Expanding the freshman seminars program will help UC Davis "grow better as we grow bigger," said Vice Provost for Undergraduate Studies Patricia Turner.
That's why next year UC Davis is planning to greatly increase the number of small, sometimes quirky, classes it offers for first-year students. The recommendation was made clear at the Chancellor's Fall Conference on Under-graduate Education held last September. And now, UC Office of the President officials are encouraging all campuses to boost their programs.
At UC Davis, the hope is to almost triple the number of seminars currently offered.
The reasoning is simple: during the impending population explosion known as Tidal Wave II, UC wants to ensure "contact between freshmen and ladder faculty in a smaller setting than the lecture hall," Turner said.
Students over the years, too, have given high marks to the classes.
Two years ago Kristen Jordan took a educational issues seminar with associate professor Patricia Gandara.
"At such a large school it is easy for a freshman to get lost in the shuffle," said Jordan, a third-year sociology major. "Freshman seminars allow students to get to know other students and a professor."
Course proposals due March 15
Turner and the Teaching Resources Center are now recruiting faculty members to teach the courses in 2002-2003. In this year's 41 seminars - designed to match students and instructor interests - freshmen have explored topics such as "The California Mystery Novel," "Esperanto: A Common Language, " "Germanic Myth and Linguistic Wisdom in Tolkien's Fiction" and "Cancer in Animals and People."
Instructors are encouraged to submit next year's course proposals to the Teaching Resource Center by March 15, Turner said, but with the expansion of the seminar program, future deadlines will also be announced.
Freshman Seminars, which meet during the first eight weeks of the quarter, are now worth two units. The Academic Senate Committee on Courses, however, is considering making one-unit courses available.
The system-wide mandate may also open the door for a slight increase in the $1,500 research stipend UC Davis faculty members currently receive for teaching a seminar, Turner said. Faculty members may also apply for a mini-grant of up to $500 to help defray seminar costs.
Seminars help faculty members branch out
Pulmonary medicine professor Jerold Last said he'd encourage any of his UC Davis colleagues, but especially those in the professional schools, to give a freshman seminar a try.
"If we isolate ourselves with just teaching professional students and doing research, we miss a lot of what being a faculty member is all about," said Last, who has been teaching in the seminar program for seven years.
Far removed from his other courses in pharmacology and toxicology, in his winter quarter seminar Last extends his lifelong interest in California mystery novels to students. They read and evaluate the novels of popular authors such as Sue Grafton, Dashiell Hammett and Walter Mosley.
"I really enjoy reading books, but since entering college, I have not had as much time to do that anymore," said student Marcus Nicosia. "So this class offers me a chance to keep up on some fun reading."
Instilling student confidence
Undergraduates flocked to linguists Carlee Arnett's Tolkien course last fall, in which she introduced students to the alphabetic principles behind the dialects J.R.R. Tolkien's used in The Hobbit and Return of the King. Butthe assistant professor of German also taught some lessons neither she nor her students expected - like showing them how to read a syllabus, critically examine a novel and do library research.
"Some basic going-to-college facts were imparted," she said.
A good freshman seminar experience can inspire academic confidence in students, Jordan said.
"After spending a quarter in a setting where there were only about 15 students grouped around an oval table who were munching on snacks and being encouraged to discuss the topic at hand," she said, "it no longer entered my mind that what I had to say was of any less value that anybody else's opinion."
For more information about the freshman seminars, call the Teaching Resources Center at 752-6050.