Both Stanford's Palmer and Princeton's Dobin say the courses are often enjoyable ways for students to fulfill science and math requirements.
For instance, Dobin says, the laboratory requirement can be fulfilled with a course such as "Life as We Know It: A History of Biology." In this course, the weekly labs replicate the laboratory experiments as they were conducted, way back when.
Stanford boasts that one seminar studying jet engines flew to Arizona for a day-long field trip to an engine factory.
For students known at Stanford as fuzzies--non-math or science majors--these courses are often enjoyable ways to satisfy their natural science requirements.
"We are encouraged those [science and math] departments to certify freshman seminars as fulfilling the [general education] requirements," Palmer says. "It is ideal for students that are not going to major in that area."
The Four Year Plan
Read more in News
Campus Crime Meeting PostponedRecommended Articles
-
General Education Created to Teach Basic KnowledgeWhen General Education courses were created in 1946, faculty members expected the curriculum to eventually become mandatory for all students.
-
Good Idea to Expand SeminarsMentioned briefly in Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles' annual letter to the Faculty was the idea of seminar-style
-
Princeton Freshman Seminars Supply ModelLawrence Rosen, chair of Princeton's anthropology department, was recently at a meeting with the university's other department chairs, when the
-
Philosophy Dept. To Institute New Tutorial SystemJuniors and Sophomores concentrating in Philosophy will enter a series of small seminars next year instead of receiving individual tutorial
-
Annex Expands Adult Education Next YearHousewives will have ten instead of seven courses to choose from in Radcliffe's seminar program next year. The seminars, operated
-
First-Year FraudLike many other American liberal arts colleges, Harvard encourages students to dabble until they can select what makes them most
