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Video interview: Aday discusses (1) How he got involved, (2) Ensuring community buy-in, (3) Inquiry-based education and (4) Partnering as volunteers.
News story: WMMMC: Beyond duffel-bag medicine.

There is something profoundly remarkable about the high-end civic-engagement model at William and Mary that rapidly is becoming common knowledge among service communities and peer institutions, alike. It is a model that no one has scrutinized more closely than has David Aday.

During the past several years, Aday, professor of sociology, has become a virtual godfather to some of the most successful international-service projects under way. As faculty mentor and advisor, he has helped undergraduates turn medical-relief initiatives into sustainable community-building ventures that are improving circumstances for thousands of the world’s most-impoverished people. In the process, he has been exposed to the seminal secret behind William and Mary’s ability to impact the world. At the same time, he has embarked on a new and innovative mode of teaching that has implications far beyond the sociology classrooms of Morton Hall.

Ironically, Aday was “pestered” into getting involved, first by Jason Starr (’06), who as an undergraduate initiated the William and Mary Medical Mission Corps (WMMMC), and later by students who had served in Costa Rica.

Starr came home from his first medical mission trip to Central America disillusioned because the students had provided only a short-term fix to a longstanding problem—“had put a Band-Aid on a man with chronic illness,” according to Aday. Meanwhile, as a student in a criminal-justice seminar taught by Aday, Starr heard the professor talk about models of community building that had been experimented with relative to crime control. Aday discussed how “top-down interventions,” in which laws are made, police officers are hired and people are put in jail, generally are ineffective because they do not address root causes. Starr asked Aday whether that kind of logic could be applied to health problems. Aday ultimately conducted a class for students who served the WMMMC, and later he joined them as a field researcher to ground the project in scientific methodologies.

Although many of the students consider his contributions essential, Aday explained that his involvement is as an auxiliary. “From the beginning, we have counted on the initiative of the students to chart the way, and we’ve tried to come along as very egalitarian guides,” he said. “Certainly I couldn’t do this work. It takes the energy and stamina and enthusiasm, the commitment and dedication, that the students bring to the effort.” Indeed, Aday called such student dedication the secret behind the College’s successful civic-engagement culture.

As far as developing new teaching strategies, Aday explained that the need to acquaint non-sociology majors with an understanding of ethnographic research principles that enable them to become true partners with the communities they serve led him to pursue a model of “inquiry-based education.”

“It involves a kind of teaching—hands-on, face-to-face, outside the classroom—that I’ve always valued,” he said. In a sense, the method represents a future for education. “I think that the building-block, stair-step approach to higher education is being challenged,” he said. “I don’t think the former method is fundamentally wrong, I just think we’re finding that there are other ways of doing things that are extraordinarily rich and productive.”

As administrators at William and Mary seek ways to further civic-engagement opportunities for undergraduate students, Aday is supportive of efforts to ease the levels of sacrifice students have had to make in order to pursue their desires to make positive impacts in communities in Virginia as well as others worldwide.

“I believe knowledge can make a difference, can be transformative,” he explained. “I would like the College to position itself to be able to play a greater role.” Aday, however,  cautioned that students remain the key to achieving additional successes.

“We can nurture it, but we can’t make it happen,” Aday said concerning institutional support. “It’s only the students who bring this profound dedication. Part of their willingness to find the resources is evidence that they’re the right people to be leading the work.”

Five professors at the College have been honored by the William and Mary Alumni Association with Alumni Fellowship awards. The awards seek to recognize younger faculty members who possess outstanding qualities as mentors of William and Mary students.

Lisa Anderson: Economics
Money motivates student responses

Associate Professor of Economics Lisa Anderson has quite possibly discovered the best way to encourage student participation—money. In her experimental economics classes, students learn about everything from decision and game theory to environmental and public economics.

Experiments place students in an artificial setting to see how they react with one another. “Students have responded very well to that technique,” says Anderson. “I’ll actually have them participate in games before we get into the classroom instruction.” By doing so, Anderson emphasizes that it is easier for her students to think about a particular theory if, for example, a student takes the role of a buyer and has to make decisions to compete in a classroom market.

In her principles of microeconomics class, half of the students take the roles of buyers, while the rest become sellers, who trade together. Successful trade is rewarded with anything from candy to small amounts of money.

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Audio: Cohen—Choosing William and Mary / Walch—Better than MIT or Yale / Walch—An odd way to assess / Clements—Choosing William and Mary

The five Murray Scholars who are members of the William and Mary Class of 2011 bring impeccable academic credentials that jealously were sought by such notable institutions as Princeton, Yale, Pennsyvlania and M.I.T.

Caitlin Clements, from the Casady School in Oklahoma, dazzled the scholarship selection committee with her bi-lingual—French and German—film spinning a romantic story set in France during World War II. Isabelle Cohen, from the Branson School in California, spoke about frontline activism on behalf of immigrants whom she felt were harassed in her home community. The others—George “Bert” Cortina from Poquoson, Va., Michelle Munyikwa from Zimbabwe, and Olivia Walch from Alexandria, Va.—were equally engaging as evidenced by their selection for one of the most prestigious undergraduate scholarships in the nation.

Walch, whose final decision included M.I.T. and Yale, explained the reason that she decided to come to Williamsburg. “William and Mary won out not just because of the scholarship offer but due to the people at the College,” she said. “I talked to them. They seemed to me, in some respects, more well-rounded. I enjoyed their presence, as well as the whole vibe I got from campus.”

Clements, who was considering Princeton and the University of Southern California’s film school, said that she chose William and Mary even before the Murray scholarship was offered. “I love film, but had I gone to U.S.C., that would have dominated my existence,” she said. “That’s why I got so excited when looking at the courses at William and Mary. I knew I could keep my interest in film alive but not pigeonhole my future.”