Learning Communities for First Year Students
The College of Arts and Letters is pleased to announce its competition to foster interdisciplinary learning for first-year students, and to enable students to realize the interpersonal nature of academic involvement and academic success. As the Harvard Assessment Seminars (1992) have revealed, “Nearly every student who describes strong academic performance can point to a specific activity that ties academic work closely with another person or group of people.” This competition, then, is designed to encourage faculty to work together to develop sets of associated courses that create a more integrated learning experience and allow groups of first-year students to engage one another outside the classroom. Learning communities are defined as a set of two or three courses that are taught in the same semester and enroll more or less the same group of students for each class. Such courses would have some shared foci, which might be historical, such as Renaissance or Post World War II; geographical, such as Latin America or Western Europe; or topical, such as the environment or gender and the body. We would particularly like to encourage faculty to connect courses across college boundaries, especially between the College of Arts and Letters and the College of Science. One might envision a learning community that includes Arts & Letters courses on the History of Science, Ethics, or Philosophy, and a 100-level course on Genetics or Chemistry. Linkages such as these could be fairly loose, based on two or three shared topics or a half dozen lectures that make reference to one another.
Learning communities should be developed to count toward a particular university or college requirement, e.g. university seminar, the literature requirement, the arts requirement, the language requirement, the history requirement, the social sciences requirement, the philosophy requirement, the theology requirement, or the natural science requirements. We ask that faculty develop courses that will be taught in the fall semester, so that the Advisors in the First-Year of Studies office can assure enrollments. Materials grants of $3,000 will be given to each faculty member working as part of a group of two or three. Courses developed with grants allocated in 2006/2007 should be offered in Fall 2007 or Fall 2008.
Dean Hugh Page (First Year of Studies) will help faculty members think through some of the logistical issues that will arise in designing learning communities. All regular faculty members are eligible to apply. Groups of two or three faculty members should develop detailed syllabi including reading lists, and a two-page proposal explaining how the courses are intellectually connected. The proposal should explain how the subject matter will be tailored for first-year students. Proposals should give evidence of consultation with Dean Hugh Page and address the questions of cross-departmental cooperation. Consistent with the Provost’s Challenge, priority will be given to learning communities that have as their connection some aspect central to Catholic identity. Learning Communities specifically tied to Catholicism should help reinforce our institutional identity while also supporting a welcome innovation in student learning. (Also see Course Development Grants to Enhance Notre Dame as a Catholic University; Undergraduate and Graduate Courses).