First-Year Seminar
In many colleges, the first-year seminar serves as an antidote to large impersonal lecture classes and introduces students to kinds of learning that what will be available in later years. That is certainly not a need at Burlington College, since all classes are seminars and teachers are accessible.
Our seminars introduce first-year students (and others who may wish to join them) to interdisciplinary exploration of pressing issues and problems. At the same time, students think critically about the nature of intellectual inquiry itself while seeking practical applications of their ideas.
We use this course to support students as they enter a new setting and embark on college-level learning: to build community through cooperative learning and to enhance their self-awareness as learners, as individuals, and as part of communities. Personal reflection, community projects, and experiential learning are significant elements.
Seminars change as different teachers choose topics of interest and put their individual stamps on the course. Recent seminars include the following.
Peace and Justice: Issues and Individuals
Fall, 2006 COR106
Laurie Gagné
We will challenge the conventional conception of justice in American society through an exploration of the lives and work of individuals whose of the good helped launch successful movements for social change: Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Dorothy Day, and Harvey Milk. Particular attention will be given to the ongoing struggles against war and violence, racism, poverty, and heterosexism that these individuals inspired. Community service learning will be an important course component with the expectation that the class will form a partnership with an inner-city school.
Peak Oil and the Challenges of Creating a New World
Spring, 2006 COR104
Annie Dunn-Watson & Bob Rice
We can hardly imagine life without cheap fossil fuels. Oil, in particular, has facilitated advances in technology, transportation, agriculture, and health care that surpass the wildest dreams of our forbears. However, petroleum geologists are warning that oil production is now peaking and ever-growing demand will soon outstrip remaining reserves. The impact will be profound: carpooling will be the least of the inconveniences. How can we face the challenges that peak oil poses to economies, communities, long-familiar ways of life, and values? How will we re-evaluate our notions of the good life? This course will involve some discussions of concepts from the natural sciences, history, social sciences, philosophy, alternative lifestyles, and hands-on community service learning and lots of critical thinking.
