Students take over the classroom 

BY cynthia lee
Today Staff Writer 

PHOTO BY Reed hutchinson Senior Holly Schwarz (lower left) meets for the first time with students enrolled in her class, “Comic Books as Literature.” There's a wait list of others hoping to get in. Hers is one of 15 one-unit, pass/no pass seminars being taught by students.

One of the first things Holly Schwarz told her packed class of comic book aficionados and addicts at their first meeting was that she too is obsessed with the literary genre.

That's right, comic books as literature — which happens to be the title of Schwarz's class. “There is a very valid and wonderful art form here,” she noted warmly.

Schwarz, a senior majoring in English and art, is one of 15 student facilitators breaking new ground in the College of Letters and Science this spring in a pilot program called Undergraduate Student Initiated Education. These juniors and seniors are teaching one-hour, one-unit weekly seminars on wide-ranging, provocative subjects they feel passionate about.

Schwarz's class was one of 40 course proposals submitted by students last fall. She spent last quarter working closely with her faculty mentor, N. Katherine Hayles of English, and took a pedagogy seminar to build a curriculum, from syllabus to grading structure (pass/no pass). A student-faculty advisory committee made sure the academic content was of high quality and that issues were approached from various sides.

The facilitators are teaching such courses as “Resurrecting Philoso-phers and Victorians from the Dead with ‘The Matrix,' ” “ '80s Pop Culture,” “Conservative Political Movements: Developments of the Right, Past and Present” and “Globalization and Inequality: Why Are Some Countries Poorer than Others?”

Student Michelle Sassounian, who led the push for the program and served on the advisory committee, said everyone wins: Facilitators intensely study topics they love, develop teaching skills and work closely with their mentors, while their students learn about subjects that interest them from fellow students with similar views. “They engage in meaningful dialogue about issues they care about because these seminars are initiated and designed by their peers,” she explained.

Alex Bodnar, a first-year Bruin in Schwarz's class, agreed. “There are so many things students want to learn about on this campus. Professors can be so stingy about picking topics for classes. So if a student is willing and able to offer this, it's a great teaching experience for them and a great learning experience for us.”

While Schwarz is requiring weekly readings, creative projects, online postings and participation in discussions, she earned smiles from the class with her optional field trips: a guided tour through Jay and Silent Bob's Secret Stash on Westwood Boulevard and a midnight showing of the new “X-Men 3: The Last Stand.”   

Initially, the idea of turning a classroom over to students made some faculty flinch. “It raises the question: Aren't parents paying tuition for us to do our jobs? Are we relinquishing our responsibility as teachers?” asked Professor Robin Garrell, chair of the College's Faculty Executive Committee that eventually approved the program, along with the Senate's Under-graduate Council. Now that she has reviewed the courses, Garrell said, “We're satisfied that they all meet the bar for quality. These are all excellent courses that are worthy of being offered. I'm also astonished at how demanding they are.”

UC Berkeley's de-Cal (democratic education at Cal) program, the inspiration for UCLA's seminars, made headlines in 2002 with a class on female sexuality that was suspended when allegations of an orgy surfaced. Another of its offerings was “The Joy of Garbage.” That won't happen here, faculty and students assured.

“We instituted a fairly elaborate process of pre-application and evaluation, with ongoing mentorship of both pedagogy and scholarly content,” said English Professor Robert Watson, the associate vice provost for educational innovation who chaired the advisory committee. UCLA students “don't have to be the passive product of a curriculum offered from the top down. Instead, they can use the university's resources to develop new and intellectually valid kinds of communication among themselves.”