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THE PURPOSE OF LS1000
Mission Statement: LS1000 employs a variety of analytical
styles to examine the disciplines which comprise a liberal arts
education at Millsaps. The shared experience of being introduced
to the humanities, the sciences, and business leadership provides
Millsaps students with both a unifying theme in their crucial first
year and with the special skills they will need during their college
years and beyond. The goals of the course are to teach particular
competencies in critical thinking and communication and to instill
an appreciation for an interdisciplinary view of lifelong learning
and development.
How is this course going to help you?
LS1000 is a carefully designed introduction to your experience of
college and liberal education.
First, let us clear up a frequent
misunderstanding. The word "liberal" in the term "liberal education"
does not refer to political positions. Both political liberals and
political conservatives recognize the deep human and practical value
of a liberal education. The word "liberal" in "liberal education"
means "free." It means this in two senses. First, a liberal education
is the education of a free man or woman, of a citizen, an education
that gives you the knowledge and above all the competencies of thinking
and judging necessary to carry out all the responsibilities of an
adult citizen in an era of change. Second, a liberal education is
traditionally understood as a process that frees or liberates those
who undertake it. What does it free you from? The limiting chains
of ignorance, incompetence, false opinions, illusion, prejudice.
What does it free you for? Knowledge and the development of your
human powers of reflection, judgment, discovery and vision, powers
which allow you to be competent and fully aware in your thinking
and acting.
Thus a liberal education not only
gives you knowledge but transforms your powers as a person and contributes
to your whole life. The liberal arts are traditionally two-fold:
(1) the trivium (grammar, rhetoric, and logic), recast in the modern
world as the humanities and the humanistic side of the social sciences;
and (2) the quadrivium (geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, and music),
recast in the modern world as mathematics, the natural sciences
and the scientific side of the social sciences. These areas of inquiry
partly embrace technical learning and information, and partly elude
the technical as they raise, reflect and offer partial answers to
the questions that arise for every open mind and heart as we live
out our lives in the world. For example:
What is it to be human? What are the
true ends and right governing values of human life? What is the
right form of human community and of our relationships with one
another? How do we relate to the large community of life? What is
the meaning of the visible wonders and the hidden secrets of the
natural world? Is there a god? How have people experienced their
relationship to the divine? What does this imply for our relationships
to ourselves, the rest of the community and the natural world?
The four units of LS1000 introduce
you to several primary aspects of a liberal arts education:
- Unit I: Growing
in self-knowledge (Identity).
- Unit II: Becoming
aware of how you think when searching for the truth about something
and
learning to think more powerfully (Cognition).
- Unit III: Learning
to identify and weigh the factors involved in reaching a responsible
decision in the most aware and informed way (Responsibility).
- Unit IV: Presenting
your work in the public community of thought and learning to assess
your own thinking according to appropriate standards (Assessment).
In these units, you will encounter
a variety of issues. You will be challenged to think for yourself
in ways that draw upon your personal experience and the experiences
of those in your class. There is a strong emphasis on writing and
revising your writing in this course because the process of revision
is important for clarifying your thinking.
Similarly, the pedagogy in an LS1000
classroom is interactive, with students taking an active role in
every class. The readings are drawn from a number of disciplines,
including art and films. These materials are not taught as introductions
to the disciplines, but as ways to help you discover how to answer
your own human questions. No faculty member is a full expert on
the multi-disciplinary content of the course. Rather, the role of
the LS1000 instructor is to facilitate you in learning how to learn
and to reason.
For these reasons, this class may
introduce you to a different kind of educational process that will
at the beginning seem strange to you. Rather than being a class
in which you learn information passively from an expert, this class
will encourage you to become responsible for your own thinking and
learning. As you progress in the course and in your undergraduate
education at Millsaps, you will increasingly become your own teacher.
Liberal Arts Abilities
In order to reach the goals a liberal education has for you, you
must begin to master a set of basic abilities. LS1000 introduces
you to these abilities and the remainder of your core courses will
give you further opportunities to advance in them. So that you can
understand why we have assigned certain material and asked you to
carry out certain tasks, we will include a list of the core abilities
as Millsaps defines them and state how they are reflected in the
course.
Reasoning. The ability to think
logically and reflectively, to analyze critically and constructively.
You will be asked to develop your reasoning skills throughout the
course in your readings, your journals, your formal writing assignments,
and classroom discussions. Each one of the units progressively leads
you to more complex thinking tasks. An openness to questions, skeptical
inquiry that takes nothing for granted, and an ability to accept
and deal with the ambiguity that is often present in experience
- these are some of the important attitudes that you will develop
in the course.
