What makes the school unique, students say, is the personalized attention and hands-on experience Alverno provides them.,”This is the second part of a series exploring the other college campuses around Milwaukee.
With an enrollment of more than 2,000 students, an unconventional grading system and an all-female atmosphere, Alverno College on Milwaukee's south side is unlike other colleges.
What makes the school unique, students say, is the personalized attention and hands-on experience Alverno provides them.
"Here you're learning hands-on with everything and you're trying stuff while you go," said Megan Dreger, a sophomore nursing student. "So in a better way you get more experience than just being thrown out there with all this book knowledge."
While Alverno is not a party school, it's not strictly a study school either, Dreger said. There are 30 clubs, in addition to the five NCAA Division III sports teams. Alverno joined the NCAA in 2004, according to the school's Web site.
Most students are commuters, said Katy Kujala-Korpela, a senior double-majoring in history and political science who now commutes but lived on campus during her first three years of college.
"You live in a building with 120 other girls and it gets kind of catty," Kujala-Korpela said. "But you really make close friendships and you learn so much about yourself."
Though there are no males on campus besides a few graduate students, students said there are opportunities to meet guys. Dreger said she met her boyfriend who goes to the Milwaukee School of Engineering while attending school at Alverno.
"I'm in Milwaukee," Dreger said. "There are lots of other schools I can go out and have fun at."
Kristin Slattery, a second-year Marquette law student and 2006 Alverno graduate, said she made close friends at Alverno. She and her friends also traveled elsewhere in Milwaukee for parties.
"We came to Marquette to party a couple of times," Slattery said.
One major difference between Alverno and other schools is the grading system. In absence of a traditional A through F scale, grade reports list "S" for satisfactory and "U" for unsatisfactory, students said.
Nursing majors, however, need to score at least 80 percent to pass according to a state mandate, said Lea Fleischman, a second semester Alverno transfer student majoring in nursing. Fleischman spent two-and-a-half years at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse studying therapeutic recreation before coming to Alverno to pursue nursing.
Fleischman said that while teachers make an effort to get to know students, many of them go off-subject in class.
"(UW-)La Crosse is more organized than here," Fleischman said. "I liked not being in the dark about grades and classes."
Students must fulfill eight criteria — called "Alverno Abilities" — covering different topics, Kujala-Korpela said.
"If we don't fulfill the criteria, we don't pass," Kujala-Korpela said.
And though a paper may come back with an "S," students say teachers will provide them with constructive criticism.
"Teachers give us really good feedback," Dreger said. "(They'll say), 'It's really good on this part, (or) you need to improve on this part.' It's a nice way of kind of learning what you're good at and what you kind of need to build up."
Slattery said the non-traditional grading system made her undergraduate work at Alverno easier.
"It took so much stress off just passing instead of getting an A," she said. "I didn't realize the stress grades put on you. Here (at Marquette) I'm constantly worried about getting A's."
Slattery said she thinks the Alverno grading system isn't looked favorably upon. Having been accepted by nine out of 11 law schools she applied for, she said the other two might have rejected her because of it.
Alverno does provide a GPA if requested based on feedback from teachers, Slattery said.
Though there may not be as much stress to get a 4.0 grade point average, in-depth student projects are challenging, said Becca Surges, a junior majoring in professional communication.
In her advanced writing class, Surges was part of a public relations team that presented a marketing campaign to real professionals in the field, a real life experience "which is a little scary," she said.
Kujala-Korpela said despite the absence of a traditional grading system, school is stressful for her.
"It really pushes you," she said. "It's a good thing and a bad thing. You learn what you're made of."
Click here for the Tribune's article about MSOE.
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