The First-Year Experience

The Engaged Citizen:

All TEC dyads share a common set of learning goals: 

• The ability to comprehend and appreciate a set of complex issues relevant to being engaged citizens.
• The ability to make connections between the evidence and methods from two distinct disciplines in order to formulate arguments about engaged citizenship.
• The ability to express those arguments clearly in writing and discussion.
• The ability to engage in and reflect on experiential learning that connects directly to the classroom experience, preparing the students for vibrant Odyssey experiences later in their Hendrix careers.

Explorations:

1. To assist first-year students in making a successful transition to academic and student life at Hendrix.
2. To assist first-year students in developing their capacity to reflect critically on their values, interests, and abilities as related to academic and student life at Hendrix.

Capacities

Writing Level I (W1) Learning Goals

The Level 1, or W1, courses serve as the gateway to the College's writing requirement. As such, these courses are designed with the following learning goals:

• Reading and Textual Understanding:  To draw on, engage, and cite the ideas of source texts to lend clarity, insight, and rhetorical force to one’s own writing.
• Writing-Ideas:  To generate insight; to convey significant ideas in writing.
• Writing-Structure:  To write with organizational purpose, reflecting a coherent and meaningful order, both at the paragraph level and in the essay as a whole.
• Writing-Mechanics & Style:  To write effective prose in keeping with standard English patterns of grammar, usage, punctuation, sentence structure, and style.
• Process:  To develop an understanding of how a process of preliminary writings, drafting, and revision can improve an essay’s ideas and shape as well as the writer’s control over written language and prose style.

Writing Level 2 (W2) Learning Goals

Expectations for Writing Intensive (W2) Courses 

A student will be able to organize a short paper which articulates and develops an argument. The prose will be grammatically correct, the diction appropriate to the audience and topic, and the sentences well-structured and clear. 

• Organization and Coherence. A student who earns W2 credit has demonstrated his or her ability to write fluent, clear, and logical short papers, marshaling the necessary information to respond to a well-structured and clearly explained assignment. The student is able to present this information to an educated audience, simultaneously conveying the student's viewpoint on the topic.
• Thesis. A student who earns W2 credit has learned to formulate, develop, and summarize a thesis. In the thesis statement the student indicates the direction of the paper and then develops this thesis with supporting illustrations and arguments. The conclusion creates an effective sense of closure that does not simply repeat the thesis.
• Grammatical Correctness. Students who earn W2 credit have demonstrated their ability to proofread their papers and to spell and punctuate properly. Many students, however, continue to have difficulty with these three skills. Every professor, therefore, needs to stress these skills constantly and to offer assistance and encouragement when needed. Among the common grammatical problems a successful W2 student is expected to avoid are fragments, run-on sentences, dangling modifiers, lack of agreement, inconsistent use of tenses, vague pronoun reference, and errors in common usage.
• Diction and Sentence Structure. W2 courses help students to improve their diction and use fairly sophisticated sentence structure. A W2 student learns to choose appropriate words for the assigned audience and topic. In order to be competent writers, students also learn to subordinate their ideas properly through the use of both simple and complex sentences. Sophisticated vocabulary and sentence structure develop over time as the student reads more widely.

Languages (LA) Learning Goals

• Students will achieve the degree of competence in a language other than English necessary to encounter another culture on its own terms.
• This level of ability requires being able to understand, analyze, and use a language other than English.
• Such a capacity increases subtlety of mind, sharpens sensitivity to the use of one's own language, and more fully opens another culture for exploration.

Quantitative Skills (QS) Learning Goals

Upon successful completion of the requirements for the Quantitative Skills Capacity, students will be: 

• Capable of interpreting quantitative ideas graphically, symbolically/algebraically, and/or numerically.
• Able to evaluate quantitative information in the context of a given question.
  

