 |
|
L&S Discovery Courses Off to a Great Start
This reporter has struggled with morale lately. Recent survey results—such as the fact that our students report studying only an average of thirteen hours a week—had me railing like an old codger, “A liberal arts education is wasted on the young!” The students’ seeming disengagement (see related article) was in danger of triggering an equal disengagement on my part. It was in this mood that I began visiting the L&S Discovery Courses, now in their pilot year, a couple of weeks ago.
I thought I would be writing an article about how fabulous the Discovery Course teachers are—and believe me, they are fabulous. This should come as no surprise: their teaching excellence was the reason the Dean invited them to participate in the program. What I didn’t expect to find was an antidote to my growing morale problem, and a rebuttal to the story told by recent surveys.
The real story here turned out to be the students. Either all of our most engaged students somehow gravitated to the Discovery Courses, or outstanding teaching really is the answer to student disengagement, or the surveys are all wrong.
Take George Brimhall’s course, L&S 170AC, for example. It’s called “Crossroads of Earth Resources and Society.” He challenges each student to work alone or in groups to produce a project of real importance to them and to the planet. I attended class on the day when each student stood up and gave a two-minute summary of his or her project, and I was astonished at the range of ambitious, creative, meaningful ideas. These students clearly had every intention of saving the world. What I didn’t know was whether they also had the know-how.
I had my chance to find out when I attended Cal Day, where Brimhall’s students are required to present their projects. I spoke with a Physics major who had calculated the economic tipping point for transporting wind power from the Midwest to the coasts. His explanation of his poster and answers to all of my questions were so crisp and articulate that even I (with little background in physical science and none in economics) could follow his argument, and find it compelling. It turned out that each student I spoke with was equally well spoken and serious. Another student had gathered edible wild plants for her visitors to taste: she was advocating a new approach to what most of us consider weeds. Two young women had done a survey to determine how much Cal students know about recycling, and had made some proposals for improving early education about the environment. A Music major composed an original song about Native Americans called An Ode to Disappearing People. Each student brought his or her knowledge, skills, political convictions, and energies to bear to create a meaningful and important project.
 |
Equally impressive were Jose Luiz Passos’s students, in L&S 20B: New World Jealousy: Othello in the Americas. The day I visited his class he showed me the projects three of his student groups had created, and I witnessed the presentations of the last two groups. Each group was charged with creating a new version of Othello III.iii, in a time and place of their own choosing. Each group rewrote the dialogue of the scene, sketched costumes, designed a model set, chose music, and gave a presentation covering such topics as the characters’ motivations in their respective versions. One group set Othello in 1950’s United States: they substituted a pair of nylons for the handkerchief that the original Iago uses as “ocular proof.” Another group made Othello into a Japanese American whose parents were in an internment camp. A third group set the scene in Baton Rouge: Othello and Iago were post-traumatic-stress Vietnam vets in this version. When one woman in the group broke into a powerful a cappella version of Sly and the Family Stone’s “Everyday People” to demonstrate the soundtrack for their war protest scene, I witnessed powerful evidence of how an interdisciplinary team can engage the talents and background of every member.
Students in other Discovery Courses appear to be equally engaged. On the day I visited Saul Perlmutter’s highly interactive L&S C70W, Physics and Music, students entered into the fun of using electronic clickers to vote on the identity of the composer of various musical interludes (was it Bach or a computer?), while simultaneously learning key scientific concepts. Ann Swidler’s students, in L&S 150A, NGO’s, AIDS and Sub-Saharan Africa, were drawn so far into their research that some of them have no intention of stopping at the end of the semester: Irene Mungo, for instance, has received a Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship to spend eight weeks in Mombasa, Kenya, investigating the part community organizations play in educating and empowering people to combat the spread of HIV. And one of the students taking Jack Phillips’ class, L&S 160B: Effective Personal Ethics for the 21st Century, has proposed a new residential life theme program called “Living Ethics,” inspired by what she learned in Phillips’ Discovery Course.
In these few visits I glimpsed some of the things faculty members do to engage their students. I saw George Brimhall inspire them to choose significant, even original projects; I saw Jose Luiz Passos draw out the presenters with probing questions about their costume, music, setting, and character decisions. More importantly, however, I saw the students, time after time, rising to the challenges posed by their teachers.
The Gazette normally adheres to a fairly objective tone, but these students have inspired me to speak in my own voice in this article, and to offer a piece of advice to anyone who is feeling demoralized or discouraged about why we do what we do every day here in the College. Just take an hour out of your day and go sit in on a class. Choose a Distinguished Teaching Award recipient’s class (about half of the Discovery Courses are taught by DTA winners) or a class you have heard students praise, or a class of a colleague whom you look up to. If you don’t find it uplifting, you can cancel your free subscription to the Gazette.
-Alix Schwartz, Director of Academic Planning
Spring 2006
