1. Introduction 

Where else would John Dewey, philosophic icon of pragmatist educational reforms in the early 1900s, and Tom “Click” Magliozzi, appear, without irony, in the same opening sentence?  But they can.  Educators, business executives and even philosophers as diverse and historically separated as Dewey and Magliotzzi, with the American Association of Higher Education and the National Alliance of Business thrown in for institutional credibility, for many decades have been calling for significant reform in American educational philosophy and approach.  In particular, these and many other reformists argue strongly for the superiority of active, inquiry-based, collaborative, integrative approaches to teaching and learning.  Dewey in particular saw participatory, cooperative learning in the community as fundamental to the development of effective members of democratic societies.  His writings underpin much of the community-based learning curricula in place today. 

Yet for the most part, American universities remain wedded to methods Dewey [48] lamented as far back as 1916: “Why is it, in spite of the fact that teaching by pouring in, learning by a passive absorption, are universally condemned, that they are still so entrenched in practice? That education is not an affair of ‘telling’ and being told, but an active and constructive process, is a principle almost as generally violated in practice as conceded in theory.”  Magliotzzi [57] rants more recently: “education has not progressed much beyond the Little Red Schoolhouse theory of learning.  We put an expert in a roomful of people and the expert proceeds to tell them everything he knows…. This so-called ‘teaching’ doesn’t result in much learning.  It results in, maybe, someone remembering enough to pass a test.” 

This paper discusses our attempts at Lehigh University to put active, inquiry-based, collaborative, multidisciplinary experiences at the center of undergraduate education.  It outlines the goals, history, structure, and our evaluation of the Lehigh Community and Policy Service (Lehigh CORPS), a community-based learning program with its emphasis on regional economic development, as well as our efforts to expand the approach into other corners of our institution. The two authors have been the primary faculty responsible for program design and implementation.  We evaluate the program based on four related sources of qualitative and quantitative assessment information: 1) our review of the quality and value of resulting project reports; 2) survey questionnaires and oral feedback from participating students; 3) survey questionnaires and written and oral feedback from the client organizations with which our student teams worked; and 4) the interest shown by the broader community and media.  The paper concludes by exploring the major issues and lessons learned in program implementation, and the extent to which the educational philosophy behind the Lehigh CORPS has become institutionalized at the university. This included a comprehensive set of interviews with faculty and administrators across campus, including every department chair. 

Lehigh is a Carnegie Research II institution with approximately 4500 undergraduates, 1900 graduate students and 400 full-time faculty.  It is located in Bethlehem Pennsylvania in eastern Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley, a re-industrializing region with a population of 575,000, about 80 miles west of New York City and 50 miles north-northwest of Philadelphia.  More than 75 percent of the population lives in urbanized areas. 

The main goal of the Lehigh CORPS is to enable graduates to move more rapidly along their chosen career paths, graduating both competent in their functional disciplines—whether economics, political science, architecture, or engineering—and better prepared for long-term success.  By working in interdisciplinary teams on authentic economic development projects for community-based client organizations, students not only become more committed to civic citizenship, but also develop skills to become more multi-functional, self-directed and team-oriented.  The program emphasizes higher-order skill development, including problem and task identification in ill defined problems, and decision making under uncertainty and lack of information, integrating, connecting and reflecting on diverse areas of knowledge, and written and oral communication. 

2. Calls for Reform in Undergraduate Education 

The Lehigh CORPS was designed to squarely address the major issues identified by a seemingly endless series of both academic studies and blue-ribbon panels on education.  The common theme throughout is the efficacy, compared with traditional classrooms, of collaborative, active, inquiry-based, experiential learning in developing skills such as critical problems solving, problem formulation, defensible judgement and facility in making connections among divergent bodies of knowledge and their application outside of class. 

For example, the American Association for Higher Education (AAHE) joined with the American College Personnel Association and the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators in issuing a major 1998 report [54] on student learning. Drawing from pedagogic research and practice, the joint report lays out major principles about learning and how to strengthen it.  It concludes that rich learning environments require students to, among other things: 

• connect ideas within and across fields of knowledge; 
• integrate classroom with out of class activities; 
• tackle complex problems in compelling situations (including community-based-learning); 
• produce work to be shared with multiple audiences; 
• be active directly in the discovery of knowledge; 
• collaborate with others in study and shared research; 
• demonstrate learning through active problem solving, applying concepts to practical situations; and
• participate as active citizens in the broader community;

The AAHE is far from alone in this chorus.  Another recent high-profile report on the shortcomings of undergraduate education comes from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.   In what has become known as the Boyer Commission report [55] in 1998, it was strongly critical of the nation’s 125 research universities for the deep barriers between undergraduate teaching and the inquiry-based activities of the faculty.  The commission comprised faculty and administrators from research universities and non-profit institutions.  Most research universities, they conclude, fail their undergraduates, giving them “too little that will be of real value beyond a credential that will help them get their first jobs.”  The report calls for “ a complete transformation in the nature of the education offered.”  Into what?  Rich environments for inquiry-based, collaborative, interdisciplinary education: “The ecology of the university depends on a deep and abiding understanding that inquiry, investigation, and discovery are the heart of the enterprise…. Everyone at a university should be a discoverer, a learner. That shared mission binds together all that happens on a campus. The teaching responsibility of the university is to make all its students participants in the mission.” 

Business leaders also believe American universities fail to deliver.  A 1995 study [1] of the corporate view of the readiness of today’s college graduates, done by the Business-Higher Education Forum, a group of business and academic CEO’s from major US firms and universities, found that: “Corporate leaders agree that [college] graduates are deficient in a number of areas, including leadership and communication skills; quantification skills, interpersonal relations, and the ability to work in teams...  In the face of global competition, higher education is behind the curve—unable to respond quickly and trapped in a discipline-bound view of knowledge.” Similarly, in 1994 the American Society for Engineering Education convened a blue ribbon group of industry leaders and engineering deans who identified twelve key areas for reform [2].  Among them: leadership, communication, integration of knowledge across the curriculum, a multidisciplinary perspective, teamwork, active learning and collaboration. 

Remarkably consistent calls for improvements in interdisciplinary synthesis, critical thinking, interpersonal and team skills, and hands-on problem solving were identified since 1993 by, among others, the Association for the Study of Higher Education [3], the Synthesis Coalition [4], the Education Commission of the States [5] and the Foundation for Critical Thinking [6]. 

In addition to these general calls for reform in undergraduate programs, educators have stressed similar curricular deficiencies in targeted fields.  For example in engineering, in 1989 the National Advisory Group of Sigma Xi, the Scientific Research Society, identified a number of typical features of undergraduate curricula that inhibit learning and drive away potential engineering and science students [7]. Among these negative features are large class sizes and impersonal relationships with faculty, failure to stimulate and engage students in the learning process, pedagogic emphasis on memorization rather than analysis, synthesis and critical reasoning, segregated disciplinary course offerings without emphasis on why they are relevant or how they are related to each other, and no introductory offerings about what professional problem-solving entails or its constraints.  The importance of an active, project-based, collaborative experience and interdisciplinary teaming is a constant theme in many reports specifically on design education [8-15], including from the National Research Council [8] and National Science Foundation [15]. So too, the Accounting Education Change Commission [56] calls for students who are active rather than passive participants in the learning process and an emphasis on unstructured problem solving and incomplete or unstructured data.  In business and management there has been a parallel flood with remarkably similar emphases [16-22].  Indeed, the literature on the value of multidisciplinary collaborative project-based curricula date back at least 30 years [23]. 

Though change in the American university system has been slow, significant steps are being taken.  Perhaps most importantly, national professional organizations and academic accrediting bodies such ABET (e.g. ABET 2000) [24] in engineering and AACSB [25] in business now actively encourage more integrated, team-based and cross-disciplinary curricula. Similarly, the American Accounting Association [56] suggests that students be “active participants in the learning process, not passive recipients of information… identify and solve unstructured problems that require use of multiple information sources”, work in groups and emphasize learning by doing.  In part because of recent emphasis on integrative design education by ASME [26], active, cross-disciplinary design education is increasingly well ensconced, particularly across disciplines in engineering schools. As overviewed in [27-30], collaborative team-based product design courses of various flavors are also offered at dozens of universities. Here at Lehigh, the disciplinary integration in design is particularly diverse: the Integrated Product Development program combines students and faculty from engineering, business and design arts in product development teams [40]. 

Community-based learning curricula have also appeared in a diverse array of fields because of their effectiveness in helping students develop higher-order skills and become more engaged citizens.  The American Political Science Association has for many years emphasized experiential, service-learning opportunities within curricula [41]. Service learning approaches have also been used with success in Nursing [42], English [43], Sociology [44, 45], Health Education [46], Environmental Science [47], Economics [49] and a host of other disciplines.  Indeed as of late 1999, the AAHE Series on Service Learning in the Disciplines covers 18 volumes from different disciplines, from Philosophy to Biology, with more to come.  At Lehigh alone, as discussed in more detail below, community-based-learning courses now exist in Theatre, Mechanical Engineering, Art, Architecture, History, Sociology, Political Science, Industrial Engineering, Journalism, Management, Civil Engineering, Environmental Science, Chemical Engineering, Sociology, Education, Chemistry, Marketing, Business Information Systems, Materials Science, and Economics. 

Not only are such active, interdisciplinary, experiential, collaborative offerings increasingly popular, educational research evidence [31-47, 49-52] strongly suggests that they are more effective than traditional curricula from the perspective of developing higher-level cognitive skills such as critical thinking, communication and teamwork.  William Weis [51] of the Albers School of Business and Economics at Seattle University summarizes his experience: "The results of the experiment were far more positive than I could have imagined. …. [S]tudents who had opted for the service-learning opportunities learned more from those experiences than they would have learned by doing the make-believe projects...in the end the students felt they had learned more from dealing with real clients in service situations than they had learned in other courses where opportunities for practical application were not offered." 

