ByGeorge!

December 2004

GW’s Burgeoning New Campus

Transforming the Mount Vernon Campus from a Quiet Women’s College to a Bustling Resource in the University’s Academic Arsenal

By Thomas Kohout

It’s a tough job to add a new campus to a close-knit University and seamlessly integrate it into campus life. It’s tougher still when the new campus already has a history of its own. Finding a way to incorporate that culture into the existing community, while maintaining a sense of legacy is the crux of the challenge. So it’s not surprising that seven years after The George Washington University forged a relationship with Mount Vernon College and Seminary, GW has only begun to capitalize on the 25-acre campus located among the tony addresses along Foxhall Road.

Prior to the start of the 2003–04 academic year, the University established a two-pronged approach to developing an identity for the Mount Vernon Campus. New positions were created with an eye toward fostering student affairs and student life as well as academic interest in Mount Vernon and maximizing the wealth of physical resources offered by the campus. Frederic A. Siegel returned to GW as the new associate vice president and dean of freshmen under Student and Academic Support Services. Rachelle Heller, professor of engineering and applied science and former SEAS associate dean, was selected to serve as associate dean for academic affairs at the Mount Vernon Campus. In the 18 months since their appointments, the duo worked to develop a clearer picture of the scenic campus just three miles from Foggy Bottom.

“My perception had been that the Mount Vernon Campus was an ad hoc solution for a series of problems without a defined plan,” said Siegel.

It’s a perception, according to Siegel, that many in the administration had already identified and Grae Baxter, the former executive dean at the campus, had already started to repair.

“Before I got here that all started to shift,” Siegel recalled. “[Baxter] brought the Honors Program and many honors students to campus, the facilities were brought up to GW standards, the campus became coed and things were becoming more like GW, but it was still such a new phenomenon that the three miles separating Foggy Bottom from Foxhall Road still suggested to the outside world that this was merely a satellite of The George Washington University and not the real thing.”

The vision Siegel and Heller saw for Mount Vernon was to establish the campus as a fully integrated piece of The George Washington University while maintaining the legacy of Elizabeth Somers and the Mount Vernon College. What they developed was Scholars’ Village, which brings together several academic-residential programs for all levels of undergraduates in several specific discipline and multidiscipline programs.

“The Women’s Leadership Program is a flagship program of this campus,” said Heller about the year-long freshman experience focusing on issues of leadership for women within the four cohorts — Women in International Arts and Culture, Women in Science and Medicine, Women in US and International Politics, and Women in International Development. “The goal is to develop the Mount Vernon Campus as a home for unique integrative learning opportunities. I think we really will maintain our identity and certainly maintain the legacy of Elizabeth Somers through activities such as these.”

In addition to the Women’s Leadership Program, the campus hosts an artist’s community as well as the Columbian College of Arts and Sciences’ new Dean’s Scholars in Globalization program and the 50 members of the Honors Community at Mount Vernon.

Along with developing and expanding the academic-residential programs, Siegel and Heller launched an all-out offensive to educate the community about the virtues of Mount Vernon — such as wireless Internet access in the science building, dining halls and on the quad, as well as the new dance and exercise studio and the athletic complex with its swimming pool, tennis courts,and softball and soccer fields. Siegel brought prospective students for campus visits and hosted Colonial Inauguration groups and welcome week activities at Mount Vernon to ensure each of them had an opportunity to see the campus, understand how quick it is to travel between Foggy Bottom and Foxhall Road, and find out what’s there.

Heller had her own marketing job to do, touting the campus’s academic facilities such as the science labs and the renovated Hand Chapel to motivate the faculty to bring their classes to the campus. Among the key selling points, said Heller, is the more traditional liberal arts college setting.

So far that vision has succeeded beyond expectations. The residence facilities on the Mount Vernon Campus are nearly at capacity with 400 freshmen and an additional 60 upperclassmen. And of the 400 freshmen at Mount Vernon, more than 360 named the campus as one of their top three choices.

“Clearly the people visiting the campus were taking a look and deciding to live there,” said Siegel. “I’m looking to find the people who, if they see it, really want to live on the Mount Vernon Campus.”

“The campus’s size is a resource,” explained Heller. “You can’t run these intimate academic residential programs on a big campus. There is an intellectual intimacy. If you see each other a little bit more, there is that contact. The classrooms here dictate small class sizes; it’s the nature of the place.”

This spring Mount Vernon will house more than 200 classes covering everything from A to W — anthropology to women’s studies. “We’d go to Z,” added Heller, “except we don’t offer zoology.”

Siegel expects enrollments in those 200 courses to exceed 4,000, with roughly 2,500 students taking at least one class at Mount Vernon — about 25 percent of the University’s undergraduate population.

Why has the popularity spiked? In part because just at the moment the facilities were brought up to speed and a plan was in place to develop their resources, Foggy Bottom underwent a classroom crunch.

“We were in a lucky place at a lucky time,” explained Heller. “There is a lot of building going on at the Foggy Bottom Campus and a lot of classrooms were coming off line. Just at the time that we had our heads straight about how we wanted to grow at The Mount Vernon Campus, it came together purposefully with the need of the University. We were ready to grow, we had the staff to grow and we started lobbying faculty.”

The University’s revamped shuttle service is another reason Siegel and Heller were able to capitalize on the increased demand for Mount Vernon. Back in 1997, when GW started teaching courses at the Mount Vernon Campus, there were just two vans operating. Now the University operates shuttle services around the clock. Between 7 am and 7 pm at least 10 busses continuously travel the three-mile artery linking the campuses. During the 3–7 pm ridership peak, 11 busses are on the road. In the evening hours busses run every 15 minutes from 8 pm to midnight and every 30 minutes from midnight to 6 am.

Siegel points with pride toward the service’s staggering increase in ridership. In September more than 80,000 riders boarded the Mount Vernon shuttle, and in October that number jumped beyond 90,000. Over the course of the 2003–04 academic year an excess of 400,000 riders traveled between campuses. This year that figure is expected to top the half million mark.

“That’s really an indication of what’s at play and how much activity is going on between the two campuses,” Siegel said. He and Heller point to the campus’s 460 residents and the roughly 2,500 students taking classes at Mount Vernon to show how out of balance those numbers are with the volume of people traveling between Foggy Bottom and Foxhall.

“Who are these additional students,” Heller asked. “They are students who are realizing the value and resources of this campus. They are students coming for sports activities, they’re coming for the Eckles Library, they’re coming to hang out with their friends, they’re coming for our jazz brunch, and they’re now coming for our dining hall. We’ve created something that the whole GW community has discovered.”


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