An Invitation to Teach IHUM
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Since 1997, when the Faculty Senate established IHUM, over 100 members of the Academic Council faculty have taught IHUM courses. The current program continues the distinguished tradition of required freshman liberal arts programs at Stanford, which began with “Problems of Citizenship” and “Western Civilization” in the first half of the 20th century. IHUM is distinctive for fostering extensive faculty collaboration both within and across departments and schools.
Each year faculty initiate new courses with the help and encouragement of the IHUM professional staff. After meeting IHUM Governance Board approval, courses are taught for three consecutive years. The Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education (VPUE) provides generous resources to support faculty in IHUM course development and ongoing teaching through honoraria, salary for course development assistants (CDAs), academic technology consultation, and enhancement funds for special events.
Faculty collaborate in teaching with post-doctoral fellows selected in a competitive national search on the basis of teaching excellence, successful experience in working with freshmen, and scholarly background appropriate to the course for which they are selected. Faculty participate actively in the annual post-doctoral fellow selection process and interview all fellows before they are appointed.
The IHUM curriculum continues to be dynamic with several revamped courses and three new courses bringing a record number of new faculty into the program this year. Welcome to Mark Zoback (Geophysics), Adrian Daub (German Studies), Nariman Skakov (Slavic Languages), Steven Carter (Asian Languages), Eavan Boland (Creative Writing), Stephen Weitzman (Religious Studies) and Paul Harrison (Religious Studies).
In the spirit of innovation encouraged by C-USP, we are undertaking an experiment that capitalizes on the recent administrative merger of IHUM with the Introductory Seminars Program under my direction. Four spring-quarter Freshman Seminars will be linked with winter/spring IHUM sequences, and students from these sequences who enroll in these seminars will receive credit for satisfying the third quarter of the requirement (they will not continue in their IHUM course.). Richard Saller’s Classics seminar and Karen Wigen’s History seminar will be linked with IHUM sequence, “Human History.” Rush Rehm’s Drama seminar will be linked with the IHUM sequence, “Arts and Ideas,” and Marisa Galvez’ French and Italian seminar will be part of “Epic Journeys, Modern Quests.” We will announce this experimental option to students in November 2010 in time for the IHUM Open House. We see this as a ‘win-win’ as more students will study with faculty in small groups in satisfying their first-year liberal arts requirement.
We are also starting a pilot initiative to encourage student-to-student intellectual exchange. In conjunction with the fellows, we will select peer mentors from among qualified sophomores to be supervised by post-doctoral fellows; they will hold informal sessions with current freshmen for the purpose of engaging students in conversation about course themes from lectures and the readings. The goal is to provide an opportunity for first-year students to practice how to articulate critical analysis and to develop speaking skills and to prepare for section participation and for visiting professors’ office hours. Parna Sengupta is in the process of working out logistics and other details please contact her for further information. This will necessarily be a small project this year as we test and assess its value.
As I did last summer, I highlight below some of the successful activities from previous years’ courses that you may want to consider as you develop and finalize your syllabus and lectures for 2010-11. This list is not meant to be comprehensive in any way, given the ad hoc nature of collecting examples of pedagogical practice. We have found that the annual review reports submitted to the Governance Board can be a good means of regular communication, so I encourage you to bring to our attention items you’d like to see included in future reports.
- Providing the "Meta-narrative"—Please remember that you will be speaking to students in their first year at college. It is important that you explain the learning goals of the course and that you provide them with a map of the course. How do the different readings fit together? We have found that students benefit not only from a clear agenda at the outset but also from guideposts in your lectures during the course. For many students IHUM will be their first encounter with formal lectures; you could give them guidance as to what to listen for.
- “SLE Challenge. ” The reorganization of Stanford Introductory Studies (SIS) has resulted in a closer programmatic relationship between SLE and IHUM, one benefit of which is increased communication about mutually relevant pedagogical approaches to working with freshmen. One that might be adaptable to IHUM is “The SLE Challenge,” a type of contest – entirely voluntary and not for credit – in which students alone or in groups seek to solve problems and compete for a token gift as well as recognition from the whole course. For example, students were challenged to complete a selection of fragments from Sappho’s poetry, which resulted in a range of creative responses.
- The project fair’ held at the end of spring quarter in “World Archeology and Global Heritage” provided an opportunity for students to share their work publicly with other students and to showcase their learning. The setting established each student project group as an intellectual resource and encouraged communication directed not to the post-doctoral fellow as the only audience but to other students in the IHUM course community, beyond the 15-person section. The buzz of in the room reflected much lively interaction, and the associated assignment for students to write a description of their learning reinforced the purpose of the event.
- Faculty Club lunches, an activity begun originally by the philosophy sequence, were organized by many IHUM courses. The question of limited student access appeared to be resolved by arranging for lecturing faculty to host small groups of students at intervals throughout the quarter, and by adopting sign-up procedures that gave priority to those who had not yet attended. In a few cases, a guest speaker from lecture joined the student/faculty lunch and the conversation between the faculty and the guest introduced a broader perspective to the discussion.
- The use of oral examinations instead of a written mid-term or final exam spread to several courses and expanded the model introduced by “Art of Living” a couple of years ago. While met with much skepticism initially, oral examinations were found to be excellent means of both evaluating students’ ability to present what they had learned and also transmitting to students symbolically the centrality of development of oral presentation skills through discussion, which represents half the hours spent in class each week.
For the program as a whole, I anticipate that a main theme of the year will be assessment of how well IHUM is meeting its goals for building students’ cognitive and intellectual abilities through emphasis on the development of specific skill areas – critical reading, interpretation, argument, discussion – as a foundation for all major fields of study. Also of interest is exploring the extent of students’ awareness of their own learning, their reflection and self-understanding in relation to their first year of study. Given the unique demography of Stanford’s diverse and California-dominated student population, we have a responsibility to understand the learning needs of the incoming freshmen. IHUM’s efforts in these areas will hopefully align with the deliberations of SUES and its sub-committees, especially those relating to the concept of an integrated freshman year. In this transitional period for undergraduate education at Stanford, I hope that I can count on your continued commitment to sustaining the IHUM program as the centerpiece of liberal education for current students.
I close by directing you to a reflective piece published by Dan Edelstein, a member of the “Epic Journeys, Modern Quests” faculty team, where his experience in IHUM has shaped views on innovation and creativity: http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2010/03/30/edelstein
Best wishes for 2010-11,
Russell