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Enhancing Undergraduate Education Through the Integration of Learning demystifies the concept of integrative learning and makes a compelling case for its central role in higher education. Drawing on original research and practical experience, Glenn A. Bowen offers university faculty and program directors a definitive guide to bridging the divides between disciplines, theory and practice, and classroom and community.
This timely book explores how high-impact practices such as service-learning, internships, and capstones complemented by critical reflection can transform fragmented curricula into coherent, meaningful journeys for students. With practical strategies, assessment tools, and real-world examples, Bowen empowers educators to foster academic achievement, personal growth, and professional preparation by helping students connect, synthesize, and apply knowledge in ways that prepare them for the complexities of modern life and work.
Whether you are designing new curricula, supporting faculty development, or seeking to intensify student engagement, Enhancing Undergraduate Education Through the Integration of Learning provides the insights and tools needed to make integrative learning a distinctive and valuable feature of undergraduate education.
Higher education is at its best when students learn not only to acquire knowledge but also to connect it, apply it, and use it to address real challenges. In this book, Glenn Bowen argues that integrative learning is not a peripheral goal of undergraduate education. It is central to preparing students for work, citizenship, and life. Drawing from research and decades of practice, he demonstrates how experiences inside and outside the classroom can help students bridge theory and practice, deepen their learning, and make sense of an increasingly complex world. Particularly compelling is his recognition that service- learning and community-based experiences are not simply enriching opportunities for students. They are powerful ways for students to connect knowledge with action, develop a stronger sense of purpose, and better understand their responsibilities to the communities they are part of. At a time when colleges and universities are being challenged to prepare graduates for an increasingly complex world, this book offers a compelling vision for how more-connected learning can strengthen student success and advance higher education’s public purpose.
— Bobbie Laur, President, Campus Compact
This book is an invaluable resource for faculty, staff, and practitioners seeking scholarship and practical application to deepen integrative, reflective, and active learning across curricular and co-curricular spaces. At a time of growing reliance on generative AI, the principles and practices of integrative learning are necessary components of a meaningful higher education experience that enables students to have successful college-to-career development transitions with desirable competencies that reaffirm the value of higher education to society.
— Rochelle Smarr, Director, Experiential Learning, University of California San Diego. Immediate Past Chair, International Association for Research on Service-Learning and Community Engagement
Enhancing Undergraduate Education positions integrative learning as a solution to the siloed and transactional approach to learning that is nearly ubiquitous in higher education today. Dr. Bowen’s handy, at-a-glance guidebook adeptly returns experiential learning to its roots of integration and exploration, reopening all the possibilities and promises offered by this kind of education. It highlights the power of integrative learning to educate individuals holistically as professionals and citizens.
— Ben Trager, Director of Community Engagement and Experiential Learning, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Glenn Bowen’s book is destined to become the go-to text for those seeking to understand how genuine learning happens on college campuses. The greatest contribution of this invaluable text is its synthesis of decades of scholarship on experiential and integrative learning into a coherent, practical, and contemporary framework that can guide both educational research and institutional practice in higher education.
— Susan Corban Harris, Executive Director, Joint Educational Project, University of Southern California
Enhancing Undergraduate Education thoughtfully addresses the important question of how college education might be reconsidered to enable learners to better become integrative thinkers during their undergraduate years. Whether in preparation for careers, community life, or civic participation, young people will increasingly need the ability to negotiate rapid change, emergent circumstances, and wicked problems. To meet this need, Dr. Bowen argues for a curricular response focused on integrative learning—“the ability to connect, synthesize, apply, and reflect meaningfully on knowledge and skills acquired or developed from various contexts and experiences.” Helpfully surveying both theoretical underpinnings and diverse models, he provides practical illustrations of how university leaders and faculty can engage and assess students as meaning makers active in the construction of their own knowledge through a range of learning experiences.
— Burton A. Bargerstock, Executive Director, Office for Public Engagement and Scholarship, Michigan State University
Glenn A. Bowen is an accomplished scholar, an experienced educator, and a prolific writer. He has designed, developed, and delivered higher education programs focused on university–community engagement, experiential learning, and integrative learning. Bowen was the Executive Director of the Center for Community Service Initiatives and Director of the Quality Enhancement Plan at Barry University, where he instituted the Service-Learning Course Designation and created both the Service-Learning Faculty Fellows Program and the Faculty Learning Community for Engaged Scholarship. Previously, he administered the award-winning service-learning program at Western Carolina University. An extensively cited researcher, Bowen has authored numerous peer-reviewed publications.
PART I. Experiential Learning as the Foundation for Integrative Learning
Chapter 1. Contemporary Context of American Higher Education
Chapter 2. The Promise and Power of Experiential Learning
PART II. Integrative Learning Principles and Practice
Chapter 3. The Place and Purpose of Integrative Learning
Chapter 4. Service-Learning as an Integrative Learning Approach
Chapter 5. Integration of Learning Through First-Year Experiences and General Education
Chapter 6. Integration of Learning Through Majors and Culminating Experiences
Chapter 7. Assessment of Students’ Integration of Learning
PART III. Integration of Learning as an Institutional Priority
Chapter 8. Reforming the Curriculum and Institutionalizing Integration
Chapter 9. Professional Development for Faculty and Staff Members
Chapter 10. Recognition and Rewards for Exemplary Integration