First-year students choose among nearly two dozen new seminars offered just for them

The seminars, a component of the Initiatives for Academic Enrichment, are designed to foster interaction between faculty and students and to provide students the chance to gain confidence in the classroom, according to the Office of the Dean of the College.

by Kristen Cole

Brown introduced a slate of small seminars for freshmen this year to give incoming students an immediate opportunity for an intimate learning experience, and to avoid the danger that they will be swallowed up by large courses.

Limited to 20 students each, the nearly two dozen seminars are designed to foster interaction between faculty and students and to provide students the chance to gain confidence in the classroom, according to the Office of the Dean of the College.

“Beginnings are very important,” said Armando Bengochea, associate dean for freshman studies. “The extent to which students can feel grounded and feel like they can develop their own intellectual voice, the more stable we hope their year will be.”

The seminars are part of President Simmons’ Initiatives for Academic Enrichment and the effort to revitalize and expand Brown’s learning environment. Students and faculty who participate will be asked for feedback on the seminars at the end of the year, said Bengochea.

Although small seminar courses are already offered at Brown, upperclassmen tend to fill them, say faculty members. Seminars are often upper-level courses and, because they are small, selection is frequently limited to students who will soon graduate and not have another chance to enroll.

Alternately, first-year students sometimes veer toward registering for introductory-level courses that may draw a few hundred students, according to Phil Brown, sociology professor.

“It’s a big transition to college,” said Brown, who will teach a first-year seminar on environment and society in the fall. “Two hundred to 300 people in a class for a freshman is not a great introduction.”

The new seminars include such offerings as a biology course about the life of birds, a Classics course on refugees and asylum-seekers in ancient Greece, and an English course titled “The Problems of Women’s Writing.”

One sociology seminar asks “Who Am I?” and looks at the concept of self in contemporary society, while another examines “The Nature of Community” and “evaluates diverse definitions of the nature of ‘community.’”

By design, the seminars will require a lot of discussion and will seek out the students’ opinions.

Incoming students registered for the first-year seminars in early August, and were assigned by lottery.

Limiting enrollment in the seminars to first-year students provides a comfort level for students as an arena that is “not one in which seniors are likely to dominate,” said Kerry Smith, associate professor of history, who will teach a seminar in the spring.

“The playing field is a little more level,” he said.