Then and now: UW has transformed in a generation

It was a chilly September afternoon when Lee and Teddie Gibbon said good-bye to the life they had known for 19 years. Although they saw this coming and were excited about the new adventures ahead, it was still hard to leave their only child on the doorstep of Haggett Hall to start a new life at the University of Washington.

For almost two decades, they had watched their daughter Alex grow into a young woman. During that time, they told her stories about the “U-Dub,” where they met, fell in love and got their degrees in the 1970s. And Alex (at center above) soaked up those tales. Living in Spokane, the heart of “Cougar Country,” she wore purple and gold to grade school, despite the teasing by her classmates. “Ever since I was young, I wanted to be a Husky,” she will tell anyone who asks why she came to Seattle.

But on the day when she became a Husky, it was tough to say good-bye. “Alex had some tears in her eyes,” Lee Gibbon says. “She knew what it meant.”

“It was emotional,” she recalls. “It was the point where I knew I wasn’t going home. I knew that next week that I was going to find my new home for the next four years; that I was on my own.”

For Lee and Teddie, it was one of the hardest steps they had to take as parents. That Sunday afternoon, as they swung their Jeep Cherokee onto the I-5 on-ramp, there was silence for a while. Teddie said she was excited for their daughter and Lee was proud that Alex got into the UW, but there was also physical and emotional emptiness. “Now you’ve lost her,” Lee thought to himself. “She’s 285 miles away from you.”

During that long drive, as Teddie and Lee talked about Alex’s future, Lee also thought about the past. Now a Spokane restaurateur, he turned his mind back almost 30 years, to the day he arrived as an 18-year-old UW freshman in September 1972. In some ways, he knew Alex would experience the same things he did. Like her mom and dad, Alex would participate in rush and join the Greek system as a freshman. She would attend football games, study in the library and hang out in the HUB, just like her parents did.

Even her first quarter schedule was similar. Like her dad, she was signed up for freshman entry courses—including the same Psychology 101 course in the same room, Kane 130—that her dad took 28 years before. But while the course title and location were the same, that class—and the entire undergraduate experience that Alex was about to encounter—had changed. The transformation was so great that, in some ways, her dad would hardly know what was going on.

If we went back to 1972, found the young Lee Gibbon, and returned in our time machine to Alex’s first day at the UW, he’d be in shock. Of course, he would be struck by the different haircuts, clothing styles and a rainbow of skin colors. Our 21st century Huskies would feature shaved heads and goatees for men, earrings and backpacks for everyone. More than a third of the faces looking at him would not be white. “I just don’t recall that kind of diversity then, that you have on campus today,” he says. While the UW doesn’t have hard figures on its ethnic makeup in the early ’70s, a huge majority of students were white, says UW Registrar W.W. “Tim” Washburn. Men also dominated the student body—only 39 percent were women.

Today 35 percent of all undergraduates come from non-white or multi-ethnic backgrounds and 51 percent of all undergrads are women. “My classes are very diverse,” says Alex. “I thought I came from a diverse high school in Spokane, but when I got here, I realized I was really not brought up in this kind of environment. I really like it and I think I learn more,” she says.

For our 1972 time traveler, there would be another early shock. The freshmen packed into Kane 130 would be holding cell phones, laptops and PDAs. He would be lost as the professor talked about a Web site syllabus, e-mail addresses and online chat groups.

“I was never around computers my five years at the UW,” says Lee. “The only technology I had was a manual, Smith Corona typewriter. It didn’t even have an erase key.”

When Alex moved into her sorority house, she arrived with a PC and a modem. In considering what classes to register for last quarter, she looked at course syllabi and teaching evaluations on the Web. Starting with winter quarter, she could even register for her classes using the MyUW Web site.

Once in her classes, she was often using the Internet for research. During her winter quarter communications class, for instance, she was part of an online chat group of students in her TA section. “It was very interesting. I never knew that you could do that kind of chat system with a class,” she says.

