Entry Year Experience Courses Get Freshmen Ready for Success
September 28, 2009
Amanda Roderick, a student in “Thoreau: Nature, Self, and Society,” took this image during a field trip to Walden Pond.
Every USM student now has the opportunity to tackle issues ranging from consumerism and the creative economy, to HIV/AIDS and the environment thanks to EYE courses. EYE, or Entry Year Experience, courses are designed by a team of professors from different academic departments who give a range of perspectives through rigorous reading and writing assignments, group discussions and fieldwork.
Freshmen, and transfer students with less than 24 credits, are required to choose one EYE class, all of which are team taught. The requirement is part of the new USM Core, a progression of courses that begin with EYE, college writing and quantitative reasoning courses and concludes with a capstone project related directly to a student’s major.
For example, this fall the EYE course “Musician’s Health” will take a holistic look at how musicians and teachers of music can avoid repetitive motion injuries, hearing loss and other physical ailments that come with the territory of those who endlessly rehearse on their instruments. Associate Professor of Music Doug Owens suffered hearing loss while teaching high school band classes, leading him to pursue his Ph.D. and a new career teaching future band teachers how to avoid hearing loss. Owens is joined by Associate Professor of Music Thomas Parchman, a clarinetist who developed a back injury by performing in a chair that was too low, and Associate Professor of Sport Sciences Brian Toy who can help students understand a musician’s physiology and the steps needed to remain healthy.
One of the first EYE courses was “Shopping and American Consumerism.” Students in this class are challenged to look at the social and economic forces that combine to lead Americans into becoming the consumers they are today. Writing assignments challenge the students’ assumptions about what they buy and why. A field assignment requires students to visit the Maine Mall to do research rather than shop. They observe the mall, shoppers, and employees in the same way anthropologists observe a different culture, writing a critical analysis of their observations. Students are co-taught by Professor of Economics Michael Hillard, Professor of English Jane Kuenz and Assistant Professor of Philosophy Jason Read, who each teach from their particular discipline.
USM’s New England location makes it a wonderful place to study “Thoreau: Nature, Self, and Society.” In contrast with “Shopping and American Consumerism” this class will look closely at one of the most widely known environmentalists who tried to learn how simply life could be lived in material terms and how richly it could be lived in spiritual terms. Students in this class will read and write about Thoreau’s essays, keep a journal, visit Walden Pond and choose from a range of out-of-class excursions.
“The Studio Experience — Art and Community” emphasizes two aspects of the studio: immersion into the discipline of making things and the nature of art as a communal experience. Students select their course section according to their preferred medium: drawing, photography, or writing. Research will be the cornerstone of this course, with students learning how to use USM Libraries, the Osher Map Library, USM Special Collections, Maine Historical Society, the Portland Museum of Art and other resources. Using these sources, Dennis Gilbert’s students will write a short story based in historical New England, which must be historically accurate and believable.
Students are not the only ones who benefit from EYE courses. Michael Hillard was a veteran professor at USM who usually taught smaller, upper-level classes where he mentored economics majors. He now enjoys interacting and mentoring students who are beginning their college experience. He also says that the team-teaching model made him a better scholar by exposing him to current academic scholarship in the fields of his collaborating professors.
For more information on USM’s Core curriculum and EYE courses, see
http://usm.maine.edu/catalogs/undergraduate/core.htm
