ABSTRACT
A 2005 study demonstrated that college students’ level of participative engagement predicted their educational outcomes, including both midterm and final examination grades. Additionally, research has shown that a student’s friends’ academic performance predicts his or her own academic performance. Knowing students often make friends with their fellow students, this means that student achievement is contagious. If students’ cognitive engagement predicts achievement, perhaps students’ engagement is what is contagious. The creation of the Intellectual Giant Model (IGM) was motivated by three factors – the author's inability as a college undergraduate to remain engaged in most academic classrooms, an unlikely teacher facilitating a remarkably engaging classroom, and a peer sharing an inspirational term of endearment about engaged cadets. The name Intellectual Giant was inspired by stories several cadets told the author about a West Point teacher of physics several years ago.