While individual reports may be criticized as anecdotal, the literature is overwhelmingly consistent with Professor Weis’ findings.  As one major literature review [31] of more than 600 studies over the past 90 years put it: 

“These studies have been conducted by a wide variety of researchers in different decades with subjects of different ages, in different subject areas, and in different settings.  More is known about the efficacy of cooperative learning than about lecturing, departmentalization, the use of instructional technology, or almost any other aspect of education.  The more one works in cooperative learning groups, the more that person learns, the better he understands what he is learning, the easier it is to remember what he learns, and the better he feels about himself, the class, and his classmates.…  Through working together to learn complex conceptual information and master knowledge and skills, students learn more, have more fun, and develop many other skills, such as learning how to work with one another.  Faculty, meanwhile, must provide the foundation and learning structures to guide their students in this new learning experience.” 

Hence, the inquiry-based, multidisciplinary, team-oriented, experiential, community-based learning Lehigh CORPS. 

3. Overview of the Lehigh CORPS 

Lehigh University's College of Business and Economics has since 1997 been developing and piloting a new multi-disciplinary, experiential, team-based program in regional and urban economic development.  The Lehigh Community Research and Policy Service (Lehigh CORPS) is run principally by multi-disciplinary teams of undergraduate students from across all three of Lehigh’s undergraduate colleges (College of Business and Economics; P.C. Rossin College of Engineering and Applied Science; College of Arts and Sciences). 

Lehigh CORPS teams tackle real problems of economic development, planning and policy formulation.  Teams work directly on projects in partnership with external client organizations. Because public policy and economic development are inherently multi-disciplinary, Lehigh CORPS teams consist of students from multiple disciplines across the social sciences, business, engineering, arts and sciences, integrating their expertise to respond to the needs of the partner organizations.  By nature, economic development planning projects can include students and faculty across a wide range: e.g. economics, finance, marketing, law, urban studies, political science, public administration, history, sociology, environmental science, geology, architecture and engineering.  For example, one team working on a site redevelopment strategy included students in architecture, economics, political science and mechanical engineering. 

Students enroll in a 3-credit, one-semester (spring) course intended for juniors and seniors, although exceptional underclassmen can enroll with instructor permission.  We team-teach this course with two faculty members.  About 15-20 students have enrolled in the course the most recent two years and 12 in the first year pilot.  In two cases in the first two years, students followed up their one-semester team project with more in-depth independent study work.  In steady state, we anticipate undertaking approximately 6-8 projects each year with three to four students working on each project. 

The Lehigh CORPS has four main goals: 

• First, to enable students to more fully appreciate the complex interdependencies of economic, political, social, regulatory, technological, industrial, infrastructural, architectural, environmental, and other issues related to public policy and economic growth and development.
• Second, to better prepare students for the similarly multi-disciplinary and interdependent modern workplace, by helping them develop skills to become more multi-functional, self-directed and team oriented;
• Third, to provide resources, expertise and analysis that might otherwise be unavailable to public, private, and non-profit community organizations active in regional and urban economic development and policy making (e.g., local and state governments, chambers of commerce, civic organizations, churches, schools, public works departments, businesses);
• Fourth, to expand the interaction, communication, and mutual understanding between Lehigh University students, faculty and staff and the regional community.

1) Quantitative analysis of public data sources. 
2) Original survey research. 
3) More open-ended and qualitative urban policy analysis and planning.  These typically entail researching a variety of information sources by a mix of methods in order to make recommendations about loosely linked policy questions. 

Our project mix has been roughly equally split among them, not by design but as a consequence of client and student interests. 

In the first type, students identify, collect, organize and analyze statistical information from one or many sources to address questions of interest to the client.  For example, one client, the Lehigh Valley Planning Commission, was interested in better understanding the dynamics of high growth regions like Raleigh-Durham, and how our area compared.  So the student team benchmarked and did statistical and econometric analysis on patterns and sources of economic growth and changes in industry mix over the past 25 years in the Lehigh Valley with ten comparable cities nationally.  This study used data from the Commerce Department, Bureau of Economic Analysis’ Regional Economic Information System.  The team found that while the limited diversity of this area’s industries in previous decades was similar to patterns in other low growth cities such as Rochester, the relative decline of manufacturing and expansion of several other sectors made the Lehigh Valley’s industrial diversity much more similar to high growth areas.  While growth in the early 1990s remained lower than national trends, the current diverse mix, they conjectured, was perhaps a good sign for the area’s future.  The team did such outstanding work that their research report was released in the University’s Kalmbach Institute research working paper series, later published in a peer reviewed journal of undergraduate research [53], and was national runner-up for the Bernard J. McCarney Award for undergraduate research in economics. 

Another project of this first type involved work with the Lehigh Valley Partnership Strategic Planning Committee. The Partnership is a collective of business and political leaders that has for several years advocated increased cooperation and joint operations across the region’s 62 municipalities and 17 school districts.  They were interested in the extent to which the three major urban centers (Allentown, Bethlehem and Easton) bear a disproportional share of the burden of tax-exempt properties while simultaneously providing considerable services to the surrounding municipalities.  The student team collected (a major chore in this case) and analyzed public tax assessment data from both counties in our area in order to compile estimates and comparisons, by municipality, of the total assessed value and foregone tax revenue of properties exempt from property taxes in the region. The study also broadly compared non-urban, suburban and urban centers in the region.  The findings were striking, yet consistent with similar studies elsewhere in the country.  The urban centers accounted for only 23 percent of the region’s taxable land value, but almost 50 percent of the tax-exempt assessed value, and because of higher tax rates 55 percent of the forgone taxes, more than twice that of the non-urban or suburban municipalities. The client was very pleased with the quality and professionalism of the team’s analysis, enough to formally release the report to the public and hold a news conference to present the student’s findings.  Stories ran in several newspapers in the region. 

As for the second type, though we were initially unsure, undergraduate teams with guidance are fully capable of designing and implementing useful original surveys within the semester timeframe.  One big caveat here is that this requires the faculty to communicate the importance of nearly immediate progress by the team in the first couple weeks of the term.  A second is that we believe a mentoring advisor with professional experience in survey research is important for increasing survey design and statistical validity. 

Our poster-child example survey was done in conjunction with the Lehigh Valley Convention & Visitors Bureau. This team developed, conducted and statistically analyzed a (randomized) mail survey of people who have received tourist information from the bureau.  The survey and analysis addressed questions related to: 1) the perceptions of the Lehigh Valley as a tourist destination; 2) the effectiveness of the bureau’s promotional literature; 3) demographic profiles of those who actually visit the area and those who requested information but didn't visit the area, and 4) the spending levels and patterns of visitors.  From a random sample of 1000 from the Bureau’s database, 248 people responded to the survey, an enviable 25 percent response rate to a single mailing.  The team found the bureau’s literature to be effective and appreciated by recipients: About 98 percent had favorable views of the Lehigh Valley after receiving the survey, compared to 60 percent beforehand.  Roughly 60 percent of recipients of the guide visited within one year, and the length of stay and average spending per visit was well above national tourism norms.  The happy client formally released the report to the public and held a news conference in which the students presented their findings.  Stories ran in all the regional news media, including TV, radio, newspapers and business press. 

The third project type mixes qualitative and quantitative analysis and may use a variety of methods to make policy recommendations.  An example is a study conducted for Good Shepherd Work Services (affiliated with Allentown’s Good Shepherd Hospital) which was considering opening a Reuse and Regeneration Center in Allentown. The Center’s multiple goals included reducing the waste disposal volumes and costs for the County and providing work training for people with disabilities and (in conjunction with Lehigh County vo-tech) for young people from area juvenile detention programs.  Significant volumes of re-usable building materials and large furnishings and appliances are disposed of each year in municipal waste collection programs.  A growing number of cities nationwide are opening refurbishment operations that entail retrieving these materials from the waste stream, refurbishing them and selling them through thrift-like retail establishments. Good Shephard was interested in how the Lehigh Valley’s potential would compare to the experience in those other areas. The student study projected the costs and revenues and disposal savings of the Center for Good Shepherd and for the County, based on detailed comparisons to results at similar centers throughout the country.  The team also interviewed possible local sources of used materials, such as remodelers, home supply stores, and trash haulers in order to gauge interest and possible volumes. The team found that the center could be very marginally profitable within 3 to 5 years, without even including the broader savings to the County and the benefits of the work training.  They recommended moving forward with planning, which the client has since done.  Good Shepherd now hopes to open the ReUse Center by spring 2000. 

We conclude this section with a brief list of projects undertaken in order give a broader sense of the scope and types of issues outside organizations have found useful and that undergraduate teams can successfully tackle.  Appendix A includes more detailed description of all the projects and client organizations from the three years of the course.  It may be worth mentioning that our expectations continue to rise as we discover what the students are capable of when challenged with compelling projects and an external client that is counting on them. 

Other projects have involved: 

• Comparing wages in our area by occupation to other similar regions in order to identify the types of industries that might be attracted to locating here; 
• Comparing statistical evidence on the level of entrepreneurial activity in the region to national norms and to select other regions; 
• Analyzing transportation barriers to successful welfare to work transitions and the spatial mismatch between public transit in our area and where jobs are available; 
• Identifying slum landlords and recommending ways to induce improved behavior; 
• Evaluating the need for a fresh produce market to serve the diverse ethnic community in an economically depressed, urban area locally;
• Analyzing trends in municipal finances and the economics of local government consolidation; 
• Surveying business owners and managers to assist a small-town Mayor in developing a plan to attract new businesses; 
• Surveying business managers in a select set of target industries to assess how important broadband access is in their location decision making and to recommend steps the region might take to expand its attractiveness;
• Surveying and interviewing undergraduate students in order to determine the factors that go into their career and location decisions upon graduation;
• Interviewing managers at small manufacturing firms to determine their current use of the internet in business transactions and their need for training and other support to insure their e-commerce readiness;
• Surveying faculty and students in order to develop a market segmentation analysis for a university performing art center;
• Developing data sources and a geographic information systems data base to track quality of life and health indicators for children living in poverty neighborhoods.

We ask that a project manager from the sponsoring organization be available for student contact an hour or two per week, usually via e-mail and phone, and, if possible, to review the reports and to host periodic meetings and the final oral briefings. 

