The History of Unit One

This document has four sections:

  1. A summary description of Unit One composed Fall, 1994
  2. A historical survey: 1971-1985
  3. A "transition statement" composed inthe mid-1980s
  4. The report of the Council on Program Evaluation(COPE), 1983--A campus level evaluation committee

Historical Survey: 1971-1985

Report by : Howard Schein, Program Director

UNIT ONE is a residentially-based academic program in Allen Residence Hall at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. UNIT ONE/Allen Hall is a living/ learning center: A program designed to combine features of the undergraduate resident's academic and personal issues into a holistic setting. UNIT ONE is characterized by the several programmatic features: Credit courses, co-curricular programming, and a Guest-In-Residence program. Allen Hall residents are characterized as being open to new ideas and interpersonal diversity, self-activating, and intellectually involved.

Allen Hall houses about 375 men and 300 women undergraduates, about 80% of whom are freshmen and sophomores. Their demography is consistent with the University's entire undergraduate population in terms of major and college distribution, hometowns, and grade points. The academic program offered by UNIT ONE is incorporated into their regular curricular schedules, and the co-curricular programming is available to all University students. UNIT ONE/Allen Hall residents are self-selected as a University Residence Hall housing option; once in Allen Hall, students are encouraged, but not required, to participate in all aspects of the program.

Although UNIT ONE and Allen Hall can be formally and structurally distinguished from one another, their interrelatedness is critical to either's flavor and effectiveness. Allen Hall is distinct from all other halls for intentional reasons, primary of which is the effect of UNIT ONE's formal offerings and philosophical position of encouraging active student participation in the decisions and actions that affect them.

UNIT ONE was established in 1971 by Chancellor Jack Peltason's Commission on the Reform of Undergraduate Education and Living (CRUEL). In two preliminary documents (1,2) CRUEL adopted a set of proposals for implementing changes in the nature of undergraduate education at UIUC. UNIT ONE was born out of the perception that living and learning had been divorced from each other on this campus and that the mission of the University was not being logically extended to the residence hall environment. This environment was seen as a ripe area for furthering the cultural and intellectual development of university undergraduates as had been successfully demonstrated at other universities (e.g., Harvard Houses).

UNIT ONE's original mandate was purposefully broad:

  1. To explore the feasibility of modifying a residential unit to create a suitable living-learning environment.
  2. To try out an academic program to complement existing programs which would concentrate on liberal arts and sciences. (3) This mandate for developmental breadth is reflected in a letter from the search committee for the original director: “...the general conviction that the unit should be free to develop a type or types of residential instruction that do not necessarily adhere to the traditional modes of undergraduate education.” (4)

Alan Purves, UNIT ONE's first director (1971-72), outlined several more specific goals:

  1. to enhance students' desires to develop themselves perceptually, intellectually, socially...and to allow them to develop for themselves a meaningful set of competence and experiences (...within the context of a community setting);
  2. to utilize tutorial study arrangements;
  3. to utilize interdisciplinary workshops that especially focus on how the social, physical and life-sciences interact with the humanities. (5)

Under the Unit's second (acting) director, William Plater (1972-73), the staff defined a set of more specific objectives. These objectives aimed towards creating an academic community of freshmen and sophomores where students would be taught to take a greater than normally expected degree of responsibility for their own educational and living experiences, toward using the University as a viable resource, and toward serving as an experimental base for new academic and residential programs. (6) Succeeding director Paul Hoover (1973-76) molded the program along these guidelines.

With Hoover's abrupt resignation in 1976, Roland Holmes, (1977-78), an assistant dean in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and George Douglas, (1978-79), a faculty member in the Department of English, assumed Acting Directorships. In 1980, Associate Director Howard Schein was named Program Director.

As has been the case with several other Midwestern, large university living-learning centers (e.g., Michigan, Indiana, Nebraska), the historical development of UNIT ONE is closely tied to two separate, but strongly interacting issues: Administrative/financial and educational philosophy.

The original administrative organizational structure of UNIT ONE was never laid out in a formal document. Although the program was instituted into the University via the Faculty Senate, the actual lines of report, financial support, clarification of the roles of the sponsoring units, and the boundaries of interaction between Housing Division and UNIT ONE staff were never clearly institutionalized (personal comment, Alan Purves). Many of UNIT ONE's ensuing problems resulted from the ambiguity set by these factors.

Educational philosophy also seemed to wander through an unclear developmental process. Although the program was meant to be an experiment, the goals of success of the experiment were never made clear enough to serve as evaluative guidelines.

The absence of administrative structure that involved the normal institutional process with the development of educational philosophy further widened the gap between UNIT ONE's development and institutional expectations so that a period of storm, 1974-80, involved a great deal of confrontation between proponents and opponents of the program.

