SUMMER READING AND 'CIE' COURSE GREET URSINUS FIRST-YEARS
COLLEGEVILLE, Pa. -- Newswise — Ursinus College's incoming first-year students will have some academic icebreakers as well as the usual social aspects of orientation. They have all read the same book over the summer, will take the same class in the fall and will live together where they will be able to discuss the book and the class anytime, anywhere.
The book discussion actually began during the summer on a college web page, where students posted thoughts about "The Epic of Gilgamesh," the required summer reading assignment for the class, Common Intellectual Experience (CIE), which is taught in small discussion sections.
The new Ursinus students, who move in Thursday, Aug. 21, comprise one of the college's largest classes, at 450 students. It is also one of the best classes academically, with a greater percentage of students in the top 10 percent of their school classes (44 percent), and higher average SAT scores.
"The strength of our programs, such as the CIE, as well as outside recognition by foundations such as Mellon; higher education authors such as Loren Pope (author of "Colleges That Change Lives" ); and surveys such as the National Survey of Student Engagement, have all caught the attention of our applicant pool," said Richard DiFeliciantonio, vice president of enrollment.
Each first-year student is issued a Dell laptop computer to use for four years. With the addition of the Class of 2007 into the laptop program, the entire campus is now laptop-equipped. Also, for the first time, students have access to a first-year web site chat to get to know their soon-to-be classmates.
The CIE is a two-semester class required of all first-year students, which grapples with central questions of human existence: "What does it mean to be human?" "How should we live our lives?" and "What is the universe and what is our place in it?" This year, nearly half the faculty will teach a CIE section.
"The reason that we expect all Ursinus students to take this course, and all Ursinus faculty to teach it, is that is deals with the questions that are confronted by everyone, the questions that lie at the heart of liberal arts education," said CIE coordinator, Professor of Biology Robert Dawley, in a letter to students. "Seeking answers to those questions is something we all share in common. And since Ursinus is a liberal arts college, we will not leave that seeking to chance, but will engage in it deliberately from almost the first moment of arrival."
"The Epic of Gilgamesh" (Penguin classic edition, translated by N.K. Sandars, ISBN 0-14-044100-X.) was chosen because "it addresses those central human questions . . . and because it resonates with so many of the texts that we will read throughout the year," said Dawley. The epic is a cycle of poems surviving from the third millennium B.C.E., which tells of the hero-king's adventures and quest for immortality.
The first CIE class will occur during orientation, Fri., Aug. 22. Before the classes meet, students will attend an academic convocation and hear from Aaron Ranck, Class of 2002, who is the college's first recipient of a Watson Fellowship, which allowed him to complete a creative project during a year he spent abroad after graduation. The Fellowships are given to students from a select group of liberal arts colleges.
First-year students will be housed in three residence hall centers. The "freshman clustering" fosters an academic learning community, with a faculty apartment on site, and a special floor, Community Catalysts, for students with an interest in community leadership. A first-year advisor from the Dean's Office works with students as they become part of the academic community.
In addition to the academic orientation activities students will spend a day in Philadelphia touring the art museum and historic area.
Ursinus College is a highly selective, independent coeducational liberal arts college located on a scenic, wooded 160-acre campus, 30 miles from Center City Philadelphia. The college is one of only 8 percent of U.S. colleges to possess a chapter of Phi Beta Kappa. The school's web site is located at http://www.ursinus.edu.
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