Once the term begins, our calendar looks something like this: 

Table 1.  Lehigh CORPS course calendar, spring 1999 
1/13  Introduction, summary of projects 
1/15  Sorting of students into project teams 
1/22  Due: brief statement of the project after consultation with agency 
2/17 & 19   Oral presentation of a complete problem statement and proposed methodology 
3/29 & 31   Mid-semester oral briefing on sections II, III, and IV of the report (see Table 2) 
3/31  Due: written draft of sections II, III & IV 
4/26-30  Dry run of team presentations 
5/3  Due: final reports and research workbooks 
4/30-5/7   Oral presentation & submission of final report & research workbooks to agency

Thereafter, instead of class meetings, each team meets one hour per week with one of us, switching between us on alternate weeks.  At each meeting they deliver to us a written one page weekly progress report that includes their weekly plans for next steps.  We also expect each team to meet once or twice per week outside their meetings with us, and regularly with their client. 

About the fifth week of class we ask each team to prepare a 10-15 minute formal oral briefing, given to the rest of the class, with a complete problem statement and a proposed methodology.  In the ninth or tenth week we ask for more in-depth oral presentations and a written draft of sections II-IV of the following report outline.  By this time we hope that students have an in-depth understanding of and can articulate the problem at hand (II), how others have approached it and their findings (III), and have fully developed (and begun to implement) a defensible, rigorous and appropriate methodology (IV). 

Table 2.  Lehigh CORPS Project Report Suggested Outline 
I. Executive Summary 
II. Introduction & Problem Statement 
III. Background Research 
IV. Methodology 
V. Findings & Analysis 
VI. Conclusions & Recommendations 
VII. References

The final draft report is due after week 14, as is a dry run for the other teams of the final briefing to the client.  The faculty and other student teams provide oral feedback for suggested improvements, and the faculty again prepare written evaluations.  Finally, to reinforce the professional nature of the experience, we ask each team to present their findings in a formal oral presentation at the offices of the client, at which time the written reports as well as supporting research workbooks are delivered.  After these presentations, several clients have arranged public press conferences to release the reports, simultaneously anxiety and thrill creating for the students, and an indication of the high quality and value of research that undergraduates are capable of. 

4. Evaluation 

4.1 Brief Summary of Evaluation  
Overall, we firmly believe that the Lehigh CORPS has been a success, though not completely unqualified, relative to each of the four goals.  This evaluation is based on four related sources of qualitative and quantitative assessment information: 1) our review of the quality and value of resulting project reports; 2) survey questionnaires and oral feedback from participating students; 3) survey questionnaires and written and oral feedback from the client organizations with which our student teams worked; and 4) the interest shown by the broader community and media.  Moreover, the faculty of the Economics Department, the College of Business and Economics and Lehigh University voted favorably on our proposal for a permanent listing of the course. The Economics Department now plans to offer this course annually.  We believe it is the first new urban-studies related course at Lehigh in at least a decade.  As measures of its success, every client organization has indicated interest in participating again, and with very few exceptions the students indicate that they gained significantly from their participation.  We also find that it requires few if any resources beyond—and perhaps even less faculty-time—than a traditional lecture-based course.  It is also encouraging that, based in part on our experience and cheerleading, additional community-based-learning courses are now being added in several other areas of the university.  It is clear to us that this type of program provides a broad opportunity for Lehigh to enhance its role as a community resource while providing outstanding educational opportunities for our students. 

4.2 Survey Responses 
In order to get more systematic data on the evaluation of this course, we sent developed two evaluation surveys, one for client organizations and one for students, and sent them to all of the participants in 1998 and 1999.  We received responses from all 10 of the community organization representatives who had studies done by the student teams.  We also obtained responses from all 15 of the students enrolled in spring 1999 and 5 of the 13 students who participated in the course in spring 1998. The results of this process allow us to make the following conclusions: 

• There is clear evidence that the community organizations benefited from the student work.  Eight of the ten agency representatives agreed that the final report was useful to them personally and to their organizations and that the final report of the student team was informative.  The two agency representatives who did not agree with these statements were both involved in 1998, our first year, and one of these groups participated again in 1999.  Three of the respondents agreed and only two disagreed that their agency had implemented action or done further work based upon the recommendation or conclusions of the students’ report. The Director of Development at the Bethlehem Economic Development Corp. (BEDCO) wrote, “these students performed admirably.  The thoroughness and professional approach they took to identifying and analyzing the situation was second to none….  Some of their suggestions are already under discussion with potential developers.  BEDCO would be proud to continue to participate in this practicum….”  Similarly, the Executive director of the Lehigh Valley Planning Commission wrote that his team “did an excellent job….  Their analysis was imaginative and it yields useful information about growth in the Lehigh Valley in comparison to several other areas….  If you plan to continue this type of program in the future you can count on my cooperation and support.”
• The students also felt that their work was valuable to their client. Only one of the 20 students agreed with the statement: “The client regarded the project as unimportant.”  And all but two students agreed that “Our report will be useful to our client.”  We believe this sense of real value creates a genuine and compelling energy in the students’ desire for original inquiry and discovery.
• The program provides a resource to agencies that would otherwise be unavailable. All 10 agency representatives agreed with the comment: “Your agency would not have had the resources to carry out this project without the student teams.” And 8 felt that the course had fully achieved its objective of providing public agencies with additional resources to effectively address important issues, while the other two respondents felt that this goal had been partially achieved.  Estimates of the cost of having an equivalent study done professionally ranged from $3,000 to $10,000, with an average estimate of $5,500.
• The clients were generally very satisfied with the capable and professional conduct of the students.  Nine representatives agreed that the student team was competent to carry out the project, that the team put in sufficient effort, that the team was responsive to their suggestions and that the team acted in a professional manner. All ten agreed that they would recommend future participation by their agencies and that they would recommend this program to other agencies.  And 18 of the 20 students indicated that they felt they had maintained a professional relationship with their client.
• There is evidence that the students gained by their participation in this course.  All but one agreed that this was a useful complement to their major and that the course added to their stock of skills.  Eighteen of twenty students felt that they learned a lot from participating in their projects and that the project allowed them to use ideas and skills learned in other classes.  Also, informal conversations indicate the projects become significant topics in job-interviews. And seven of the students felt that their experience in the course had led them to consider graduate studies in economics or social science.
• The project experience seems to have enhanced student appreciation of the value of teamwork. Seventeen students agreed that they liked working with a team.  Fourteen felt that all of the team members did their part in completing the project.  Just six students felt that they would have been more effective in working on their project alone.  And sixteen students agreed that team members brought different skills to their project.
• Participation in these projects increases student awareness of community issues.  Nineteen students agreed with the comment: “My experience in this course has given me a better understanding of community problems.”  And all of the client representatives agreed that the course had fully achieved its objective to “provide students with the opportunity to learn more about the Lehigh Valley community.” Among the students, 5 agreed and 4 agreed strongly with the statement: “My experience in this course had led me to consider a career in community/economic development.” 
• Most of the students were satisfied with the course. Fourteen students disagreed with the statement: “I would not recommend this course to my friends”.

4.4 Our Academic Assessment of Project Reports 
As we have seen, there is evidence that the client agencies are indeed satisfied with the quality and utility of the student reports.  There is also the question, however, of the academic quality of the course.  Are the research activities, the written reports and the oral presentations on each project equivalent to the demands of a typical 3 credit hour course at Lehigh University?  We can start to answer this question with our subjective assessment of the academic quality of the final products we have seen in the past two years. 

As with most undergraduate courses, the final reports prepared by our students have been of mixed quality.  We feel that half of the studies have been at a very high level, one that we call ‘professional quality’. These include the study of industry mix and growth, the tax exempt property report, the survey study for the tourism bureau, the examination of the need for a new food market, and the gateway development study.  These studies might have been written by paid consultants and those that were not overly specific could well have been published in academic journals.  Two reports, on the entrepreneurial climate of the Lehigh Valley and the Good Shepherd Re-Use/Regeneration Center, came close to the professional quality level.  Of all the studies done in the past two years, only one project was so weak that one might question giving 3 credit hours to the students involved.  In terms of our subjective assessment, the reports produced by the students generally exceeded our expectations of what undergraduate students could accomplish and approached the level one might expect from researchers employed by the agencies or by consultants.  And the work effort that went into the best studies also exceeds that shown by A-students in a typical Lehigh class. 

During the pilot year of the program, we learned that we needed more structure, particularly in our weekly team meetings.  With few firm deadlines from week to week, the weaker teams tended not to be as self-directed as they might have been.  Since we hope to give any Lehigh student—not just a chosen few—the opportunity to participate in conceptualizing and undertaking independent research, we needed to provide greater structure and incentives without giving too detailed a roadmap. 

That lead to three significant modifications.   The first was that teams now have to within the first week meet with their client and construct what amounts to a memorandum of understanding about their project.  This gets all the teams off to an immediate start, and we hope encourages early and mutual understanding of expectations.  Second, to give more structure to the weekly meetings, each team prepares a weekly written progress report, which serves as the basis for discussion.  These include their thoughts on next steps.  We do not grade these, yet we’ve found that this simple step, asking the students to write down what they did and plan to do next, encourages increased activity from week to week and more regular introspective thought to project planning.  Because the students know they have to write something down, in our experience teams have been less likely to collectively coast between firm due dates.  Third, we now ask each team to maintain a professional project research workbook, to be delivered to the client at the end of the project. The research workbooks include copies of briefings, the weekly work records, an annotated bibliography of books, articles, data files, interview notes and other material used in the project, and copies of the final presentation prepared for the sponsoring agency. 

In another modification after the pilot year, we provide more specific information up front about each project.  The first time we identified several possible projects per client, assuming that flexibility had value, and that the students would then work with the client to identify their preferred topic.  However, during a feedback discussion at the end of the term, there was significant sentiment among the students that they wanted to pick specific projects rather than simply client organizations. Importantly, students preferred more up-front clarity about what skill sets might be required (such as number crunching vs. interviewing vs. architecture).  Several felt they ended up in projects somewhat different than what they’d initially thought, largely because two clients had presented projects the students liked, but then ended up encouraging them to tackle different ones.  Though this early uncertainty is typical of real-world problem definition, the students, new to client consulting, were hesitant to push in alternate directions early on with the clients or with the faculty.  Since then we have worked with each client organizations to pre-select single projects.  We remain committed, however, to not over-defining each project, providing only a 50-100-word paragraph, in order to engage the students in the struggle of problem formulation.  We try, in addition, to be clearer with the students up front that this struggle is part of the intended learning experience. 