UNIT ONE has always been housed in Allen Hall in the University Residence Hall system. In 1971, 178 freshmen began the program. In 1972 the program expanded to 250-300 to accommodate sophomores. In 1978 the program expanded toward inclusion of the entire hall (675). Non-residents have been encouraged to participate since 1974.

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the Housing Division jointly sponsored the program through 1979-1980. The budget hovered around $100,000 and came, largely, from the academic sector. The Housing Division supplied a good deal of “in-kind” funds which were not formally acknowledged. In 1979 the Housing Division assumed about 85% of the actual funding.

Beginning in 1975, students began paying a modest fee of $15/semester. This fee gradually increased to $45/semester in 1980. The student fee represents two distinct issues:

  1. a necessary fiscal contribution toward the extra features they receive;
  2. a "put-up or shut-up" statement by the administration to the students who protested the program's being terminated for fiscal reasons.

The College of LAS terminated UNIT ONE in 1974, 1978, 1979, and 1980. The College did not perceive UNIT ONE as being central to the College's mission and cited alleged academic weaknesses as a major factor. Contributing campus political issues also appeared to be at work: Chancellor Jack Peltason, the program's administrative proponent, was gone and a vacuum of sponsorship was created; the funds he had allotted to LAS for UNIT ONE had come to be considered College property (personal comment by Morton Weir, Vice-Chancellor for Academic Affairs to Howard Schein); UNIT ONE's director had never been replaced; the College of LAS was in bad financial shape and needed funds for its central mission.

The first three terminations were rescinded due to lobbying efforts by students, faculty, and campus administrators. Students' commitment to the program and to their perception of undergraduate ownership of an academic program strongly motivated their solicitation of support from state legislators, their parents, faculty, and campus administrators. As the result of each year's student protest, UNIT ONE was gradually moved into the Housing Division and under a more direct supervision by the Vice-Chancellor for Student Affairs, Stanley Levy, a strong and active proponent of the program. In 1980, Levy convinced the new Chancellor, William Gerberding and Vice-Chancellor for Academic Affairs, Edwin Goldwasser, to sponsor UNIT ONE at the campus level. This reorganization came in concert with a reorganization of the Housing Division, with its new director, Gary North, coming with good working knowledge of living-learning centers.

These reorganizational features included a strong, all campus advisory committee to oversee UNIT ONE's academic program, and an integration of UNIT ONE and Housing staff under a unified mission statement and administrative structure. It paved the way for the recent growth and reorganization of the program in a more academically credible direction.

Academic Program

The academic program is based on credit granting courses and co-curricular activities. The early program was founded on student-faculty tutorials for variable, ungraded credit under the LAS 110 rubric. Seminar courses were added in 1972-73 under LAS 210 (3 hrs, graded). Tutorials soon became a secondary feature due to students' inability to assume the necessary level of responsibility and faculty's inability to commit time without departmental release.

In 1972, the UNIT ONE staff began incorporating several academic instructors who had no formal faculty ties to regular departments. These people were added in order to teach courses not regularly available in the University. These staff tended to be either advanced graduate students or recent Ph.D.s. They were hired by a UNIT ONE student-staff screening committee which included representatives from the College of LAS.

Sections of Rhetoric 105/108 restricted to UNIT ONE students have also traditionally been offered in Allen Hall since 1971.

Until 1980, most UNIT ONE courses were seminars taught by UNIT ONE instructors under LAS 210. Some departmental seminar courses were included on an irregular basis. Prominent UNIT ONE courses revolved about Community Internships, Women's Studies, Interpersonal and Black/White Relations, Music (Composition and Instruction), Ceramics, Photography, Peer-Teaching, Artist-In-Residence Seminar, Interdisciplinary Studies and Tutorial Studies.

The feature characteristics of these courses were small class size (12-18), seminar format, flexible structure, innovative approaches to subject matter and presentation, student participation in design and content.

Following the reorganization of 1980, and in response to student requests, several changes occurred: All courses and instructors were accredited through regular departments, and all teaching was credited under departmental rubrics; most courses became letter-graded; many sections of standard course-catalog courses were added to the list of courses. The present UNIT ONE Courses Timetable offers about 20-25 courses each semester.

With few exceptions, all courses are taught through departments with departmentally appointed instructors. About 50% of these courses are listed in the University Courses Catalog and the other 50% represent elective credit in art and design, performance (music and dance), and various elective seminars.

Courses at UNIT ONE tend to be smaller, when appropriate, than comparable campus sections; graduate instructors are chosen for their proven ability to teach well; discussion is encouraged; instructors keep in-hall office hours and receive meal passes to facilitate interaction. Regular faculty are solicited to teach seminars and had, in the 1980s, the option of a $1,500 stipend. The Faculty Advisory Committee monitors course and instructor selection.

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