Next week, Stanford leaders will pilot Reflections Seminars, a new initiative offering freshmen the opportunity to reflect on their lives, identities and time at Stanford. The project, spearheaded by the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education (VPUE) and the Vice Provost for Student Affairs (VPSA), is a collaboration of faculty, administrators and ASSU leaders.
“The initiative has been something that the different administrators in [Undergraduate Advising and Research] and other departments around the University have been thinking about for a number of years,” said Stewart Macgregor-Dennis ’13, ASSU vice president.
Over the past 18 months, more than three dozen faculty, staff and students from across the University have been in dialogue about the need to create a “Stanford 101” in order to better help students take full advantage of all that Stanford offers both academically and in terms of support and resources.
These meetings have been led by Dean of Freshman and Undergraduate Advising Julie Lythcott-Haims ’89 and Associate Vice Provost for Student Affairs and Dean of Residential Education Deborah Golder, with Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education Harry Elam and Vice Provost for Student Affairs Greg Boardman also jointly overseeing the effort.
The committee concluded that a Stanford 101 curriculum should have two components to it, which Lythcott-Haims described as “Reflection” and “Navigation.” Newly formed task forces composed of faculty, staff and students are currently exploring programming for these two components.
“Each task force will run a process of prototype and iteration which will last two to three quarters,” Lythcott-Haims said. “By Jan. 2013, we hope to have a clear sense of how to integrate these concepts of ‘Reflection’ and ‘Navigation’ into the undergraduate experience for offering in the 2013–14 school year.”
Lythcott-Haims said that the “Reflection” idea originated from the notion that students should have the chance to pause and reflect upon big questions: “Who am I?” “What are my ideals and dreams?” “What is important to me?” “How am I going to spend my time?” “What do I want to do with my life?”
Students will be encouraged to think about how to integrate their answers to those questions with the myriad of opportunities offered by a Stanford education.
“Students will be encouraged to think further about their Stanford experience, not just the four years they have on campus, but also the years afterward,” Macgregor-Dennis said. “It’s to reflect on their current involvement on campus, not to add more on their plate.”
“The goal would be that students would end up having a clearer sense of self as they make their way through their undergraduate experience and would more intentionally and more thoughtfully make choices about course selection, major declaration and the types of activities they pursue here as a result,” Lythcott-Haims said.
This winter’s Stanford Reflections Seminar is only open to current freshmen. At the moment, 75 freshmen have signed up to be placed into small groups, each of which will be led by two people from either the faculty or administration and one upperclassman mentor. Each student group will consist of approximately eight to 12 students and will host three 90-minute sessions over the course of the quarter. The small group experience was designed to foster trust and community and to benefit students’ mental health and wellness.
Involved faculty members hope to continue to test the program to see whether or not sophomores would benefit from the experience as well.
“Our counterparts at Harvard have been running a program like this for three to four years, and we are excited to compare notes with them once our pilot gets underway,” Lythcott-Haims said.
The later “Navigation” piece of the project stems from one of the major concerns that was brought up over the committee meetings – namely that students often don’t seem to know about or know how to utilize the numerous resources that already exist on our campus, she said.
According to Lythcott-Haims, “Navigation” will likely be a 10-week course attempting to demystify the University’s structure and introduce students to some of its key resources, opportunities and support. The program will include teaching students how to find good places to study, manage time effectively, take advantage of faculty office hours, gain awareness of mental health and wellness resources, get involved in research, write a resume and cover letter, get advice from upperclassmen and use Axess, CourseRank and ExploreCourses.
Courses of this sort are currently offered to different degrees at the University, such as through UAR’s Expanded Advising Program, with partners in the community centers and in athletics, and through a student-initiated course on “Navigating the University,” taught by Maya Amoils ’12 and Alex Wittenberg ’12 this fall. A course taught by former Arroyo Resident Fellow Todd Davies to his freshmen last spring also addressed the topic.
The job of the Navigation Task Force will be to design a 10-week curriculum drawing upon the best that is already offered, in order to scale current offerings up to hundreds of students, Lythcott-Haims said.
“While it is too soon to draw conclusions, our hope is that both the ‘Reflections’ and ‘Navigation’ pieces will prove to be exciting new offerings on the Stanford undergraduate landscape. We envision that they will be voluntary and perhaps credit-bearing,” Lythcott-Haims said.
“I’ve been blown away by all the faculty and how much care and effort they’ve put into the program,” Macgregor-Dennis said. “The work of the administrators and faculty members who I’ve seen working to put on the Stanford Reflection project makes me proud to be working with them. They have total commitment for making this a breakthrough project and I’m really excited to see their efforts come to realization.”