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Quick links

• May 2010 Honors College Scholars Commencement Reception
• Honors College Thesis Handbook
• UVM Fall Course Schedule

Related links

• Summer 2009 Orientation
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• Honors College 2008-2009 Handbook (PDF)

First-Year Curriculum - Fall 2009

The Pursuit of Knowledge: Disciplines, Universities, and Engagement

See the Fall 2009 schedule here

See the Spring 2010 schedule here

Fall 2009 FY Seminar Syllabus (pdf)

When you enter college, you enter a world of knowledge. You may wonder how this knowledge arises and how it will relate to your life. The Honors College first-year course explores these issues. It tries to answer the follow questions:

• How do different disciplines (the natural sciences, medicine, literature, etc.) generate and transmit knowledge?
• What special role do universities play in this process? What role ought they to play?
• How does the educational process of knowledge acquisition relate to engagement with the world - to how people lead their lives?

Students consider these questions and, in discussion with one another and by engaging important texts, they develop their reponses to them.

Answers to these questions are explored in the three parts of the year-long first-year course. To see how knowledge is generated in the disciplines, students read from texts such as Descartes' Meditations, Bill McKibben's "Warning on Warming," Mozart's "Letter," and Anne Fadiman's The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down. To examine the role of universities, the course looks at Richard Hofstadter's Anti-Intellectualism, Anthony Kronman's Education's End, and Hannah Arendt's "The Crisis in Education," among other readings. The third question is answered by examining a variety of intellectual autobiographies, ranging from "Pilgrimage to Nonviolence" by Martin Luther King, Jr., and Barack Obama's Dreams from my Father, to The Hunger of Memory by Richard Rodriguez, to Alice Walker's "In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens." The readings are challenging,thought-provoking, and exciting.

The first-year course includes the following components.

Plenary Lecturers:

A plenary lecture series open to the university community will invite even more discussion about the topics and questions explored in the course. The lecture series will feature talks by university faculty and guests, who will discuss their personal experiences and how their areas of inquiry relate to the themes of the course.

Writing-Intensive Study:

Faculty in the seminar will expect you not only to defend your opinions verbally but also in writing. The course is designed to be writing-intensive, and you'll find that committing your words to paper will help you in expressing your opinions verbally.

Community-Building Experience:

All first-year students take the six-credit course — for three credits each semester. What this means is that you'll become well-acquainted with other honors students. And because you'll also live with them in the honors residence hall, you'll be able to continue your discussions about the place and value of education — not to mention, socializing — long after class has ended for the day.

Last modified October 29 2009 10:36 AM