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Develop an ecological explanation of the following facts regarding free throw shooting in basketball. Why are two of the four players less skilled in free throw shooting even though all four players are exceptionally talented?
(1) Wilt Chamberlain (Oberbrook High School in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) in 1959-1960 averaged 37.6 points per game in the National Basketball Association, but his free throw shooting percentage was only .582.
(2) Bill Russel (McClymonds High School, Oakland, California) in 1959-1960 averaged 18.2 points per game in the NBA, but his free throw percentage was only .612.
(3) Bill Sharman (Porterville High School, Porterville, California) in 1959-1960 averaged 19.3 points per game in the NBA, but his free throw shooting percentage was .866.
(4) Cliff Hagen (Owensboro High School, Owensboro, Kentucky) in 1959-1960 averagd 24.8 points per game in the NBA, but his free throw shooting percentage was .803.
Additional facts
(1) As of 1973, the all time NCAA season free throw percentage record was held by Jim Sutton, a native of South Dakota State in the 1957 season.
(2) Wilt Chamberlain, the greatest NBA player, holds records for the most free throws missed in one game, one season, and in a playoff game.
What is the explanation?
Answer to the Puzzle.
Free throw shooting is a skill that is influenced by practice. The ecological explanation of the difference betwee the players is based on the variable of rural vs. urban. The players of rural background (Sharman and Hagen) develop their skills in an environment where the number of basketball hoops per youth-player was nearly one to one. Every rural home and/or barn seems to have a hoop attached. The urban players' (Chamberlain and Russel) ratio of hoops per youth-player was on the other hand much less than one to one. Urban youth play basketball in school yards, YMCAs and recreation centers. Due to the number of youth wanting to play, time is usually not allotted for free throw shooting. On the other hand, in the rural setting, many afternoons are spent in one-person per hoop shooting free throws.
This explanation is based on the concept of over-manned vs. under-manned settings. (See Barker, R.G. and Gump, P.B. eds. Big School, Small School. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1964.) Also due to the difference between rural and urban on this variable, different rules of play develop, i.e. "make it-take it" or "winner's ball". Again under the "winner's ball" rule, no time is devoted to free throw practice, because the intent of the rule is to move the game along in an overmanned setting.
University campuses have their own complex ecosystems. But instead of streams and meadows filled with herbivores and carnivores, the system is composed of students, faculty, curriculums, architecture and campus rituals.
Today, a growing number of professionals are viewing their campuses as ecosystems. The campus ecologists believe major problems facing higher education-issues like racism, sexism and the formation of values-should be addressed through an ecological approach. Thus, a new science, "campus ecology," has emerged.
In June, more than 80 administrators, faculty and staff from public and private colleges across the nation gathered for a conference at Pingree Park. The Second Annual Symposium on Campus Ecology, hosted by CSU and the University of Wyoming, focused on student development.
The campus ecologists take their study of the academic enviornment seriously. And they are not content with only making observations. At Pingree Park their focus was on changing campus environments to facilitate student development.
Among the conferees was CSU's Student Affairs Vice President Jim Banning, a pioneer, popular speaker and broadly published author in the field of campus ecology. The publisher of a quarterly national newsletter, The Campus Ecologist, Banning describes campus ecology as "a mindset, a perspective for me for student affairs."
Campus ecology, he pointed out, evolved when campus observers realized many problems do not lie in the individual students, but in the student's environment instead.
"We should look at the environment first, not last," Banning stressed. Banning, who surveys campuses like a park ranger in the wilderness, cited the existence of nonverbal messages in physical settings. Architecture, Banning said, often conflicts with institutional goals.
On a campus such as CSU, one difficulty that can send out an adverse signal is the location of the admissions office. If it is practically hidden in the center of campus, potential students are given the nonverbal message: "Go away. We don't want you."
Also, at some universities inaccessible buildings, structural hazards and unmarked ramps nonverbally announce a hostile environment for handicapped students.
Banning stressed the importance of seeking out the nonverbal messages of a campus' physical design.
"As student personnel professionals we have to be interested in that because we can send valuable messages," he said.
Banning also believes some negative student behaviors can be positively influenced through changes in the physical environment.
Banning cited alterations to the CSU College Days setting to avert the characteristic disturbances of the annual celebration. Changes in the physical setting, like the relocation of beer kegs, the bandstand and port-ajohns, favorably altered the outcome of the event.
The successful change happened, Banning said, because student input was included on the decision-making. The inclusion of students at the planning stage is an important ethical consideration, Banning emphasized.
Ethics became a consideration throughout the conference as a major question arose: How much control of the campus environment is rightfully ours?
"We are the change agents on campus. We need to take that role," said Linda Kuk, dean of students at Marquette University.
Kuk was among the presenters who spelled out the needs to address the current sexism in higher education. She and colleagues Linda Forrest, Michigan State University, and Kathy Hotelling, Southern Illinois University, cited studies showing women still suffer marked disadvantages in student, faculty and administrative capacities.
