This is the sort of program you might want to ask about and pay attention
to when you visit colleges.
Your allies,
The college counselors
Fresh approach at Holy Cross
By Peter Schworm
Globe Staff / November 17, 2008
WORCESTER - Students had barely taken their seats before the class turned
philosophical, an intellectual icebreaker of determinism and metaphysics.
It was 8:30 on a rainy Friday morning, a time most college students are
catching up on REM sleep. But at this Spanish history seminar at the
College of the Holy Cross, 16 freshmen, assembled in a semicircle, were
immersed in a highbrow discussion that explored the ideas of St. Thomas
Aquinas, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Spanish author Emilia Pardo Bazan.
The intensive, interdisciplinary class, taught by a full professor, is
akin to a senior symposium, a far cry from the typical freshman survey
course. Adding to the close-knit feel, many students in the seminar live
in the same dormitory, where they often discuss the readings and work on
group assignments.
Starting this fall, all 740 first-year students at Holy Cross are required
to take the full-year seminars as part of a pioneering program designed to
create a more serious intellectual culture on campus and connect academic
and residential life to create a more unified and universal college
experience.
"We are starting with the idea of a senior seminar, but for freshmen,"
said Nancy Andrews, who directs the program. "We have very high
expectations, but are confident students will stretch to meet them.
They're not going to be able to just sit in the back and take notes."
The integrated program, which officials at the Jesuit school believe is
one of the few of its kind, is called "Montserrat" after the mountain in
Spain where St. Ignatius, the founder of the Jesuit order, laid down his
arms to lead a spiritual life.
Placing new students into high-level courses that grapple with big-picture
ideas, the college hopes, will promote self-discovery and reflections
about what makes a life well-lived.
The program reflects a growing movement on campuses toward "learning
communities" in which first-year students live and take classes together
as a way of easing the often difficult transition to college life.
Holy Cross, however, has taken the unusual step of requiring all freshmen
to participate in the program and creating a range of social activities
that tie into the classroom experience.
"Colleges are saying, 'We have to pay more attention to first-year
students,' " said John N. Gardner, executive director of the Policy Center
on the First Year of College, a North Carolina group that works with
colleges on programs for freshmen. "We've increasingly come to realize
that even able students can be at-risk in the first year of college."
At Holy Cross, seminars are grouped into five themes - The Divine, Global
Society, The Natural World, The Self and Core Human Questions - and
students in each cluster share a dormitory and participate in common
activities outside class, such as coffeehouse discussions, guest lectures,
and community service projects.
College officials hope the clusters will make a small college feel that
much smaller, creating a closer community and giving freshmen the chance
to get to know professors. The close-knit enviroment will spark not only
intellectual development, administrators and professors believe, but
ethical and spiritual growth as well.
"We're trying to get a sense of wholeness," said the Rev. Michael C.
McFarland, president of Holy Cross. "It reemphasizes our values, and puts
them into action."
Montserrat builds on the success of a voluntary Holy Cross program that
grouped about 150 freshmen into learning communities. Studies showed that
students who participated did better academically, were more likely to
become leaders on campus, and were more active in community outreach
programs.
"We saw very significant differences," he said.
On a recent Friday, professor Estrella Cibreiro led a vigorous, 90-minute
discussion on Bazan, an early 20th-century feminist who advocated for
educational rights for women. For context, students read passages from
Aquinas and Rousseau that asserted women's natural inferiority.
"Today we take it for granted that women have equal rights," Cibreiro
said. "In the 19th century this was definitely not the case."
The quotations led to an analysis of a Bazan short story that reworked the
Genesis story so that Adam, not Eve, first eats the forbidden fruit.
"Why is the guilt issue so important?" Cibreiro asked.
"If in the Bible, it had said that Adam had eaten the apple, starting at
the very beginning of Christianity people would have had a different view
of women," said Sofia Spanos, a freshman from Laconia, N.H.
Cibreiro agreed. Women might have had a different view of themselves as
well, she added.
"Women came to believe the Genesis story," she said. "If you hear the
message enough times, you begin to believe it."
After the class, students said the small setting gives them the confidence
to express their ideas without fear.
In a larger class with older students, they would be more reluctant.
Students said they often work on assignments together in the dorms, and
have bonded over the shared experience.
"This is the only class I have where I know everyone's name, where I talk
to them and walk to class with them," Spanos said.
Cimmie Binning, a Philadelphia native, said the first-year program makes
her feel like part of something bigger than herself. But it also makes her
feel like she belongs, not like the average anonymous freshman.
"There's a sense of identity with the group," she said. "But the focus is
also on the individual."
Peter Schworm can be reached at schworm@globe.com.
