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View from the Hill
Experiential Education at UNH:
When the World is Your Classroom
If a student wants a broad education but also wants a job waiting after college, which is better: Book learning or experience?
The answer: both.
The University of New Haven is taking the classroom out of the building, and the students into the field. Understanding full well what the New England philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson was thinking when he said, “Skill to do, comes of doing,”
UNH students are availing themselves of internships, research opportunities, and community service that bring them into contact with scientists, businesspeople, professional engineers, authors and more. Experience combined with education—aka experiential education—is moving UNH students into the future equipped to succeed. Experiential education also figures prominently in the University’s Strategic Direction, a master plan for the future.
“Classroom learning combined with internships, research opportunities and many of the other hands-on experiences that UNH offers its students create highly employable graduates,” points out President Steven H. Kaplan.
Marquis Bell '08
A triple major in Business Administration, Marketing and Music Industry, Marquis Bell ’08, of Plymouth, North Carolina, spent the summer working for the New Haven Symphony. Among many tasks he helped rebuild the symphony’s website, and planned a Family First program to attract the community to classical music.
“Working at the symphony was a different marketing challenge,” Bell says. “In pop music, you have to promote the artist. For the symphony, you don’t have an image to sell, but rather the music.”
He strongly supports the notion of internships for students, believing internships more adequately prepare students for life outside college.
"It’s sort of amazing how much an internship helps a student,” says Bell, who hopes to attend the Yale School of Management after graduation from UNH. “Internships have helped me to pinpoint precisely what I want to do.”
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