ÔOne day when I was twenty-three or twenty-four this sentence seemed to form in my head, without my willing it, much as sentences form when we are half-asleep, ÔHammer your thoughts into unityÕ. For days I could think of nothing else and for years I tested all I did by that sentence [...]Ó William Butler Yeats (cited in Frank Tuohy, Yeats <, 1976, p.51 )
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Environmental History of the University of Texas
FS301, 35285, FALL 04, Jerome Bump, SWC
T 4-6. Par 214; office Par 132
Office hours TT 10:45-11:15, 1:30-2; Tu 6-7 and by appointment
Course Web Site: http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~bump/ FS3011/
email: bump@mail.utexas.edu; Office phone: 471-8747, home: 267-7884
ÒLarger universities must find ways to find ways to create a sense of place and to help students develop small communities within the larger whole.Ó CarnegieÕs Reinventing Undergraduate Education: A Blueprint for AmericaÕs Research Universities (http://notes.cc.sunysb.edu/Pres/boyer.nsf)
Course Description. We will develop a sense of this state, this town, and especially this university, as your place, your Alma Mater (nurturing mother). One of our mottos will be Òthink outside the box.Ó Hence, some class time will be outside the classroom, devoted to writing about nature, buildings, and works of art on campus and in Austin. Off campus, we will explore the Japanese garden at Zilker Park, the state Capitol building, and St. MaryÕs cathedral downtown (third-hour credit will be given for these excursions). However, we will begin with these accounts of undergraduate life at Oxford and compare them to your life here: CarrollÕs Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass; and selections from HardyÕs Jude the Obscure and BeerbohmÕs Zuleika Dobson.
As you explore Òyour place,Ó you will write answers to basic questions about your self and your environments, such as Òwhat is thisÓ? Òwhere did it come from?Ó and Òwhy is it here?Ó We will discover that objects around us are palimpsests with layers of meaning we can trace through time back to various eras and places. For example, questioning fossils in Waller Creek will lead us back to the origins of life on earth and forward to the writings of Darwin and Tennyson and to the contemporary debate between evolution and creationism.
Readings: A related goal is to define your college experience, especially by comparing it to that of others unlike ourselves. Thus, we will begin with the questions ÒWho am I?Ó and ÒWhat am I doing here?Ó Focusing on how ÒplaceÓ shapes the experience of those who inhabit it, we will read CarrollÕs, HardyÕs, and BeerbohmÕs accounts of undergraduate life, as well as selections from Newman and others on the purpose of university education.
Grades. The final grade (1000 points) will be determined as follows: 40% by multimedia projects (10% for each draft -- 100 points each), 10% by the final portfolio of all your writing (100 points); 13% by informal writing (130 points); 10 % by fifteen third-hour activities (15 X 6.7 = 100); and 7% by class participation (14 X 5 = 70). Points will be reduced for each class day assignments are late. Grades are not negotiable: students will receive exactly the grade recorded in the online gradebook, even if it is one point short of the next higher grade. 900 points are required for an A-; 800 for a B-; 700 for a C-; 600 for a D-.
Projects. Multimedia projects, on the web or on paper, will address undergraduate life and the question, ÒHow Would My Life Be Different and How Would It Be Similar if I Attended One of the Universities Whose Seals Appear on the West Wall of the Main Building?Ó (They are the oldest universities in the West: Bologna, Paris, Oxford, Salamanca, Cambridge, Heidelberg.) Projects will first be posted on our electronic Discussion Board. Initial comments on the projects will be made online by the instructor and other students in the class, with the instructor then focusing on polishing the final drafts for punctuation, word choice, etc. Rewriting and preparing almost perfect final drafts will be stressed. Procrastination will be heavily penalized. A basic principle of this course is reading. The first test of reading throughout the course will be the ability to read directions and suggestions for assignments, and especially the ability to search through details and Òread the fine print,Ó as they say.
Class participation includes demonstrating in class that you have read, thought about, and are able to talk about the assigned reading, and that you are able to concentrate and listen when others are speaking.
Portfolio. The final portfolio consists of clean copies of your essays, your third-hour reports, learning record, other informal writing, and any other relevant materials.
Learning Record. Part of the grades for informal writing and the portfolio will be based on journals of your learning styles, including an interview with someone familiar with your intellectual development, a list of personal goals for the course, and a series of self-observations.
Third-hour requirements.ÒStudents in seminars meeting two hours per week will be required to attend twelve hours of Ôthird-hourÕ events. Also, all students in the Freshman Seminars Program must attend the following three third-hour activities: a library workshop scheduled during a class period, a talk given by a staff member of the Undergraduate Writing Center, and a session on time management presented by a staff member from the Learning Skills Center.Ó
Texts: The course anthology, an absolutely essential collection of xeroxed materials to be purchased from Jenn's, 2000 Guadalupe (basement of the ÒChurch of ScientologyÓ at 22nd, 473-8669); The Annotated Alice by Lewis Carroll, ed. Martin Gardner (W. W. Norton); and The Writing Skills Handbook, 5th edition, byCharles Bazerman (Houghton Mifflin). (You must buy this book as my corrections on your essays will be based on its code and you will not understand them otherwise).
Fees: As much as $12.50 may be required for the Story of Texas museum.
Computer literacy required.Students should be familiar with keyboarding, operating systems, word processing, electronic mail, and web-browsing. Students will be expected to check their email frequently (maintaining the correct email address in the U.T. Direct system) along with the course Discussion Boards and Online Gradebook. Students are encouraged to download pictures from our class web site and use multimedia to fulfill all the writing requirements and ultimately collect everything on one portfolio web site. Even if a traditional essay format is chosen for projects, pictures must be scanned into the text and text wrapped around them.
HTML. If students are going to do web projects, they must have or acquire basic HTML skills on their own in the first month. Website project students should expect to spend a considerable amount of time outside of class, sitting in front of a computer, and may also find it useful to attend some of the free classes and workshops on various technical topics offered by ACITS, TeamWeb, or the General Libraries. See http://www.utexas.edu/computer/classes/http://www.utexas.edu/cc/training/handouts/tutorials.html#internet
About the Professor: Jerome Bump was awarded the Jeanne Holloway Award for undergraduate teaching, the Dad's Association Centennial Teaching Fellowship for instructing Freshmen, the Rhodes Centennial Teaching Fellowship for directing the Computer Writing and Research Laboratory (devoted primarily to lower division instruction), and chosen as a Mortor Board Preferred Professor. He is the author of Gerard Manley Hopkins and many essays and reviews. At the moment he particularly interested in writing about nature and architecture, especially gargoyles. For more information see http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~bump/
