INTEGRATED NON-ACADEMIC FORMATION CURRICULUM PROJECT:
TOWARDS A SYSTEMATIC AND DELIBERATE APPROACH TO STUDENT
SERVICES AS NON-ACADEMIC STUDENT FORMATION

BACKGROUND

The Ateneo de Manila University Vision. The Loyola Schools of the Ateneo de Manila University is an institution of higher learning inspired by the vision and ideals of St. Ignatius of Loyola. It seeks to form students who are "academically excellent, socially responsible, culturally rooted and spiritually mature." As such, it seeks to form its students into men and women who can effectively contribute to and participate in the Christian mission of evangelization - of bringing people closer to the Creator, and thereby, bringing "greater glory to God." In idealistic secular terms, this means forming students who will make this world "a better place for everybody."

This vision assumes the successful formation of future leaders, of people who can make a positive impact on human society. This means men and women who can integrate themselves successfully in the different sectors of society, carrying with them the right skills, knowledge and attitudes that could move both material and human resources towards the good. This means men and women who will be effective and efficient in their fields of technical expertise and yet will remain constantly concerned for the quality of human life. This poses a challenge for an institution like the Ateneo de Manila University to continue to provide an education that successfully bridges the gap between the world of the academe and the actual felt needs of the outside world.

The World Outside the Academe. Many a person in the professional world, especially in the business sector, has hazarded the hypothesis that only around twenty percent (20%) of what a student learns in the classroom is actually useful in the outside world of work and personal life. While the contention may be too radical and the exact figure debatable, experience would tend to support the notion that academic or classroom formation is only one part of a well-rounded education.

There is a gap between the lessons learned in the classroom and the actual knowledge, skills and attitudes needed in the professional and personal world after graduation. Many people eventually discover that, notwithstanding the substantial gains made through academic endeavors, many essential skills and attitudes are not acquired directly in the classroom, especially if traditional methods like lectures are mainly utilized.

The area of human relations, for example, is an oft-cited concern. Effectiveness in the real world requires not professional expertise in a technical field but the ability to deal with people in a social world. Many bright ideas remain on the level of plans because the main proponents are unable to mobilize the people who are supposed to implement them. Handling people requires skills beyond the mere conceptual and technical. People, being what they are, are to a great extent unpredictable. Preparing people to handle people, therefore, requires more than a theoretical grasp of human reality but an actual lived experience of people in their real setting. Many a manager has expressed, sometimes in exasperation, that material resources, including money, are the easiest to manage while people are the most difficult.

Tertiary Education: Technical versus Holistic. Human relations skills in the workplace is but a part of a bigger picture. A more serious concern is the overall preparedness of the graduate to meet not just the demands of the professional world, but to handle the demands of life itself. Oftentimes, tertiary education focuses on the technical preparedness of the person. The demands of life, however, include not just effectiveness and efficiency as a professional but effectiveness and quality of life as a person.

In many instances in formal education, the lessons to make one an effective person, in the workplace, in the social world, and in the home, are taken for granted. In the formal education process, tertiary education plays a crucial stage in a person's education. It is the stage when the individual is in the best position to decide for herself the kind of individual he/she wants to be (and not just the individual other people, for instance his/her parents, would want him/her to be). Tertiary education for most people happens at that stage in their psycho-emotional development process when they confront the question of their identity, distinct from that of their parents or of other people. As such, tertiary education should address not just the need for professional preparedness but the need for preparedness for life as a whole as well.

We all know deep in our hearts that we live not just to work but to live a full and satisfying life. Work is only a part of the picture. Asians, in particular, value personal and family life as sources of their deepest fulfillment. Technical education does not fully address, if at all, the need for learning how to be an effective person. A-dime-a-dozen are the persons who are brilliant and excellent in their fields of expertise and failures as family-persons or difficult to deal with as friends or colleagues.

Experience would show us that grasp of concepts does not assure one of the appropriate responses to situations encountered. Psychologists would tell us that human reality requires responses not just from the mind but from the heart and the will as well. By now, psychologists would have made us aware of the difference between "IQ" and "EQ," or between "educating the mind" and "educating the heart." Education must go beyond technical education to holistic education. It must educate not just the mind but the heart, and the will, as well.

Classroom and Non-Classroom Education: Academics and Student Services. The gap left by classroom education is either left empty, or is filled through some other means. Normally, the "other means" of student formation would refer to the non-academic or co-curricular and extra-curricular aspects of student life, the area spanned by Student Affairs or Student Services. It is generally accepted that a student's non-academic activities contribute significantly to his/her character formation (attitudes) and to the acquisition of leadership skills which otherwise might have been neglected in the academic classroom learning.

The student's real interactions with other people and fellow students outside the classroom are integrating experiences that enable the student to determine for himself/herself the kind of person that he/she wants himself/herself to be and gives him/her a real experience of people in their natural setting. It allows him/her to choose the qualities that contribute to him/her personal vision of wholeness. It gives the student a real, fact-based observation of him/her personal strengths and weaknesses and the consequences and implications of living out certain values and ideals. It, therefore, provides a realistic and personally meaningful venue for making those life-defining decisions on the kind of person that he/she wants to be, while anchoring him/her in the world of real people. The co-curricular and extra-curricular world of the student provides him/her with a laboratory that closely simulates life.

Unfortunately, while the academic curriculum or the classroom formation program in the formal educational institution is well-developed and articulated, the same cannot be said of the non-academic formation program. The venue for facing the important questions that have tremendous implications later on in one's life is still very much a hit-or-miss affair. It is still largely unsystematic and non-deliberate. Oftentimes, Student Affairs or Services is approached only as the venue for dispensing "services" like housing and food to students. To a young person in search of an identity and a place in the world, a mundane and day-to-day activity such as dormitory living, with all its real-life concerns and issues, can be a very formative experience.

