff that
students should be learning on co-op, and that's what students do learn
on co-op." And although the tenure track in the co-op division was
abolished in 1991, Canale and some of his tenured colleagues pursue a long-standing
debate at the university by continuing to insist that scholarship on co-op
ought to be considered part of the job of a co-op coordinator.
Yet while Canale and his colleagues think of themselves as educators
and even scholars-"faculty" in fact as well as in name-not all
members of the academic faculty share this estimation. CBA's Marple, for
example, defines a co-op coordinator's job as "facilitating the educational
process through giving students meaningful work assignments." He adds,
"The co-op coordinators are extraordinarily helpful here, just as
the admissions and financial aid people are helpful." Asked about
research by co-op coordinators, Marple responds, "There may be a degree
of sophistication regarding the design of a co-op work experience that
escapes me. But from what I know about the placement activity here, I don't
know that it is all that terribly complex."
By moving co-op coordinators into the colleges, the Call to Action intends
for academic faculty to see for themselves that the co-op division is about
more than just "placement." Even so, some co-op faculty worry
that co-location may tend to devalue their contribution to the educational
process. Acting co-op dean Tillman-who fears that co-op coordinators will
be viewed as intruders in some academic units-raises this issue when he
asks, "Are we really saying that we have to move into the colleges
because the only learning that can really take place is that that's going
to come out of the colleges?"
Nonetheless, Tillman says that if students perceive co-op faculty as
being welcome in the colleges, then the restructuring of co-op at Northeastern
will be a "good thing." And indeed, while mandating a major structural
and operational overhaul of the co-op division, the Call to Action also
insists that co-op should be respected and embraced by the academic units
of the university (that is, the colleges and academic departments). In
fact, one of the major differences between the Call to Action and previous
efforts to improve co-op is that, rather than requiring co-op to shoulder
the entire burden of change, it asks academic units to do their part as
well.
In summoning the academic units to create organizational structures
reflective of the educational role of co-op, the Call addresses three areas:
curriculum, personnel systems, and decision making. The colleges are directed
to "consider" modifying their curricular-planning processes so
that faculty routinely think about how to utilize their students' co-op
experiences, and to find ways of furnishing faculty with information about
what their students have done on co-op. They are also enjoined to consider
changing personnel procedures and standards to include "input"
from the co-op division and create expectations for how academic faculty
will incorporate co-op into their teaching. Moreover, the colleges are
instructed to develop plans for the "meaningful integration"
of co-op faculty into the decision-making processes of the units to which
they are assigned.
These proposals have already been embraced, at least in spirit, in a
handful of colleges and academic departments around the university. And
yet, as the sometimes careful tone of its language suggests, the Call to
Action asks for what will amount to significant shifts in attitude from
some members of the academic faculty.
While the Call speaks about academic faculty needing to "make reference"
to students' co-op experiences in the classroom, the engineering and business
colleges have already taken the concept of incorporating co-op into the
academic curriculum even further. In the mechanical engineering department,
for example, students seek out projects from their co-op companies to work
on in a senior-year design course. In both engineering and business, students,
academic faculty, and co-op faculty work on problem-solving strategies
for co-op companies in a project known as SMILE (Systems Model for Integrated
Learning Environments). Still, a certain percentage of the academic faculty,
according to chemistry professor Thomas Gilbert, sees no reason to teach
any differently just because Northeastern is a co-op school. Thus the question
becomes, in Gilbert's words, "How do you get some faculty to rethink
their positions?"
Personnel systems and decision making are also areas in which some academic
faculty, hearing the Call to Action, tend to worry about their prerogatives.
Some faculty members in the College of Arts and Sciences, for example,
argue that too much emphasis on co-op will make it harder for their departments
to recruit junior faculty. The Call's stipulation of a voice for co-op
faculty in the decision-making processes of the colleges will cause few
ripples in some units-especially those where co-op coordinators already
serve on committees. Yet some academic department chairs still maintain
that when it comes to committee posts, only tenure-track members of their
own faculties need apply.
Addressing such issues, Hall and acting co-op vice president Richard
Porter stress the potential payoff from integrating co-op into the structures
of the colleges. On the question of faculty recruiting, Hall says, "I
don't think [the reforms in the Call to Action] will create a competitive
disadvantage for us. I'm hoping that they create a competitive advantage-that
people will feel that there's something exciting going on here that they
want to be a part of." (He adds that not every new faculty member
a department hires needs to engage in "practice-oriented" teaching
or research.) With regard to the Call's overall expectations for the academic
faculty, Porter says, "I think what people need to focus on are the
results that we're trying to achieve for the students. In that context,
[the academic and co-op faculties] should be able to work together to move
practice-oriented education to a higher level."
