Experiential learning has long been a core component of Delta College at The College at Brockport, SUNY, but for all the meaningful work our students have done over the years, not enough attention has been paid to whether our students are able to articulate that experience, particularly in the interest of reflecting on their own growth; furthering their professional and academic development; and spreading awareness among the broader community (internship partners, businesses, recruiters, potential students) of Delta's unique interdisciplinary, experiential curriculum.

As part of the extant experiential learning curriculum, students are required to submit periodic journal entries, as well as a final reflective essay; these documents have effectively served as the sole written record of their experiential education. While suitable for providing students a space to catalog daily experiences and reflect on their time at a given site, these assignments (as well as the experiential learning curriculum in general) have not historically been writing-intensive: more clerical than critical, far from creative or compelling.
This was a function of a gap in our experiential curriculum: narrative writing. It wasn't a learning outcome.

An important element of Delta's approach is professional development, which requires students to articulate professional goals, run through a mock job interview process requiring them to compose cover letters and resumes and interview with a member of Career Services, and intensive coaching sessions aimed at defining professional, academic, and personal goals. All these exercises are intended to ensure that by the end of their professional development coursework our students are fluent in their own goals and qualifications. But we had not been developing their fluency in their experiential education.

Given the competitive marketplaces of post-graduation employment and graduate school admissions, "real world" experience is key, but if our students lack the ability to effectively communicate that experience, to situate it into the context of their academic, personal, and professional growth, to truly animate it, then we are not doing our job.

To address this gap in our curriculum, we are launching a new course: Writing Personal Narratives - designed to be taken after or during our existing experiential learning coursework, which will develop our students' ability to write compelling narratives of their experiential education.

This presentation will explain the rationale behind the development of the course, outline its role within Delta's experiential learning curriculum, and explore methods of encouraging meaningful student reflection of experiential education through creative writing.