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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.
Mark Bonaventura '08
The desire to hone his skill at working with mentally ill inmates inspired Mark Bonaventura '08, of Bridgeport, to work as an intern at the maximum security Garner Correctional Institution in Newtown this summer. Each day his duties changed, but he spent the majority of his time listening to inmates' concerns, resolving conflicts, transporting inmates, helping counselors with paperwork, distributing mail to inmates and compiling daily roster sheets. "I received training that many of my peers are not receiving right now," says Bonaventura, who is majoring in Criminal Justice with a concentration in investigative services. "These internships, and our performance in them, are going to be the deciding factors in our getting jobs."
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