The Furman Advantage promises to remake college experience

Furman University will announce today a new strategic vision designed to deepen the university’s engagement in the Greenville community while providing current and future students with concrete experiences outside the classroom that will further their preparation for their career interests.

Called The Furman Advantage, the vision will dramatically reshape how many of Furman’s students experience college.

The university will guarantee students the opportunity for internships or career-relevant extra-curricular experiences.

Furman will develop deeper connections to organizations and businesses in Greenville, both to address issues critical to Greenville and to expand the number of opportunities Furman students can engage in.

The university will boost stipends for students involved in internships or research to make opportunities available to all students, not just those who can afford to skip getting a summer or part-time job.

Faculty and staff will become more involved with students one-on-one to mentor and guide them toward opportunities as students express interest in possible career paths.

And Furman also will build the network and information systems needed to track students’ involvement and the database needed to manage potential internships, research opportunities and other experiences.

The university will use $47 million from The Duke Endowment to build the infrastructure and networks needed to create its new program, parts of which will begin immediately as the university transitions to full deployment by the fall semester, university officials said in a sit-down interview with The Greenville News last week.

Furman will officially announce The Furman Advantage at an event on campus at 11:30 a.m. Wednesday.

The strategic vision becomes the hallmark piece of Furman President Elizabeth Davis’ plan to increase the value of a Furman education at a time when the national conversation around higher education has shifted from liberal arts education and toward career readiness.

The new strategy will stem from the university’s new community-centered infrastructure, which has been in place since May and is led by Angela Halfacre, who is in a short-term role as a special advisor to the president as the university establishes the framework and implements its new strategic vision.

“That can be a point of connecting with the community to understand community needs and match them with Furman’s expertise so then our students can put into practice the critical thinking and real-world problem solving that we claim a liberal arts education promises for students,” Davis said.

Furman already does this to some degree through programs like its Richard W. Riley Institute and the David E. Shi Center for Sustainability as well as student research opportunities across a number of fields. It will continue with a new program in partnership with Greenville Health System, the Institute for the Advancement of Community Health, that will provide more connections for Furman faculty and students to improve the Greenville community, university officials said.

Furman wants to become the “go-to resource for Greenville and beyond” and wants its graduates to become more integrated into community-involvement wherever they live, Halfacre said.

“What a perfect place to learn – Greenville – to really learn what it means to improve quality of life of the communities in which we live and work,” Davis said.

Many Furman students already are on that path. Lizzie Francis, a senior chemistry major who’s applying for medical schools, has volunteered for three years to work with children in after-school programs at the Frazee Dream Center in Greenville.

Her involvement as part crowd-control, part mentor and part tutor, has changed her outlook and shaped her time at Furman, she said.

Mahmood Syed’s experience has involved a research position and an internship with GHS that focused his career choice.

Syed, a senior from Greenville, wanted to become a heart surgeon growing up. But when he got to Furman he began to head down a path toward a career in research as a biochemistry major.

But an internship in a clinical observation program that allowed him inside the operating room to watch a knee replacement surgery brought a renewed focus on his first love: surgery.

“It taught me a lot about just the kind of things that a successful physician, the kinds of qualities that physician needs to have,” Syed said.

Now he’s applied for medical school.

Furman wants to connect all of its students with experiences like Francis’ and Syed’s beyond the classroom.

Furman will use $25 million to build its network of local and global experiences, research opportunities, internships and community-centered projects and will use $22 million announced in November 2015 to fully fund the James B. Duke Scholarships to provide additional support for students who want to engage more with opportunities afforded through Furman.

“The Duke Endowment fully supports Furman’s strategy for providing life-changing experiences for its students,” said Minor Shaw, chair of the Endowment’s Board. “The grants announced today illustrate our continued commitment to the university and its ambitious vision for the future.”

The scholarships will provide stipends and cover living expenses for students involved in unpaid internships or research positions, Davis said.

“Some students have to work, so there’s this opportunity cost of ‘I need a summer job to pay my bills for the rest of the year, or I need this outstanding internship experience that opens the doors for the rest of my career,’ ” Davis said. “What we don’t want is these experiences being allocated out based on family socio-economic status. We want to take away the financial burden.”

Furman’s size – about 3,000 students – and its history as a pioneer in engaged learning offers students an opportunity Davis believes is unique in a university setting.

“We’re big enough to have a lot of opportunities but we’re small enough to be able to manage to the student level,” she said. “This is what we think we can do that other institutions can’t.”

Furman wants to improve the overall quality of the student body, Davis said. The recruiting landscape for students has become more challenging and about one in five students who are accepted at Furman choose to attend, she said.

“We were having some enrollment issues of our own where our yields, that is the students we admitted who chose to come, just weren’t where we had hoped that they would be, needed them to be,” Davis said. “We wanted to be clear on the front end what students can expect and be able to make a promise that every student will be engaged and have a community of mentors.”

By making it clear what students will get from their Furman education and giving a guarantee that students will get in-depth real-world experience, the university hopes to improve the percentage of accepted students who choose to attend, Davis said.

The experiences Furman plans to offer will go beyond just plugging students into internships. The structure being built will personalize internships and opportunities to each student. That means faculty advisors will change their approach to move beyond setting up class schedules and course loads to a role as mentor, Davis said.

Having a faculty mentor changed Alyssa Richardson’s Furman experience.

Richardson, a 2012 graduate who has since earned a law degree from Harvard Law School and just completed a clerkship with the Hon. Margaret Seymour, senior U.S. District Judge in Columbia, said she came to Furman from tiny, rural Dillon, SC without an understanding of the value of internships and other experiences.

“My parents sent me to Furman and they said ‘Get a great education,’ ” Richardson said. “I interpreted that as ‘OK, let me keep my head down and make good grades,’ which is great, but so much of the Furman education comes in the soft skills, the intangible stuff you’re learning outside the classroom.”

But a faculty member told her she should stop by and talk at the Riley Institute, which she did. Others guided her toward internships, convinced her to try mock trials and convinced her to apply to go to the Asia-Pacific Economic Conference, which she did.

Without faculty mentors, Richardson said she probably wouldn’t have found those opportunities on her own. She wants other students to have those same experiences.

“We don’t want my experience to be unique,” she said.