Innovative faculty are drawn to the light of Fiat Lux

By Judy Lin

Six years ago in the aftermath of 9/11, a new idea emerged as faculty and administrators searched for a way to help students — freshmen and sophomores in particular — make sense of that traumatic event and their world.

Faculty response was phenomenally swift: They offered 50 "Perspectives on September 11" seminars that fall quarter, each scaled to a small class and taught by faculty committed to helping students understand this historical event from different perspectives.

For example, English Professor Robert Watson, a Shakespeare scholar, taught a seminar on modern war fiction. "We used literature," he recalled, "as a way to get some perspective on what was going on in the explosive world at that time."

Today, Watson, associate vice provost for educational innovation, chairs the College of Letters and Science program that evolved from the 9/11 seminars, Fiat Lux (UC's motto — "Let there be light"). Faculty eager to take a novel approach to scholarship now annually offer some 200 seminars to no more than 20 students per class.

These volunteer teachers aren't paid to teach the seminars, and students only receive one credit hour and a pass/fail grade. Yet Fiat Lux, going on its 1,000th class this winter quarter, continues to engage faculty and students alike.

"This is really a little window into the pedagogic Eden where people find pleasure and excitement in learning," Watson said.

Fiat Lux classes are proposed by faculty members, often on topics for which they hold a special passion. Thomas Harrison, an associate professor of Italian literature, created a class merging his interests in poetry and music — he played bass and flute in a rock band in his youth. "After many years of teaching," he said, "I've realized that poetry doesn't grab students the way it might have 100 years ago. It's not part of their culture. What they have a passion for is rock music."

Thus was born "Rock Lyrics," in which Harrison' and his students analyze the writings of Bob Dylan, Pink Floyd and Nirvana, to name a few. "Lyrics speak very immediately and intimately to young people around the world," said Harrison. "That's where the poetic experience is really occurring. I thought I could bring my literary analyses to bear on this."

The small-seminar format works equally well for Jill DeJager, who focuses on our culture's obsession with body image in "Cosmo Says You're Fat? I Ain't Down with That." A School of Public Health lecturer and nutrition education coordinator at the Arthur Ashe Student Health and Wellness Center, DeJager and her co-instructor, Rena Orenstein, find the format to be "an excellent platform to initiate some much needed dialogue about these issues," DeJager said.

She appreciates that her students "are learning because they want to learn. It is a laid-back, stress-free learning environment [where] they can just be themselves and happen to be learning at the same time."

The classes are a testament to the faculty's ability to be nimble and develop scholarly perspectives quickly on what matters to students now. This quarter, for example, two classes related to the Virginia Tech tragedy are being offered, one by Constance Hammen. A distinguished professor in the departments of Psychology and Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, she has taught numerous classes in psychopathology and mood disorders.

Yet it's her Fiat Lux class, "Disturbed and Disturbing Students: Learning from Virginia Tech," that most deeply reaches young students, she said. "I wanted to show beginning college students how the complex issues of Virginia Tech might be approached by the science and profession of clinical psychology."

Harrison describes Fiat Lux classes as "thought" courses. "For freshmen, it's very important to build their competence in reflecting, questioning. I ask questions, and together we discover what the truth is."

For more information, see Fiat Lux.