Liberal Studies Commons^™

Practicing What We Preach: Risk-Taking And Failure As A Joint Endeavor, Alicia Cunningham-Bryant

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Faculty and administrators often present risk-taking as something honors students must do, but rarely do they take risks themselves. In an ideal situation, communal risk-taking would subvert institutional power dynamics, free students from grade-associated anxiety, and enable them to build dynamic partnerships with faculty. This paper discusses how one honors college piloted self-grading in the second semester of its first-year seminar as a mechanism of liberatory learning for both faculty and students. While self-grading was originally intended to provide increased freedom for risk-taking, in truth it led to increased anxiety in students and high levels of frustration for faculty. This …

Disorienting Experiences: Guiding Faculty And Students Toward Cultural Responsiveness, Rebekah Dement, Angela Salas

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

This essay examines the challenges of integrating culturally responsive teaching into an honors curriculum at a predominantly white institution. Through self-reflection resulting from three specific incidents, one author examines the trajectory of risk-taking as it pertains to assigning difficult or challenging texts. The second author provides a vital complement to self-reflection: the mentorship of a senior colleague.

Academic Risk And Intellectual Adventure: Evidence From U.S. Honors Students At The University Of Oxford, Elizabeth Baigent

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Many study abroad programs promise students self-knowledge through adventure. Those that involve intense study seem at first sight not to offer adventure nor to entail risky dislocation nor to offer new insights into self. However, evidence from study abroad students at the University of Oxford reveals that they describe intellectual endeavor as adventure, finding that their academic experiences pose risks, demand courage, and are the means through which they and their new surroundings accommodate one another. Oxford faculty encourage academic risk-taking by posing hard intellectual challenges, helping students find their own voice rather than summarizing the views of others, and …

Risk That Lasts: Prioritizing Propositional Risk In Honors Education, Eric Lee Welch

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

The fear of missing the mark often shapes how honors students approach risk in the classroom and, consequently, how instructors build risk-taking exercises into their curriculums. This paper explores the concept of propositional risk in the context of honors pedagogy, wherein students are challenged to interrogate deeply held beliefs and tasked with exercises designed to call forth the full complexity of attendant issues surrounding any individual viewpoint. As distinct from strategic risk, which can be characterized as performative and externally motivated, propositional risk requires students to critically evaluate a spectrum of thought, value, and ideology in the context of singular, …

Purpose, Meaning, And Exploring Vocation In Honors Education, Erin Vanlaningham, Robert J. Pampel, Jonathan D. Kotinek, Dustin J. Kemp, Aron Reppmann, Anna Stewart

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

This paper examines the importance of cultivating a sense of vocation in honors education. Through examples of coursework, program initiatives, and advising strategies, authors from across five institutions align the scholarship of vocation with best practices and principles in contemporary honors discourse, defining vocation in the context of higher education and describing how this concept works within honors curricula to enrich student experience and cultivate individual understandings of purpose. By focusing on critical reflection processes, Ignatian pedagogy, and theories of moral development and reasoning, the authors offer different models to advance the thesis that honors educators can and should address …

Embodied Risk-Taking: Embracing Discomfort Through Image Theatre, Leah White

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Taking risks does not come easily to many honors students. Often their success is based on carefully following directions and working hard to meet established expectations. Although the Minnesota State University, Mankato Honors Program’s competency-based model encourages students to focus on personal growth rather than course completion, our students still struggle with the openended nature of reflection-based learning. This essay explains how incorporating Augusto Boal’s Image Theatre techniques in an honors seminar, Performance for Social Change, helped encourage students to become more comfortable with taking academic and ideological risks. Boal’s methods depend heavily on embodied experience as a companion to …

Lawrence, Fall 2019, Lawrence University

Alumni Magazines

No abstract provided.

Fall 2019

Insights

A World of Opportunities: LAS in the Global Community; ISSUES - Study Abroad, Applied Diplomacy, HumanitiesX; In this issue of Insights, we celebrate all things global at the College of Liberal Arts and Social Science (LAS). We are deeply proud of the positive impact our students and alumni have had on the world, and of the many LAS academic initiatives that foster global engagement; New Advisory Board Chair Mitchell Goldberg; Study abroad turns LAS Honors alumni into global citizens; Depaul Expands the Borders of Diplomacy with this First of Its kind program; Landing in LONDON Spring break trip brings DePaul …

Volume Cxxxvii, Number 2, September 27, 2019, Lawrence University

The Lawrentian

No abstract provided.

The Grizzly, September 26, 2019, Kevin Leon, Gabriela Pascal, Kim Corona, Madison Rodak, Jenni Berrios, Rosalia Murphy, Shelsea Deravil, Daniel Walker, Jake Supran, Gabriela Howell

Ursinus College Grizzly Newspaper, 1978 to Present

Ursinus Welcomes a New Assistant Director • College Expands Recycling Capacity • Celebrating Ursinus' 150th Birthday • U-Imagine Starts Business Workshops • UCARE Offers Voter Registration • Opinions: How Studying Abroad has Been Rewarding; Sesquicentennial Fatigue is Soon to Set In • Stout Defense Stands Tall for Women's Soccer • Men's Soccer off to a Promising Start

The Grizzly, September 19, 2019, Kevin Leon, Samuel Chiche, Rosalia Murphy, Kim Corona, Colleen Murphy, Jenni Berrios, Daniel Walker, Elana Goldman, Gabriela Howell, Lauren Viola

Ursinus College Grizzly Newspaper, 1978 to Present

Two Decades of Ursinus Fringe Festival • Professor Walvoord Wins First-Year Advising Award • Men's Golf Competes at Spartan Invitational • Shammah Bermudez Will Depart from Ursinus • Res Life Launches "It's On Me" Campaign • Wismer Feeds More than Ursinus Students • Opinion: Andrew Yang, Promising or Placebo?; Why Ursinus Could Use a Shuttle Bus System • Football Shoots Past Gettysburg • Thirteen in the Nation, One in Our Hearts

Is Our Future Too Hot To Handle?, Mark Burstein

Presidential Addresses

Lawrence University President Mark Burstein officially opens the university’s 171st academic year, along with its 2019-20 convocation series, with his matriculation address, “Is Our Future Too Hot to Handle?”

