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Home > 03-05 Home > Academic Programs > Academic Programs and Regulations > I. Cross-disciplinary courses |
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I. Cross-disciplinary courses
First-year SymposiumFirst-year Symposium is a required two-semester course (4 credits each semester) designed to help students develop skills in thinking, speaking and writing which they will continue to use and refine during the rest of their academic careers. These skills are developed interdependently - reading stimulates thinking; thinking stimulates writing, listening and speaking; writing and speaking in turn stimulate thinking. Symposium employs discussion and writing as primary learning methods, thus encouraging students to take an active part in their learning from the beginning of college study. Professors from many disciplines offer a variety of themes, allowing students to choose an area of personal interest in which to learn. The class stays together for the whole year, developing a sense of community and continuity. The professor also functions as the students' academic advisor. Despite the diversity of themes, the goals of each symposium section are the same: to help students develop skills in thinking, speaking, and writing which they will continue to use and refine during the rest of their academic careers. Senior SeminarThe traditions of the liberal arts and the Benedictine character of Saint Benedict's and Saint John's emphasize the need to develop in students an ability to lead responsible lives in a contemporary world. This concern has always been a central element in notions about striving for a "good life," leading a life of civic responsibility, a life of personal integration, a life of "wholeness." At the junior/senior level of the curriculum, this objective implies that explicit and focused attention be paid to developing the ability to make good moral judgments on issues that affect our lives. The Senior Seminar has the purpose of helping students develop this ability. Courses in the Senior Seminar program are discussion-based and focus on complex ethical issues which resist easy, once-for-all-time solutions. No single method, type of analysis or school of thought has a privileged position. The program is not an attempt to lead students to preconceived answers, but rather to show them how to pose questions and search for reasoned ethical alternatives. Faculty for these courses are chosen from all disciplines; topics are chosen specifically because they are debatable and widen the field of moral vision.
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CSB|SJU Academic Catalog |
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