| University College crosses boundaries BY MATT GETTY How do you create a common intellectual experience for 138 students taking eight different seminars on everything from western legal tradition to molecular biology? For acting AU president Neil Kerwin, the answer recently came in one word—“Shakespeare.” For those students themselves, however, the answer seems to have come in two—“University College.” All 138 students in AU’s new freshmen academic program linking intellectual challenge, campus life, and the local community recently gathered for a University College take on Shakespeare’s Othello in a symposium moderated by Kerwin and paneled by professors from four of AU’s six school’s and colleges. The three-hour discussion in the Cyrus and Myrtle Katzen Arts Center’s Abramson Family Recital Hall turned the Bard into a kaleidoscope. Throughout the evening, students peered inside a recent theatre experience to consider how Othello reflects topics as varied as cognitive science, the danger of inaccurate news, and the 1965 Black Power movement. “We wanted some way to bring all the University College sections together for a common intellectual experience that would somehow bind them,” said CAS professor Caleen Jennings, who teaches the program’s Principles, Plays, and Performances seminar. Though Kerwin supported her intent, he admitted, “My first reaction was that no such experience exists. Then Professor Jennings said one word to me—‘Shakespeare’—and I thought, this might be a possibility.” In fact, when Jennings submitted her proposal for the Othello viewing and conference, Kerwin agreed not only to moderate the panel but also to provide university funding for the 138 students to see the play at the Shakespeare Theatre in late October. In the week that followed the play, each University College seminar dealt separately with topics raised by the performance. Then they gathered to explore how Othello’s implications on race, history, theatre production, science, communications, politics, and philosophy interacted. Jennings dissected directorial choices, SPA professor David Fagelson explored how Othello’s dramatic arc played out Max Weber’s theories of authority, and SIS professor Gary Weaver turned the play into a history lesson on the emergence of a black American identity. SOC professor John Douglas, who teaches the program’s visual literacy seminar, detailed the production’s visual cues, while his SOC colleague Joseph Campbell compared the reporting inaccuracies surrounding Hurricane Katrina to Iago’s lies and deceit throughout Othello. Even neuroscience found its way into the conversation as CAS professor Albert Cheh, who teaches the program’s Molecular World seminar helped explain why the play’s characters are so bent on self-destructive revenge. Thoughts of retribution and punishment, he said, stimulate the striatum section of the brain, a key pleasure center, and “so do we all have the seeds of Iago in ourselves.” Following the panel’s presentations, students divided into small groups to discuss these ideas with students from other University College seminars. The result was what Jennings describes as “intellectual cross-fertilization.” As her students mixed with Fagelson’s, for example, talk of the production’s casting choices led to debates on race, gender, and power. “This is general education in a nutshell,” said Campbell on the evening’s discussions. “General education programs are supposed to expose students to multiple ways of approaching a subject. That’s what this night [was] all about. That’s what University College is all about.” Like the symposium, the University College program itself aims to help ideas transcend the classroom. Beyond the recent trip to the Shakespeare Theatre, for instance, University College students have connected in-class lessons with Library of Congress research trips, embassy visits, museum and national monument tours, and local community service projects. “We like to call it AP D.C.,” said University College student Nicole Calderon, “because you don’t just learn in the classroom but you get this great ‘advanced placement’ education about the city itself.” Additionally, because the 18 students from each University College seminar live in cohorts in the freshman dorms along with an upperclass student mentor, learning has flowed from classroom to campus. The Othello symposium may have been the first event to unite all of the seminars, but its Thursday evening 7:00 to 10:00 p.m. time-slot has been cleared on all of the University College students’ academic schedules to foster informal conversations melding social and academic life. “We talk about it; whether we want to or not, we talk about it,” said University College student Laraine Weschler on how class discussions become dorm conversations. “It’s just a part of our life.” According to acting dean of academic affairs Haig Mardirosian, who oversees the program, those conversations have even begun to expand beyond University College. “Some students recently told me how they would get together in their dorm lounge to discuss readings for their class,” he explained. “The first time other students would come by and say, ‘What are you doing?’ almost shocked that they’d be doing school work in the lounge. The next time they saw them they asked ‘What are you reading?’ and the next time they asked, ‘What are you reading about?’ and then joined the conversation. So it’s already starting to spill over and engage students who aren’t even connected to the program.” As students huddled together in the Abramson Family Recital Hall late into the evening, mingling talk of favorite actors and revenge fantasies with analysis of Shakespeare and cultural relativity, Mardirosian, who was on hand to open and close the symposium, had the chance to observe that in action. “It’s what I like to call ‘serendipitous learning’—where learning just happens. It’s facilitated, not directed,” he explained. “And that’s why I think the program’s been tremendously successful. I’d been skeptical going in, but now my worries come from questions raised by the program’s success. Now I’m wondering, how can we broaden it? How can we do this for all first year students?” Current University College students think Mardirosian’s asking the right questions. As she left the recent Shakespeare symposium, freshman Jill Knapp summed up the value of the program’s unique introduction to college life in eight simple words: “I can’t imagine doing it any other way.” |