Now in his seventh year as Lawrence’s 16th president, Burstein has focused on creating learning communities in which all members can reach their full potential.

Volume Cxxxvii, Number 1, September 13, 2019, Lawrence University

The Lawrentian

No abstract provided.

The Grizzly, September 12, 2019, Kevin Leon, Katherine Chicano, Kim Corona, Rosalia Murphy, Madison Rodak, Colleen Murphy, Jenni Berrios, Daniel Walker, Lauren Viola, Gabriela Howell

Ursinus College Grizzly Newspaper, 1978 to Present

The Commons is Coming • Ursinus Celebrates its 150th Birthday • High Expectations for Women's Field Hockey • Proposal Submission Deadline for Ursinus' Inclusive Community Grants is Approaching • Berman Exhibit Lands on Campus • Who ya Gonna Call? Campus Safety • Opinions: Is Climate Anxiety the New Nuclear Anxiety?; Meatless Options: A Positive Trend • A Promising Start for Ursinus Men's Soccer • Senior Spotlight: Tom Garlick

Hermeneutics: A Literary Interpretive Art, David A. Reitman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis examines the historical traditions of hermeneutics and its potential to enhance the process of literary interpretation and understanding. The discussion draws from the historical emplotment of hermeneutics as literary theory and method presented in the Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism with further elaboration from several other texts. The central aim of the thesis is to illuminate the challenges inherent in the literary interpretive arts by investigating select philosophical and linguistic approaches to the study and practice of literary theory and criticism embodied within the canonical works of the Anthology. The narrative begins in ancient Greece, traverses …

Who Is My Neighbor? The Importance Of Global Education For Kinesiology Students, Jessica D. Ventura

Movement and Being: The Journal of the Christian Society for Kinesiology, Leisure and Sports Studies

The parable of the Samaritan in the Gospel of Luke illustrates that helping others requires both the ability to reach out to any person and the humility to receive mercy from any person. This active love requires a basic understanding of culture and the ways in which it may affect the values and actions of others. As believers seeking to express God in careers that bring them in contact with any person, kinesiology students have a specific need to understand their global neighbors. This paper first explores the importance of multicultural education as illustrated in the book of …

Exploring The Uses Of The Liberal Arts Through Beyoncé’S “Formation”, Christine Marks

Open Educational Resources

I first shared this assignment in LaGuardia’s Spring 2017 mini-seminar Introducing Your Discipline in the First Year Seminar. I developed the assignment drawing on both Beyoncé’s 2016 Super Bowl halftime show and her music video “Formation” to initiate a discussion about how the Liberal Arts may inform our readings of popular culture images and performances. Through an analysis of content and form of Beyoncé’s musical performance and the video, students are invited to reflect on the ways in which a Liberal Arts education can contribute to a deeper understanding of the social issues addressed in the work. In our …

Multiperspectivity Through Alternative History In The Classroom, Anggita Parameswari Latif

Graduate Masters Theses

This paper aims to evaluate existing teaching approaches in middle school history classrooms that incorporate alternative history materials. Alternative history focuses on the question of what might have happened differently, or ‘what if?’ The study focuses on addressing the following question: How does the understanding of one event’s significance on the chain of historical occasions contribute to students’ engagement in discussing past and current conflicts, based on teachers’ points of view? Interviews with 10 education practitioners focused on exploring the ways students can learn to see history creatively while developing tolerance. Existing approaches are explored through the viewpoints of conflict …

Debate, Critical Thinking, And Civic Education: Why No One Should Give Up On Burma, Joseph Zompetti

eJournal of Public Affairs

I traveled to Myanmar to instruct indigenous NGOs in critical thinking and democracy promotion. In this paper, I examine the political and cultural context of Myanmar before and after the 2010 elections. Fortunately, given the democratic initiatives since the 2010 election, the activists and organizations with whom I worked are now safely advocating for ongoing reforms and are free from persecution. Specifically, I discuss the training curriculum I presented, and how debate and critical thinking pedagogy help influence the democratic impulses of concerned citizens in Myanmar. I believe this reflection is worthwhile for anyone interested in debate, critical thinking, citizenship, …

Whose Story Is It, Now? Re-Examining Women’S Visibility In 21st Century Secondary World History Textbooks, Erica M. Southworth, Jenna Kempen, Melonie Zielinski

Faculty Creative and Scholarly Works

In 2005 Clark, Ayton, Frechette, and Keller (2005) conducted a content analysis study on secondary world history textbooks to determine whether women’s inclusion had increased or decreased between 1960s, 1980s, and 1990s. They reported women’s severe marginalization in the texts even though the percentages of women’s inclusion had increased over the course of the decades. We conducted a replication study of the content analysis performed by Clark et al. from a feminist research lens and analyzed 2000 and 2010 editions of the same textbooks to determine if female inclusion had increased. Our findings revealed that very little to no progress …