FYE101-06

First-Year Seminar

The Experience of Meaning

Instructor:

Dr. Patrick Goold. Office: Blocker 222. Extension: x3375. E-mail: goold@vwc.edu. Homepage: http://facultystaff.vwc.edu/~pgoold/. Office hours: Monday and Wednesday 1-3 (other times by appointment.)

Catalog description:

Every section of FYE110 is designed to help students engage and succeed both academically and socially in Virginia Wesleyan’s liberal arts learning community. In the process of investigating an essential problem or question, students will develop foundational inquiry skills that emphasize critical thinking and independent learning. Through diverse co-curricular workshops, events, and activities, students will gain additional academic as well as personal resourcefulness.

FYE101 is an introduction to Liberal Arts Education and inquiry-based learning.

In addition to inviting students to gain an in-depth facility in a major field of interest, a liberal arts education emphasizes the pursuit of broad knowledge and intellectual and imaginative capacities that enable students to approach any challenging issue with analytical precision, creative vision, and ethical and civic responsibility. First-Year Seminar introduces students to the fundamentals of such critical inquiry by engaging them in the foundations of inquiry-based learning. Inquiry-based learning describes a range of activities that have in common the student’s central role as someone who actively takes charge of his or her learning, raising questions, challenging pre-packaged answers, seeking out necessary information, weighing different perspectives against one another, and making real choices about what to believe and what to do. An education founded on inquiry, then, is one that emphasizes learning processes rather than a set of answers. In First-Year Seminar, we will focus particularly on how to ask questions that matter.[1]

Every section of FYE110 has the following common course objectives:

1) Students will learn to frame productive questions in response to complex issues, questions that lead to more effective critical analysis and inquiry.

2) Students will learn how different disciplinary perspectives raise different kinds of questions and will be able to relate those different kinds of questions to Virginia Wesleyan’s general studies frames of reference categories as well as to the purpose of a liberal arts education.

3) Students will learn to take responsibility for their own learning, through active learning projects, through skills workshops and information about academic support services, and through participation in community engagement events that invite them to connect their learning inside and outside of the classroom.

Every section of FYE110 has a course topic and central question:

Every section has a topic and at least one central, concrete, complex problem or question that lends itself to scholarly analysis. The topic of this section is the need for meaning in our lives, for seeing our lives as meaningful. The central question is “What meaning can we find in our scientifically and culturally disenchanted world?”

FYE110 is a graduation requirement:

Completion of First-Year Seminar with a passing grade is a graduation requirement for all students entering with fewer than 24 college credit hours. Students who fail First-Year Seminar in the fall will be required to enroll in a special section the subsequent spring. However, because of limited seating, students who do not fail will not be permitted to re-enroll in a spring section simply to try for a higher grade.

Dates to know:

August 28 (Th) 11:00 a.m., Honor Convocation

September 4: Equalogy programming (6:30)

[Oct 27-31, Nov 3-7 Advising Weeks: freshmen meet with advisors]

CEC workshop dates to be determined

Co-curricular series on Election 2008:

September 18 “U.S. Foreign Policy and Middle East Politics: What’s at Stake?”

October 2 “Three Perspectives on the Environment: What’s at Stake?”

October 16 “Race, Ethnicity, and Immigration: What’s at Stake?”

October 30 “The Economy, Taxes, and Income Distribution: What’s at Stake?”

November 13: Final Examination.

Frontloading FYE classes and early completion:

Our class will meet Tuesdays and Thursdays for the first three weeks and then end the course three weeks early. This means that we will meet Aug 26 and 28, Sept 2 and 4, Sept 9 and 11, then only on Tuesdays until the final examination on Thursday, November 13. Note that the Honor Convocation on August 28 and the Equalogy play on September 4 are required class meetings. I also encourage you to attend the four sessions of the co-currricular series on the 2008 elections.

Course Requirements

Attendance.

Participation.

Learning Journal

One-page record of your sense of the reading, mainly a summary of its main points, but you may also include assessment, critique and questions as well. One is due for each reading assignment (twelve in all). It is due on the day we discuss the corresponding reading. Late journal entries will not receive credit.

Personal Essay

A five to ten-page personal essay, plans and drafts to be submitted at various times during the session. Topics are to be drawn from Scruton’s book and must be approved by the instructor.

Community Engagement Contract:

The 10-event CEC includes the submission of 100-word reflective responses for each event. The CEC component is worth 20% of the final grade. Your CEC grade is determined by the percentage of appropriately engaged and detailed responses submitted. You begin with 100 points and if you do the weekly assignment, you retain 100 points. If you fail to do the assignment, you lose 10 points. Everyone is required to attend the Honor Convocation (August 28) and the Equalogy program (Sept. 4). Finally, you must include within your contract events representing three categories (with at most three from category 3): 1) intellectual and cultural events, 2) skills workshops and resource fairs, and 3) campus life activities.

Final Examination:

A 50-minute Final Exam worth 10% of the final grade will be given on Thursday, November 13. It will consist of a single question and you will be asked to use your fifty minutes to develop a focused, detailed response. The question is given below:

What critical questions do you think are most important to the study of our experience of meaning, and of the lack of meaning, in our lives? Why are these questions important?

Grading:

Final grades will be calculated using the following weights: 20% for class participation (including attendance); 20% for the Community Engagement Contract; 25% for the personal essay; 25% for the learning journal; 10% for the final examination.

Student workload expectations: As with all college classes, you are expected to spend 2-3 hours’ work outside of class for every credit hour (so, 4-6 hours per week on behalf of FYS).

First Year Experience website: http://www.vwc.edu/academics/programs/fye/index.php

Required Texts

Roger Scruton.

Philosophy: Principles and Problems.

Continuum, 1996.

ISBN-13: 978-0826476234

Day-by-day

Tuesday	Thursday
August 26 Introduction	August 28 Honors Convocation
Sept 2 Scruton, Chapter 1	4 Equalogy play 6:30PM Hofheimer Theater
9 Scruton, Chapter 2	11 Scruton, Chapter 3
16 Scruton, Chapter 4	18 “U.S. Foreign Policy and Middle East Politics: What’s at Stake?”
23 Scruton, Chapter 5	25
30 Scruton, Chapter 6	October 2 “Three Perspectives on the Environment: What’s at Stake?”
7 Scruton, Chapter 7	9 Fall Break
14 Scruton, Chapter 8	16 “Race, Ethnicity, and Immigration: What’s at Stake?”
21 Scruton, Chapter 9	23
28 Scruton, Chapter 10	30 “The Economy, Taxes, and Income Distribution: What’s at Stake?”
November 4 Scruton, Chapter 11	6
11 Scruton, Chapter 12	13 Final Examination (FYE ends here)
18	20
25	27 Thanksgiving Break
December 2	4 Last day of classes
Exam Section 1 (9:30 TTh): December 9 at 8am Section 2 (12noon TTh): December 9 at 11:30am

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[1] Dr. Lisa Carstens, Associate Dean for Inquiry-Guided Learning, in an e-mail to seminar directors.