Communication. a) The ability
to express one's thoughts and feelings coherently and persuasively
through written and oral communication; b) the ability to work effectively
in collaboration with others and to demonstrate leadership abilities.
Written communication. Helping
you gain the power to express your thoughts and feelings is one
of the most important elements of the course. In this course, you
will begin to learn how to do the kind of writing and thinking that
are required in all courses at Millsaps. A description of the writing
assignments will be found later in the guide.
Oral communication. In this
course you will develop your powers of oral communication informally
by open discussion in class. You will also learn how to collaborate
with other students in a number of projects throughout the term.
In the final unit of the course, you will prepare an oral presentation
based on one of your writing projects.
Reading. Learning how to read
more attentively and analytically is a basic skill in this course
and in all your core classes. You will be asked throughout the course
to pay attention to strategies of reading different kinds of material,
and techniques for analyzing challenging readings.
Quantitative Thinking. The
ability to understand, interpret, and use the numerical and scientific
data and the technology of the modern world. Unit II will ask you
to think about scientific thinking as one way of knowing, and discuss
its interrelationships with other ways of knowing. You will have
an opportunity in other core courses to develop your skills in quantitative
thinking.
Historical Conciousness. The
ability to understand the achievements, problems and challenges
of the modern world from the perspective of those of the past. Some
of the materials of this course will ask you to confront different
values and different time periods. For instance, you might study
texts from ancient Greece and a film from medieval France as well
as key modern works related to the Holocaust and the civil rights
movement.
Aesthetic Judgement. The ability
to understand and appreciate creative responses to the world, and
to develop one's own modes of creative expression. You will practice
this skill in all the units of the course - in the study of the
visual arts, in the films, and in many of the reading selections.
Global and Multi-Cultural Awarness.
The ability to understand and appreciate the variety of social and
cultural perspectives. This is an important part of the course in
all the units. It is important not only because we all live and
act in a multi-cultural global environment, but also because dealing
with differing perspectives is essential in developing your reasoning
powers.
Valuing and Decison-Making.
a) The ability to understand and appreciate the variety of perspectives
provided by differing moral viewpoints, b) the ability to make carefully
considered, well-reasoned decisions, c) the ability to make a mature
assessment of one's own abilities, beliefs and values. You will
practice this skill in the first unit by being asked to confront
lives different from your own and in the second and third units
you will focus on developing your skills in making carefully considered,
well-reasoned decisions. In the fourth unit (and throughout the
course) you will be asked to assess your own abilities, beliefs,
and values.
These liberal arts abilities and the
fields of study that teach them are not independent but interconnected
and work together to enable us to reach a truer grasp of experience
in its many aspects and complexity.
Writing Assignments
You will have the opportunity to develop
your written communication skills with the following assignments:
1) An analytical essay (3-5 pages)
centered on some narrowly focused event that had a major impact
on your understanding of the role and value of education. You will
work on your narrative skills, but will also move beyond description
to the crucial stage of analyzing and reflecting upon the significance
of that event. This paper will go through a drafting process, in
which you receive reader responses and apply the skills of global
revision and editing.
Skills: description; narration; reflection
2) An analytical essay centered on
a visual or written text in the field of arts and letters. This
will be an in-class timed essay involving the skills of close reading,
narrow focus, and use of supporting evidence.
Skills: close reading; summary; narrow
focus; use of evidence; paraphrasing; documentation
3) An analytical essay (3-5 pages)
centered on evaluating an argument, experiment, or set of data from
the field of science. You will consider the appropriate writing
style and method of analysis for the argument and audience. This
paper will go through a drafting process, in which you receive reader
responses and apply the skills of global revision and editing.
Skills: objectivity; scientific method;
experimentation; process of discovery; documentation
4) An analytical essay centered on
evaluating a written argument, experiment, or set of data from the
field of business leadership. This will be an in-class timed essay
involving the use of argument, evidence, and synthesis.
Skills: style; argument; synthesis
5) An analytical essay (5-6 pages)
centered on some ethical issue. This paper will involve the presentation,
evaluation, and synthesis of multiple perspectives. It will go through
a drafting process, in which you receive reader responses and apply
the skills of global revision and editing.
Skills: evaluation of multiple perspectives;
synthesis; documentation
6) Informal process writing. A journal,
short response papers, and/or in-class free-writing will enable
you to work through the ideas and experiences of the course through
less formal analysis and reflection. You will also write a series
of self-assessments in which you evaluate your growth as a writer,
thinker, and speaker during the course of the semester.
Grading Guidelines
Since this is your first semester
at Millsaps College, it may be helpful to you to understand how
you will be graded in an LS1000 class. Often students equate effort,
good intentions, and length of time spent on an assignment with
grades. However, your LS1000 instructors will be looking at other
criteria when they are evaluating your papers.
