All About Mentoring Spring 2011 - SUNY Empire State College

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Bob Lenard’s comprehension is tested
and his interpretive abilities are exercised
when after carrying out library research
on the non-Western antecedents of Greek
Classicism in Persia, Egypt, and India, he
writes a paper discussing the non-Western
and nonlinear influences underlying
Western rationalism … The same is
true for Charles Booth when he reads
Marcuse’s One Dimensional Man and
describes “transcendented being,” and
of Janet Lessinger when she discusses the
experiences of modern life as presented
in Kafka’s The Trial and Laing’s The
Divided Self.
Analysis calls for the ability to break down
a communication or an experience into basic
elements, to identify the relative importance
of ideas or incidents, and to make explicit
the relationships among them.
When Emma Schmidt creates her
“intellectual autobiography,” looking
back over her past reading and
experiences, she tackles a complex
analytic task … Dolores Guion faces
a similar challenge when she examines
the Health Science Programs at Hudson
Valley Community College to determine
what they include and whether there
have been task analyses of the basic skills
and concepts of health career workers …
Donald Wentworth’s research project on
The General Motors sit-down strike will
call for similar analytic abilities.
Evaluation calls for the ability to make
qualitive and quantitative judgments in
relation to given or understood criteria.
It calls for judgments about the value of
information, materials, and methods for
specific purposes. In some cases, judgments
may rest on internal evidence such as
logical accuracy or internal consistency.
In other cases, judgments may rest on
external criteria which must be selected or
formulated to fit the case, or which may
depend upon using standard systems of
appraisal.
Dolores Guion’s study of Health Science
Programs will have a substantial
evaluative component as she makes
judgments about the effectiveness of
student training and the degree to which
there is a good fit between the curricula
and actual job requirements … Emma
Schmidt’s study of the agency practices
in relation to Spanish-speaking clients
will evaluate their effectiveness and
responsiveness to such persons and their
effectiveness with them, and the degree
to which requirements for employment
and volunteer work permit persons of
Spanish background to participate in the
work of those agencies … Chuck Booth’s
evaluative paper on experimental colleges
will scrutinize and make judgments about
their methods and curricula.
Synthesis involves arranging and combining
elements so that a structure or pattern
emerges which was not clearly there before.
The result may be a communication in
which a writer or speaker conveys his ideas,
feelings, or experiences to another; it may
be a proposed plan or a set of abstract
relationships which classify or explain
certain phenomena and may be presented in
verbal, mathematical, or artistic form.
Dolores Guion’s report will synthesize
the results of her analyses of the Hudson
Valley Community College Health Science
Programs … Emma Schmidt’s reports on
community agencies which have Spanishspeaking
clients and her interviews with
faculty members in the Department
of Human Services will call for the
ability to draw together diverse kinds of
information to make an integrated whole
… Chuck Booth will need similar abilities
when he compiles a bibliography for use
in his course and organizes the readings
in relation to students’ interests … In
bi-weekly phone calls and conferences
with the Mentor, Bob Lenard and others
will create syntheses of their readings,
travel, work experiences, volunteer
activities.
Application calls for the use of abstractions
in particular and concrete situations, or
for the ability to compare one set of ideas
or experiences with another in order to
consider the implications or potential
consequences. The abstractions may be
general ideas, rules, or procedures or they
may be technical principles or theories.
The capacity for application is critical if
knowledge is to relate to the identification
and solution of problems.
Empire State’s program has special
potency for this kind of intellectual
competence. Donald Wentworth is asked
how Marx and Engel’s definitions of
the working class and the owner class
apply to his own experiences in and out
of the factory. He is asked to examine
the relationship between the sit-down
strikes and the preceding history of the
labor movement, and the relationship
between the CIO of the sit-downs and
current union activities – especially of
the U.A.W., his own union … Dolores
Guion undertakes substantial background
readings, studies a series of Health Science
Programs, and develops her own optimal
health education program for Licensed
Practical Nurses … Chuck Booth relates
Mersault’s “Passivity” to the “Aesthetic
Concepts of Disinterestedness,” as
discussed by Kant and Baumgarten; he
considers Plato’s notion of dialogue as
it applies to intercourse between student
and teacher … Janet Lessinger reads
Jews Without Money, Call It Sleep,
The Autobiography of Malcolm X, The
Second Sex, Last Exit to Brooklyn, The
Man with the Golden Arm, Division
Street America, and asks, “How do
the lives of the persons in these books
converge How does this convergence
relate to life in a metropolis In what
ways is the rhythm of urban life an assault
against the persons on the underside and
on their cultures”
Empire State’s program aims to develop
intellectual competence in these major
areas. It asks students to acquire knowledge
pertinent to their purposes, and to develop
skills of comprehension, analysis, synthesis,
application, and evaluation. Although the
emphases differ, most contracts test a wide
range of such abilities. In the course of his
college career, each student will frequently
be challenged to develop these skills.
* * *
However, intellectual competence is only one
aspect of individual development. Significant
educational experiences influence other
major tasks which are the work of human
development throughout life: increasing
interpersonal competence, increasing
awareness, clarifying purposes, becoming
increasingly self-reliant, understanding
oneself and others, and developing selfconsistency.
Because these are important
areas of concern for many students, and
suny empire state college • all about mentoring • issue 39 • spring 2011