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Welcome Parents of the Class of 2012! And welcome to Fresh@News, Villanova's e-mail newsletter
for parents and friends of the class of 2012. Over the year we will be sending
you occasional postings about activities at Villanova University that relate
the class of 2012. Instructions on how to unsubscribe from this service are
given at the end of this posting. Please feel free to open as many
subscriptions as you please, by sending an email to Fresh@News.Villanova.Edu. The
message should have just two words: subscribe fresh Interview with Dr. John Doody, Robert M. Birmingham Chair and Director of
the Villanova Center for Liberal Education, Associate Dean for First Year
Studies, and Professor of Philosophy Fresh@News. Our first year students have now
had almost two weeks of classes. What are some of the issues and questions that
they face in these first few weeks? Dr. John Doody. It was, for many of them,
a lot different from what they experienced in high school. When I asked my
class what they were most surprised by they spoke of having so much unorganized
free time with less supervision than they were used to. Their instructors
expect them to be much more organized and responsible about getting their own
work done. I would really stress the issue of learning time management skills
in the first semester. Fresh@News. How do they respond? JD. The vast majority do extremely well.
They are, after all, bright, eager, and well-prepared and it shows. They have
overcome the first week of "homesickness" and settled in quite well.
However, there is now a second period of adjustment. The biggest issue, again,
- and we stress this in New Student Orientation - is time management. We did a
survey recently where we asked freshmen after their first year whether the
workload was what they expected. Interestingly a lot of students told us that
the workload at Villanova was lighter than they expected. Then we asked,
"What about your grades, were they higher or lower than you
expected?" Many of the same students said that their grades were lower
than they expected. Sooner or later they figure out that there is a
relationship between these two answers, and that the workload only seems
lighter because no one is telling them what to do on a day-to-day basis. Fresh@News. Tell us a bit about the courses
that the students are taking? Dr. John A. Doody. There is enormous
variation in what our students take in their first year. Almost everyone takes
math, and I understand you'll also have an interview with Doug Norton, the head
of our Math department. The other thing that they all have in common is what we
call the Augustine and Culture Villanova Seminar. Fresh@News. Since you are the director of
that program, can you tell us a bit about it? JD. This is one of our signature programs at Villanova. It has been in place
for 17 years and we are extremely proud of it. The idea is that every first
year student is enrolled in a two semester program called the Augustine and
Culture Villanova Seminars. One of the two courses is called Traditions in
Conversation, the other is called Modernity and its Discontents. About 90
percent of our first year students take Traditions in Conversation in the first
semester, then follow up with the Modernity seminar. The others take them in
reverse order. Fresh@News. So what does an ACS Seminar look
like? How would I tell it apart from another course? JD. If you walked into the room, here is
what you would see. Instead of a professor standing at the front of a big
classroom giving a lecture, you would see 16 students sitting at a seminar
table. Typically they would have one of the most important and central texts of
the western intellectual tradition open in front of them. At this time of the
year that might be Plato, Homer, or the Bible - and they'll be having a lively
discussion about what that text really means. In a few weeks they’ll be
reading St. Augustine. The idea behind the seminar is that the professor,
instead of lecturing, is driving the discussion forward with probing questions,
and maybe calling on one of the shyer students to make a contribution. Fresh@News. Do the seminars all have the same
theme? JD. We offer over 100 sections of this
course a semester. Typically the readings are pretty similar from section to
section, and all of them include something from St. Augustine, often, his
highly regarded Confessions (which is at least in part his autobiography), readings
from the Bible and a Shakespearean play. But each instructor teaches her/his
course with a particular theme in mind. For example, I was just talking to one
of our instructors whose course is focused on friendship. Friendship is a big
topic of interest for college freshmen and this instructor tries to get them to
apply the discussions of friendship that they read in the ancient world to what
is going on in their lives today. Fresh@News. What are some of the skills that
the ACS Seminar tries to emphasize? JD. We've already mentioned helping
students hone their skills in oral presentation, and an equally important
emphasis is on writing. Typically the students do more than 30 pages of writing
in a semester, and that also includes a lot of rewriting. And, of course, we
also throw some very difficult primary source texts at them, which really
enables them to sharpen their ability to read critically. Finally, we do a lot
of work with writing portfolios, so students start to learn to be more
self-critical of their own strengths and weakness. Fresh@News. And why do they call it the
Augustine and Culture Seminar? JD. The most obvious reason is that
all of the students will read the work of St. Augustine, which, as I said, is
often his Confessions. In it, Augustine talks about the struggles he
faced when he was a college-aged student, so our students find a lot there to
identify with. Of course, we also stress the emphasis of Augustine on
western culture generally, and as the year goes along they understand his
impact on religion, philosophy, political science, and many other fields.
But finally, we don’t just want students to learn about Augustine, we
want them to learn to be like him, in certain ways, especially his passionate
dedication to the search for truth, his powerful understanding of the role of
love in human life, and his focus on community. In other words, it is all
about Villanova’s Latin motto veritas, unitas, caritas (truth,
unity, love). Fresh@News. I've been hearing about learning
communities. What is that about? JD. For us, learning does not stop when a
student leaves class at the end of the hour. We want students to struggle with
these ideas not just in class but also while they are at lunch, or in
discussions in the residence hall that go late into the night. One way we have
found to enhance that experience is to house students with the classmates from
their ACS section. We call this arrangement - where students live with their
ACS classmates – the Villanova Experience. Parents may have heard about
our premier learning communities last spring, such as the Leadership Program,
Citizens for a Diverse World, the Wellness Experience, and Politics of Freedom.
But we also have many other learning community programs, including programs for
our commuting students. Most first year students have discovered by now that
all of the other students in their ACS Seminar live in the same or in a nearby
building. Often the other students in their floor will have the same ACS
professor even if they are in a different section. All of this stimulates a lot
of discussion and interaction in the halls. Fresh@News: What should parents do to support
the work in the ACS Seminar? JD. I would suggest that parents probe a
little deeper than the usual, "How are your classes going?" They
might ask their sons or daughters what books they are reading in their ACS
class and specifically ask about the ideas and themes they are talking about in
their classes. Parents might also ask the students to share some of their
written work. I actually suggested to my ACS class that they send their first
paper they wrote for me back home and share it with their parents. These
students are doing some very fascinating work, and I think many of our parents
would really be interested to hear some of the details. Fresh@News. And how about some general advice
for parents, to support academic work? JD. If there is one thing I would like to
emphasize it is that parents should always focus on learning, not on grades. I
think parents should ask students what they are finding new and exciting in
their courses, what new ideas they are dealing with, and what books and
articles they are reading. I would avoid a focus on tests and grades. The
students had so much emphasis on that in high school, now we need to get them
to focus on the excitement of learning. |