Atlantis Educational Initiatives: An Atlantis Apprenticeship - Outreach Tutorials

An Atlantis Apprenticeship - Outreach Tutorials


08-AN ATLANTIS APPRENTICESHIP: OUTREACH TUTORIALS

How an Atlantis college would involve itself in the work of the local community, and beyond.

A particular advantage of intensive Atlantis tutorials is that they provide unique opportunities for students to work off-campus with organizations in such fields as law, business, politics, government, education, or environment.

The aim would be to provide them with practical training and experience as they make contributions in "real-life" situations.

Here's how it works.

Atlantis offers cooperation with organizations (or individuals) that would like to work with our special "outreach" or "professional" tutorials. Essentially, an organization have would have some research, planning, or similar work they need doing and we set up a research team, normally four students, to work with one of their executives, who would act as supervisor and tutor.

 Prior to the term, or other agreed on period, when they start work for the off-campus organization, the students prepare for their outreach tutorial by intensive background reading, and acquiring or improving on any skills necessary for these semi-internships. Just as they would prepare for any other Atlantis tutorial.

They would take a preparatory exam to ensure that they were adequately prepared for their outreach work.

Our outreach tutorials would also have a supervisory academic tutor, to ensure that their work is relevant to the student's academic progress as well as to the outside body.

The students would hand in dossiers at the end of term which will be appraised on the same standards as the in-house productions.

How might this work out in practice?

Take for instance a group of students doing some background research for a documentary TV series on say "Patriarchy." We would supply a group of four students, a historian, an anthropologist, a psychology major, and someone from Communications Studies.

Their final papers would have to be assessable as sound contributions in their fields.

They would have had good records as having worked well with other students in their own studies, and this tutorial, besides giving them experience of working in the professional world, would give them opportunity to collaborate with people from other disciplines -- somewhat rare in normal college work.

In summary, The advantages to the students:

  • Exposure to "real-world" working conditions
  • Meeting the kind of people they might expect to work with and for, after graduation
  • Opportunity to earn money while increasing both academic skills and working experience.
The advantages to the company:
  • Gaining well prepared and carefully supervised research teams, at a very competitive cost.
  • Sustained encounters with the kind of students who might one day make good potential staff
  • Opportunity both to support and to make useful contacts with local educational institutions
  • Opportunities to hire well trained temporary staff used to effective teamwork.

    Should we expect any prejudice against student research teams?
Students often give an impression of immaturity to the outside public, with the reports of binge drinking, fraternity hazing, and such emanating from the campuses. But this kind of behavior arises, largely from their immersion in an academic milieu that conveys the impression to both students and outsiders that they are not yet expected to be responsible people. For a number of students, college is just extended high school, with laxer rules.

Change attitudes and expectations, and everything changes. (Bernard Shaw reputedly held that the sole disparity between Duchesses and Charwomen lies in the way they're treated by those around them. In this observation lies the most importamt single principle Atlantis is attempting to purloin from Oxbridge.)

This is why we would not expect any prejudice against Atlantis research teams.  They would emerge from a somewhat distinct academic culture and milieu.

There are other work-study schemes such as the Antioch and other North American programs and one wouldn't want to hinder an Atlantis student from participating in something of that sort. In fact our admissions policy favors those who have had some outside experience of that type even before entering college.

Nonetheless the outreach tutorials are different, in that they incorporate study into the work experience, instead of making it a way of spending a semester away from the campus.