By Greta Petry

"My mom was worried about my going to a big school," she recalls, and it was her mother who first took an interest in the Project Renaissance brochure explaining the program. 

Thomas, who attended a small high school in Nassau County, ended up applying for a spot and became one of the first 182 freshmen last September to join the living-learning community known as Project Renaissance. The aim of the program is to combine the advantages of a small college with the opportunities found at a major research university. 

Buoyed by the positive experiences of students and faculty in the first year of the program, the University is welcoming 400 freshmen to the program this fall. 

"Project Renaissance is evolving into an extremely attractive curricular option for first-year students," said President Karen R. Hitchcock, who led development of the program when she was vice president for academic affairs. "Project Renaissance is clearly the type of academic program which attracts highly-qualified applicants and serves to distinguish us from other institutions. It also reflects the University’s commitment to enrich undergraduate learning." 

Several years ago, recognizing that freshman year is critical to the success or failure of many students, University faculty and staff began seeking new ways to strengthen the freshman-year experience. The Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning was charged with developing a program for first-year students that would offer them the best possible orientation to a research university. 

"We began developing the program in 1993 by asking students, faculty, residential life staff, and many other campus professionals what they thought were the best features of the University at Albany. Every group spoke of the excitement of being at a research university where everyone is engaged in inquiry," said Lil Brannon, director of the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning, which manages Project Renaissance. 

What makes this program so different? 

Ernest Scatton, a professor in the Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literatures and one of three faculty on his team, said, "First, it is an environment that makes the transition to the University easier; second, it offers close contact with the faculty in a positive way; third, it brings the students up to speed technologically; and fourth, there is a lot of opportunity for students to sharpen their writing skills, and their critical reading and thinking skills." 

"Our top priority is to try to reach students on a personal level and use that as leverage to motivate them," he added. 

One of the things sophomore Cindy Batista found most helpful was the supportive academic environment. 

"If I don’t understand something during discussion, I can just go down the hall and ask," said Batista last spring, as she reflected on her experiences in Project Renaissance. She said she liked living with the same group of students she went to classes with, and that this made it easy to make friends. 

Batista’s family now lives in Westchester County, but she was raised in the Bronx, where she attended Cardinal Spellman High School. Sue Faerman, a professor in the Department of Public Administration and Policy and another faculty member on the team, said Batista’s leadership ability showed in class. 

"She clearly thought things through and engaged the material throughout the semester in very positive ways. Since Project Renaissance has small groups, the classes rely on student participation and energy. Cindy brought a lot of energy to the small-group discussions," said Faerman. 

Like other students, Batista enjoyed the small class size. "There are more opportunities for students to get to know the teachers one-on-one and discuss certain topics, which you wouldn’t be able to do in a lecture," she said. 

Project Renaissance also offers the chance to learn high-tech skills in the comfort of a small community. Computer literacy is a priority. One afternoon Batista listened as a teaching assistant, Tom Mackey, helped students with their home pages. Then Batista walked back to her room to help another Project Renaissance student work out a Web page problem. In between helping her friend and answering questions, Batista dialed the number to register for fall classes by phone. 

Batista lived with other Project Renaissance students in Seneca Hall on Indian Quad, the freshman living area. For this academic year, the program moved from Tuscarora and Seneca halls into larger quarters at Mohawk Tower, also on Indian Quad 

Computer skills are just one aspect of this living-learning community. Students take an integrated curriculum where the subjects are related to one another. 
"The faculty members work together so the curriculum works together. For example, students might be reading history, studying literature, listening to music, and exploring the science of the same period," said Brannon. 

Like other freshmen, Batista lived in an all-freshmen residence hall and took her meals in the recently remodeled Indian Quad dining hall last year. And, like many students, she helps finance her education by holding down a work-study job. 

But certain aspects of her day were unique to the Project Renaissance program, where students take six credits in the fall and another six in the spring in one multifaceted course which is designed to meet half the University’s general education requirements. These requirements aim to provide students with a broad foundation in the liberal arts. There is also room in the schedule for electives. 

The emphasis this year, like last, will be on human identity and technology. Project Renaissance is a "who we are and where we come from kind of course. It tries to tie in all those things we learned from the past; how history ties into science, and how religion has influenced it, and how technology and medical technology developed. The teachers find a connection among all their specialties and they teach it to us," Batista said. 

This interdisciplinary team-teaching approach meant that even the professors learned from each other. "You get the benefit of some very different disciplinary perspectives on a given topic," said Scatton, who in 1997 was named both a Distinguished Service Professor, the highest faculty rank conferred by the State University of New York system, and a winner of the University’s Excellence in Teaching award. 

What did faculty learn from the program’s first year and what is being changed this fall? 
 

