Consider that when Carleton was founded in 1866, the telephone and lightbulb were still a decade away from reality. Cars and airplanes—yet another 20 to 40 years down the road.
The computer?
“There wasn’t a single person at that time who even had a concept of the computer,” says Carleton computer science professor Jeff Ondich.
Yet these were exactly the kind of intellectual curiosities that Carleton’s pioneering founders believed in exploring.
The possibilities that we dream of today—self-driving cars, cures for devastating diseases and social ills—are closer to reality than ever before. Yet while rapidly developing technological advancements would indicate a completely transformed college landscape in 20, 50, definitely 100 years, there’s something intensely human about what young people have always craved from their educational experience.
“Eighteen-year-olds are not going to change significantly in what they need developmentally, what they’re ready for intellectually, and, really, just what their overall physical and emotional needs are,” says Ondich, who is currently president of the faculty. “The idea of getting a bunch of students in one place, where they live together and do intensive learning with expert guidance, is always going to be a powerful part of the tool kit.”
While sentient computers might not be coming to a Carleton classroom anytime soon, changes continue to shape the campus experience in small yet significant ways. It can be as convenient as professors hosting online courses for incoming freshmen before they set foot on campus or as simple as students combating homesickness by using Snapchat or Facetime to stay in touch with loved ones on the other side of an ocean.
“We look forward to a student body that changes every day because it requires us, as a college, to be innovative, courageous, and thoughtful about what the student experience should be,” says Carolyn Livingston, vice president for student life and dean of students. “We’re constantly thinking about how students connect with one another, both inside and outside the classroom. If you think about how everyone can share information now, and what that was like even 20 or 30 years ago, it’s exciting to think about how that will make us better at what we do.”
Ondich hopes to see a future in which students can interact virtually with various periods of history and its corresponding iconic locations. Will it ever replace or duplicate visiting the actual Parthenon in Greece? Only if technology captures the entire sensory experience, not just visuals, Ondich says.
Whatever revolutionary progress is destined for the future of academia and society at large, Cathy Paglia ’74 is confident that personal interaction—the human experience—will remain at the core of a Carleton education.
“I benefited from a culture and ethos that were established by students, staff, and faculty members long before I arrived on Carleton’s campus,” says Paglia. “I learned so much from the college environment that was built and developed 110 years before me. It’s our responsibility to protect and shape that environment for the students who are yet to come to Carleton.”