A grade of A means you have produced
a paper exemplary in almost every way. You have presented your thesis
coherently, you have organized your thoughts effectively, and you
have supported your interpretations meticulously. An A paper is
also one that is excellent in style and voice or tone. And in an
A paper, attention to form (spelling, punctuation, grammar, documentation)
is as rigorous as it is to the content. Your work on that paper
is superior.
A grade of B means you have gone beyond
the minimum requirements of the assignment and have successfully
balanced description with analysis. And you express yourself more
clearly, meaningfully, and imaginatively than in a C paper. Your
work on that paper is good.
A grade of C means you have successfully
completed the minimum requirements of an assignment. Your paper
has no major problems of any kind, but there is still much for you
to do to better your grade. Your work on that paper is average.
A grade of D means your work is seriously
deficient in some way and is thus evaluated as below average.
A grade of F means your work has failed
to meet the minimum requirements of the assignment. Anyone receiving
an F as the semester grade in LS 1000 will be required to take LS
1020 in the spring.
Instructors, in evaluating your paper,
focus on how you present your overall idea, how you organize the
paper, the style and voice of your presentation, how you use evidence
and documentation to support your ideas, how thoroughly you interpret
and analyze, and how carefully you handle punctuation, spelling
and proofreading. Throughout, the complexity of your thinking is
of prime importance and is one of the ways in which A papers are
distinguished.
Complex thinking is often termed "critical
thinking". This term does not refer to the act of being critical.
Rather, critical thinking is thinking which is able to incorporate
multiple points of view, addresses problems which may have no neat
and simple answers, tolerates ambiguity, finds connections, and
is not reliant on others' assessments. Critical thinkers can subject
their own assumptions to rational inquiry and are able to be self-assessors.
Good writing which incorporates critical
thinking is almost invariably the result of a long process of re-writing.
The formal papers in this class are papers which go through multiple
revisions. Revision means much more than correcting errors in spelling,
punctuation, grammar, vocabulary and documentation. Your revised
paper should show major changes in approach, point of view, and
style and should reflect an enhanced clarity and deeper insight.
You will always be asked to keep, and turn in, all drafts of the
formal papers you write for LS1000.
Sometimes students are confused by
what faculty mean by the word "draft". Any draft that you submit
in order to fulfill an assignment must be complete and must represent
your best effort to fulfill the assignment. Drafts which are fragmentary,
sloppy, and hastily written are not acceptable.
Evaluation
Your grade will be assigned on the
basis of the following assignments and activities:
1. Analytical Essay #1 15%
2. Analytical
Essay #2 15%
3. Analytical Essay #3 15%
4. Analytical Essay #4 15%
5. Analytical Essay #5 20%
6. Class Participation and Oral Presentation
10%
7. Process Writing 10%
If you fail to complete any of these
major components you will not be able to pass the course. Late work
will be graded down each day it is late unless prior arrangements
are made with your instructor. Permission for late work can only
be granted at the instructor's discretion.
Writing Portfolio
All Millsaps
students are required to assemble a portfolio which contains samples
of their writing during their first two years at Millsaps. As part
of your work in LS1000, you will begin to assemble this portfolio.
At the end of the course, the papers you wrote in LS1000 will be
submitted. In future semesters, you will add papers from other core
courses to these LS1000 papers. Further instructions about assembling
the portfolio will be distributed during the last weeks of the LS1000
course.
LS1000: The Student Support System
Your first semester at Millsaps is
a time of real challenge and change. Some of these challenges you
will handle easily; some may be more difficult for you. Whether
the difficulties you face have to do with your life as a student
or occur in your personal life, we want you to know you have a support
system which will offer every help you may need. Different parts
of this support system will help you with different kinds of problems
you may face.
YOUR SECTION PROFESSOR. Your section
professor will welcome the chance to talk with you about any problem,
whether it is of an intellectual or personal nature. If your professor
is unable to help you, she or he will work with you in finding someone
who can. Office hours are given at the top of the syllabus, and
your professor will be glad to schedule meetings with you at other
times.
YOUR ACADEMIC ADVISOR. An academic advisor is
one who can help you to learn about majors, scheduling, and college
resources. They can also help you learn where to find help on study
skills and provide meaningful guidance in your academic endeavors. Get to know your advisor - don't wait until you have a problem.
YOUR FELLOW STUDENTS. Your fellow
students in LS1000 are an important part of your support system.
They are facing the same sort of problems and working on similar
tasks. This fact is even built into the way the course is designed.
You are asked to work together in collaborative groups and teams,
comparing experiences and viewpoints or completing a project together.