She has also found e-mail helpful when she has questions. “If I am in Kane 130, I’m hesitant to say something. E-mail makes it so much easier than asking something in front of a classroom of 500 students,” she explains.

While diversity and technology are the visible signs of change that a time-traveling Lee Gibbon would notice, there have been deeper transformations to what is now the largest undergraduate program on the West Coast.

The days of one-way education are over, says Dean of Undergraduate Education Fred Campbell, who has been on the UW faculty for 35 years. “Back then, students were more reliant on the professor for the information we dispensed,” he says. “There was a limited number of materials on reserve, and some of us didn’t even have copy machines. We had to use ditto machines.

“Today faculty aren’t the only ones that have all the information. As a result, telling students what you know is not nearly as important,” he explains. Reflecting on his teaching experience in the sociology department in that era, he adds, “In the 1970s, we focused on teaching; today the conversation is around how do students learn.”

“The whole concept has changed,” adds Richard Simkins, who was part of undergraduate advising for 38 years before retiring as director emeritus last year. “Students are involved in their education in an active way. They are not baby birds in a nest having knowledge poured down their open beaks.”

The change didn’t happen overnight. In the 1970s and early ’80s, some critics attacked the UW for ignoring undergraduate education and concentrating too hard on its research mission. “I think that was a fair criticism,” Campbell says. “We probably allowed the pendulum to swing too far in one direction.” Also, society and technology were rapidly changing, and the University needed to reflect those changes in the way it taught students.

The turning point was in 1988, when the College of Arts and Sciences created an associate dean position just for undergraduate education. The college turned to Campbell, the first winner of the UW Distinguished Teaching Award (sharing the 1970 prize with legendary History Professor Giovanni Costigan), who had chaired the sociology department for seven years.

Soon after he started, he heard about a test program to help shrink the size of the UW for new freshmen. Called Freshmen Interest Groups (FIGs), they are clusters of new students who take all their courses together during the fall and meet once a week with a student mentor.

“We had four of them that first year. We didn’t have any great expectations at the time,” Campbell recalls. Last fall 2,461 UW freshmen enrolled in 115 FIGs. There are similar programs for transfer and returning students. “It has had a much more positive educational influence than we anticipated,” Campbell says. He’s found that the average FIG student has a higher G.P.A., lower dropout rate and easier time adapting to life at the University.

When Lee Gibbon arrived here in 1972, his academic life was centered around his living group, the Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity. “I don’t recall any groups organized like FIGs,” he says. “Until you met and had a peer group, you went into those classes solo.” For daughter Alex, it was a natural way to ease herself into the UW. “It made the UW feel like a real home,” she says.

In addition to FIGs, the UW started other new initiatives under Campbell. In 1993 the UW began to offer freshman seminars: a chance for new students to meet senior faculty once a week in a more relaxed setting. Since then, more than 200 faculty from 90 departments have participated, including Nobel Prize-winning physicist Hans Dehmelt, former astronaut George “Pinky” Nelson, Computer Science Professor Steve Tanimoto and Classics Professor James Clauss.

But these innovations don’t stop after freshman year, Campbell says. Once a student has some basic coursework, the University encourages “experiential learning,” taking the student out of the traditional lecture hall.

“One of the great strengths of the University of Washington is that it is a research university leading a life of continued learning,” he declares. “We want to engage students in the discovery of new knowledge. We think it is a more advantageous form of learning.”

UW undergraduates participate in the creation of new knowledge in new ways. About 24 percent are involved in at least one major research project before they graduate, and the UW wants to see that number grow. Boosting undergraduate research are programs like the Mary Gates Research Training Grants, which funded about 120 undergraduates in 2000-01. Each year the UW holds an Undergraduate Research Symposium, where top students present their findings to the public. This May saw 250 undergrads present papers on such topics as electricity from fuel cells, magnetospheric propulsion for space travel, robot soccer and arsenic toxicity.

