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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.
Heather Toothaker '08
Intern Mixes Schoolchildren, the Sea and a UNH Education to Find a Future that Works
It’s a name that not just anyone could carry, but Heather Toothaker doesn’t skip a beat. “You think my last name is interesting now?” she said. “Before I got married, it was Blankenstein.”
Effortlessly trading a name that rhymes with Frankenstein for one that raises visions of dental pain is part and parcel of Toothaker’s charm. Little fazes her, including the challenges of getting second-graders to line up properly once library time is done, or listen up when lunchtime is over. A UNH master’s candidate in Education and a teaching intern at Hebron Avenue School in Glastonbury this semester, she is as ebullient as many of the children, and shorter than some of them.
But her enthusiasm and ease with children are what shine in the halls of the school. A graduate of Maine Maritime Academy who worked as an educational specialist in Marine Sciences at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Toothaker married her college sweetheart, then thought about what sort of career would mesh her love of marine science with her desire for a family.
“I realized the best way to make an impact on the mathematics and sciences with kids was to work full-time in the schools,” she said. “And that works for family life too.”
She chose the University of New Haven because the master’s program allowed her to complete an internship while she was taking classes. She has made connections with schoolteachers and administrators, and will have taught in every elementary grade once she finishes her internship. “The kids have so much enthusiasm, and they so want to learn. I call them my little sea sponges,” she said. “This has been such a wonderful experience.”
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