Our assessment of the course is substantially different now that we have increased the degree of structure in the course.  It is worthwhile noting that five of the seven studies that met our “near-professional-quality” rating or better were produced by students in the second year after these changes were implemented. 

There are two other ways in which this course more than passes muster as an academic exercise.  First, the course allows students to extend their knowledge by applying what they’ve learned in other classes to a real project. This is perhaps most noticeable in the case of projects involving survey research.  The students in these projects have come away with a greater appreciation of the difficulty of constructing good surveys and of the limited inferences one can make from survey responses.  Second, in recent years business education has placed increased emphasis on communication skills and team problem solving.  This course allows students to practice both skills in the context of a real project, thus extending the effect of classroom activities in other courses. 

We are satisfied that the course meets its objectives. It provides a meaningful educational experience that adds value to a student’s program of study.  And it meets the needs of community/economics development agencies for high-quality research on important issues.  Our subjective assessment seems to be consistent with the feedback we have obtained from the attitude surveys discussed above. 

4.5 Is Lehigh CORPS Institutionalized? 
The Lehigh CORPS began in 1997 with a curriculum development grant to the two authors from Lehigh University's Integrated Learning Experiences (ILE) program, discussed more below.  We believe it is now well ensconced in the University’s curriculum.  As a measure of the University's commitment to the program, during the two-year pilot phase $10,500 in funding came internally from the University.  Based on this pilot experience, Lehigh faculty voted to establish the Lehigh CORPS as a permanent curricular offering beginning this Spring, 1999.  In addition, with the commitment of two successive Deans of the College of Business and Economics and of two successive Economics Department Chairs, the course is now part of the regular academic year teaching load in the department.  In addition, the Economics Department voted in 1999 to require a Lehigh CORPS or equivalent consulting experience as a core requirement in our most popular major track. 

Moreover, to regularize the process of identifying community organizations and appropriate projects, Lehigh’s Small Business Development Center (SBDC), which has well-established contacts with related organizations regionally, has volunteered its services.  SBDC also now coordinates a similar procedure for IPD and for the Lehigh University Management Assistance Counseling (LUMAC) course and the Marketing Practicum course, similar courses in which student teams assist small businesses and non-profits in the community.  The state evaluates SBDC, in part, based on its interaction with and support of University activities, so there is fruitful synergy here. 

4.6 Areas for Improvement 
We have identified three ways in which this course could be significantly improved, with greater attention to managing the mix of projects available to the class and the mix of students by skill and discipline enrolling in the course. 
First, additional attention at the start of the course to skill sets and methodologies needed for various types of studies could jump-start the projects.  For example an initial lecture on survey design methods and analysis would equip students doing survey-based projects with some basic skills right at the start of their project.  Since our projects thus far have incorporated different research methods, we have relied on informal, just-in-time consultations with the instructors and other relevant faculty as the means of addressing research skill needs.  This has worked fairly well with classes numbering around 15 students.  If the enrollment were to increase much above this number, we would need to use more formal means. 

A second improvement we have not fully pursued would be to aggressively recruit students from particular disciplinary areas, depending on the projects identified for a particular term.  In particular, given the project mixes we have been getting, we hope to attract more students from architecture and more with some exposure to econometrics or geographic information systems (GIS).  A wider set of students with these backgrounds would facilitate more in depth urban renewal and economic/geographic data analysis projects.  At Lehigh, students pre-register for spring classes in mid-November, so we would need to move forward the date by which we try to nail down the potential projects.  Another possibility would be to have students fill out an interest and background sheet during pre-registration when they come to get the required department permission to take the course. While we envision allowing any upper-level student to enroll, we could then select appropriate projects for the incoming skill mix. 

A third weakness concerns the whole learning cycle of students as they progress from freshman level introductory courses through their upper-level coursework.  Lehigh CORPS is targeted as an upper-level capstone experience for juniors and seniors, and as implemented is not appropriate for (most) lower-level students. However, we lack similar pedagogical approaches in our lower-level courses.  Nonetheless, much of the pedagogic literature discussed above, for example both the AAHE and the Boyer Commission, recommends integrating active, inquiry-based, collaborative approaches into all levels of the curriculum.  We have not yet moved strongly in that direction, either within Economics or more generally across the University.  We undoubtedly should, and perhaps will as the new broader organizational framework and support structure discussed next matures. 

5. Broader Organizational Framework and Support 

In addition to evaluating the Lehigh CORPS itself, we also undertook a broader assessment of the institution’s commitment and capacity for such programs.  This included a comprehensive set of interviews with faculty and administrators across campus, including every department chair.  The short version of our conclusions is that within the past five years the integration into Lehigh’s curriculum of inquiry-based, collaborative, experiential opportunities such as community-based-learning has increased rapidly and continues to accelerate.  Moreover, with recent organizational changes directly related to the positive experience of the Lehigh CORPS and related programs, support appears healthy and well institutionalized.  We hope and believe it has moved well beyond the ad-hoc character of the energetic but mostly short-lived courses faculty have occasionally offered in the past.  In words, deeds and resources the institutional leadership and a significant fraction of the faculty have demonstrated sincere commitment to making such curricular opportunities a hallmark of a Lehigh education.  However, these opportunities, while better than they have been, still need to be increased by a factor of two if we are to include all Lehigh undergraduates, and could be far better integrated with lower-level curriculum and non-curricular aspects of student-life. 

5.1 History of Integrated Learning Experiences at Lehigh 
Five years ago we would not have been as upbeat about the trajectory of Lehigh curricula.  So, we think it may be instructive to overview that recent institutional history.   While that history has many protagonists, and faculty for many years have occasionally offered similar opportunities for undergraduates, we focus on (and no doubt exaggerate since we participated) the significant recent catalysts for institutionalizing inquiry-based, collaborative, experiential learning.  Key catalysts included changes in recommended curriculum from an engineering accrediting body, a self-assessment task force stimulated by participation in an AAHE summer Academy, a Vice Provost’s suggestion that three previously separate faculty planning groups deliberate together, and the initial success of two relatively high profile, initially unrelated, programs begun at Lehigh in the mid 1990s.  Throughout, the most important elements have been faculty energy and the interest and support of two successive administrations. 

First Catalyst: IPD and Curricular Reform Driven by Changing Engineering Curriculum Standards. 
In 1992-3, Lehigh’s Mechanical Engineering department was moving to more thoroughly integrate design throughout their curriculum, under pressure from new curriculum standards promulgated by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.  One step in that process involved inviting faculty from Lehigh’s College of Business and Economics to give guest lectures to the junior Mechanical Engineering Design I course.  To expand exposure to business concepts in the design process, business faculty were asked to lecture several times on key business topics (e.g. financial statements and capital budgeting, marketing, economics of product development).  Because one of the authors (Watkins) had a background in engineering, he was asked (as part of service, not as part of the teaching load) in 1993 to coordinate all the business guest lecturers. 

The first year the process was traditional chalk and talk, with no real integration across disciplines outside the guest lectures, which the students largely found boring and too disjointed.  More importantly, it left untapped the community potential of about 75 smart, energetic, potentially creative ME students a year, creating little or no value beyond the course participants.  At the time, teams of 3-4 ME students in the course did design and prototyping projects dreamed up by faculty advisors (better widgets) or very occasionally by the students themselves.  Nearly uniformly the projects and any potential external value died at the end of the course. 

Fortunately, the ME course faculty lead was hugely energetic, and he and the Business and Economics lead began looking for ways to massage this existing course.  We did in simple stages over the next several years.  In 1994, we first eliminated the parade of talking head guest lecturers and jointly planned and co-taught the course between the two of us, while other faculty also serve as individual project advisors.  We integrated the business material fully throughout the course, rather than as an afterthought on an existing course.  At the same we time advertised a pilot for business students to join the course and be part of product development teams with the engineers.  Eight business students enrolled.  We also found four external organizations in the community with product ideas, and assigned the four engineering-business integrated student teams to those projects.  The external organizations were: the local children’s science museum; a PA-based charity group of retired engineers who design for applications in less-developed nations; and two local small businesses.  By 1996 the integrated course moved from pilot to fully on the books, cross-listed in both business and engineering.  Over the next several years, we continued to expand to have all the projects have outside sponsors, most in the local community.  We also brought in art and information systems students and faculty to expand the multi-disciplinary design experience. 

What emerged was Lehigh’s Integrated Product Development (IPD) Program, discussed in more detail in [40].  It is the first, and to our knowledge, the only undergraduate program in the nation to fully integrate students and faculty from the three fundamental pillars of successful product design and commercialization: design arts, engineering and business.  In the capstone course, teams of engineering, business and design arts students and faculty work together to produce technical and business feasibility studies, mock-ups of design ideas, working prototypes and business plans.  At the same time, by emphasizing a working relationship with organizations in the external community, IPD has unleashed—without exaggeration—tens of thousands of hours of student and faculty thinking as a resource to the community. Most of the design projects are done for small and medium-sized entrepreneurial business or non-profits in this rust-belt region.  Currently, roughly 120 juniors and seniors and 15-20 faculty from a variety of disciplines participate annually. 

In terms of institutionalizing service to the community in the curriculum, IPD is firmly entrenched.  The capstone course is a required course in the curriculum of departments in all three of Lehigh’s undergraduate colleges, IPD has percolated up to a top developmental priority of the University, with well over $3 million raised so far in program support.  Plans are to double the number of students over the next few years and to complete fundraising for a $5.2 million renovation of an historic powerhouse on campus to serve as a design and prototyping resource for the students and local small businesses. 

In addition to this demonstrated potential for generating significant external funding for curriculum and undergraduate research, a second factor that helped sell the program internally was the national exposure it gained.  It was national winner in 1996 of the American Society of Mechanical Engineering’s Curriculum Innovation Award.  IPD was also honored the same year by the Newcomen Society of the United States, an organization of business leaders and professionals that promotes pubic and scholarly understanding of the American free enterprise system.  IPD was featured in US News Best Colleges Guide, and IPD student designs have been displayed in the innovation wing of the Smithsonian, appeared several times in the New York Times and on national television. 

Second Catalyst: Lehigh Earth Observatory 
In parallel, a second major multidisciplinary active learning program for undergraduates, the Lehigh Earth Observatory, was in the planning phase in 1995-6, led by faculty in the Earth and Environmental Sciences Department.  Like Lehigh CORPS, LEO is firmly centered on community outreach: gathering, studying and making regional environmental data and analyses available for community uses. 

