New Seminar Challenges Students, Professors

New Seminar Challenges Students, Professors

BY PHILIP MONTGOMERY
Rice News Staff
September 30, 1999

Laundry soap on a store shelf and cults seemingly do not share anything in common, but first-year Rice students are learning how both use persuasion.

Students in UNIV 112: The Power of Persuasion are studying the sales pitches of cults and how stores sell soap as part of a new Rice teaching experiment called the Hewlett Teaching Seminars. The seminars challenge freshmen to critically study a range of topics, from the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl to the study of neuroscience.

Rice received a grant from the Hewlett Foundation to teach four seminars to first-year students during the 1999-2000 academic year. The California-based Hewlett Foundation supports initiatives in research universities to rethink and improve the general education of lower-division undergraduates. For the fall semester there are four seminars, each with an average of 15 students taught by two to four tenure-track or tenured instructors.

The small size of the seminars and the focus on class discussion appeals to students such as freshman Kim Tran of Sid Richardson College. Tran is taking the “Power of Persuasion.”

“On the first day (of classes), I had really full classes of 30 (students) or up,” Tran said. “There wasn’t much discussion in those classes. Then when I came to this class there were about 12 people in (the classroom). It was really surprising because I’ve never been in a class with 12 people where half the class was led by students. The teacher would ask ‘what do you think of this or that’ and the students answered. It’s not a lot of lecturing, and it is a lot of discussion and talking.”

In addition to the “Power of Persuasion,” the other courses are UNIV 111: The Sustainable Environment, UNIV 113: Technological Disasters and Catastrophes and UNIV 114: Understanding Brain and Behavior.

The purpose of the seminars is “to expose freshmen to the different ways the disciplines treat the same subject, thus fostering critical thinking skills and writing skills,” said Albert Van Helden, the Lynette S. Autrey Professor of History. He is chair of the steering committee that evaluated the faculty proposals for courses to be taught as Hewlett seminars.

Robert Curl, the Harry C. and Olga K. Wiess Professor of Natural Sciences in the Department of Chemistry and winner of the 1996 Nobel Prize in chemistry, is teaching the course on technological disasters and catastrophes with Van Helden.

The professors, who have equal roles in the course, divided the class of 16 freshmen into four teams. Each teacher meets with two teams and helps those students prepare for class discussions. Outside experts are also brought in to talk about various topics.

The course requires students to participate in research, analytic discussion, writing, teamwork and oral presentations. All of those aspects are important for professional success, Curl said.

The course is a good meeting ground for the humanities/social sciences and engineering/science, Curl added.

“By exploring the issues presented by disaster, I thought the gulf between the two cultures might be bridged, resulting in more technologically-sophisticated citizens,” said Curl, who is facing his own set of challenges. “There are lots of things that we are discussing that I am not familiar with. I have to keep on my toes to try to understand things. These are very bright and motivated students. I don’t want to let them down.”

Teaching in an interdisciplinary environment can be quite a challenge. For example, Suzanne Kemmer, associate professor of linguistics, has found “surprising ways” in which her ideas and expectations differ from those of her fellow team teachers. She teaches “The Power of Persuasion” with Michel Achard, assistant professor of French studies, Mikki Hebl, assistant professor of psychology, and Carolyn Funk, assistant professor of political science. Even a simple thing like a syllabus can become complicated when team-teaching across department lines.

“One of the first things we found is that we had different definitions of what a ‘syllabus’ was and what information should go in it,” Kemmer said.

Because she is teaching with people from such diverse backgrounds, Kemmer said she often finds herself learning about other fields along with the freshmen.

“I find it incredibly exciting,” Kemmer said. “To have all these fresh, interested students so keen to learn about everything, to be able to work with and learn from colleagues outside my discipline and to be able to think about a whole set of fresh ideas and integrate them with what I know–it’s really the ideal teaching experience.”

Eventually, the students have to come up with a final project. The students will be required to devise a campaign of persuasion or an appeal, explained Hebl. To prepare for the final project, she has her students venture into a grocery store and study the placement of milk, keep journals on all the persuasive appeals received in a day and, finally, the students have to study the appeals of cults.

“I really like the idea of having freshmen participating in seminars,” Hebl said. “I think it is a way for freshmen to say, ‘Wow, I really had this in-depth experiential look at the power of persuasion or nature or whatever the topic is.'”