Conference celebrates 75th anniversary of Experimental College

Five alumni of UW–Madison’s original Experimental College will join nationally known scholars and UW–Madison faculty, administrators and students Oct. 10-11 to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the influential forerunner of today’s learning communities.

Founded by Alexander Meiklejohn in 1927, the Experimental College was designed to help students develop into thinking, caring, involved citizens. Meiklejohn created a framework that included a curriculum which ran for two consecutive years, lectures and readings by experts in those fields, students studying the same topics at the same time, and shared residence hall living space among students and faculty.

Although it only lasted until 1932, the college is credited with providing the underpinnings for UW–Madison’s Integrated Liberal Studies (ILS) program and its residential learning communities, along with similar programs around the country.

Today, more than 1,200 students live in Chadbourne Residential College, Bradley Learning Community and several other campus learning communities, all of which incorporate educational activities into student housing.

The conference, which will explore key issues related to the learning community experience, is scheduled to begin at 11:30 a.m. Thursday, Oct. 10 and will run through 1:45 p.m. Friday, Oct. 11.

One conference session that may be of particular interest is titled “Students Then and Now” at 8-9:30 a.m. Friday, Oct. 11, at Chadbourne Residential College. The hosts will be Walter Brecher, Leonard Einstein, Robert W. Frase, Harold B. November and Leslie Orear. All five, now in their nineties, were students in the original Experimental College. They will talk with current learning-community students and share their recollections of Meiklejohn and UW–Madison in the late 1920s.

Other notable conference participants include:

• Cathy McHugh Engstrom, associate professor of higher education, Syracuse University
• Barbara Leigh Smith, co-director, National Learning Communities Project, Washington Center for Improving the Quality of Undergraduate Education, Evergreen State College, Olympia, Wash.
• Whitney Gould, urban landscape writer and columnist, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, speaking on ILS
• Aaron M. Brower, faculty director, Bradley Learning Community and professor of social work at UW–Madison

Sessions will be held across campus and are open to members of the media. A full schedule is available on the Internet.

For more information, or to arrange an interview with a participant, call Thayer Reed at (608) 265-6342.

The conference is sponsored by WISCAPE and the Wisconsin Alumni Association (WAA), with assistance from the Meiklejohn Integrated Liberal Studies Association (MILSA), University Housing and UW-Madison Libraries.