Operated largely by undergraduate students, LEO has a broad charge to monitor and study earth and environmental systems and the ways in which these systems interact with human society.  The primary motive is to understand the ways in which ecological, geological, and anthropogenic processes together shape our communities and our modern environment. The observatory is dedicated to active observation of natural phenomena, particularly in our region, to archiving information about the earth and its environmental systems, to analyzing that information, and to communicating effectively the results of its observations and studies to community users whose activities impact the earth.  LEO reaches beyond the traditional bounds of science, drawing students from environmental engineering and the broad arena of environmental studies (environmental policy, management, economics, journalism, art, and philosophy) to participate in observatory activities. 

Again now firmly entrenched in the institution, LEO has become with IPD a second flagship undergraduate program of the University and a developmental priority, having already raised more than a million dollars.  A significant fraction of this supports 30-50 undergraduates per year doing credit-bearing research and multidisciplinary team projects with environmental conservation organizations in our area. 

Third Catalyst: AAHE Summer Academy 
As IPD and LEO were by 1996 gaining significant momentum, a third group of faculty had been gathered by our Vice Provost for Academic Affairs to attend a Summer Academy organized by the American Association for Higher Education.  That self-assessment task force attended in hopes of coming back with ideas and recommendations for improving the teaching and learning environment and culture on campus.  The group returned convinced (and stated in its report to the rest of the University) that: 

“Change is overtaking American higher education.  Virtually all institutions are finding that they need to address a challenging mix of student needs, economic pressures and technological opportunities.  For a number of reasons—the potential for three-college cooperation, a significant core of faculty committed to teaching innovation and a rich technological environment—Lehigh is well positioned at the forefront of this change.  However, for Lehigh to become a distinctive leader, requires nothing less than the transformation of our teaching culture from one grounded in traditional instruction to one which encourages, recognizes and rewards learning-centered teaching.” 

But how?  The Vice Provost was aware of the interests of the IPD faculty and the LEO faculty in moving curriculum towards more active, multidisciplinary, project based experiences.  She and the Director of Faculty Development invited the three combined groups, LEO, IPD and the AAHE Summer Academy team to a series of joint brainstorming meetings.  We began to discuss how to foster opportunities similar to IPD and LEO in the widest possible variety of fields across campus. 

The Final Catalyst: the Integrated Learning Experiences Faculty Working Group 
What emerged from those discussions was the Integrated Learning Experiences (ILE) Faculty Working Group (so-called because no one wanted to be on another Committee!)  It included faculty from, among others, the departments of Art and Architecture, Biological Sciences, Economics, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Earth and Environmental Sciences, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Journalism, Mechanical Engineering, Political Science and Theatre, as well as the Director of Faculty Development.  One of the authors (Watkins) served initially as co-chair and the second participated as well.  This was very much a self-appointed group, working informally outside the normal administrative or elective structures of the university.  However, it had the ear of key administrators because of the demonstrated success of IPD and LEO in raising funds and the national profile of Lehigh curriculum, and because the group had been stimulated by the Vice Provost, an obvious favorite of the then University President. 

The ILE group developed a proposal to the University President for a budget to support pilot ILE courses and programs at Lehigh, and to give small grants through a competitive campus-wide call for proposals.  The President agreed to fund the first year at $50,000.  During Spring 1997, the group funded eight proposals, largely supporting faculty time to develop these new curricula, and in one case a key piece of analytic software for student and faculty use.  Seven of the eight had components of community outreach.  One of these was a pilot grant of $10,500 for the Lehigh CORPS.  Though the new courses vary widely, from industrial history to on-line publishing to environmental monitoring, the common ILE tenets are that these experiences are active, collaborative, multidisciplinary problem-based learning, on authentic projects for organizations in the external community. 

5.2 Ventures: the New University-Wide Organizational Umbrella and Support Structure 
After that initial ILE call for proposals in Spring 1997, we were somewhat frustrated because Lehigh’s President took a new job elsewhere, shortly after we got a new Provost and two new Deans.  Despite the ILE faculty working group’s strong urging over the following year or so, and the strong recommendations of the Industrial Advisory Board we established for IPD, the changing leadership committed no new funding for pilot ILEs.  We knew through informal conversation that the new Provost was supportive in principle, but with an Interim President and new Deans, nothing was moving.  Moreover, the existing ILE-like programs that had bubbled bottom-up from faculty across campus remained largely ad hoc, not terribly visible to potential students, to community organizations or, critically, to potential donors. 

So to combat the loss of momentum, during the fall of 1998, the ILE group again convened to devise a strategy for broadening institutional support for making these types of experiences a hallmark of a Lehigh undergraduate education.  After some brainstorming, the group drafted recommendations to the Provost.  We pushed hard and probably a bit too impatiently.  We felt in this arena Lehigh was already outperforming our large competitors by a significant margin, but as a key ingredient in a Lehigh education they lacked visibility and universality.  We also felt that the greatest strength of the existing and emerging programs was their grass-roots character.  Faculty leadership, not directives from the administration, would be essential if we were going to increase such opportunities for our students. 

Thankfully, and finally, the Provost in January, 1999, followed our recommendations and announced the establishment of a new University priority with a $150,000 annual budget and a Faculty Fellow position in the Provost’s office responsible for expanding ILE and other inquiry-based educational experiences across campus.  At last, a university-wide organizational umbrella and support structure was born.  We call it Ventures.  The Provost asked one of the authors (Watkins) to take on the role of Faculty Fellow, and he now serves half time in that capacity, half time teaching, which includes IPD and Lehigh CORPS.  A now formal faculty advisory group works with the Faculty Fellow to promote Ventures throughout the university. 

At heart, Ventures is a faculty initiative that strives to enable Lehigh to remain at the forefront among research universities in developing and implementing innovative pedagogies.  In particular, Ventures emphasizes learning based on inquiry and discovery guided by mentoring.  Ventures promotes a Lehigh where inquiry-based learning, community-based-learning, collaborative experiences and close mentoring relationships are fundamental to the educational culture.  Ventures aims to make such experiences a Lehigh hallmark.  We believe that Lehigh will continue, with substantial but feasible investment, to develop and promote a distinct competency: the opportunity for all Lehigh students, not just a select few, to interact closely with faculty, peers and the community in inquiry-based learning. 

The Ventures mission is fourfold: 

1. Promote inquiry-based learning, collaborative experiences and close mentoring relationships; 
2. Foster cross-college collaboration among both students and faculty and create mechanisms for world-class interdisciplinary education; 
3. Provide a focal point and critical mass for supporting a diverse array of personalized educational experiences; 
4. Enhance synergies between the undergraduate experience and the intellectual, artistic and scholarly activities of the faculty. 

Ventures supports innovative instructional initiatives along a continuum from new conceptions of close, one-on-one mentoring relationships to multi-college collaborations among students and faculty.  These initiatives include, but are not limited to, broadly overlapping activities such as: community service and outreach, design and artistic creation, undergraduate research, integrated learning experiences and interdisciplinary student projects. 

Through competitive calls for funding proposals, the $150,000 annual budget supports faculty time directly and indirectly to launch sustainable Ventures for our undergraduates.  Items that can be funded include faculty release time, summer support, teaching assistant support, equipment, materials and software.  The Ventures initiative funds a number of proposals each term, but that number is not fixed. Funded proposals are intended to become part of the University’s permanent undergraduate educational opportunities. 

The faculty advisory group evaluates proposals in the spirit of, but not limited by, the following criteria: 

• Creativity in educational approach;
• Extent to which the nature of student-faculty interaction goes beyond what is currently routine in the academic environment;
• Application of multi-disciplinary study of real-world issues and problems, involving students and faculty from more than one college and/or academic area if appropriate;
• Hands-on experience in decision-making and problems solving, team-based where appropriate;
• Working relationships with external organizations in the community;
• Creation of a tangible outcome that can be evaluated, e.g. a design, a performance, a film, an organizational plan, a policy recommendation, a business plan, an environmental audit, or other output that reflects an intellectual investment;
• Engaging students in the innovative use of creative methodologies and technology;
• Emphasis on written and oral communication.

Another early task of the Faculty Fellow was to undertake during summer 1999 a comprehensive inventory of the (as it turned out) dozens of Ventures-like opportunities that now exist on campus, and to begin working with admissions and university communications to more widely recognize and celebrate these unique opportunities for Lehigh undergraduates.  By that census, more than 700 students participated in 1998-1999.  At this rate, we estimate that more than half of Lehigh’s 4500 undergraduates now engage in at least one such experience before they graduate as an important part of their education.  This involves in some way roughly one quarter of the faculty members, and amounts to 2-3 percent of the credit hours awarded to undergraduates. 

A sample of new and existing undergraduate opportunities now within the Ventures umbrella might help illustrate our enthusiasm and also how community service related activities are now solidly integrated in upper-level undergraduate curriculum throughout the university.  These are in addition to the Lehigh CORPS, LEO and IPD programs discussed above. 

• In the Democracy Workshop, multidisciplinary teams of undergraduates partner with a wide array of community groups to develop strategies to help the groups become more effective participants in political processes. Significant numbers of citizens feel voiceless, lacking effective access to mainstream political and communication institutions.  Projects may entail field research, substantive policy analysis, canvassing, and formal written and oral communication with community groups and political bodies. 
• A joint Religion department and Art department course called, Visions of God: 2000 Years of Christian History and Art, partners teams of students (and access to the most comprehensive on-line database of images of historic Christian art) with local schools, museums and religious organizations.  An example project: students undertake original research in order to prepare displays, a web site, presentations and lead discussions on representations of the Apocalypse in historic art.
• Related to civic journalism, in Paving Paradise: (Sub)Urban Sprawl and the Public Interest, multidisciplinary teams of upper-level undergraduates work in partnership with the regional National Public Radio affiliate to research, do interviews for, write and present an ongoing series of radio programs on (sub)urban sprawl.  The student team also designs and maintains a related informational web site accessible through the station’s.  Paving Paradise is designed to bring natural science, social science and journalism students together to investigate and illuminate for the public the complex, extraordinarily multi-dimensional challenges of land use and planning.  Although each is part of the larger picture, no one discipline—environmental science, economics, political science or journalism—can capture or fully explain the issues confronting citizens or regional planners. 

