Larger lectures are forums where students learn to engage in debate and exchange ideas with experts and with their peers about some of the most pressing issues in our collective past, present, and future: "The Legacy of the Holocaust," "Crime and Inequality," "Race Relations and Ethnicity in the U.S.," and "Earth Hazards," are just a few examples. Many of these larger classes will also have smaller break-out discussion groups, laboratories or tutorials, and all of these courses fulfill a college distribution requirement.
Enrolling in a larger class (100-plus seats) in the College of Arts and Sciences is also an important part of the first-year experience at UVM. Internationally recognized scholar-teachers, not teaching assistants, provide broad surveys of fields like Anthropology, History and Sociology, for example.