This requires a reorientation of the approach to Student Affairs or Student Services work. Many tradition-bound Student Affairs/Services offices still maintain the "service-dispensing office" approach. Such an approach or paradigm will make the Student Services worker miss a lot of formative opportunities outside the classroom to which the student is exposed since a paradigm determines what would be perceived as relevant or irrelevant objects. These opportunities will remain mere unexamined experiences and their potential as carriers of important learning will be lost.

The Challenge. The challenge posed to educators and particularly to Student Services or Student Affairs workers, therefore, is to optimize its role in the education of the youth by ensuring that the non-academic aspect of college life has a holistic framework. This framework must be translated into a program of formation that must be aligned with the academic aspect and geared towards equipping the student with the most essential knowledge, skills and attitudes needed to succeed in both the professional and personal domains. Ideally, for consistency with the values and principles espoused, such a program of formation or curriculum: • is rooted in and responds to the actual felt and anticipated needs of human society; • is consistently responsive to the challenges faced by students in their context as adolescents or young adults while undergoing education; • is founded on a holistic view of the individual and her developmental needs; • identifies the necessary knowledge, skills, and attitudes useful to society, in general, and to the sector that the student intends to join later as a professional, in particular (to the extent that identification of such specific KSA's is possible); • gives the student the opportunity to practice responsibility for his/her own formation; and • develops and continuously improves implementation programs and activities for the acquisition and development of the necessary knowledge, skills, and attitudes.


RESPONSE TO THE CHALLENGE: THE ATENEO DE MANILA UNIVERSITY SITUATION

In an effort to face this challenge, we have set up the "Integrated Non-Academic Formation Curriculum" Project.

Objectives. The Integrated Non-Academic Formation Curriculum project aims to:

     • develop a curriculum of non-academic student formation that will enhance the academic formation of students;
     • identify and constantly monitor the actual felt and anticipated needs of Ateneans undergoing formation;
     • develop a template of Christian leadership;
     • identify the needs and effective non-academic delivery mechanisms consistent with the principles and values espoused;
     • monitor the operationalization of programs and activities; and
     • provide an evaluation mechanism.

INAF Vision. The question now is: "What, concretely, would an Integrated Non-Academic Formation Curriculum look like?"

We envision the Integrated Non-Academic Formation Curriculum project to take a form similar to the current academic curriculum available to Ateneo students. Just as the academic curriculum is composed of a combination of core curriculum subjects which every student has to take and major subjects specific to the concentration of each student, the Integrated Non-Academic Formation Curriculum will likewise have a set of core Knowledge-Skills-Attitudes on the one hand which should ideally be nurtured in every student. It will also have a set of major KSAs which are specific and useful to a student's particular discipline.

We envision a framework for unifying all offices and programs for students in the non-academic area, inasmuch as these offices and programs provide students with experiences that can be harnessed as learning opportunities. The framework will provide a template or a listing of non-classroom projects and activities or a combination of classroom and non-classroom learning opportunities. This template will map out the non-academic learning opportunities available to students, and the possible knowledge, skills and attitudes that they could produce. It will also identify combination KSAs suitable to particular professions or careers.

This template can be made available to every student at the beginning of each school year. It will be in the form of a handbook that will be revised every school year as new activities or projects are developed. Somewhat like a menu of programs and activities, it could serve as a guide to the student and enable her to be actively involved in determining her own formation. With the awareness of opportunities for learning comes greater responsibility on the part of the student.


INAF DEVELOPMENTS AND PROSPECTS

At present, the Integrated Non-Academic Formation Curriculum is being utilized as the integrating framework for the directions and activities of the offices comprising the Student Services Team of the Loyola Schools of the Ateneo de Manila University. These are the seven offices, including the office of the Associate Dean for Student Services, involved in matters directly involving the students in the non-academic area. While the seven offices pursue different lines of endeavor from sports to counseling, they all participate in the more primary task of the University which is education, and which gives justification to these different endeavors. The formation of students, and not just the dispensing of student services, is what justifies a Student Services Team office's relevance and effectiveness.

Starting in School Year 1998-1999, the individual offices comprising the team underwent strategic planning to ensure the alignment of their thrusts and programs with the overall vision of the university. The strategic planning workshops did not just review existing programs and activities but re-examined the basic assumptions about the offices. These include questions about each office's distinct identity and distinctive competence and its mandate vis-à-vis the University's Vision-Mission and the identity of the other offices. All present and future plans, programs and activities were viewed and justified in relation to these. The offices are not just involved in the dispensing of services to students but are actively involved in the formative mission of the University. Any program or activity for that matter was acceptable only inasmuch as it contributes to the achievement of the office's own Vision-Mission which, in turn, is aimed at helping achieve the University's Vision-Mission. Fine-tuning of these plans and programs continues to this day. These six offices besides the Office of the Associate Dean for Student Services are the:

     • Office of Student Activities, which oversees student organizations, including the student government;
     • College Guidance Office, which oversees the psycho-emotional and emotional well-being of the students;
     • College Athletics, which oversees the sports development program, including varsity sports, for the Loyola Schools students;
     • Office for Social Concern and Involvement, which oversees the formation of students into socially-responsible individuals through their exposure to the realities in other sectors and strata of society;
     • Placement Office, which assists the graduating student (or the graduate, as the case may be) in finding gainful employment which will utilize his/her unique capabilities.
     • Residence Halls, which provides not just bed-and-board but formation to resident students as well by giving them a "second home away from home."

The Student Services Team also coordinates with the Campus Ministry Office that caters to the spiritual development needs of the entire Ateneo de Manila University, including its Rockwell and Salcedo campuses in Makati City.

For inquiries, comments or feedback, please e-mail inaf@admu.edu.ph