I am so excited to highlight the work of some of our Fall 2022 FYS instructors, who created amazing experiences for our entering first year students. Janalyn Phillips (CPHS) taught The History of Hip Hop; not only did her students listen to great old school hip hop, they spent a class session making graffiti to commemorate the ethos of the era. See the group art photo below.

And, almost any time I walked campus last fall, I ran into Chuck Sengstock’s (SOE) FYS Photography: Capturing Moments out an about … capturing what it felt like to be newly on campus and enrolled in college.  I love the flickr accounts from students Blythe Kelly, Chase Stephens, and Kate Hagemeier that Chuck shared with me; the students featured here gave permission for you to look, too.

What excites me most about the courses Janalyn and Chuck taught last fall is that they are courses that follow their passions, not their professions.  Like so many of our FYS offerings, these faculty help meet our mission by providing an opportunity for our students to develop their whole selves, to participate in a liberal arts curriculum, and to meet other entering first years who share a common interest in something as meaningful as the music they love, or how they see the world.

If you’re teaching an FYS next fall, I hope you take inspiration from these two courses.  And if you want to talk about teaching an FYS later on down the road, please reach out!  But also: when you see your colleagues doing cool things with students in their classes, please let me know – I’d love to feature them in a coming installation of Look What Your Colleagues Have Done!

— Renée Cramer, Deputy Provost

Deputy Provost 2:10 (two articles with a read time of 10 minutes) is a communication series by Deputy Provost Renée Cramer sharing important scholarship, teaching, and development opportunities.