Physical Activity (PA) Learning Goals

• Content Knowledge. Students will demonstrate basic knowledge of rules and/or skills needed to be successful in physical activity classes.
• Social. Students will use physical activity as an opportunity for enjoyment and social interaction.
• Value Physical Activity and Fitness. Students will articulate the value of physical activity to improve health and well being of individuals, and that physical activity can foster self-expression, development, and learning.

Learning Domains

Expressive Arts (EA)

Either through the creation and performance of works of art or through the study of artistic creations within a context of time, culture, or style, students are able to: 

• Understand and respond to works of art in an informed manner.
• Recognize the manner in which artistic content communicates ideas and feelings.
• Comprehend the formal processes which go into the creation of selected works of art.

Historical Perspectives (HP)

Upon completion of a course in this learning domain, students are able to: 

• Understand some of the diverse ways in which human beings in different cultures and societies have responded to temporal change.
• Examine contemporary issues from a historical perspective.
• Use historical perspective to gain insight into their own convictions and actions.

Literary Studies (LS)

Upon completion of a course in this learning domain, students are able to: 

• Engage in the practice of written and oral expression.
• Read a text critically to determine what meanings it holds, how and why those meanings are produced, and the effects of these choices.
• Examine how literary works provide insight into the human experience.

Natural Science Inquiry (NS, NS-L)

Upon completion of a course with the NS domain code, students are able to: 

• Understand and apply the scientific and mathematical principles of their discipline.
• Understand the distinction between science and dogma.
• Use basic scientific principles to place information in a larger context.
• Understand how science does and does not work.

Upon completion of a course in with the NS-L domain code, students are able to: 

• Use the scientific method to gather, interpret and evaluate data.
• Employ tools to assess the validity of observations related to the natural world.
• Join scientific principles with critical analysis in a manner that is appropriate to the discipline.
• Relate their analysis and conclusions to those of the larger scientific community.

Social and Behavioral Analysis (SB)

Upon completion of a course in this learning domain, students are able to: 

• Begin to understand human and social behavior through the use of appropriate disciplinary techniques.
• Use their understanding of human behavior and relationships to discuss policy and/or other interventions.
• Grasp how human experience is shaped by the social and institutional landscape.

Values, Beliefs and Ethics (VA)

Upon completion of a course in this learning domain, students are able to: 

• Articulate an understanding of different value and belief systems that follows upon critical exploration of those systems.
• Express the commonalities discovered in value and belief systems that follows upon critical exploration of those systems.
• Express the commonalities discovered in value and belief systems across historical, philosophical, religious, and/or cultural boundaries.
• Demonstrate familiarity with ways of making reasoned value judgements.

The Odyssey Program

Enhancement of learning — both what they know and how they come to know — by:

• the examination of ideas in new contexts,
• the application of theories to practice,
• the first-hand discovery of how things are in the world,
• the exercise of, and reflection upon, their powers of judgment in practical situations.

Vocational Self-Discovery and Professional Development through:

• the discovery of qualities and capacities they possess for acting effectively in the world,
• the exercise of resourcefulness and problem-solving abilities in new and complex situations,
• the identification and exploration of vocational and a-vocational passions,
• the reflective delineation of values, life plans, graduation and career goals in light of hands-on experience.

Development of a sense of ownership over one’s educational pursuits and of the habits conducive to life-long learning by:

• independently structuring educational projects in accordance with self-selected learning goals
• applying previous learning to new contexts in creative and novel ways
• discovering unforeseen connections among disciplines, schools of thought, or social practices,
• learning to learn from critical reflection upon both success and failure.

Increased awareness of one’s responsibility for linking action and understanding in the effort to respond effectively to the social, spiritual, and ecological needs of our time by:

• discovering one’s capacity to explore the world and act as an effective agent within it,
• becoming reflective and articulate about how one’s values and beliefs influence one’s actions and actions shape and reveal one’s values and beliefs.
• gaining exposure to, and critically reflecting upon, previously unfamiliar avenues of response to intellectual queries and social problems,
• making conscious decisions in the selection or design of hands on projects responsive to local and/or global communities.