Although the Dean of the Faculty bears the ultimate responsibility for recruiting and supervising the staff of Freshman Studies, the daily administration of the program rests with the Freshman Studies Director, who normally serves a two- or three-year term. All questions concerning the operation, administration, or implementation of the program are handled by the director.
The Freshman Studies Director oversees the annual selection of the reading lists, the preparation of class schedules, and the planning of a lecture series. The director also arranges and presides over luncheons and review sessions as well as any special symposia or workshops that may be required in a given year. Provisions for common exams and other jointly used materials are similarly left to the director. In practice, the director usually delegates some of these responsibilities to committees appointed from the teaching staff. A committee on works made up of instructors from both terms, for example, is usually charged with the task of developing a reading list and calendar for the subsequent year.
Faculty Development | Summer Symposia | Review Sessions, Luncheons, and Workshops | Supporting Materials | Selection of Works | Staffing the Course | Course Committees | Course Evaluations
Because Freshman Studies requires faculty members to teach outside the areas of their disciplinary expertise, instructors may desire and benefit from substantial assistance in understanding the works studied and in mastering ways of teaching them. To that end, a number of workshops and symposia are organized every year. These events are particularly useful for newer faculty with little or no experience in Freshman Studies. They provide opportunities for informal but thorough introduction to the goals and methods of the course, and they allow newer faculty to interact intellectually with colleagues outside their immediate spheres within the college.
The Director of Freshman Studies and the Dean of the Faculty organize summer symposia for instructors, focusing on particular texts or on intellectual and pedagogical issues that will figure importantly in the coming year. Scholars from inside and outside the college are invited to lead the symposia, whose topics will vary from year to year. Symposia are held at Bjorklunden or on campus, generally in early September prior to Welcome Week. Although attendance is voluntary, stipends are provided to participants and presenters.
Review Sessions, Luncheons, and Workshops
Review sessions, held sporadically on a by-need basis during the two terms, help to assimilate new works into the course by providing extra instruction to faculty. They also accustom new faculty to ways of teaching established works and disseminate useful information on those works.
During the course of the term, there are other opportunities for instructors to meet and discuss their work in the course. Luncheon meetings have always been popular, especially when scheduled for the hour immediately following a plenary lecture. The lunches give instructors a chance to discuss students’ responses to a work and to ask lecturers and other local experts about the works themselves. Attendance at these luncheons, though not mandatory, is strongly encouraged.
Additional workshops may also be scheduled, with most of them focusing on the substance of the works to be discussed in class. These workshops have been especially important when highly specialized works of art, music, math, or science are part of the syllabus.
As a large course in which much of the faculty and all incoming students participate, Freshman Studies has a major impact upon the Lawrence community. In many ways it helps to set institutional patterns and norms and thus creates circumstances that invite comparisons both within and without the program. With all of this in mind, the faculty in 1997 endorsed the following statement: “Although individual instructors must be free to approach works in their own way, the staff as a whole must also strive for greater consistency in expectations and standards.”
To encourage consistency and provide support to colleagues, the director makes available a number of sample handouts and paper topics. These samples can be found in a faculty sharedrive, to which all instructors should have access; useful materials are also distributed during the symposium and at luncheons and review sessions. These materials are also available from the Center for Teaching and Learning or CTL, which is located on the first floor of Briggs Hall.
Works are selected each spring by instructors who will teach them in the coming year. These faculty formally vote to adopt one of several “slates” of works for the term they will be teaching. The slates themselves attempt to provide a diverse yet complementary selection of works for the term. They are developed by a Works Committee charged by the Freshman Studies Director and operating under the following principles:
A. Works should be selected primarily for their suitability as materials for developing students' skills in reading, writing, discussion, and critical thinking. This principle is based on a recommendation adopted by the faculty that "teachability," rather than historical importance or contemporary relevance, should be the primary consideration in choosing works for Freshman Studies.
B. Works should be chosen through a process that allows the five divisions of the faculty (music, fine arts, science, social science, and humanities) to nominate works that accurately represent their intellectual interests, traditions, and methods. This goal is accomplished through a two-step procedure.
In the first step, faculty in each of Lawrence's five divisions nominate at least fifteen and no more than twenty-five works for inclusion in a pool from which the works to be taught in any given year can be chosen. By nominating a work, a division makes a commitment to support that work, not only through lectures to the freshman class, but also through presentations to faculty at summer symposia, staff luncheons, and other such events. In discussing their nominations, divisions are encouraged to consider works that have not yet been tried in Freshman Studies as well as those with a long history of success in the course. In addition, divisions are encouraged to consider works that address issues of cultural heritage and diversity. Finally, the divisions are asked to reconvene periodically, perhaps as often as every other year, to review the works they have nominated, assess the success of works actually taught in the course, and consider new works that might be added to the pool.
In the second step, faculty use the divisional lists as the basis for revisions to the syllabus for each term. Two constraints are always in effect: first, at least twenty percent and no more than thirty percent of the works must be changed each year; second, at least one work from each of the five divisions must be taught each year.
C. Works should be chosen so that the two terms of Freshman Studies can be distinguished from one another, with each term emphasizing different (though certainly not unrelated) skills.
In Term I, most instructors would agree, we help students to make the transition from high school to college. More specifically, we try to show students what college teachers expect in the way of writing, speaking, and critical thinking.
In Term II, we help students to get ready for their work in other areas of the curriculum. We want them to consolidate the gains they have made and refine their skills as writers and thinkers. In keeping with those goals, we ask that the papers for Term II be longer and more complex than those for Term I. If a paper for Term I usually focuses on a single text—or perhaps even a single passage—then papers for Term II may require students to compare and contrast two texts or to assess a bit of commentary on one or more texts.
In principle, every member of the faculty is expected to contribute to Freshman Studies on a regular basis. In practice, however, many individual faculty members have other responsibilities that significantly limit their ability to participate in the program. For this reason a number of inter-related guidelines and procedures have been developed to staff Freshman Studies both equitably and with instructors of the highest quality.
In the spring of each year the Freshman Studies Director, working with the Dean of Admissions and the Dean of the Faculty, determine how many sections of Freshman Studies must be staffed in the coming year. The Freshman Studies Director and Dean of the Faculty then determine a “quota” of sections to be staffed by each academic department in the College and by the faculty of the Conservatory of Music. The quota for each department is based on past commitments to Freshman Studies and current faculty obligations and activities. Each department head and the Dean of the Conservatory then invite faculty in their respective departments to teach in the course.
Two ad-hoc committees typically assist the Freshman Studies Director in the routine operation of the course. The Works Committee, consisting of three to five members of the teaching staff, drawn from both terms, compiles slates of works and an outline syllabus for each slate to be voted on during the annual selection process. The Exam Committee, consisting of about three members of the teaching staff in a given term, composes a mid-term and final exam for each term of the course. These exams are made available to the faculty teaching the course a week or more before the scheduled mid-term and final exam dates, but individual instructors may choose whether or not to use them.
The Freshman Studies Director sends course evaluations to all students enrolled in Freshman Studies towards the end of each term. The evaluations inform the director and members of course committees about student attitudes towards the works, examinations, lectures, and other course materials and activities. A summary of the evaluations for each section is sent to the section instructor to help instructors monitor and improve their teaching in the course.