• Making Trails, puts students in partnership with local historical societies and Native American organizations doing historical research on our area’s indigenous peoples and early settlers.  Students are then designing hiking trails and trail-side educational displays, as well as creating related computer GIS maps and developing marketing strategies to increase awareness and utilization of the trail system.
• Computer Based Training is a new multidisciplinary Ventures offering between our College of Education’s Educational Technology Program and our engineering college.  Undergraduates interested in engineering or education team up to design, develop, implement and assess multi-media computer-based training modules for industry and other organizations in the community.  The purpose of the instructional modules is outreach and entry-level orientation and training of new hires.
• ChemPals: Collaborative Mentoring in the Sciences is ChemPals is an electronic community outreach and mentoring program initiated and run for credit by Lehigh students.  The program connects girls ages 11-15 and science professionals.  Capitalizing on the pervasiveness of e-mail communication in school, home and industry, ChemPals seeks to encourage more talented girls to explore opportunities in science. Matched pairs maintain e-mail contact, periodically engage in video conferencing with program-maintained equipment, and regularly discuss science and career-related issues based on modules developed by the Lehigh students.
• Lehigh lies at the center of one of the most racially and economically diverse neighborhoods in Pennsylvania. Building Bridges: Prejudice Reduction Workshop and Performance uses theatre to reduce barriers formed by racism, classism and sexism, and to allow diversity to be a greater source of community enrichment. Lehigh students, with area middle and high school students, confront their own experiences of discrimination—as victims, witnesses and oppressors—and express those experiences as original pieces of theatre.  The students are collectively responsible for all aspects of the production, from researching and developing theme, story and script, to designing sets, costumes, lighting and sound.  The students then perform their creations and lead post-performance workshops at Lehigh and schools throughout the region.
• In Integrated Exhibit Design, student teams develop exhibits to be implemented in collaboration with clients such as museums, architects, historical societies and corporations. Course deliverables include background research, concept sketches, oral, written and visual presentations, CAD drawings, virtual and physical prototypes, and in many cases the final real exhibit. 
• Business Information System Practicum teams work with client businesses or non-profit organizations on projects that focus on information systems.  Students develop requirements, design and help implement the systems.
• Opportunities for Student Innovation (OSI) Program teams assist businesses with specific technical problems related to Chemical Engineering, Chemistry, and Material Science and Engineering. 
• In the Lehigh University Management Assistance Counseling (LUMAC) program, business students work in small teams to assist business and non-profit clients of Lehigh's Small Business Development Center.  Counseling reports have covered, among many others, financial and cost accounting systems and practices, advertising and sales promotion programs, resource utilization efficiency improvements, inventory control and record keeping, procedures for finding and selecting new personnel, new product introductions and even the formation of new businesses.
• The Marketing Practicum combines a consulting engagement with a local business or non-profit organization with formal class work on marketing problem formulation and business communications.  Small teams of undergraduates work with real clients to undertake original projects that address marketing needs of the client, such as market research, strategy development, sales management and promotion management.
• Capstone Engineering Design Projects give upper-level undergraduates in each of the engineering majors at Lehigh the opportunity to undertake substantive original engineering design projects, often in partnership with industry or non-profits in the community.  Engineering design projects generally entail close supervision by a faculty advisor in the related field and most often include background research, design concept generation, computer and mathematical modeling, the creation of virtual and physical prototypes, and formal oral and written presentations.
• In CyberDesign, teams of students from multiple fields—including art and design, computer science and engineering, marketing and advertising and journalism—propose and ultimately implement complete Web designs for real clients.

Beyond that, one yet unmet challenge would be moving the pedagogic approach into lower-level coursework.  Prospects here are more uncertain, as pilot models are just beginning to emerge.  As Ventures matures, we hope and fully intend it will move beyond piloting upper-level programs and help integrate similar philosophies into introductory offerings across campus. 

A second, more daunting challenge will be to integrate Ventures and other curricular initiatives with the non-curricular aspects of student life.  The goal should be truly integrated education that fully leverages what is unique about a residential research university the size of Lehigh.  Our review did not attempt to evaluate the community service and other student and residential life programs outside of the curriculum, of which there are many examples.  It is fair to say that the faculty as a whole has not seriously considered the wider view of the whole-student experience in designing and implementing curriculum.  These two realms of an undergraduate’s learning experiences here are unfortunately overwhelmingly separated both organizationally and more fundamentally in the minds of the students and faculty.  Just one illuminating data point: few of the department chairs we interviewed knew who Lehigh’s community service coordinator was, and the majority did not even know we had one.  We remain optimistic and proud of our progress, but much work remains. 

6. Lessons Learned 
We conclude our discussion with a few thoughts on lessons learned in the collective process of moving a campus largely traditional in its undergraduate teaching towards one where active learning, inquiry-based learning, community-based-learning, collaborative experiences and close mentoring relationships are increasingly fundamental to the educational culture.   We offer these in the spirit of continuous improvement and with our sincere hopes that they may be helpful implementation guidelines for others exploring new approaches to undergraduate education and to integrating community and curriculum. 

6.1 Do Authentic Projects for Real Clients. 
The level of both student and faculty interest, energy and intensity is significantly greater in projects with external clients when compared to mostly hypothetical or faculty-invented projects.  Our impression is that this is largely because the increased accountability, the likelihood of seeing ideas actually implemented, and the resume building potential stimulate both students and faculty.  In addition, the learning environment is richer because the teams must squarely confront economic, political and resource constraints, and learn about and leverage existing organizational competencies.  The client also serves as an additional information provider (e.g. data, regulatory and financial information, contacts) and sounding board for the teams.  Finally, there is little a faculty member can do that can stimulate interest in a project—and the personal internal desire to actively inquire about things unknown—that compares to the smell of the grease, paint, and roar of the organizational machinery of a hungry client with an authentic need. 

Based on six years of working with sponsored projects, both within Lehigh CORPS and in other programs, a critical component to success is the active participation of the outside sponsor both in project selection and in providing the student teams with context, demand and utility for the results and information.  The project must be tractable and at the same time not so critical that client would face significant problems should their undergraduate team produce sub-professional results. 

That said, as we indicated above we have been pleasantly surprised at the low fraction of teams that do not live up to full expectations.  We have as a result considerably raised the bar in terms of our expectations about what student teams can and should accomplish.  In large part this is because students and faculty alike see what previous teams have done and aim to do better. 

6.2 Provide Multiple Opportunities for Students to Present and Reflect on Their Ideas. 
We believe that as faculty we can provide a much richer mentoring experience for the students if we engage them on multiple levels in exploring and reflecting on their own ideas and progress.  This elevates the learning experience well beyond what students could get on their own through, for example, summer internships or fraternity and sorority community service requirements.  While these latter are very often valuable, they do not leverage the unique inquiry-rich features of the research university, nor do they necessarily exercise and integrate skills learned in earlier curriculum.  Faculty and peer mentoring and feedback can. 

We have several approaches to encourage students to present and reflect on their ideas.  The most informal are the required weekly meetings among each student team.  With two or three peers they need from week to week to decide what key issues the team faces and collectively decide how to tackle them. Though we do not monitor these meetings, if the literature on collaborative education is right, this immediate peer feedback can be a valuable learning experience. 

The next, only slightly more formal level is the weekly meeting with the faculty advisor. We try to focus these meetings and our feedback on key issues by having each team come prepared with a brief written summary of their accomplishments during the week and plans for the near future.  This makes them collectively reflect, ahead of time, on where they have been and where they need to go.  Though we meet only one hour per week with each team, we find that we are able to provide far more, more frequently and more targeted feedback to each student than we would in a traditional classroom. We have pushed, for example, a very capable team to develop multivariate econometric models based on concepts from their recent labor economics course, and explored sources of data, data limitations and econometric modeling problems in testing their original hypotheses.  At the other end with other students, we re-acquainted them with and exercised notions of medians, statistical variance and basic spreadsheet skills.  At either end the students were challenged to and wanted to move beyond their current capacities in order to address their clients’ questions.  At either end, there was a sense of accomplishment and reward well beyond grades for the effort. 

Another level involves three quasi-formal interim oral briefings that each team gives to the whole class through the semester, at roughly 1/3rd intervals in the semester.  This does at least three things.  First, the focusing lens of a public presentation in front of their peers requires each team to organize and distill their thoughts and be prepared to defend them.  Second, the process of and feedback from preparing, giving, and watching others give presentations exercises and we think clearly improves communication skills.  The quality and professionalism of the talks is demonstrably far higher at the end of the term than the first time through. 

Third, students see the economic development and research issues that each of the other teams faces.  This significantly broadens the context for them, illuminating the breadth and diversity of the types of problems in the field of regional economic development.  Admittedly this approach cannot cover the full scope of the field, as a textbook might.  However, we believe the fairly ad hoc collection of the topics is more than made up for in the depth of student interest and understanding--and presumably superior long term retention. Because they share with peers going through the same process of inquiry and discovery, the presentations and class discussion personalizes the issues like no textbook can. They share the struggle over the types of questions their peer teams are asking, the methodologies and background materials brought to bear on these other economic development problems, and as a class can collectively brainstorm and reflect on each team’s approach while in progress. 

One more formal level of presentation and reflection entails the draft written reports and research workbooks.  The value of the process of completing and getting feedback on written report drafts will be familiar to most reading this.  The only point we might add here is that we find it very useful to ask for a brief written memorandum of understanding within the first week after the teams meet their client.  This engages early-stage collective reflection and decision making on problem definition and planning, and involving the client provides context and ensures that their efforts will have authentic value.  The research workbooks may not be as familiar.  We ask that teams present these at project’s end to their client.  Teams must organize their raw data, interview notes, background papers and weekly meeting notes.  In the process we hope they develop habits of documentation potentially useful later in their professional lives while at the same regularly distilling the raw materials and reflecting on what materials might be relevant to their client 

Finally, the most formal level involves the final oral and written reports to the client, generally at the client’s offices.  Here the anxiety factor has its strongest incentive, and we’ve found it a significant magnitude greater than for traditional final in-class presentations.  The payoff is far higher as well, in the form of the students’ often-palpable internal rewards for presentations well done, recommendations seriously considered and kudos from professionals.  Grading schemes simply cannot match the incentive and reward effects. 

