Tearing down walls: How Duke Immerse is redefining what a classroom is

‘Duke Immerse is a new way of seeing the world as your actual classroom’

Recently, many US colleges, including Duke have placed a focus on educating students as not just intellectuals, but as global citizens. Oftentimes, however, this “worldliness” is critiqued as “voluntourism.”

When traveling abroad to participate in global outreach, many critics question students’ motives, effectiveness and lack of general knowledge about the sites they are serving. This idea holds true for Duke Engage, as well.

Over 300 Duke students go abroad fully-funded each year thanks to a grant by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, but unfortunately many students lack essential cultural and contextual knowledge about the communities in which they have signed up to help serve. Duke faculty, identifying this lack of knowledge, came together to change that in 2012 with Duke Immerse.

Freedom Struggles in the 20th Century students and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Spring 2014, South Africa

Spring semester of 2012 Duke launched two pilot programs. “Uprooted and Rerouted” focused on refugee displacement and “Freedom Struggles in the 20th Century” was centered on the Apartheid and American Civil Rights Movement.

Professor Kerry Haynie, Director of the Fall 2013 “Governance, Policy and Social Justice” program, provided some background on how Duke Immerse emerged.

He said: “Many faculty, including myself were concerned that they way students were engaging was too disconnected and removed from what they were learning in the academic curriculum, and I think to be engaged, you need to be informed before you can engage in any meaningful and active way.”

This ideology served as the basis for Duke Immerse. Haynie added: “The goal was to have students working with faculty for a concentrated amount of time, dealing with a set of issues around a theme that they may go out and engage in terms of field work and site visits.

“But the main thing is that it would be routed in what we typically do in an academic environment.

“The theories and arguments that you read in a textbook you would then be able to go out and put it into practice, look at them or critique them in the actual field.”

Students participating in the program are enrolled in four classes like any other student, except two to three faculty members teach the classes as a team, with many interdisciplinary themes and coupled with a trip to a domestic or international site. Class sizes are usually capped at twelve, so while the learning experience is rigorous, it is also very intimate. Students typically meet four to five times a week in two hour or more blocks and all the programs maintain a heavy focus on research.

Fall 2015 ‘Governance, Policy and Social Justice’ In front of Cabbagetown Mill, Atlanta GA

Though intense, bringing learning into the real world is an invaluable educational experience. Professor Ralph Lawrence travels all the way from his home university Kwazulu-Natal Pietermaritzburg in South Africa to participate as a professor in the Governance, Policy and Social Justice Immerse.

He said: “I think experiential learning is important and it gives students an opportunity to combine what they read with investigation in real locations to see what it actually looks like.”

Senior Emerson Lovell participated in “Governance Policy and Social Justice” in Fall 2014 and said the most rewarding part was “coming together as a group to venture into an unknown area and apply our training from Duke to tackle real world issues.”

Professor Haynie also noted there’s a sharp academic difference in his Immerse students compared to his regular semester students, due to the fact that the education the immerse students receive is not limited by the walls of a classroom.

He said: “I find that the Immerse students have more insight and are more academically rigorous from the experience of actually touching, feeling and talking to things that you actually read about, they use more of their senses.

“Their range of critique, the level of their critiques – their thoughts are at a much higher level.

“You see it in their writing, they have a broader perspective than if I taught the same thing in a regular classroom.”

The rewards are endless when you combine education in a real world context.

This spring semester two programs are taking off again including, “Civil Rights: Freedom Struggles in the 20th Century” and “Rights and Identities.”

Duke Immerse is a new way of seeing the world as your actual classroom, the Duke Difference.

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