Due to an unusually high number of internal transfers during summer orientation, we are adding one more section of Exploring the Options, the one-credit gateway course for incoming first year students coming to IC to discover their major.
We are soliciting expressions of interest from faculty with assigned academic advisees as part of their work load.
There are numerous advantages of teaching in the Exploratory Program.
- The course meets once per week based on your schedule.
- Class is capped at 15
- We provide an established syllabus, large selection of readings from which faculty choose (and to which they contribute), guest speakers, common anchor assessments and rubrics, and professional development in advising Exploratory and first year students.
- Can be taught in load or on overload with chair/dean permission.
- This course is not required and students take it for personal and academic enrichment. We enrolled over 80% of incoming Exploratory students last year, and expect to approach 90% this year.
- Students are required not to find a major, but to develop a four year plan after guided exploration of the role of "required" courses, the experiences they want in college, their personal philosophy of education, and how to make academic choices align with personal values. We are explicit about empowering students to take charge of their own education.
- The course is a hybrid combination of interdisciplinary academics with academic advising, occupational investigation and values clarification.
- Central is the course's mission is to help students understand the value of a liberal education, and make connections among their courses, so there is a strong emphasis on integrative thinking and learning. We teach the benefits of the ICC as a form of exploration, and a foundation for future academic and professional pursuits.
- The students become the faculty member's assigned advisees until they declare a major. In-class advising is supplemented with a mandatory individual pre-registration meeting. About half the students declare a major and move to a departmental faculty advisor by the end of their first year. Average time in the program is 2.5 semesters.
If you are interested or want to learn more about the course, please email me at ebleicher@ithaca.edu, and indicate why this is opportunity is appealing, and whether you would be teaching in load, or as an overload.
