New Course Proposal
Collegiate Seminar 001: Critical Strategies and Great Questions
1. List School, Department, course number and course title
Department, School Affiliation: Collegiate Seminar Program, Undergraduate College
Course Number: CS 001
Course Title: Critical Strategies and Great Questions
2. Justification for the course
Context for course submission
The course is the first in the required four-course sequence of the Collegiate
Seminar Program, a required component of the undergraduate graduation
experience for all students, classified under the Habits of Mind area of the Core.
Until Fall 2012, the Collegiate Seminar Program consisted of four chronologically
sequential required courses (Greek Thought; Roman, Early Christian, and Medieval
Thought; Renaissance and Early Eighteenth-Century Thought: and Nineteenth- and
Twentieth-Century Thought) and two additional elective courses, Multi-Cultural
Thought and World Traditions. The recurring issues addressed within the Seminar
Program concerned text selection and the best way to insure that teachers were
truly discussion leaders, conducting their classes as shared inquiries into the issues
posed by the texts. The Program was primarily concerned with structuring a certain
kind of classroom experience for students, and in service to that goal focused its
attention on texts and teachers.
Prior program reviews had raised questions about learning outcomes, especially as
related to writing development. Though there was also some question about how
the outcomes were achieved within and across sections, no follow up work was
conducted to redesign outcomes at that time.
Beginning in the 2012-2013 academic year, and in conjunction with Core
Curriculum reform, the Seminar Program inaugurated a new curriculum, one
organized primarily around learning objectives and student experience. The
curriculum revisions capture the spirit of the SMC Core to be “developmental” and
“integrated.” The Collegiate Seminar offers the majority of courses in the first of
three Core areas, Habits of Mind. To better prepare students for the experience of
Seminar, the first Collegiate Seminar course was moved to the spring semester so
that students could adjust to college life, guided by the FYAC experience, and
already have completed one course in composition, English 4.
Justification for Collegiate Seminar 001
The learning outcomes for Seminar fall under four headings, Critical Thinking,
Shared Inquiry, Written and Oral Communication, and Seminar-Specific Outcomes.
Learning outcomes are scaffolded across four courses, one of which will be taken
each year.
COLLEGIATE SEMINAR LEARNING OUTCOMES
Seminar Specific Learning Outcomes: As a result of their participation in the Collegiate
Seminar Program, students will grow in their ability to:
1.Understand, analyze, and evaluate challenging texts from different genres and periods.
2. Comprehend the intellectual threads that connect works both backward and forward
through history.
3.Relate the works studied to their own experience and to notions of authentic humanity.
4. Reflect on prior knowledge and assess one’s own process of learning.
CRITICAL THINKING
Critical thinking within Seminar is grounded on the processes of analysis, synthesis and
evaluation necessary to read with understanding. Through careful reading, listening, and
reflection, which lead to a solid understanding of the texts, critical thinking allows
students to make perceptive insights and connections between texts, Seminars and
ultimately their life experiences. Critical thinking within Seminar also includes skills that
allow for sound judgments to be made when multiple, competing viewpoints are possible.
Seminar is a place where reading critically is transformed and integrated into a habit of
mind, providing students with the tools to question the authority of the text and the
foundations of their own assumptions. In short, critical thinking allows students to
recognize, formulate and pursue meaningful questions, which are not only factual but
also interpretive and evaluative, about the ideas of others as well as their own.
Critical Thinking Learning Outcomes: As a result of their participation in the Collegiate
Seminar Program, students will grow in their ability to:
1. Distinguish the multiple senses of a text (literal and beyond the literal).
2. Identify and understand assumptions, theses, and arguments that exist in the work of
authors.
3. Evaluate and synthesize evidence in order to draw conclusions consistent with the text.
Seek and identify confirming and opposing evidence relevant to original and existing
theses.
4. Ask meaningful questions and originate plausible theses.
5.Critique and question the authority of texts, and explore the implications of those texts.
WRITTEN AND ORAL COMMUNICATION
A mind is not truly liberated until it can effectively communicate what it knows. Thus the
Collegiate Seminar Program seeks to develop strong written and oral communication
skills in its students. Students will develop skills that demonstrate an understanding of
the power of language to shape thought and experience. They will learn to write and
speak logically, with clarity, and with originality, and grow in their intellectual curiosity
through the process of writing.
Written and Oral Communication Learning Outcomes: As a result of their participation
in the Collegiate Seminar Program, students will grow in their ability to:
1. Recognize and compose readable prose, as characterized by clear and careful
organization, coherent paragraphs and well-constructed sentences that employ the
conventions of Standard Written English and appropriate diction.
2. Recognize and formulate effective written and oral communication, giving appropriate
consideration to audience, context, format, and textual evidence.
3. Analyze arguments so as to construct ones that are well supported (with appropriate
use of textual evidence), are well reasoned, and are controlled by a thesis or exploratory
question.
4. Use discussion and the process of writing to enhance intellectual discovery and unravel
complexities of thought.
