Story updated March 27, 2007




View the complete FOCUS series on the Transforming Undergraduate Education

First-year students coming to Rutgers next fall will choose from traditional courses such as Psych 101, Expository Writing, and introductory chemistry. But they may also take specialized, one-credit seminars designed just for them: courses like “Should I Sell My Shore House?”; “Curiosity”; “Asian-American Political Identity” and “Malevolent and Magnificent Microbes.”

The seminars (complete list) are a central part of the transformation of undergraduate education in New Brunswick. The task force from the outset envisioned an intellectual community that embraces undergraduates as soon as (and even before) they arrive on campus.

“These courses are intended to be an exciting introduction to the life of a student at a research university,” said Interim Vice President for Undergraduate Education Barry Qualls. “We hope the variety will suggest something about the multitude of possibilities at a public research institution.”

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Advising the new Rutgers students also will require a new approach. First-year student advisers previously worked for Rutgers, Livingston, or Douglass colleges. Now the advisers of the School of Arts and Sciences need to tailor their services to address the needs of at least 3,000 students. That challenge is augmented by efforts to bring more faculty into the advising process; advisers say they have been overwhelmingly successful at recruiting faculty to attend events for prospective and admitted students.


A sample list of first-year seminars

  • "New York Undercover: The City as Mystery" Greg Jackson, English, School of Arts and Sciences

  • "Anonymous Communication in an Information Society" Craig Scott, Communication, School of Communication, Information and Library Studies

  • "Microbes and Humans, or: Germs You Can't Live With and Others You Can't Live Without" Charles Martin, Cell Biology, School of Arts and Sciences

  • "What is Discrimination" Barbara Lee, School of Management and Labor Relations

  • "Gentrifying New York City" Kathe Newman, Bloustein School

  • "A Woman for President?" Ruth Mandel, Director, Eagleton Institute of Politics

The university plans to offer between 75 and 100 seminars; nearly 150 faculty members from all schools have expressed interest in teaching seminars. As more funds are raised, the seminar offerings will expand; President Richard L. McCormick was instrumental in supporting the seminars, raising more than $2.5 million from donors. McCormick also will teach a seminar, “Challenges Facing Higher Education in the 21st Century.”

The 10-hour seminars introduce first-year and transfer students to interdisciplinary study, cutting-edge research, and senior faculty members at Rutgers. Many of the seminars are based on topics in the news and subjects that are of growing importance in the 21st century.

A cluster of five courses deals specifically with the New Jersey’s shore and climate. One looks at the activities of the Rutgers Marine Field Station; another examines the relationship between the oceans and human society. “Should I Sell My Shore House?” taught by Ken Miller of the geological sciences department, is concerned with the impacts of global warming and the rising seas on the Jersey Shore and the state’s economy.

The one-credit courses will begin shortly after regular classes, and end before the finals period. They will be graded pass/fail. The committee that developed the first-year seminars did not want the courses to be pressure cookers. “These are not intended to compete with three-credit courses,” Qualls said. “We want to excite students who come to Rutgers, not scare them off.”

In addition to the first-year seminars, directors of the honors program at the School of Arts and Sciences plan to offer roughly 20 sections of one-credit honors seminars. The concept is very similar to the first-year seminars, and like those courses, will integrate co-curricular cultural activities, both on- and off-campus, into the material.

“It is a way of structuring the out-of-classroom experience,” said Julio Nazario, assistant dean for academic programs at Livingston and director of that college’s honors program. Nazario will incorporate some of the practices of the Livingston honors program into the new arts and sciences program debuting next fall. “We want our honor students to be engaged, and hopefully after these colloquia they will continue to attend cultural events.”

Sarolta Takacs, dean of the honors program at the School of Arts and Sciences, said that that the cultural events on Rutgers’ campuses can be magnets of intellectual discussion. “They aim to foster global said awareness, academic excellence, and leadership.”

Helping first-year students navigate the new curriculum and choose courses appropriate to their interests is a new task. First-year advisers from each college have been working together to create a system that will provide arts and sciences students with the same services, no matter which campus they live on. Yet, those students should be able to develop relationships with advisers and be part of a small campus community, said Beth Howard, assistant dean of academic affairs at Douglass College.

“The goal is for a student to be able to drop into an advising center on any campus, and to be able to be given an immediate and straightforward answer. But they can come back and see the same adviser, who has seen their development,” Howard said. “The system is being designed so that students really can have access to both kinds of support.”