2018 Newsletter

Herbst’s role in global education

Anonymous — Wed, 27 Jun 2018 20:38:17 +0000

Herbst’s role in global education Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 06/27/2018 - 14:38

Global education is part of the CEAS mission statement. Herbst contributes to this in many ways, including the Global Engineering RAP and the various study abroad courses. These give American students a more international perspective, both at home and abroad.

The program contributes to the CU Engineering mission in the other direction, too, by making international students feel more comfortable in the U.S. and at CU. We do this formally and informally, in the following ways.

In fall and spring semesters, Herbst offers two sections of HUEN 1010 just for international students who need additional help with English. These sections give students a bit more time to express themselves fully in conversation. These sections also require extra-curricular assignments on conversation, including weekly conferences with their instructor and also weekly chats with American conversation partners. Participating in these sections helps international students gain confidence speaking English; this in turn enables them to get more out of their engineering classes—especially their projects courses.

Also, Herbst now offers a five-day summer workshop for new international graduate students. This workshop helps these students adapt to being in the U.S. It also alleviates some anxiety about their upcoming courses and teaching assistant responsibilities, and it gives them the opportunity to form friendships before their first semester starts.

Finally, Herbst helps promote the campus-wide International Coffee Hour. This is held Fridays from 4-5:30 p.m. at the UMC; both international and American students are welcome, whatever their discipline. In early fall, Herbst plans to co-host an Engineering International Coffee Hour in the Engineering Center lobby. This will introduce engineering students to the fun and fellowship of such a gathering—and that introduction might induce them to make the trek to the UMC in subsequent weeks.

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Two new study abroad options for Herbst students

Anonymous — Wed, 27 Jun 2018 20:36:00 +0000

Two new study abroad options for Herbst students Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 06/27/2018 - 14:36

Herbst launched two new study abroad courses in 2018—one to Spain and one to Austria. These join Herbst’s highly successful Rome and China courses.

The Spanish trip started here in �鶹ӰԺ, during the spring semester, when Diane Sieber taught a new course on Don Quixote, by Miguel de Cervantes. In May, after the semester ended, she took her students to Madrid and the surrounding countryside for nearly two weeks. Since Diane has spent many years living in Madrid, this amazing trip gave students a real insider’s look at the city and its culture.

Incidentally, this new course design is called a Global Intensive seminar; it combines a full semester course in �鶹ӰԺ with post-semester travel. In these Global Intensive seminars, course themes can develop over a matter of months in �鶹ӰԺ, rather than over a two- or three-week period abroad.

In Maymester 2018, Laura Rabinowitz and Lisa de Alwis piloted their co-designed and team-taught seminar, Voices of Vienna. This course made full use of both teachers’ expertise throughout each day’s instruction and excursions. The result was a complex, densely woven fabric of art, music, philosophy, history and science. A few class meetings in �鶹ӰԺ during the spring semester introduced the historical context and main themes of the course. Then Laura and Lisa met their students in Vienna on May 14 for the on-site adventure. They report that the students fell in love with this beautiful city!

Herbst’s third 2018 study abroad course was a repeat of Paul Diduch’s highly successful Maymester course, Culture Wars in Rome. This course combines history, architecture, philosophy, politics, art and religion, all synthesized into an incredible 14-day experience for the students.

Herbst’s remaining study abroad course, Self-Awareness and Images of the Other, was not taught in 2018. Anja Lange leads this Maymester course to China in alternating years, and 2018 was an "off" year.

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The courses you might remember best

Anonymous — Tue, 26 Jun 2018 22:20:32 +0000

The courses you might remember best Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 06/26/2018 - 16:20

We tend to emphasize new courses in our newsletters, so you might wonder what has happened to our Great Books seminars. Rest assured: they are alive and well!

HUEN 1010, Humanities for Engineers. Over the last year, we taught 29 sections of 1010, for a total of 345 students. Class size remains small: 12 for regular sections and 10 for ESL sections. Today’s 1010 seminars tend to be theme-based, focusing on leadership, for example, or identity. No single text is read in every section, but all sections still entail close reading and open discussion.

HUEN 3100, Advanced Humanities for Engineers. Last year, we taught 20 sections of 3100, including four summer sections, for a total of 235 students. These seminars are capped at 12 students. The various sections of HUEN 3100, though not identical, have a great deal in common, and what they share will be familiar to you. In 3100, students still meet Frederick Douglass and Socrates; they still contend with Stoic philosophy and with the Grand Inquisitor’s harangue. They still perform Shakespeare and attend cultural events. Finally, they all still do the art assignment, combining a trip to the Denver Art Museum with a reproduction of a piece of its artwork. These familiar features of 3100 remain unchanged.

Furthermore, the format of the 1010 and the 3100 seminars remains the same: constructive class participation counts for 25-35 percent of the semester grade; students continue to negotiate the open-ended questions raised by their texts. Instructors help students weed out wrong answers, but they still don’t hand out any right ones. In other words, the heart of the program remains the Great Books Seminar.

We have extended the notion of “Great Books” to mean foundational and/or deeply worthwhile texts in any cultural tradition, however. Moreover, we have expanded the notion of “texts” to include music, art, architecture and film. The results have been very successful. Broadening our scope has not diluted our curriculum; rather, it has helped us all gain new perspectives on the human condition.

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