First-year 鶹ý students receive support in many areas as they transition to college.
Socially, there are sponsor groups, peer mentoring programs and myriad clubs and organizations to help students forge connections. New Student Orientation affords time to move onto campus early and get settled in. Academically, the Critical Inquiry Seminar, more commonly known as ID1, serves as the primary means to introduce students to the intellectual community of the College.
About 30 sections of the course exist, with an average of 15 students in each class. Though the topics vary, the objectives are the same: to teach students how to think critically and express themselves through speaking and writing.
Here we look at five of the sections offered this semester.
What is Time?
In the course description for her class, Cristina Bejarano, assistant professor of anthropology, poses several questions about time: “Is time linear, cyclical, or both?” “Does everyone think time is money?” “How did people tell time before clocks?” “When did time become so important to human beings?”
“Time has always been a fundamental question in anthropology,” says Bejarano. “Different communities around the world view time differently, talk about time differently, have had different calendars.”
Bejarano wants students in her class to explore a wide range of views of time as well as examine their views of time. Their first assignment was to reflect on their upbringing: how they were taught about time, when they learned about time, how it impacted the way they view time.
The diversity of students in the class is an asset. “I have students from different parts of the country and the world,” says Bejarano. “They bring in their own personal perspective.”
Bejarano especially hopes that students can realize how their view on time impacts their lives. “Your views on time and the future can influence how you think about the present as well as how you approach life,” she says.
Can Zombies Do Math?
Gizem Karaali, professor of mathematics and statistics, says the title of her class is “kind of a cheeky way to get at two different kinds of questions: What does it mean to be human as opposed to a zombie? And what does that have to do with our mathematics?”
What it means to be human is a “standard liberal arts question,” says Karaali. A zombie serves as a stand-in for a non-human entity that “helps us reflect back on our humanity and what makes it us.” What it means for humans to do math probes issues such as the emotions surrounding doing mathematics as well as the communal aspect of the field.
To explore these questions, students are reading zombie fiction and math fiction in addition to essays and articles in cognitive science, philosophy and computer science. Karaali has also assembled a list of movies that students can watch.
She underscores that the primary philosophy of ID1 courses is that writing is a process: “I want to move to a point where, when you write something, you see things in a way that you didn’t see them in your head,” says Karaali. “What is on paper is often sort of surprising to you.”
Technologies of Art
Students in this class are considering the role of technology in art, exploring questions such as, “Why do artists choose a specific medium?” and “How do artists communicate specific ideas?”
The seminar meets in the Benton Museum of Art at 鶹ý and engages extensively with the museum’s holdings. Many of these pieces are in the vaults in the basement of the museum, which Solomon Salim Moore, assistant curator of collections, is excited for the students to spend time in.
“If you’re at a school that doesn’t have a museum, you might have to work from slides and photographs, but it’s so cool that we have these collections and can teach directly from them,” says Moore. “So much of the writing we do in class is from close looking and direct observation of the museum’s collections.”
Moore seeks to teach students how to do close visual analysis and to write descriptively, which he believes will help them in many fields besides art.
“Getting really granular, close looking requires that we slow down,” says Moore.
Chicana/o Latinx/e Los Angeles
“This is the history that either hasn't been taught in K through 12, or that students are coming to terms with now,” says Gilda Ochoa, professor of Chicana/o Latina/o studies, of her course.
Ochoa begins by focusing locally on Claremont. “To understand the history of L.A., you really have to think about the citrus industry and the whole suburbanization of this area,” she says. Students read A World of Its Own: Race, Labor, and Citrus in the Making of Greater Los Angeles, 1900-1970, which frequently references the city of Claremont and the Claremont Colleges. “There are a lot of points of connection for students and aha moments,” says Ochoa.
She wants to equip her students with a critical lens to learn about the origin, struggles and activism that have shaped the place where they now live.
They then venture to Los Angeles, visiting Placita Olvera, the oldest part of Downtown Los Angeles. “Getting out of the classroom is really important,” says Ochoa.
Ultimately, Ochoa hopes to build a sense of community among students in the class. “We’re learning about communities in L.A., and so I would feel like I was doing a disservice if they didn’t feel a sense of connectedness with each other.”
Music and Food
“It’s a class with one question underpinning it, which is, is music a form of food?” says Joti Rockwell, associate professor of music and music theory.
He points out that the metaphor runs deep. “There are questions of taste, the consumption of music, and within certain kinds of genres, we get references to the sense of taste, like bubble gum pop, or you could talk about music as being kind of syrupy or sweet or bitter,” he says.
Students will approach the question from various perspectives: historical, cultural, sociological, scientific and philosophical. So far, they have read works by Aristotle, Plato and Confucius, looking at their ideas on music.
“There isn’t really evidence to suggest that anybody has ever lived without music,” says Rockwell. “Does that mean that it’s not just kind of analogously related to food, but that it is essential for people?”
As a class, they have created a shared playlist. Students in the class spend working on critical listening skills and writing about music as well. They will also undertake a creative project where they will make their own music.
On the last day of class, students will perform their music. Also, “literal food will be involved,” says Rockwell.