G U I D E D. S T U D I E S. P R O G R A M

The following feature story appeared in the campus publication MOSAIC in May, 1999.  Although some courses, students, and faculty members referenced in the story may have changed, it still provides a full and accurate picture of the Guided Studies program.  For current course information and a faculty listing we encourage you to visit the program's homepage.

ENGAGING STUDENTS IN A COMPREHENSIVE, INTERDISCIPLINARY EXAMINATION OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION

Celebrating its 20th anniversary this fall, the "Guided Studies Program: European Civilization" is Trinity’s oldest interdisciplinary program of study for entering students. In a sequence of nine courses taken over the freshman and sophomore years, Guided Studies students engage in a comprehensive, integrated, interdisciplinary examination of European history, literature, and thought from classical antiquity to the present. Attending classes together, living in the same dormitory, bonding through common work and required out-of-classroom activities, students find that Guided Studies gives more than a solid foundation for their future majors; it often becomes the formative, defining experience of their college years.

Associate Academic Dean J. Ronald Spencer says that Guided Studies grew out of a faculty study group on the topic of 19^th-century Europe. Members of the group, which included Professor of Philosophy Drew A. Hyland, Professor of History Samuel D. Kassow, Professor of Religion Frank Kirkpatrick, and James J. Goodwin Professor of English Milla Riggio, wanted to share their experiences with students. At first the group wanted to create a major in 19^th-century studies but found that students didn’t have the background for it. "So we created a threshold program designed to provide the knowledge we thought the students would need for a good interdisciplinary study," explains Riggio. "We never got around to the major, but the basic program remains after all these years a very valid way to introduce certain historical concepts and themes and patterns of development."

Since its inception, approximately 500 students have enrolled in Guided Studies, about 25 in each incoming class, and the courses have been taught by more than a dozen current faculty members. John J. McCook Professor of Modern Languages Kenneth Lloyd-Jones taught the program’s "Literary Patterns in European Development, Part I" for the first time last spring. He saw Guided Studies as "an opportunity to reaffirm the historical approach to the liberal arts." Together, Guided Studies students and faculty explore the dynamic tensions between the orthodox and the heretical, or the dialectical battle between Romanticism and Reason, for example. Along the way, Lloyd-Jones says, students discover that "what seems contemporary is—or is in part—old."

Interdisciplinarity and intellectual rigor

A key strength of the program is the collaboration among faculty members. Teachers find many ways to work together, from exchanging syllabi to sitting in on each other’s classes or actively team-teaching. Knowing what colleagues are teaching means they can cross-reference material in their courses to the others. According to Frank Kirkpatrick, "I know what all the students are taking that semester and I can make connections."

Guided Studies is an honors program; as such, students invited to enroll expect to be challenged by both the content and the workload of their classes. Milla Riggio says the courses are different. Her reading list for Guided Studies is "much more intense than in any other course," and many of the long and difficult novels must be read during the summer. The intensity holds true for writing as well as reading assignments. Justin D. Smith ’99 recalls, "My writing improved tremendously because the program is so writing-intensive." He notes that the writing demands are varied because of the interdisciplinary nature of the program. When one paper is a response to literature and the next is an examination of a historical trend or of a philosophical development, you have to think from different perspectives," he explains.

This integrated, interdisciplinary approach provides a solid foundation for future, more specialized work in other fields. Guided Studies students have gone on to major in virtually every department at Trinity. Amanda B. Holden ’02, a theater and dance major with a minor in French, for example, expects her Guided Studies background will be excellent preparation for the required (and notoriously rigorous) theater history courses that trace the evolution of drama from ancient world to the Enlightenment.

In addition to their demanding classes, Guided Studies students participate each semester in required "Colloquium" activities intended to help synthesize and bring to life material from classes. These activities have included trips to museums in New York and attendance at performances of Greek drama and Renaissance music. Coordinated with their study of the development of Western religious thought—and in particular a unit on monastic life—Guided Studies students two years ago visited a convent in Bethlehem, CT, where among other things they helped nuns shovel manure out of their barn. Professor Kirkpatrick notes that, while still living by old Benedictine principles, the nuns also drove trucks, giving insight as to how their way of life has "deep roots in the medieval period but also adapts to the modern world."

Forming an intellectual community

Learning is at the heart of the Guided Studies experience, but equally important is learning together. Kenneth Lloyd-Jones says the cohesiveness of his Guided Studies class this semester was immediately apparent. "Students had a common intellectual purpose," he says. "They looked out for one another intellectually. The students were courteous but firm in their intellectual arguments with one another."

Some faculty members require students to work collaboratively. Milla Riggio likes to give a full-day, group oral exam in which students take on the personae of authors and historical figures, speak in the first-person voice, and "role play history."

Justin Smith ‘99, who became an academic mentor for the program, says that the intellectual community is not confined to the classroom. Part of his role as a mentor is to be a mediator or liaison between students and faculty members, helping first-year students to feel comfortable seeking out and creating dialogues with professors.

Professor Kirkpatrick notes that the "esprit de corps" that develops among Guided Studies students and faculty members stays with them. As juniors and seniors, students often show interest in what the younger Guided Studies students are doing and, as graduates, they often keep in touch with faculty from the program.

Guided Studies is ostensibly so transformative an experience that descriptions of it—from both faculty and student participants in the program—often seem a litany of superlatives. "The most enjoyable course I’ve taught at Trinity," and "some of the most committed and engaged students at Trinity." Or, "the most rigorous courses I’ve taken and also my very favorite." Justin Smith, without hesitation or equivocation, calls it "the best thing I’ve done at Trinity."

—Leslie Virostek