The Freshman seminar course is designed to help you, our students, achieve the purposes of Monmouth College. According to our Statement of Purpose, the College exits to "create and maintain a learning environment which is value-centered, intellectually challenging, aesthetically inspiring and culturally diverse." (Monmouth College Catalog 3). In this environment we seek "[to foster] the discovery of connections among disciplines and of larger patterns of meaning" (3). It is in the small freshman seminar setting that we strive to achieve these goals.
Together, faculty from many disciplines and students read books and essays which incorporate various perspective on what it means to be a human being at the dawn of a new millennium in an increasingly complex technological world. Our goal is to discover how the complex web of assumptions, interpretations, hypotheses, theories, facts, and insights we call knowledge or wisdom becomes meaningful within our personal and professional lives. We will explore how we organize the particular beliefs, values, and truths of our lives into contexts of meaning that connect with our contemporaries and with the generations who have gone before us, as well as those who will follow. We may never find answers to some of the questions we will raise. Nevertheless, we hope for you to acquire abilities that will enable you to understand the enduring human questions. The task before us is challenging, and while it begins with Freshman Seminar, it stretches over four years of education and continues beyond graduation.
Our course theme is "Technology and the Human Condition." We will reflect on texts whose themes involve broadly the motif of how heroic or everyday characters live and work; search for truth, excellence, self knowledge; and appreciate beauty in the seemingly fragment technological world.
We also aim to "foster and promote intellectual inquiry and critical analysis through mentoring relationships characterized by individual attention" (Monmouth College Catalog, 4). Designed as a common experience for all first year students, Freshman Seminar stresses certain skills which include how to critically read a book or essay, write thesis-focused essays, use the library and computer center, think analytically and communicate ideas orally. Studying the same readings and discussing convocations in light of the theme for the course promotes a common sense of purpose among students and instructors. Diversity arises from the particular mix of individuals in each section, and from the insights each of us brings to the common readings and convocations.
The key to the success of this course is your working relationship with your instructor and colleagues in the class and your willingness to engage hard issues intellectually. As you respond to the questions, assignments, discussions, convocations, and common texts, you will find where your personal experiences intersect with the life and traditions of this College.
Shared documents
Fall 2001 Freshman Seminar Instructors
Texts and Movies