Ignatius Seminars Stimulate Intellectual Curiosity in New Students
Dr. Heidi Hamilton's class discusses the linguistics of health-related communications.
Dr. Steven Sabat's class addresses the notion of Otherness in relation to people with brain damage.
Students in Dr. Jim Sandefur's class learn the mathematics behind strategies for card games like bridge, then put their theory to work by playing the game.
“The College is blessed with a marvelous faculty,” says Dean Jane McAuliffe, “and I am eager to offer our incoming students access to the minds, talents, and interests of this great group of people.”
In 2006, Georgetown College initiated a new series of first-semester seminars for the intellectually curious student interested in an integrative and personal approach to learning. These Ignatius Seminars introduce first-year College students to the depth and diversity of Georgetown’s dynamic intellectual community. Favorite topics of College faculty form the offerings for these seminars that invite small student groups to join their professors in the creative exploration of mind and spirit.
Each year, a number of the Ignatius Seminars focus on science and technology. In fall 2006, the courses included Professor Heidi Hamilton’s Healthtalk in Public and Private, Professor Jim Sandefur’s Strategy for Games and Puzzles, and Professor Steven Sabat’s Brains, Persons, “Otherness.” Dr. Sandefur and Dr. Sabat will teach their courses again in fall 2007, and Professor Brian Blake will begin teaching A Connected World: For Better or for Worse.
“Before I came into the class, I always believed that my passion for writing and my affinity for science were mutually exclusive, and I actually decided to take the class to better flesh out which path was the correct path for me,” says a student who took Dr. Hamilton’s course last fall. “However, I have learned in the process that effective communication skills, whether written or verbal, are what makes any decent doctor a great doctor by allowing them to connect with their patients.”
The small class setting of these first-year seminars enables students to get to know their professors and each other well. In this atmosphere, the faculty can recognize the strengths and educational needs of each student, creating a teaching and mentoring environment. Each professor’s expression of his or her particular scholarly pursuit provides students with a tangible example of the interplay of mind and spirit, of disciplined work and intellectual excitement, of academic rigor and creative play.
One such course integrating academic skills and life beyond the classroom is Dr. Sandefur’s course Strategy for Games and Puzzles. Dr. Sandefur, of the Department of Mathematics, designed the course so that students learn mathematics and game theory through learning how to play games.
“Success in many games requires both inductive and deductive reasoning skills combined with an understanding of random processes, such as the roll of a die or the draw of a card,” says Dr. Sandefur. “These same skills can be the key to succeed in many disciplines, including mathematics.”
Drawing on the educational insights of Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, the Ignatius Seminars seek to cultivate the Ignatian ideal of cura personalis: care for each person’s individuality and care for his or her integral wholeness. The Ignatius Seminars focus not only on conveying information and intellectual content, but also on building a home for wisdom and enriching all dimensions of students’ lives.
One course that exemplifies the ideal of cura personalis is Dr. Sabat’s course on Brains, Persons, “Otherness” in which students explore the impact of brain damage on persons. Dr. Sabat explains: “In my research, I work with people who have brain damage (Alzheimer’s disease) and I search for what they can still do, instead of focusing only on what they cannot do. In this course, we identify and explore stereotypes about brain damage and aging, examining their effects and what is thereby obscured. We look carefully at what such people can do in spite of their illness, the humanity that lives on within them, and how healthy others in their midst can help to make the lives of people with brain damage, as well as their own lives, meaningful.”
The students also found Dr. Sabat’s course meaningful. As one student in the course says, “I do not think that such a connection between human ethics and science is made very often, and the result is one that I will remember forever.”
“There is one thing that I have learned from this class and have made my own,” reports another. “That thing is respect for all of humanity, regardless of age, gender, economic status, religion, or any quality that forces a person to become an ‘other’ in the eyes of society.”
Dr. Blake’s course, A Connected World: For Better or for Worse, focuses on how information technology negatively and positively affects society and also how society affects technology. Dr. Blake will address such topics as how the Internet protects or interferes with personal privacy and freedom, how social networks such as Facebook or MySpace enhance or complicate our lives, how sharing environments such as Napster/Kazaa have changed businesses and copyright law, and how information technology in general has changed the way lawmakers think about public policy and government.
The Seminars initiate opportunities early in the student’s experience to cultivate basic skills that faculty identify as important: reading a text with thought and insight, speaking clearly and persuasively in an academic discussion, and writing a structured and sustained argument. The Ignatius Seminars are a chance to experience Georgetown College and university learning at its best.
“A significant change that I have witnessed within my self is how I am influenced by what I am exposed to in my classes,” says a student who took Dr. Hamilton’s class last fall. “Especially within our seminar, I now feel like part of a greater academic community. Rather than just sitting back and absorbing all the information I receive and being just a student, now I can really analyze what I learn. I can now object to an idea, put it in the context of other things I know or relate it to real-world scenarios.”