While summoning the academic and co-op faculties to collaborate in order
to bring about more integration between co-op and the classroom, the Call
to Action assigns the co-op division its own set of tasks for the purpose
of strengthening co-op as an "employment experience."
President Freeland explains the link between these two overarching aims
when he says, "If our goal is the learning benefits of co-op rather
than the earning benefits of co-op, then having quality jobs, closely related
to what you're studying, obviously becomes critical. Historically, we've
had many students who will tell you, and have told me, that they've had
terrific co-op experiences. We also have plenty of students who say, 'I
was really kind of a gofer,' or 'My job was only marginally related to
my studies.' We can less and less afford that now." In addition, Freeland
notes, with co-op salaries having fallen behind salaries in the workplace
generally, today's full-employment economy affords a chance to "push
the envelope" in this area-and thus to make up lost ground on the
earnings side of co-op.
In response to these circumstances, the Call to Action directs the co-op
division to "assure that co-op jobs offer high-quality experiences
at the best possible pay." Co-op, it says, should develop standardized
expectations for coordinators "in developing positions in fields most
relevant to students' educational needs and in the companies and agencies
that best reflect emerging economic patterns." Coordinators are also
to be evaluated for their success in "sustaining competitive salaries."
Members of the co-op faculty proclaim their long-standing support for
the objective of ensuring "high-quality experiences" for students.
The real issue here, they say, is defining "quality" in light
of the widely varying needs of individual students. Co-op professor Ann
Galligan-who works with art, music, and theater majors-states the often
expressed view that co-op jobs must meet different needs for many arts
and sciences students than they do for undergraduates in the professional
colleges. "Career paths in the arts are not straight shots,"
she says by way of illustration. "So for me to try to get my students
to come too tight isn't really in keeping with the career path that the
arts follow."
Galligan also sees a need to recognize that for students with certain
kinds of career goals, a high-quality co-op job may compare poorly with
other opportunities in terms of salary: for example, the best job for a
music major might involve working for a relative pittance-although in a
music-related position-at a local radio station.
Besides requiring new sets of standards for job quality and pay, the
Call to Action also lays out mandates to ensure "high-quality service
to students," full information for all students about co-op jobs,
and strong relationships with employers. These directives entail further
standardization of expectations for co-op coordinators, as well as an upgrade
of the co-op division's information systems.
On the service issue, Hall says there is, at present, "no major
service problem" with co-op, only what he calls a "need for uniformity."
To this end, the Call directs that the co-op division's new service standards
for coordinators deal with matters including "the availability of
coordinators for preco-op counseling and referral, on-site visitations
by coordinators during co-op periods, and review and reflection activities
at the completion of the co-op cycle." As a reading of the co-op division's
existing evaluation criteria shows, the performance of coordinators throughout
the co-op "cycle" is already judged by a comprehensive set of
standards. What the Call to Action has done, Porter and Tillman say, is
afford the division a useful opportunity to spell out these criteria in
even greater detail.
The Call's prescriptions for furnishing students with "full information"
about co-op jobs carry the potential for much greater change. These measures
are designed to ensure that "students from across the university have
access to information about all co-op possibilities that might interest
them, not just those developed by their particular co-op coordinator."
The Call directs the division to develop a plan to make this possible,
and to support its plan with incentive systems for co-op coordinators to
"continue to assist" students from outside their assigned colleges
or departments. To the same end, the division is instructed to come up
with a blueprint for enhancing the information systems in co-op.
The idea of making information about co-op positions available to all
students appears to respond to frequently heard criticism of co-op at Northeastern:
that it forces undergraduates (particularly, though not exclusively, in
the arts and sciences) into narrow channels, sometimes limiting a student's
co-op job opportunities by tying these too closely to the academic major.
Given the Call to Action's overall emphasis on integrating co-op with academic
study, this provision for preventing the connection between co-op and the
major from becoming an iron link seems designed not only to give students
broader job opportunities but also to provide the system with some checks
and balances.
To be sure, some co-op faculty fear that co-location (by linking coordinators
more closely with their particular academic units) will reinforce a system
of channeling students that, according to associate professor of co-op
Kathleen Finn, "we've tried so hard to break out of." Yet the
Call to Action envisions breaking down this system partly by means of information
technology. In the most immediate terms, new information systems for the
co-op division will allow jobs to be posted on-line, thus making them available
to students in any college or department. At the same time, technology-properly
designed and implemented-should improve both the level of service and the
educational work of the co-op division. (For details on the technology
plan for co-op and its likely effect on day-to-day operations, see the
article on page twenty-four.)
In the last of its measures for strengthening co-op as an "employment
experience," the Call to Action charges the co-op division with ensuring
the "strongest possible relationships with co-op employers."
