Spring 2004

New Essay Available: "In the Undergraduate Mind"

The latest paper in the TRC Occasional Paper Series, "In the Undergraduate Mind: The First-Year Experience from Three Perspectives," offers a glimpse into the first-year University experience from three distinct yet related viewpoints: those of a student in a University Seminar (USEM), his mother, and the course instructor. The student compares his USEM with his other first-semester classes. The mother, a faculty member at a US university, writes about her reactions to her son's college experiences and contrasts first-year phenomena with her son's previous academic life. The instructor reveals what he learned in teaching the course and examines how this USEM fits into his longer teaching experience. These essays furnish us with a rare look into the first-year mind and a parent's perspective, while providing insight into the impact of the University's core mission on individual lives and the community. Complimentary copies of this essay are available at the TRC.

Previous Occasional Papers available at the TRC:

A Teacher's Attention by Stephen Cushman, Department of English
Some of the 'Whys' and 'Hows' of University Teaching and Research by Robert Cook, Department of French

Do you have an Occasional Paper in mind?
In the spirit of its mission to promote excellence in teaching at U.Va. and in recognition of the inherent scholarly relationships between research and teaching, the Teaching Resource Center welcomes paper submissions for this series on a continuing basis. We cannot promise to publish every paper, but we do solicit your thoughts on teaching at a research institution. Paper and electronic submissions are equally acceptable.