Don’t think of research as strictly a scientific endeavor, says Campbell. The UW uses the term broadly to mean student involvement in the academic work of a faculty member. “In the arts, faculty members might not call it research; they might call it artistic development. In the humanities they might call it scholarship.” The May undergrad symposium also covered such topics as military intervention and terrorism, competitive balance in major league baseball and the archaeology of the Persian Empire.

While the lure of participating in research was not a factor for Alex, for other undergraduates it is a prime reason to choose Washington. “The possibility of participating in undergraduate research is our number one recruiting tool,” says Janice DeCosmo, director of the undergraduate research program, who helps attract students interested in the sciences and engineering to the UW.

Lee Gibbon doesn’t remember anyone he knew in the 1970s involved in faculty research. But he did benefit from learning outside of the classroom when he had an internship with the Eastside Public Defender’s Office as part of his major in the society and justice program.

“I learned a lot by taking that internship,” he says, “but I did not get a sense from my peers that there were a lot of internships out there. It was a rarity back then.”

It is a rarity no longer. Thanks to the Carlson Leadership and Public Service Center and internship programs scattered throughout individual departments, the UW estimates that nearly 40 percent of its undergraduates will hold at least one internship before they leave.

“A lot of the juniors and seniors that I meet at our sorority have had internships. One of them worked at a major Seattle radio station. It helps being in a major metropolitan area. I definitely think I have lots of opportunities around here,” Alex says.

Yet another way out of the classroom is service learning, where students volunteer for public service as part of their coursework. For example, geography students studying world hunger help out at a local food bank or chemistry students become tutors and mentors at local high schools. “Let’s take what you’ve learned and put it to work,” says Campbell. About 24 percent of recent graduates say they participated in community service as part of a class.

With all these changes, one factor that has remained consistent is the quality of teaching, says advising veteran Simkins. “You can’t say that it’s much better today. We had great teachers back then like Giovanni Costigan and Henry Buechel,” he declares. “But there is more emphasis on teaching today, more of an effort to help people with their teaching skills, and more acceptance of the idea that when you come here as a faculty member, you need to pay attention to your teaching.”

Internships, research activities, technology, diversity, FIGS—compared to her dad and mom, Alex’s learning opportunities have exploded. “Today there are more choices,” says Campbell. “Every year the number of courses goes up. We’ve developed whole new fields since the 1970s related to the vast explosion of knowledge.”

He also feels the students are up to the challenge. “The level of accomplishment that our best undergraduates achieve today is far beyond what most students were able to achieve in our classrooms in the 1960s and ‘70s,” he maintains. Much of that achievement goes back to the power of technology, he adds. “You just couldn’t work with students as easily back then. Now you have computing power and equipment at your fingertips.”

Campbell retires this summer after spending 35 years at the University. He is not afraid to admit there is more to do. “We are going to have a period of change even more rapid than the last 35 years,” he warns. “We’ve got to continue to revise and reinvigorate undergraduate education.”

As part of that continuing process, the UW held three forums this spring on academic excellence, including a session led by Regent William Gates titled, “Do We Challenge UW Students?” Campbell doesn’t see any slowdown in such dialogues. “As long as society keeps changing and knowledge keeps growing, what we need to teach will change, too,” he says.

Yet Campbell is proud of what has been accomplished. “I feel we stand up very well compared to any other school,” he declares. For example, the UW was among the top 15 public universities when U.S News & World Report released its 2001 undergraduate rankings. And UW alumni agree. In a survey of former students taken five and 10 years after they graduated, 82 percent said they were satisfied with the UW’s quality of instruction in their field.

“The UW is amazing,” Alex declares. “I am definitely getting a valuable education. I am also learning people skills, communication skills, how to live with others.”

Which is not so different from what Lee and Teddie Gibbon got out of their UW education as well. “I feel very fortunate to have attended the University of Washington,” says Lee. “And I am very excited for Alex. I just feel great about her being at the University.”

Tom Griffin is the Editor of Columns.