"Equal access is not the solution," said Forrest, who added that institutions still center around male values despite the large number of women students. Minority students face similar problems.
Frank Harrell, a CSU psychologist, cited studies showing black students at black colleges do far better than black students at predominantly white institutions.
Harrell, and Robbie Nayman, a staff psychologist at Arizona State University, said minority students confront a subtle form of institutional racism-a nonverbal message that success requires total assimilation of white male values.
A nationwide high dropout rate among minority students demonstrates that higher educational institutions are not accomplishing desired results, Harrell and Nayman said. Remedying institutional racism will not be simple, however.
"When racism is nonverbal it's much harder to confront," Harrell pointed out.
Despite the conferees' consensus of calling for environmental changes, the issue of controlling changes surfaced during Lois Huebner's presentation, "The Ethics of Designing Environments."
Huebner, director of the counseling center at St. Louis University, cautioned against tampering with the campus environment without adequate foresight.
"We're used to thinking of ourselves as ethical and human," she said. "But we still need to think about what we're doing."
Huebner referred to the women's movement of the 1970s. It instigated women's programs, support systems, and in some cases, women's centers on campuses.
"But are women treated significantly better in the university today than they were 10 years ago?" she asked.
Perhaps, she suggestesd, the needs of women on campus have been compromised by well-intentioned efforts. The focus was taken off changing the system and placed on changing women to fit a system designed for men.
"We have to find a way to deal with unhappy people without co-opting them," Huebner said.
Harrell echoed her concern. "A guiding principle for a support service is that you do not do for people what they can do for themselves," he said.
Also, Harrell said, he often reminds black students that if they can survive the campus environment the experience will be beneficial in the real world. "It doesn't get any better after you leave here," he tells students.
In that discussion, Banning referred to conditions in a conventional ecological setting: "The species that survive are the ones that have had to adapt to the widest variety of conditions."
Therefore, Banning asked, "Are we messing with things we ought not mess with?"
Possibly, it was a week in the Colorado Rockies that contributed to the hesitancy of the campus ecologists to tamper with the natural order on their respective campuses.
But, as Jim Hurst, a University of Wyoming psychologist and one of the event's organizers, pointed out, the ecology of a campus is contrived, not natural.
Thus, Hurst concluded, "We have every right, perhaps an ethical obligation, to shape that environment."
-by Liam Rooney, office of university communications-Colorado State University. Comment. July 19, 1984. Vol. 15, No. 1
A Campus Ecology Task Force proposed by James Banning, Directorate Body member, class of '83 (VP for Student Affairs, Colorado State University), James Hurst, past Commission VII Chair (VP for Academic Affairs, University of Wyoming), and Judith Jacobson, graduate student (University of Wyoming) is being sponsored by Commission VII for professionals interested in an ecological perspective of the campus. The sponsors invite you to participate, and hope to obtain ACPA Commission status as interest grows. The campus ecology perspective is unique, substantiated theoretically, documented by research, and represents a major paradigm for the profession.
This new task force will provide Commission VII members and others with the opportunity to develop knowledge and skills in environmental design. Objectives and proposed activities have been outlined to give scope and direction to this new group.
OBJECTIVES
1 ) To foster the sharing of assumptions, analogies, conventions, and exemplars (Catalano, 1979) common to the emergence of new theoretical paradigms in higher education.
2) To serve ACPA as it ventures to further substantiate the role of the student affairs in the educational enterprise.
3) To generate refined appreciation for the intentional design of campus environments that promote student development in the learning community.
4. To attend to these March 1982 Executive Committee Resolution components from an ecological perspective:
PROPOSED ACTIVITIES
Proposed activities would be contingent upon solicitation of ideas from Task Force members.
2} Develop a five year plan for Task Force/Commission projects.
3) Devise strategies intended to enhance the constellation of skills prerequisite to the deliberate design of environments.
4) Serve as a forum from which to address the dilemmas to subscribing to Campus Ecology as a management precept.
5) Coordinate projects among members throughout the year.
6) Perhaps to extablish a credit generating mini Ecology curriculum. Professionals could enroll in a correspondence program of study orchestrated by various campus ecologists. This exercise could engage learners in scholarly inquiry, and culminate at the annual conventions.
7) Host annual Campus Ecology Symposia. Evidenced by the resounding response to the first annual symposium pilot (summer 1983), professional development opportunities such as this are at a premium. Professionals reflective of ACPA geographical distribution investigated conceptual, implementation, research advances and dilemmas themes during the three day study. Educational symposia such as this could become the business of the Task Force.
8) Educator in Residence Model: Educators in Residence could conduct an incremental sequence of thematic sessions at any given convention. Delegates could elect to track the sequence if desired.
9) Host convention sessions targeted to professional from all orientations.The Task Force could insure and perpetuate the orderly and quality presentation of Campus Ecology as a relatively new perspective of student affairs.
10) Translate theoretical constructs of campus ecology and student development into meaningful intervention strategies.
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This material resides on an Indiana State University server and is maintained by
Will Barratt.
Please forward any problems and comments to him.