As outlined in the Call, this task entails outreach and feedback to furnish
information about co-op employers' experience with the program (with the
establishment, once again, of new standardized expectations for how co-op
coordinators will carry out their responsibilities).
With an average of 1,850 employers participating in co-op at Northeastern
over the course of a given year, the range of opinions is no doubt wide
as to what the university might do to improve the co-op experience for
employers. At least one co-op employer, however-Kenneth Damato, BA'93,
who is now northeast region sales manager for General Electric's lighting
division at its regional office in Dedham, Massachusetts-offers a point
of view that endorses crucial objectives in the Call to Action. A member
of the university's new Co-op Employer Advisory Group, Damato speaks of
several outcomes he would like to have emerge from the current reform initiative.
Among them, he says, is "not just saying it, but actually tying the
classroom, the student, and the employer together."
As someone who has experienced co-op as both a student and an employer,
Damato would also like to see "the ability to be flexible within the
schools": "If you're somebody who's a criminal justice major,"
he advises, "who thinks you want to run your own private detective
firm, that's business and criminal justice. So knock the walls down."
In addition, Damato would prefer more "consistency" in a system
where students go out on co-op for either three or six months at a time.
"For true value in learning," he suggests, "maybe fewer
co-ops and more longevity is better." If there is a problem with service
in the co-op division, he adds, it is that "the co-op advisers have
way too much on their plate. So you have a resource issue, and there are
dollars and cents associated with it."
In speaking about matters such as the co-op calendar and resources for
the co-op division, Damato calls attention to a final set of issues addressed
by the Call to Action. Under the goal of "Reviewing Basic Questions
About Co-op," the Call proposes a "fresh look" (overseen
by Hall) at the "structure and format" of co-op at N.U., as well
as an effort to increase understanding about the actual effects of the
program. Questions to be examined include issues such as the optimal number
and length of co-op experiences. To enhance the university's understanding
of co-op, the Call directs Hall to initiate a program of research and monitoring
as well as a process of evaluation.
The last goal set out by the Call to Action is "Providing Needed
Resources." Given the necessity of ensuring that "co-op coordinators
as well as college faculties are provided with the support needed to carry
out the tasks we have identified," the Call charges the provost with
assessing the needs for administrative support and technology in both the
co-op division and the colleges, and with reviewing the "potential
reassignment" of current resources and the provision of new ones.
Taken as a whole, the Call to Action lays out an enormous agenda. It
has also created a fast-forward timetable designed to compensate for years
of what Freeland and Hall have termed "only modest progress"
in bringing co-op into step with the times. Although issued only last September,
the Call to Action required the colleges and the co-op division to design
new structures and policies, create planning processes for the redesign
of others, and report to the provost on their progress by the end of 1998.
Most other tasks assigned by the document must be completed by the close
of the current academic year, with the colleges' plans for academic integration
(to be developed in collaboration with the co-op division) due in Hall's
office on May 17. Looking at what has been accomplished so far-and considering
the scope of the job of giving co-op a "very different structure"-Hall
concludes, "I think we've made tremendous progress."
Beyond the tasks and timelines, however, many faculty and administrators
see another imperative if the Call to Action is to succeed in ensuring
Northeastern's leadership in co-op for the future. Business Dean Ira Weiss-co-chair,
alongside Richard Porter, of the university's Co-op Implementation Task
Force-is a strong supporter of the Call's effort to break down the walls
between co-op and the classroom. Yet Weiss also foresees challenges in
the "culture change" that genuine integration of co-op and academics
will entail, and stresses the need for the co-op division and the colleges
to put their new organizational structures in the service of communication.
"This is a great opportunity," he says, "for co-op to teach
us and tell us about what they do, and work with us to reshape both what
we and they do as we go through this educational process."
On the co-op side, acting dean Tillman declares himself in favor of
an integration that he defines in terms not so much of formal structures
as of "communication, cooperation, and collaboration": "You
build up trust through communication and cooperation," he observes,
"until you get to the point where there's a mutual valuing of what
each of you brings to the table. And then collaboration, in its best form,
appears seamless to the students."
President Freeland, for his part, says that an important purpose of
the Call to Action's structural reforms is to get the co-op and academic
faculties "around the table" for the kind of dialogue that Weiss
and Tillman describe. He also contrasts the kind of approach to organizational
change that advocates "doing something dramatic and violent, like
busting up co-op" with the process of change now under way around
the university.
"The Call to Action," Freeland says, "is a document which
is optimistic in its presumption that we can make the kinds of changes
we need to make-which are quite significant-through a collaborative, collegial
process." Designed to turn much talk about co-op into action, the
Call to Action ironically may achieve its greatest success by getting the
right people around the university involved in an open, focused, and productive
conversation.
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