Summer 2003
Columbian College Challenges Incoming Freshmen
Dean’s Seminars Designed to Engage New Students
in Learning, Area Resources
By Greg
Licamele
Incoming freshmen in the Columbian College of Arts and Sciences (CCAS)
will have new opportunities to enroll in small, innovative, and content-specific
Dean’s Seminars taught by senior faculty members. These seminars
will offer freshmen the unique experience of close, focused involvement
with accomplished faculty from the start of their time at GW.
Through the fall and spring, 22 CCAS departments will offer 51 courses
designed to engage and challenge new students. These classes will count
toward CCAS general curriculum requirements.
William Frawley, CCAS dean, likens the goal of the seminar program to
the old business axiom, “You never get a second chance to make
a first impression.”
“With this important first-year program, we’re trying to show
students, faculty, and the whole GW community that we take freshmen
seriously and we expect them to take us seriously in return,” says
Frawley. “GW is a place of sustained inquiry and is committed to
ideas and to building the community that supports ideas.”
Dean’s Seminars were initiated in very modest form at GW four years
ago; they had a more recent counterpart in the Hewlett Foundation courses
in the past academic year, which involved inquiry-based learning and
connections to the Washington area. Now, with major investment from
the CCAS dean’s office and strong commitment from faculty for small
courses based on their intellectual and research interests, more than
1,000 seats will be open for CCAS freshmen.
“It’s a melding of two initiatives,” says Nina Mikhalevsky,
assistant dean for academic programs and planning. “Dean’s
Seminars and the Hewlett courses had been very successful, so the new
seminar program is a natural extension and expansion of small and challenging
classes for first-year students taught by highly engaged and experienced
faculty.”
The Dean’s Seminars, denoted as 800-level courses, include: “The
Buddhist Art of Asia,” “The Birth and Death of Mountain Ranges,”
“Abraham Lincoln: The Man and The Legend,” “War, Morality,
and Conscience,” “Astrobiology: Prospects for Life in the
Universe,” “Puritans, Republicans, and Free Love,” “Birth
to Earth: Human Development from Infancy to Old Age,” and “Games:
An Introduction to Mathematical Reasoning.”
Building on the teaching and learning successes of the Hewlett Foundation
classes, some seminars will rely on Washington-area resources and problem-based
approaches to education: students will work directly with artifacts
at the Freer and Sackler Galleries of the Smithsonian Institution, meet
with US State Department officials, and travel to the nearby Appalachian
Mountains to explore the evolution of mountain ranges.
“As we strategized in CCAS to invest the freshman experience with
challenge and rigor, we asked ourselves: ‘How can we create an
undergraduate education that uses the GW mission and resources well
and reaches out to the sophisticated and talented freshmen we get?’
Interestingly, graduate school — with its research-teaching integration
and the immediate connection of faculty to students through intellectual
guidance — provided many of the answers,” Frawley says. “We
have taken the best of the graduate-school ethos and put it directly
into the undergraduate experience. Right from the start, we give freshmen
guidance and academic experience with results. We ask just one thing
in return from them: think with us.”
Michael Moses, associate dean for graduate studies, says many of the
Hewlett-based courses that are related to the current effort were on
subjects that faculty were currently researching. “By using the
best of the Hewlett effort, the Dean’s Seminar initiative sends
a message that the college is interested in quality undergraduate teaching
and it is investing resources and time,” Moses notes. Mikhalevsky
adds, “Faculty who were involved with Hewlett courses talk about
ideas for teaching — what works, what doesn’t work —
and what they want to do. They formed a community who in an actual,
deliberative way tried to figure out what constitutes undergraduate
excellence.”
Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs Donald R. Lehman views
the Dean’s Seminars as yet another foundation to building a comprehensive
and engaging undergraduate academic culture.
“It’s positive for the faculty, but it’s especially positive
for the students,” Lehman says. “When you put this in the
context of the University Writing Program (that will begin as a pilot
program this fall) or in the parallel context of the University Honors
Program, all of these are enhancements of the undergraduate academic
challenge. This is also a very nice continuation of the Hewlett courses.”
Frawley adds, “The Dean’s Seminars are a critical step to
the future: a major part of CCAS’s contribution to making GW a
place of ongoing excellence and academic commitment.”
Send feedback to: bygeorge@gwu.edu