A Typical Day in the Life of a Project Renaissance Student

 
9:05 a.m.: Batista learns the intricacies of oxidation and reduction in a chemistry class taught by Professor Lawrence Snyder, above. 
 
 
10:10 a.m.: Time for Professor Helmut Hirsch’s class, Biology 111, the second semester of a two-semester course. Batista and Sara Thomas are members of the Charles Drew Science Club for students of color who are planning a career in medicine. 

Hirsch is talking about the direction-sensitive retinal ganglion cell. "This is the cell which tells the animal in which direction an object is moving. And why do I care about it?" he asks. "I’m a rabbit and I have these motion-sensitive cells that tell me there’s something that’s going to eat me." 

He gestures with his hands, walks up and down the middle aisle, asks questions and waits until he gets a response. "Let’s talk for a moment about the most dramatic example of a cell of this type," says Hirsch, referring to this cell in frogs. "Do they eat dead flies? No. They eat live flies. They need to track small dark moving objects." Hirsch is a Project Renaissance team member this year. 

 
11:15 a.m.: Off to Biology 154, the required lab for Bio 111, where Batista and several other students are tested on their knowledge of the organs and organ functions of the pig. Stacy Morris, above right, administers the practicum. An exercise like this yields important information for someone who wants to enter the field of medicine. 

 
1:25 p.m.: Time to work with teaching assistant Tom Mackey, who is showing Project Renaissance students how to design their own pages for the World Wide Web. There are four computers on the second floor of the residence hall for students in the program who do not have their own computer, and many more in the public user rooms around the campus. 

 
2:25 p.m.: Off to work. Cindy walks across campus to her work-study job at the University Health Center, where she files, runs errands and answers the phone. Tonight she will study and go to a meeting to plan a cultural carnival. Cindy says she is careful to manage her time in order to keep school work her top priority. 

In addition to adapting to living with others, many are carrying a heavier work load than they did in high school, while learning to manage their own time. 

Recruitment Successes

"Albany has long had top faculty and demanding academic programs. Now we see that the message about that sterling academic reality is reaching the ears of prospective students," said Sheila Mahan, senior assistant to the president for enrollment management. 

Nowhere is that more evident than in the significant increase in top students—the pool of new Presidential Scholars. There will be 177 new Presidential Scholars on campus this fall as compared with 113 last fall, an increase of 43 percent. 

Working with the Noel-Levitz national enrollment management firm this year, the University organized a successful telecounseling effort by about 30 current students who made more than 10,000 phone calls to prospective students. 

Alumni also helped communicate the value of an Albany education to applicants by making individual phone calls and appearing at college fairs, receptions and open houses. 

Counselors in the Admissions Office maintain a busy schedule, traveling around the Northeast, completing more than 730 visits to high schools and college fairs each year. The Admissions offices are being renovated to create a more welcoming setting for visiting prospective students. 
 

Project Renaissance offers such a rich educational experience that it has attracted at least one member of a University at Albany family. Batista’s roommate is Blanca Angelica Gonzalez, whose parents are Gary Wright, a professor in the University’s Department of Anthropology, and Blanca Ramos, who teaches in the School of Social Welfare. 

Before Gonzalez heard of the Project Renaissance program, she had planned to attend the University of Michigan, where Wright earned his Ph.D. It was Project Renaissance that changed her mind. Once at Albany, she became interested in biology as a course of study. 

"A lot of people don’t know that the University at Albany has a really good biology program," Gonzalez said last spring. "I’m excited about next year. That’s why I applied to be a resident assistant at Project Renaissance." 

Another requirement of Project Renaissance students is community service. Batista’s work has involved cooking on weekends at the Ronald McDonald House in Albany, which serves parents from out of town whose children are seriously ill and staying at area hospitals. 

According to Peter Sawyer, assistant director of the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning, the community action component of the program stresses that students have a responsibility to the campus community, as well as to the larger Capital District community. 

Students are asked to serve on committees in the residence halls and volunteer at Project Renaissance events. They also interview a campus group in which they are interested. For Batista, this led to her involvement in Fuerza Latina, a student-sponsored cultural group. In order to develop an appreciation of the campus as an intellectual community, students go to poetry readings, plays, and lectures. Faculty members bring in other professors to tell students about their research. Students become involved in a project outside the University, and are encouraged to think critically about that experience. 

Volunteering is not new for Batista, who worked at a hospital and was on the executive committee of the youth group of her church while in high school. It is a new experience for some of the students however, and Sawyer noted that even those who didn’t like the idea at first grew to be quite capable in community service and gained experience that could prove valuable in future endeavors. 

Students clearly benefit from many aspects of the Project Renaissance experience, and so do faculty. 

"I’ve already gotten e-mail from students who have gone home for the summer," Scatton said in May. "Project Renaissance provides a unique opportunity to get to know students in a way you just don’t in other courses."