For some students the last two years of college are often a scramble to complete the requirements for a major - or two. Others must come to terms with the reality of impending graduation. Many students begin searching for an identity in the career world. Rarely, though, are these scrambling students concerned about making the most of their final years immersed in the University's culture. Now, third- and fourth-year students have the opportunity to slow down and learn in the kind of environment Jefferson envisioned when he founded the University.
The College has piloted a new series of courses set to debut next semester, called Pavilion Seminars, which will facilitate a new kind of learning for many qualified students. For this spring, the program consists of 10 different courses led by renowned professors from various disciplines, on "topics of real significance, big broad important topics ... that will be both rigorous and involve innovative pedagogy," said Sophia Rosenfeld, director of the program and associate professor of history.
Rosenfeld said the series developed from an idea of Maurie McInnis, associate dean for undergraduate academic programs in the College, and responds to the question: Why isn't there a special liberal arts seminar for students in their final years at the University?
Rosenfeld said this program is supposed to "counter the idea that most of your time in college is spent in giant lecture halls of 300 people." The classes, each limited to 15 people, will be held in Lawn pavilions, and "is going back to the Jeffersonian idea" of student-faculty interaction centered around the Academical Village.
Some of the courses being offered include "Geometry and Imagination," "China in Your Lifetime," "Free Speech," "The Importance of Play," and "Nutrition in a Changing World."
"These are not part of a standard palette of options as a student," Rosenfeld said. "None belong to any one discipline, nor are they intended to attract students from one discipline. The idea is that they will all come together."
Interested students must complete an application asking for their major, year and grade point average, as well as their reason for wanting to take the class, she said.
This is intended "to deliberately make sure not to take students from all one major," and to ensure students have a real interest in the course they are applying to, Rosenfeld said.
A committee in the dean's office chose professors "that had big topics," creating a set of seminars which are "diverse and representative."
"We have environmental science, humanities, math and sciences [represented]," Rosenfeld said. "Most [professors] are teaching something they've never taught before."
Brantly Womack, a politics professor who recently received the China government's friendship award, will teach the "China in Your Lifetime" seminar. Womack said one of the topics the course will address is "how China is likely to develop from now until 2050, when a 20-year-old student will be thinking of retirement."
Students will examine difficulties China is facing now, and what the consequences of China's development will be to the rest of the world, Womack said.
"I hope there will be students who have a background in various departments who have something to bring to the seminar," he said. "It's an opportunity for students to seriously think about how the world is likely to change."
The course "Spatial Stories," instructed by Ricardo Padron, associate Spanish professor and director of undergraduate studies for the department, will be "exploring ways in which the modern narrative creates a sense of place and a sense of space," he said. "Narratives also has an important role to play in carving out places of the world and making them meaningful to us as places."
Padron said students will read novels from the 19th and 20th centuries, primarily from English and Spanish language traditions. "It should be something of a grand tour through a very diverse collection of novels," he said.
Martien Halvorson-Taylor, assistant professor of religious studies, is offering a course titled "The Biblical Job," which will examine ways in which writers, artists, poets and playwrights interpret the Bible.
Halvorson-Taylor said the course is not a typical religious studies course because it is "dealing with secular novels" and interpretations that come from a variety of art forms in addition to the biblical text.
"I'm excited to have students in fields very different from my own," Halvorson-Taylor said, echoing many of the professors' sentiments regarding the series.
Rosenfeld will also be teaching a course herself. Her seminar, "Free Speech," will "combine history and political theory, discussions of current events and public policy today, and look very closely at what we mean when we talk about freedom of expression and censorship," she said.
These are courses of the sort one might find at a smaller, more liberal arts-focused college, Rosenfeld said.
"The real hope is that sometime in college every student takes a class that turns out to be fundamental in some way to his [or] her intellectual development," she said. "We hope these classes will provide a lasting impact on some students"
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