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Engaging Today's Students with the Liberal Arts |
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First Year Reunion and Sophomore ESCape Ripon College |
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Ripon College's new curriculum is known by the acronym ESC-Explore, Select, Connect. The exploration stage involves coursework in the natural sciences, behavioral and social sciences, humanities, fine arts, and global and cultural studies. In addition to this coursework, all first year students must sign up for a First Year Seminar (FYS) which brings together at least two different disciplines on a shared topic (the courses that share a particular topic are known as a cluster). We discovered that first year students, following a very intensive first semester, may feel disconnected the second semester. Thus, we proposed a FY reunion which brought together the clusters once again. The First Year Reunion brought together all of the students from the first year studies classes to participate in a lunch, discuss the liberal arts, and listen to a national speaker. In addition, we wanted to ensure that first year students did not have all of the attention while the sophomores struggled in their transitional year. The selection stage of our curriculum involves proposing a program of study, which brings us to the second half of the grant, a Sophomore ESCape (so named from the ESC curriculum mentioned above). The Sophomore ESCape provided an opportunity for sophomores to escape from campus for much of a Friday and learn about the liberal arts while engaging practical transitional issues for sophomores, in particular how to secure internships, what graduate study means in various fields, and how to be a strong leader in campus organizations. We learned a lot from the experiences of these two events. We did not feel the FYR was effective; it delivered the liberal arts too forcibly. Students were much more excited to get together with their classmates than listen to the speaker. While it helped to have FYS faculty present, most of them wanted to take the time to catch up with their students instead of addressing questions concerning the liberal arts. In many ways, the event overplayed its purpose. Perhaps if we had just allowed the faculty and students to get together in their original clusters for lunch, it would have accomplished the same purpose. But making it an "event" for first years did not work to our advantage. The Sophomore ESCape was much more successful. The messages of a liberal arts education were reinforced, but not the focus of the event. We repeated the Sophomore ESCape for a second year, and it was even better attended and structured. We learned a lot about event planning, logistics, and what students are motivated to do, and we can share some of those. However, the most important issue learned was that the liberal arts needs to be dynamic, interactive, and so fully immersed in the event that students don't even realize how much they learn about the liberal arts until the event is over and they have reflected on the experience. Dean Pape, Director of Communicating Plus, Coordinator of First Year Studies, and Assistant Professor of Communication
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Return to: Engagement Project |
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