Of the 10,000 new students who come to UCLA every year, about 6,000 are undergraduates, and 4,000 of those are first-year students, many leaving home for the first time. In normal years, the move to Westwood is a happy one for students and their families, though the transition is a big one.

This year, students faced another, more momentous transition. As young adults and citizens, UCLA freshmen -- who were 6 or 7 years old when the Berlin Wall fell -- experienced the catastrophe of Sept. 11, perhaps feeling the weight of history for the first time.

Every year, our programs of orientation, advising and counseling help students make the transition from home to campus, from high school to college. What about the transition into history, as educated citizens of a nation?

To put it another way, how might a university respond to the catastrophe of Sept. 11 through teaching and learning? In the face of an action that defied reason, what might become of the rational discourse that we take for granted when we teach? What are the university's special obligations as a forum for debate and criticism in such circumstances?

On the day of the terrorist attacks, these were key questions for the Chancellor's Executive Committee. Several responses emerged, all shaped in one way or another by UCLA's academic mission.

One response, led by Vice Provost Judith Smith with the prompt support of the Academic Senate, began with another question: Would faculty, on short notice and without compensation, be willing to teach special classes to help our youngest undergraduates make sense of Sept. 11 by connecting it with their first experience of the university curriculum?

The answer from 50 faculty was a resounding "Yes!" From all parts of the university, 50 faculty proposed classes, screened by a committee of their colleagues, to be taught once a week to small groups of 15 or so students on a pass/fail basis. Students also responded enthusiastically, filling nine-tenths of the seats available.

Having taught one of the classes, I can testify to the value of this project, now continuing in the winter term with 30 more classes. I first taught college students in 1964, and last quarter's course is the best teaching I've done. (I hope my students felt good about it, too.) For the project as a whole -- all 50 classes -- I've seen the evaluations done by students and faculty both, and the positives are nearly unanimous.

Why did UCLA's Sept. 11 classes work so well? Clearly, the force and scale of the event cried out for some such response: In part, the classes worked because the moment made them work, giving superb teachers a special motivation and stimulating the drive to learn what brings top students to UCLA. Partly, however, the classes enabled us to do a kind of teaching -- small groups of new undergraduates face-to-face with senior faculty -- that large universities like UCLA can't offer often enough.

I hope that our success with the Sept. 11 classes will help us think about making this type of teaching (though not about Sept. 11) a regular part of the undergraduate experience at UCLA.

Copenhaver is provost of the College of Letters and Science.