While it is possible that our experience is unusual, it does seem to match closely the pedagogic recommendations of others.  The National Society for Experiential Education's Principles of Good Practice in Student Community Service-Learning, for example, suggests that: "The service experience alone does not ensure that either good service or good learning will occur. Both are improved by frequent opportunities for conscious reflection on the experience and critical analysis of the issues involved. This interplay of action and reflection on experience is central to service-learning. Seminars, carefully planned journals, discussions among service learners, conversations with those being served, faculty conferences with students, debriefing sessions, analysis papers, public presentations, and creative artistic expressions are examples of reflective practice which can help the experience become much more than a one-time service opportunity.” Based on the Lehigh CORPS we wholeheartedly concur.  Lectures, textbooks, problem sets and tests have fundamental utility in curricula, but should not constitute the entirety. 

6.3    Resource Needs Are Manageable. 
When we began planning our pilot course, we anticipated higher resource needs than have emerged.  We thought the process of lining up project clients would consume considerable time, when in practice it is no more than 10-20 hours per year in total.  We also wondered whether mentoring several small groups of students would eat our time more than teaching traditional lectures.  This too was unfounded.  With two of us team teaching the course and splitting advising responsibilities, meeting every other week with each team, we both personally find our time commitment for six teams is less than half a three-credit course each. 

This plus less than $75 for one mailing is all the resources required to operate the Lehigh CORPS.  We consider the minimal non-teaching resources required a very positive factor in our success in institutionalizing Lehigh CORPS. Very little is needed outside of the faculty teaching commitment (approximately a $25,000 annual cost to the university including standard fringes and overhead) and the (largely informal conversational) time spent lining up projects.  If we assume that the faculty resources involved would be employed anyway, the real opportunity cost of the course is simply the loss of one section of something else—in our case probably a traditional lecture-based course.  If we could add anything we do not now have, a small budget might be useful to cover costs of bigger surveys or occasional data purchases.  This would allow some of the teams to expand the depth of their research. Though this would be nice, it is not critical to the fundamental learning experience.  So too, client organizations have been largely satisfied with the results to date. 

Moreover, there are benefits to us as well as the time costs.  We are learning along side our students as they tackle problems that we have never struggled with ourselves, sometimes stimulating thinking about our research agendas.  We also get more psychic reward in teaching this way since the students are considerably more engaged, and their time and our time might actually have real value to the community.  And for a bit of fun, the projects sometimes have resulted in the students’ and our names in the media.  We conclude, then, that the resource costs are equivalent or lower than traditional courses while the benefits are higher. 

6.4 Consider Team Teaching 
Each instructor has a different background and expertise, and we believe that diversity strengthens our collective mentoring.  However, there was an unexpected additional benefit.  In the pilot year we both together met each team each week.  In retrospect, this was unnecessarily time consuming.  During occasional weeks, because students have other exams, breaks, out of town athletic contexts and the like, little gets done.  The weekly meetings in first year could be a bit redundant.  We now alternate every other week with each team, each of us meeting with half each week.  Students can not assume we know what had gone on, nor that we necessarily agreed, and have to work harder to keep us informed and to be able to defend their collective decisions.  This puts a higher premium on communication and reflection during these sessions.  The alternating advisor approach has significantly increased the quality and value of the weekly discussions, made them more interesting and rewarding, and at the same time cut the demands on our time by at least a third. 

6.5 Time Finding and Screening Projects is Well Spent. 
Generating and screening possible projects for tractability and appropriateness involve marginal additional time and effort up front, but are indispensable. Because client participation is so valuable for the learning environment, but the hurdle of finding and dealing with clients a bit time consuming, the temptation is to tackle the first projects that come along.  However, some are too ambitious for students just cutting their teeth, while others are too narrowly defined to have the disciplinary scope or to fully exercise the various students’ disciplinary skills.   We’ve found that depending on the client’s needs, teams can usefully tackle projects along the entire range from economic feasibility studies of new policy ideas, through econometric analysis of existing data sources, to creating and implementing original survey instruments for gathering and evaluating new data.  We’ve also found nearly all clients to be readily willing to modify project scope in response to our suggestions.  An alternative for engaging more involved problems, which we have considered but not implemented, is to have a series of projects in the same problem space over several years. 

An additional screening criteria should be the level of interest of the client, their willingness to commit time (an hour or two a week commitment is what we ask) to dealing with student inquiries, and their level of understanding of and willingness to accommodate the pedagogic goals.  Regular communication and coordination along these lines between the students, faculty and client has proven indispensable. 

We would also recommend establishing as early as possible standard processes for finding and dealing with clients. An ad hoc, catch-client-as-catch-can process of finding projects could dissipate scarce faculty energy. Throughout the year we informally discuss possible projects with our personal contacts in economic development groups in the region.  More formally, roughly two months before the course begins, we distribute a letter seeking expressions of interest to our mailing list of members of the Lehigh Valley Economics Club, close to 200 business and political leaders, economic development professionals and academics that meets twice a year to discuss economic development issues of common interest.  Conveniently, the Club has been administered under auspices of the University by one of the authors (Hyclak).  Based on our informal discussions and also on the responses to the letter, we then generally have several discussions with potential clients in order to ensure appropriate scope and focus for the projects. 

6.6 Consider a Mentoring Program Using Former Students as Advisors. 
An additional resource we have not yet begun to leverage is previous students.  Should the program grow beyond our capacity to fully advise 6 to 8 teams, it might begin to make sense to use a handful of top students who have already been Lehigh CORPS members as mentors to new project teams.  For credit (as teaching apprentices), these students would meet weekly with the course faculty to discuss project management, resources, team dynamics and leadership in the ongoing context of the teams they are mentoring.  Each mentor would work with two or three project teams.  They could help them establish realistic timelines and milestones, help translate faculty expectations, provide guidance about tasks the teams may want to consider, give feedback on their written and oral reports, and answer questions students may, unfortunately, feel awkward about addressing to faculty. 

We learned this tip from two Lehigh faculty members who, as only 1/5 of their teaching load, direct 75-100 students annually doing real-client team projects in small business management consulting in the Lehigh Management Assistance Counseling program (LUMAC).  This was also then adopted successfully in IPD, discussed above, involving about 120 students annually on 20-25 integrated product design teams.  Student mentors in both LUMAC and IPD have turned out to be surprisingly good at dealing with many of the day-to-day project team management and student coordination issues.  And the mentors learn some teaching, communication and leadership skills at the same time. 

6.7 Just do it. 
Start small but do try it.  The Lehigh CORPS program pre-pilot began with no budget and 12 students doing small projects as a part of an already existing Urban Economics course.  Our impression is that many institutions offer similar courses and that outside client organizations have limitless potential projects only a phone call away.  We then moved to a pilot stand alone course the next year.  It worked well enough that we were able the following term to propose and pass a permanent course through the department, college and university. Our community partners also remain both enthusiastic and supportive, and as one metric of the program's success, they are willing to come back for more. 

The relative (by university standards) speed of implementation of Lehigh CORPS and the institutionalizing of the approach throughout the university in Ventures were fundamentally helped by the existing campus experience with similar programs in management consulting (LUMAC), product design (IPD) and environmental research (LEO).  However, colleges and universities can be highly political and idiosyncratic places, so there is likely to be no substitute for local experimentation about what works for each institution.  Our approach has been to move forward, learning as we go. 
 

Appendix.  Lehigh CORPS Project Descriptions and Client Organizations 

2000 Projects 

1. How Important is Broadband Communications Access in Business Location Decisions? 
Client:  Lehigh Valley Partnership Technology Committee. Description: Attracting and fostering growing high technology businesses is a key feature of Lehigh Valley economic development planning.  Access to high quality infrastructure has always been an important variable in where businesses choose to locate.  In particular, demand is growing remarkably rapidly for access to very high capacity (broad bandwidth) telecommunications and data communications capabilities.  This study will address the following questions, most likely through a survey of business managers in target industries.  What are the broadband access needs of businesses in a select set of industries targeted by Lehigh Valley economic development plans?  Relatively how important is broadband access in their locational decision making?  The study will assess whether broadband access in the Lehigh Valley is well suited to attracting these businesses and recommend steps the region might take to expand its attractiveness.  As background, the study should also benchmark broadband-access-related programs or policies that other similar cities and regions may have implemented.  What has and has not worked elsewhere? 

2. Attracting and Retaining a Technology Workforce. 
Client: Ben Franklin Technology Partners. Description: An increasingly important local economic development factor is the existence of a well-educated, high-tech workforce in the community. While Eastern Pennsylvania might be expected to have an advantage in this regard, given the large number of higher education institutions in the region, there is concern about the region’s ability to retain students in the workforce after graduation.  This study will survey Lehigh University students to determine the factors that affect their career and location decisions and to assess their perception of Eastern Pennsylvania as a residential location.  The results of the survey will be used by the client to develop educational programs and other policies to induce a greater fraction of local college grads to stay in the region. 

3. Assessing the E-Readiness of Local Manufacturers. 
Client: Manufacturers Resource Center. Description: The use of the internet for electronic commerce is a rapidly expanding phenomenon, particularly in business-to-business transactions.  This project will interview managers at small and medium manufacturing establishments in the Lehigh Valley to answer the following questions: How important is e-commerce to this industry group?  Do these firms possess adequate computing infrastructure to support anticipated e-commerce growth? Do they have the computing skills to take full advantage of this new technology?  The Manufacturers Resource Center provides training and consulting services to manufacturing firms. They will use this survey to plan for activities related to e-commerce. 

4. What Factors Influence Student and Faculty Attendance at Arts Center Events? 
Client: Lehigh University’s Zoellner Arts Center.  Description: The new director of the Arts Center feels that student and faculty attendance is below that experienced at other colleges.  She would like to base new marketing programs on empirical data on attendance patterns.  This project will survey students and faculty about their attendance at Zoellner events and their perceptions of prices, programming and other facets of these events.  This survey information will be used to do a market segmentation analysis as a guide for marketing programs. 
 

