For the first time, the
U offers small-group, faculty-led freshman seminars
By Geoff Gorvin
As summer was winding down in her hometown of Fairbanks, Alaska, Laura Brunner was gearing up to immerse herself in the genetics and cell biology program at the College of Biological Sciences (CBS).
She scheduled a quick, two-day trip to the University's Twin Cities campus in late August to register for classes, check out the campus, go through orientation, and start chipping away at the laundry list of details that incoming freshmen need to take care of before they plunge into their college education.
While poring over the class schedules and bulletins, Brunner zeroed in on a 15-credit load for fall quarter, starting with some dandies: chemistry, calculus, and freshman composition.
"That was 13 credits and I had a colloquium that was worth another credit, but I still needed one credit," Brunner recalls.
While going over some ideas with a CBS adviser, Brunner's eyes settled on a brochure called "Exploring Biology," a list of one-credit freshman seminars. In particular, she was interested in one of the genetics seminars, partly because of the subject matter, but also because the seminars involved small-group discussions with a professor.
"My other classes were really big," Brunner says, referring to the 300 students in chemistry and 150 in calculus. "I thought it would be nice to have a small class with a professor."
Brunner's not alone in that regard. In fact, University President Mark Yudof is in her corner when it comes to class sizes and faculty accessibility as they relate to the whole freshmen experience.
"I want the University to offer the highest-quality, most hands-on, most humane undergraduate education of any comparably sized public research university in America," Yudof wrote in a letter to the University community that was published in the University's student newspaper, The Minnesota Daily, last fall. He went on to say, "The heart of the plan is seminars for every entering student. These small classes of up to 20 students, taught by faculty, emphasize classroom discussion and analytical writing."
Although the concept isn't a new one for CBS -- it has offered an "academic success" course for the last four years, targeted mainly at high-ability students from under-represented groups -- college administrators wasted no time setting up the seminars and organizing the faculty to teach them. Even the administrators got in the act: CBS dean Robert Elde helped teach one, as did assistant dean Kathryn Hanna.
"We wanted to set an example," says Hanna, who was instrumental in forming the CBS freshman seminar program. "I was really curious about how this would work, and unless you're doing it, it's hard to get a handle on it."
Hanna cites research results showing that freshmen have a better chance of success in college if they have contact with faculty -- preferably one-on-one contact -- early in their college careers. That, the research says, improves freshmen retention, makes the university experience more personal, and helps reduce a widely held perception that freshman-faculty contact is unheard of at large universities.
Hanna teamed up with Pete Snustad, professor of genetics and cell biology, to teach a seminar called "Genetics circa 1998: Dolly, DNA Chips, Gene Patents, Etceteras." Following a recommendation of CBS's curriculum committee, they chose to incorporate some student development instruction in with the biology material. That meant the first half of each two-hour class was led by Hanna, who talked about how-to issues such as note-taking, studying, using the library, test-taking, voting, and money management. Snustad led the second hour and focused on specific genetics topics.
"The highlight of the seminar for me was interacting with some bright, highly motivated students and watching them discuss complex and controversial biological topics," Snustad says. "Another highlight was bringing in [two experts]. It's always fun to watch students interact with experts in their fields of interest."
Snustad's students, he says, excelled in the science materials but also enjoyed the student-development issues discussed by Hanna, who gave the class a list of topics early in the quarter and let them pick the ones they wanted to pursue.
"A lot of these students, in high school, were getting A's and B's," Hanna says. "Now, they're competing with other students for those A's and B's; sometimes it's a rude awakening. Sometimes, students in high school had it easy -- but they get to college and they have trouble, especially with the sciences.
"That's why we did a lot with study skills. One of the major adjustments -- with their peers -- is that the bar's been raised. That's in addition to the social encounters, like roommates you may not get along with, or peer pressure to study or not."
One of Hanna's vocal opponents to getting instruction on how to use the library was Brunner. "I complained about it at the time because I thought I could just go to the library and learn how to use it by myself. But when I look back, I'm glad we did it. We learned how to use the library, access the Internet, and find books. It was great."
Brunner also was one of the students who accompanied Hanna for an optional class trip to the Mixed Blood Theater for a production called The Gene Pool.
"I enjoyed the play," Hanna says. "It covered a LOT of social issues, but I tried to show that the arts are important to science. About half the class went, and seemed to enjoy it, too."
Although the seminars received a host of kudos from students, they weren't perfect. The main complaint was that they required too much work for one credit, a point that Hanna finds difficult to argue against. The classes met once a week for two hours, and the class led by Hanna and Snustad required a weekly writing assignment, a term paper at the end of the quarter, and a presentation. "That was the only thing I didn't like," Brunner says.
But for Brunner, the positives far outweighed the negatives. One of the things she appreciated was that her term paper was corrected by a professor (Snustad) instead of a teaching assistant. "I really liked the fact that I got a professor's feedback on my term paper, that a genetics professor read it and critiqued it," she says.
Hanna is quick to point out that the seminars varied greatly. Not all of them had such a strong student development component, for example. That's because CBS let the faculty decide what the course focus would be. "We'll tally up the student evaluations but we'll still leave it up to the faculty to determine exactly what they're going to teach next year," Hanna says.
About 10 percent of the CBS faculty participated in this first year of freshman seminars, Hanna says. "We had a handful who stepped forward and thought this was a really good idea," she says. "It was a self-selecting process."
Snustad, however, was one of the faculty members who taught a course not because he wanted to, but because he was expected to.
"I was serving as a partial interim department head of genetics and cell biology and was attending a department head meeting when the issue of freshman seminars first surfaced. Yudof, Elde, and other administrators decided to lead by example and offer seminars themselves. So I felt some pressure to participate."
That feeling of pressure soon gave way to enthusiasm. "Student participation was phenomenal, exceeding my expectations by a wide margin," Snustad says. "They did an excellent job; sometimes we had trouble preventing two or three people from speaking at the same time. They had some great ideas and they shared them freely with the class. In that respect, the class was a lot of fun."
Hanna agrees, from both sides of the classroom. "I think the word is out there that it was enjoyable," she says.
In fact, one class -- the one taught by Dean Elde and biochemistry professor Norma Allewell -- found it enjoyable enough that they voted to keep meeting once a quarter for as long as possible.
CBS offered six freshman seminars in the fall and one each in winter and spring quarters. Next year, Hanna expects to offer 15 freshman seminars and possibly 30 the following year.
"Next year's goal is to have a seminar for every freshman who wants one," she says, adding that 150 CBS freshmen took freshman seminars this year. "The target is 225 freshmen next fall."
And whether those freshmen are from Fairbanks, Alaska, or Fairmont, Minn., they'll stand a better chance of succeeding at the University of Minnesota because of the small-group seminars that give them an opportunity to get to know professors -- and each other.
