Word: seminars
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...adviser steered Jusiewicz into a forensic science "learning community" of 11 students, all enrolled together in a freshman seminar and in chemistry and criminal-justice classes that included students from outside the group. Their seminar was far cozier than either the chemistry class of 50 students or the criminal-justice course (more than 30). It fostered new friendships, honed their study skills and brought in working professionals to familiarize them with the forensics field. It also served as a ready-made study group for the other two courses...
Students enrolled in small freshman seminars and learning communities return to Appalachian for their sophomore year at a higher rate than do their peers who don't partake in the program (90% vs. 84% for 1999's freshmen). So the school is expanding the program, which is offered on a first-come, first-served basis. More than 50% of the incoming class will take part in freshman seminars this year, up from about 40% last year. And students in each freshman seminar are enrolled together in at least one other course to form a learning community...
...through the cracks at William Jewell College. That's because this 1,400-student Baptist liberal-arts school in Liberty, Mo., has caulked up every crevice where a newcomer might stumble. Jewell's mentor program reaches out to incoming students even before they pack their bags. Its introductory freshmen seminar has all the first-year students highlighting their copies of St. Augustine's Confessions on the same night. And the college assigns all newcomers as many as five contacts--two faculty members and three students--to check on their adjustment...
Many of the first-year students' first exploration of different worldviews will come in the required freshman seminar called The Responsible Self. "It sounds like a course in shampooing your hair," groans junior Andy Johnson, who nevertheless feels the course "taught me a lot about myself...
...There are some upsides to this new approach. Who, for example, wants to sit in a seminar brimming only with trombone playing, letter wearing football players who chaired their student governments? What's more, looking beyond renaissance students, who tend to be children of privilege, has allowed admissions officers at elite schools to inject a measure of meritocracy into a process that, at an earlier point in history, largely consisted of the guidance counselor at Andover telling Harvard University which students it should admit. The downside, in Toor's view, is that with no agreed upon standard of admission...