5. Community Quality of Life Indicators. 
Client: United Way of the Greater Lehigh Valley. Description: The Institute for the Development of a Healthy Community, a division of the United Way, has as an objective the development of an annual report focusing on statistical indicators of trends in community health in the Lehigh Valley.  In addition to aggregate indicators for the whole community, they are particularly interested in data on the quality of life, broadly defined, for children in high poverty areas of Allentown, Bethlehem and Easton.  This project has two facets: First, the student team will identify sources of data on appropriate statistical measures of the quality of life indicators the Institute has in mind.  The key here is finding data sources that could be tapped annually so trends can be identified.  The second aspect is to develop a geographic information systems database that would permit the storage, retrieval, display and analysis of data for neighborhoods. 

 
1999 Projects 

1. Fresh Food Market Impact Project. 
Client: Community Action Development Corporation of Bethlehem.  Description: This agency was interested in research to support an initiative to establish a fresh food market in South Side Bethlehem, an economically depressed, urban area.  One key element was a survey of consumer eating and shopping habits to help determine the need for new fresh food outlets in this racially diverse community.  This survey addresed the degree of shopping inconvenience, prices and fresh food types and availability currently facing South Side residents.  A second element benchmarked similar initiatives in other communities across the country, and assessed the economic impact of a fresh food market on the community.  The team recommended that a better alternative would be a buying cooperative among the many small, and often ethnically specialized, corner groceries throughout the area. 

2. Profile of Tourists and Potential Tourists to the Lehigh Valley. 
Client: Lehigh Valley Convention & Visitors Bureau.  Description: This project developed, conducted and statistically analyzed a (randomized) mail survey of people who have received tourist information from the bureau.  The survey and analysis addressed questions related to: 1) the perceptions of the Lehigh Valley as a tourist destination; 2) the effectiveness of the bureau’s promotional literature; 3) demographic profiles of those who actually visit the area and those who requested information but didn't visit the area, and 4) the spending levels and patterns of visitors.  Nearly 250 people responded to the survey, an enviable 25 percent response rate to a single mailing.  The team found the bureau’s literature to be effective and appreciated by recipients: About 98 percent had favorable views of the Lehigh Valley after receiving the survey, compared to 60 percent beforehand.  Roughly 60 percent of recipients of the guide visit within one year, and length of stay and average spending per visit is well above national tourism norms.  The client was very pleased with the quality and professionalism of the team’s analysis, enough to formally release the report to the public and hold a news conference in which the students presented their findings.  Stories ran in all the regional news media, including TV, radio, newspapers and business press. 

3. The Impact of Tax-Exempt Properties on Lehigh Valley Cities. 
Client: Lehigh Valley Partnership Strategic Planning Committee.  Description: The Partnership is a collective of business and political leaders that has for several years advocated increased cooperation and joint operations across the region’s 62 municipalities and 17 school districts.  They were interested in the extent to which the three major urban centers (Allentown, Bethlehem, Easton) bare a disproportional share of the burden of tax-exempt properties while simultaneously providing considerable services to the surrounding municipalities.  The student team collected and analyzed tax assessment data from both counties in our area in order to compile estimates and comparisons, by municipality, of the total assessed value and foregone tax revenue of properties exempt from property taxes in the region. The study also broadly compared non-urban, suburban and urban centers in the region.  The findings were striking, yet consistent with similar studies elsewhere in the country.  The urban centers accounted for only 23 percent of the region’s taxable land value, but almost 50 percent of the tax-exempt assessed value, and because of higher tax rates 55 percent of the forgone taxes, more than twice that of the non-urban or suburban municipalities. The client was very pleased with the quality and professionalism of the team’s analysis, enough to formally release the report to the public and hold a news conference to present the student’s findings.  Stories ran in several newspapers in the region. 

4. Transportation Barriers to Successful Welfare to Work Transitions. 
Client: Council of Hispanic Organizations.  Description: The Council was preparing a transportation grant proposal to improve the public transportation options open to inner-city residents.  They needed research to document the extent to which welfare recipients living in three urban inner cities of the region are limited in their search for employment by the current configuration of bus routes.  The student team designed and implemented two surveys, one of welfare recipients about their transportation needs and jobs, the other of local businesses about their hiring, shift hours and access to public transit. The team also met with the regional bus company planners to identify current routes and times and discuss ways routes could be changed or new services developed to enhance the possibility of successful transitions from welfare to work.  The team found significant spatial and temporal mismatch between the increasing locus of entry-level jobs (and shift work) in the suburban areas and industrial parks surrounding the urban core compared to the bus routes and times designed to bring people into, rather than out of that core, during normal business hours.  Compared to other areas of the country, the problem is compounded for transit planners in the Lehigh Valley because there are three urban cores rather than one. 

5. The Vitality of the Local Entrepreneurial Environment. 
Client: Bridgeworks Enterprise Center.  Description: This project assessed the vitality of the local environment for assisting people in starting businesses.  The Center's Director, hypothesized that the long dominance of large corporations (e.g. Bethlehem Steel) in the local economy and the "non-risk-taking" attitude in Pennsylvania German Society limited the local support for business development. An important element of the study was the collection of statistical data on business formation, establishment size and other information to compare the Lehigh Valley with other similarly sized urban areas.  In fact, the student team found otherwise.  The Lehigh Valley was surprisingly close to national averages across a number of objective statistical measures of the entrepreneurial environment, neither spectacularly entrepreneurial (as Raleigh-Durham or Silicon Valley) nor notably lagging. 

6. Lehigh County Reuse and Regeneration Center. 
Client: Good Shepherd Work Services.  Description: Significant volumes of re-usable building materials and large furnishings and appliances are disposed of each year in municipal waste collection programs.  A growing number of cities nationwide are opening refurbishment operations that entail retrieving these materials from the waste stream, refurbishing them and selling them through thrift-like retail establishments.  Good Shepherd Work Services (affiliated with Good Shepherd Hospital in Allentown) was considering opening a Reuse and Regeneration in Allentown.  Its multiple goals include reducing the waste disposal volumes and costs for the County and providing work training for people with disabilities and (in conjunction with Lehigh County vo-tech) for young people from area juvenile detention programs.  The study projected the economic costs and benefits (revenues and disposal savings) of the Center for Good Shepherd and for Lehigh County, based on detailed comparisons to results at similar centers throughout the country.  The team also interviewed possible sources of used materials, such as remodelers, home supply stores, and trash haulers in order to guage interest and possible volumes. The team found that the center could be very marginally profitable within 3 to 5 years, without even including the broader savings to the Country and benefits of the work training.  They recommended moving forward with planning, which the client has since done.  Good Shepherd now hopes to open the ReUse Center by spring 2000. 
 

1998 Projects (first pilot as stand-alone course) 

1. Comparing Economic Growth Patterns and Industry Mix. 
Client: Lehigh Valley Planning Commission.  Description:  This team benchmarked and did statistical and econometric analysis on patterns and sources of economic growth and changes in industry mix over the past 25 years in the Lehigh Valley with ten comparable cities nationally.  This study used data from the Commerce Department, Bureau of Economic Analysis’ Regional Economic Information System.  The team found that while the limited diversity of this area’s industries in previous decades was similar to patterns in other low growth cities, with the decline of manufacturing and expansion of several other sectors, the Lehigh Valley’s industry diversity was currently much more similar to high growth areas.  While growth in the early 1990s remained lower than national trends, the current diverse mix is perhaps a good sign for the area’s future.  The team did such outstanding work, that their research report was released in the University’s Kalmbach Institute research working paper series, later published in a peer reviewed journal of undergraduate research [53], and was national runner-up for the Bernard J. McCarney Award for undergraduate research in economics.  See the published study on-line at http://138.87.168.39/uauje/issue%203/faberman/frame.html. 

2. Redevelopment Strategies for the Gateway Tract. 
Client: Bethlehem Economic Development Corp. (BEDCO).  Description:  This was a re-use study of the “Gateway” tract of lands at West Third Street and Brodhead Avenue in south Bethlehem.  BEDCO owns this property and the student team (which included a student architect) studied alternative redevelopment strategies for the site, which included designing and implementing an original survey of potential developers and a traffic study.  Their recommendations included redesigning the entry road and developing a restaurant and an office building with ground-floor retail space.  BEDCO pursued some of the suggestions with potential developers, and as of early 2000 a new Perkins Restaurant has opened on the site. 

3. Benchmarking Wages by Industry and Skill Level. 
Client: Lehigh Valley Economic Development Corp. (LVEDC).  Description: The team conducted a benchmarking study of wages by occupation and skill-level in the Lehigh Valley compared with ten comparable cities nationally.  The LVEDC was unaware (and excited by the analysis) of the new data series the students ended up using, the National Compensation Survey from the Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics.  The team focused, in particular, on comparing Lehigh Valley wages to other areas across key occupations in high growth industries that the LVEDC aims to attract here. They found that overall wages in the area are comparable to national norms, but most importantly that in some occupations lower than average wages in the area might be particularly attractive in skill areas sought by companies in six of the target industries: pharmaceuticals, plastics, foods, high-end back-office operations, computers, and biotechnology.  Thanks to the publicity efforts of the satisfied client, the team’s research was featured several times in area newspapers.  One story was a full front page Sunday business section article in the region’s largest paper, with the wage data and a photo of the students working with their client. 

4. Slum Landlords in South Bethlehem. 
Client: Community Action Committee of the Lehigh Valley (CACLV).  Description: CACLV engaged its team in identifying, through various sources, slum landlords in Bethlehem’s South Side.  The team also recommended strategies for dealing with the problem.  To support their conclusions, the team investigated what other cities had done and organized and analyzed data from neighborhood leaders, police, county code enforcement offices and deed records.  The study was discussed in the region’s business newspaper. 
 

1997 Projects (first pilot, minor projects as part of Urban Economics course) 

1. - 3. Municipal Finances and Government Consolidation. 
Client: Lehigh Valley Partnership.  Description: Three student teams analyzed trends in municipal finances and the economics of government consolidation for a committee working with the Lehigh Valley Partnership in its strategic planning process. 

4. Attracting Businesses to Downtown Macungie. 
Client: Mayor of the Borough of Macungie.  Description: Another team’s analysis involved surveying business owners and managers in the Borough of Macungie, to assist the Mayor in developing a plan to attract new businesses to the Borough. 
 

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