Much of the reading material and the writing projects are common
to all the sections, so all members of the freshman class and the
transfer students who are taking LS1000 can learn from conversation
with one another. Perspective leaders will prove to be another resource
for you.
OTHER LS1000 PROFESSORS. In addition
to your own section professor, other LS1000 professors may be able
to help you with subjects that fall within their specialty, especially
during your work on your inquiry paper. Please feel free to consult
with any member of the LS1000 faculty.
THE WRITING CENTER. The Writing Center,
located in the John Stone House, provides advice on writing and
help in improving your papers. The Writing Assistants can help you
get started on an assignment and can help you in drafting and revising
your papers. To take full advantage of this help, you should visit
the Writing Center early in the process of writing a paper and return
several times as the paper is nearing completion. Visiting the Writing
Center at the last minute will not give you the sort of help that
will improve your papers. The Writing Center is open every day except
Saturday. Its hours are posted at the John Stone House and on various
bulletin boards around campus.
COUNSELING SERVICES. Counseling services
are available to all students in the Student Center. A counselor
can assist you in improving academic performance by helping you
develop study skills techniques, such as time management, note-taking,
problem-solving and test-taking. A counselor is also available to
help you engage in self-exploration and goal-setting, to discuss
difficulties in your relationships or other personal concerns, to
develop better coping skills, to obtain information on community
resources, and to discuss any other problems that may arise. Referrals
to professionals or treatment programs off campus will be made when
it is believed to be appropriate.
This support system is a safety-net
to help you handle any problem that may arise during your first
semester at Millsaps. But it can only help you if you make use of
it. We urge you, at the first sign of any difficulty, to use this
help and to urge your friends to do likewise.
Your Obligations to the Course
PREPARATION AND PARTICIPATION. The
format of LS1000 is that of a seminar - a forum for sharing ideas,
exploring new subjects, and helping each other to understand. Thus
it is the responsibility of each member of the seminar to prepare
ahead of time by reading the appropriate material and thinking and
writing about it so as to be able to participate fully in each day's
discussion. It is also your responsibility to respect the views
of others, even when you offer sharply contradictory opinions. Lively
debate and cogent argument are stimulating; sniping and put-downs
are stifling, and thus interfere with learning.
ATTENDANCE. Only if you are in class
will you be able to practice fully the tasks that maximize your
learning. In addition, since so much of the course is collaborative,
depending on the exchange of diverse insights and comparison of
differing points of view, your participation is necessary for your
classmates' learning as well as your own. Because your participation
is so important, you are expected to attend every class. For flexibility,
you will be allowed two absences (for a TTh schedule) or three (for
a MWF schedule). After that point your semester grade begins to
drop for each excess absence. Your section professor will schedule
a conference with you to address any problems that may be causing
the absences and bring you back to the expected regular and full
participation in the class.
ACADEMIC HONOR. Millsaps College is
an academic community where men and women pursue a life of scholarly
inquiry and intellectual growth. The foundation of this community
is a spirit of personal honesty and mutual trust. In order to maintain
trust among members of the College, faculty and students must adhere
to these basic ethical principles. Honor within an academic community
is not simply a matter of rules and procedures; it is an opportunity
to put personal responsibility and integrity into action. When students
accept the implicit bond of honor of an academic community, they
liberate themselves to pursue their academic goals in an atmosphere
of mutual confidence and respect. Dishonesty of all kinds, including
plagiarism, the presentation of someone else's work as your own,
or auto-plagiarism, the presentation of your own work done in high
school or in another college course, are serious transgressions
against academic honor and are not acceptable. By choosing to come
to Millsaps College, you have indicated your willingness to abide
by its Honor Code. Your LS1000 instructor will help you understand
how to implement the Honor Code in your academic life at Millsaps.
Course Materials
The newest edition of Hacker's A Writer's
Reference (St. Martin's Press) is required for all sections and
will be used in all your core courses as a writing reference. The
Promenade, the publication of LS1000, serves as a good source of
models for ways of approaching the LS1000 assignments and is also
required for all sections. Each section will have additional materials
which you will be required to purchase at the bookstore.
Course Outcomes
Because LS1000 is a course devoted
to helping you acquire academic skills rather than amass information
and data, it is not always easy to articulate exactly what you are
learning. The course is structured to encourage you to become an
active partner in your own education, by learning how to initiate
questions, to sustain discussion, and to evaluate your own progress.
We hope that, by the end of the course, you will be comfortable
with the process of writing formally and informally, expect to write
as a way to increase the clarity of your own thinking, and understand
that good writing involves re-writing and re-thinking. And finally,
we hope that you will begin to take ownership of your own ideas
and values, subject your opinions to valid analysis and evaluation,
and be tolerant of diversity in thinking styles, world views and
values.
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