SHARED INQUIRY
Shared inquiry is the act of reasoning together about common texts, questions, and
problems. It is a goal of Collegiate Seminar to advance students’ abilities to develop and
pursue meaningful questions in collaboration with others, even in the context of
confusion, paradox, and/or disagreement. Through the habits of shared inquiry students
will carefully consider and understand the perspectives and reasoned opinions of others,
reconsider their own opinions, and develop rhetorical skills.
Shared Inquiry Learning Outcomes: As a result of their participation in the Collegiate
Seminar Program, students will grow in their ability to:
1. Advance probing questions about a common text or other objects of study.
2. Pursue new and enriched understandings of the texts through sustained collaborative
inquiry.
3. Reevaluate initial hypotheses in light of evidence and collaborative discussion with the
goal of making considered judgments.
4. Engage in reflective listening and inclusive, respectful conversation.
Course design began with these learning outcomes. The courses still base student
achievement on participation (50%) and writing (50%), but these two broad areas
now are defined through the assignments relating to the four categories of learning
outcomes. Likewise, the design still attends to the texts, but also is more intentional
about the methods and pedagogies necessary to achieve the outcomes, by students
and instructors alike.
Thus, this first course in the sequence, taken by first-year students in the spring,
focuses on Critical Strategies and Great Questions. Classroom discussions center on
texts, but the course also addresses in a deliberate way skills important for serious
discussion, successful shared inquiry, and clear expression, and so classes include
such things as discussions of the learning goals, brief writing exercises, instruction
in annotating texts, and exercises in accurate and respectful listening.
The readings were chosen and arranged primarily to support the students in
achieving the course’s learning outcomes; thus while they include canonical texts
such as the “Declaration of Independence” and Homer’s Odyssey, they also include
such accessible and immediately intriguing readings as Ursula LeGuin’s “Those Who
Walk Away from Omelas” and Sherman Alexie’s “What You Pawn I Will Redeem.”
The sequence of readings is designed to lead to the acquisition of skills fundamental
to seminar, particularly those listed under “Critical Thinking” and “Shared Inquiry”
(for the Seminar 1 catalog descriptions and full reading schedule see Appendix B.)
In Seminar 1, the writing requirements are also deliberately chosen and sequenced.
Students are required to write three essays, the first two of which are exercises in
textual analysis, requiring students to read closely, write clearly, and support their
positions with textual references. Finally, the students write a self-reflection, in
which they comment on their progress toward mastery of the Seminar’s learning
outcomes. Thus students are required to evaluate their own learning in detail and
to continue to practice the critical thinking skills the Seminar emphasizes.
3. Student Population
This course is required of all undergraduate, first-year students, in their spring
semester. There are approximately 35 sessions each year.
4. Relationship to present College curriculum
This course is part of the Habits of Mind Core requirements, along with three other
collegiate seminar courses, two composition courses, and an upper division writing
course in the discipline.
5. Any extraordinary implementation costs
Not in terms of course materials. It should be noted, however, that the Collegiate
Seminar Program has instituted a new faculty orientation and training program for
the new curriculum. This program, called "Formation" is required of all faculty
prior to teaching in the new courses. It is in its third iteration, and now consists
primarily of online training and classroom visits and reflection. Faculty complete
"modules" related to the skills and learning outcomes expected of students.
6. Library Resources
See attached library review by Sharon Walters.
7. Course credit and grading options
The course meets 195 minutes per week, for 1.00 credit.
8. Prerequisites, corequisites (If applicable)
There are no prerequisites per se. The course assumes that students have
completed English 4, although some have completed 3, not 4. It also assumes
students are enrolled in the FYAC program.
9. Course description wording for the appropriate College catalog
Seminar 1 Critical Strategies and Great Questions
This first seminar develops the skills of critical thinking, critical reading and writing,
and shared inquiry that are foundational to the Collegiate Seminar Program.
Students learn strategies for engaging with a diversity of texts, asking meaningful
questions about them, and effectively participating in collaborative discussions
regarding them. Reading and writing assignments are specifically designed to
support students’ gradual development of these strategies and skills. The reading
list is current but subject to modification. From some texts selections are read.
10. Course content: Reading List
Plato, “Allegory of the Cave”
LeGuin, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”
Woolf, “How Should One Read a Book?”
Al Ghazali, “Manners to be Observed by Teachers
and Students”
Seneca, “Moral Epistle #88”
Supreme Court, Korematsu v. the United States (1944)
Alexie, “What You Pawn I Will Redeem”
Martin Luther King, “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”
Jefferson, “The Declaration of Independence”
Thucydides, “Mytilenian Debate,” “The Melian Dialogue”
Johnson, “Melvin in the 6th Grade”
Genesis 22
Ptolemy, Almagest
Brome Abraham and Isaac
Cervantes, “The Man Who Was Recklessly Curious”
Galileo, The Starry Messenger
Mo Tzu, “On Universal Love”
Matthew 5 –7, “Sermon on The Mount”
Carson, Silent Spring
Spiegelman, Maus
Epictetus, The Handbook (The Encheiridion)
Sophocles, Antigone
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics
Homer, The Odyssey
Sample Syllabi and Class Plans (attached)
1) José Feito syllabus F2012
2) Rashaan Meneses syllabus F2012
3) Eleen Rigsby Class Plan F2012