Posted on Friday, February 10 2006 - 12:27 AM - Students

The Dartmouth experience means something different to every Dartmouth student and alumnus, but a common thread for the last four decades has been the First-Year Seminar Program. Begun in 1965, the program was designed to provide a powerful launch for entering students, fueled by the College's focus on the liberal arts. Across the disciplines, the seminars provide an emphasis on strong writing skills and independent research. They immerse students just entering the College in the scholarly process, bringing them into close contact with senior faculty members in small class settings that foster rich discussion.

Almost every department offers a first-year seminar each year during at least one term. Faculty members design and teach these courses in their individual areas of scholarly interest. Tom Cormen, chair of the Writing Program and professor of computer science, oversees the First-Year Seminar Program. Cormen and the Writing Program team work to make sure that each course places enough emphasis on independent research and writing (students are expected to write at least 6,000 words over the term). He also confers with the faculty Committee on Instruction — the group that sets policy on academic requirements — to determine whether seminars fulfill a particular distribution credit.

Professor of History Rich Kremer's first-year seminar, Reading Artifacts: The Material Culture of Science, uses Dartmouth's extensive collection of historic scientific instruments to familiarize students with how science has been taught over the last two centuries. “With few exceptions, these instruments are indigenous to Dartmouth,” explains Kremer, who recently published a book on the collection, titled Study, Measure, Experiment: Stories of Scientific Instruments at Dartmouth. “They were used by faculty members to conduct research in what was then the field of natural philosophy, and to display for students the phenomena of the natural world.” He says that the seminars, most of which are limited to an enrollment of 16 students, hold first-years to a high standard of scholarship. “I run this class at a very high level and include a lot of reading. The students are more than willing to do the work.”

Steven Swayne, associate professor of music, shared an appreciation for the personal contact that the seminars afford. “Beyond the tools I hoped to give my students as writers and scholars, we developed a sense of mutual respect and trust that, if not unique to the first-year seminars, is a welcomed aspect of the intense experience we shared together,” he says.

Courtesy: GENEVIEVE HAAS



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