Academics

Area 8: Senior Colloquium (SRC 399)

During your senior year, you will participate in a senior seminar in the liberal arts called senior colloquium. These courses are interdisciplinary in nature and will include students from a variety of majors. Faculty members likewise are drawn from all divisions of the college.

Senior colloquium is a capstone course in the cornerstone studies and is an attempt to integrate the various disciplines into a course where student wholeness can be pursued. Tentative answers to the perennial questions are attempted one last time before you leave college. Questions like: Why are we here? How does one live a good life? Who are my models? What are my values? How can we all maintain a learning stance throughout our lives? What things have I learned that will help me to try to make a difference in the world into which I am graduating?

Class members read essays, novels, biographies, or plays to help kindle the discussions which address these questions. Grading is based on three or four essays and participation in the discussion. Some sample course titles from recent semesters are:

Leadership and Community
Values and Women
Values in Conflict
Values and Change
Images of Self
Self and Imagination
Origins and Endings
The Challenge to Values in Modern Society

Last Updated: 1/22/09