Yale-NUS Visits Shalem to Share Ideas, Best Practices
A delegation from Yale-NUS College, the newly established liberal arts college in Singapore, arrived at Shalem in November to trade insights on the process of adapting the liberal-arts model to new and diverse contexts. One of two international institutions visited by Yale-NUS as part of its ongoing research into the global liberal-arts movement, Shalem shares the highly selective college’s goal of enabling students to converse with multiple traditions as preparation for lives of influence in a complex, interconnected world.
As the result of the four-day visit, during which the Yale-NUS delegates met with Shalem leadership, faculty, and students, both sides emerged with a sense of shared endeavor and invigorated optimism for the prospects of their ambitious projects. “Both our institutions are facing many of the same challenges,” explained Shalem President Martin Kramer. “For instance, Singapore, like Israel, is highly pre-professional, a cultural fact that results in a very grade-oriented approach to education. Both Yale-NUS and Shalem must work hard to introduce students to a new way of viewing their studies, one that emphasizes the question over the answer and the process of learning over simply acquiring information. Our two institutions have a lot to learn from one another in this regard.”
A collaboration of Yale University and the National University of Singapore, Yale-NUS features a common curriculum that combines elements of the Western tradition with those of Asian civilization—much as Shalem’s innovative Core blends Western, Jewish, and even Islamic texts. Yet as Casey Nagy, director of the president’s office of Yale-NUS, explained, new institutions such as Yale-NUS and Shalem are much greater than the sum of their parts. “Yale-NUS and Shalem seek to address the particular needs of their time and place. The communities that the faculty and students create around their curricula will become an important vehicle for sharing knowledge and achieving personal growth.” Daniel Polisar, Shalem Executive Vice-President and Provost, agreed, expressing his belief that the driving force behind many of the world’s newly established liberal arts colleges is the hope that they may serve as greenhouses for a new, ideal type of community in their countries. “Hearing our colleagues at Yale-NUS speak about their goals for the college, we felt affirmed in our vision of an institution whose mode of learning—namely, the give-and-take of classroom discussion and debate, the encounter with different views and backgrounds, and the need constantly to keep the big picture in mind—models in miniature the kind of society we seek.”
For both Shalem and Yale-NUS, a critical part of the picture has been the creation of a teaching faculty dedicated to accompanying students on an intellectual and personal journey. “Hearing about the intensive process of professional development Shalem’s Core teaching faculty underwent prior to the college’s opening, and the deep discussion and debate that preceded their selection of pedagogical methods, it’s clear that the college will position its graduates for success,” said Choy Heng Lai, Yale-NUS Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs. Nagy agreed, pointing to the extensive interaction between faculty and students as a way in which small liberal arts colleges can have big impacts on their societies: “Students will be, after four years, a highly networked group. The mentorship that they receive from faculty can lead naturally to professional connections and opportunities, above and beyond the unique skill set and broad base of knowledge that they’ll gain.”
Jenifer Raver, director of institutional research at Yale-NUS, remarked on the diversity of the Shalem student body, which she admitted had come as something of a surprise. With approximately 60 percent Singaporeans and 40 percent overseas students, the Yale-NUS student body raises particular challenges. “Finding a common teaching language is a literal and metaphorical challenge, one that our faculty works creatively to address all the time,” she stated. “At Shalem, the fact that there are students from such a range of ideological and religious backgrounds, many of whom just a year or two ago were in elite army units, who have travelled to remote places in the world—this also requires creativity in developing a common teaching language.” To all the Yale-NUS delegates, however, this challenge was merely another advantage: “In today’s world, college students can expect to have up to nine different careers over the course of their professional lives. This means that they will need not only to be flexible of mind, but also to know how to deal with diverse personalities and appreciate the value of diverse backgrounds,” said Nagy. “Liberal art colleges such as Yale-NUS and Shalem are superb training grounds for just this sort of experience.”
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