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Back in Class: Capstone Seminars Offer Seniors an In-Person Finale

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Five students, masked and socially distanced, seated outside.
Classics majors, from left, Sean Smith, Liberty Schubert, Dominique Paz, Terek Walker and Alexandra Meyer, in the Arboretum for a meeting of their senior seminar, CLA 198: 鈥淭he Ancients and Us.鈥 Photo by their instructor, Anna Uhlig, associate professor.

A handful of students, all wearing face masks, filed into the conference room, and dispersed far apart from one another around the large oblong table. Distinguished Professor Ron Mangun, a cognitive neuroscientist, readied his presentation.

For these graduating 嘿嘿视频 seniors and their professor, class was about to begin. In person.

The course, PSC 198: 鈥淣euroscience of Attention, Awareness and Consciousness,鈥 is one of seven capstone seminars being taught in the 嘿嘿视频 College of Letters and Science this spring 鈥 each with the option of attending in the flesh (remote sessions are still available). See a list of the senior seminars below.

Senior seminars, in themselves, are not new. In fact, they are a growing emphasis of the College of Letters and Science. But for most students, the spring 2021 seminars are the first courses they鈥檝e taken in-person since pandemic precautions brought a curtailment of campus operations more than a year ago.

鈥淭he first time coming to class felt incredibly exciting,鈥 said Nam Anh Nguyen, a psychology major in the neuroscience seminar. 鈥淚t is as if a kind of normality has returned 鈥 commuting, sitting in a classroom, seeing, listening and watching Professor Mangun in person. It threw me back in time to the days before the pandemic.鈥

Professor (masked) gives a wave in selfie as masked students enter conference room.
Psychology professor Ron Mangun takes a selfie as students enter conference room for their spring quarter senior seminar.

COVID-19 protocols

Despite obvious differences that keep Nguyen 鈥済rounded in the present reality鈥 鈥 masks, hand sanitizers and social distancing 鈥 he welcomed the in-depth learning opportunity offered by a seminar. 鈥淚 like the fact that we can study these topics in a small group 鈥 where it is much easier to ask questions and discuss ideas.鈥

The neuroscience seminar meets for two hours each week at the about two miles east of campus. Mangun, the center鈥檚 founding director, is a faculty member in the Department of Psychology in the College of Letters and Science and the Department of Neurology at 嘿嘿视频 Health.

鈥淗ow the brain gives rise to the human mind is the topic of my senior capstone seminar,鈥 Mangun said. 鈥淲e are digging into some heady science and theory, which we can do in this special class.鈥

In a recent class session, he offered tips to students for end-of-quarter presentations they鈥檒l give on scientific papers of their choosing. As a demonstration, Mangun summarized a study on the overlap of working memory and attention, raised questions about the design of the experiment and shared suggestions he gave in a phone conversation with the author, a colleague at Princeton University. He also showed how he adapted charts and other graphics in the paper for his slide presentation to make them easier for an audience to understand the research.

Professor points to information on projected slide.
Professor Mangun provides guidance on end-of-quarter presentations he has assigned his students. (Kathleen Holder/嘿嘿视频)

Diving deeper

D鈥橝ngelo Martinez, who graduates this month with degrees in psychology and neurobiology, physiology and behavior, has taken other courses from Mangun. 鈥淚 was excited to have the opportunity to do so in a smaller setting,鈥 Martinez said. 鈥淭his is different from a typical lecture because it is not just the professor relaying information, but rather showing us how he dives deeper into the research.鈥

嘿嘿视频 plans to return to in-person instruction this fall. Under pandemic restrictions, most courses since spring 2020 have been taught remotely. 鈥淲e have had a few [in-person classes] across departments. Some examples are music, for obvious reasons, and earth and planetary science because there were field courses needed for accreditation of geologists,鈥 said Claire Waters, an English professor who serves as faculty advisor to Interim Dean Ari Kelman.

During winter quarter, Waters proposed to colleagues the possibility of offering in-person seminars for spring. 鈥淥nce we realized it was possible, I was very happy to see them go ahead,鈥 Waters said.

In addition to Mangun鈥檚 psychology seminar, capstone courses are being taught this quarter in art, cinema and digital media, classics, human rights, physics and statistics. Enrollment is capped in each to keep class sizes small.

鈥淟etters and Science departments are increasingly thinking about how to best run capstone courses to allow as many students as possible a seminar-and-research experience,鈥 Waters said. 鈥淐apstone seminars and other research or hands-on courses are an obvious place where we can help our students think about and articulate how what they鈥檙e learning on campus will stay with them as they graduate and move into careers and later life.鈥

Real-world tools

When Alexander Aue, professor and chair of the Department of Statistics, asked colleagues in February if they would like to teach in-person spring seminars, Professor Christiana Drake said yes. 鈥淚 had been vaccinated at that point, so I thought it would be pretty safe for me to teach such a course,鈥 Drake said.

With seniors frequently asking her about working with real data sets, she developed STA 198: 鈥淒ata Handling and Analysis,鈥 focused on a statistical analysis software package called SAS that is widely used in data management.

Eleven students enrolled and another couple are auditing, Drake said. Close to half attend online and the rest 鈥 who have been vaccinated 鈥 come to the classroom.

鈥淚t is the first course that I have taught in person since the pandemic,鈥 Drake said. 鈥淚t is a nice change from sitting in front of a computer and staring into a camera all the time. I will be happy to go back to teaching on campus in the fall.鈥

Like learning to skate again

Online classes are fine, but they fall short of the 鈥渞eal thing,鈥 especially for a workshop-style course, said Andrew Smith, a filmmaker and professor of cinema and digital media who is teaching a seminar on screenwriting.

Smith and the 11 students in the seminar push several rectangular tables together to make a large square table in the lecture hall where they meet for at least two hours every week. 鈥淭he room feels livelier, better humored, freer than even the best Zoom classes,鈥 he said. 鈥淭he only downside is that we can鈥檛 see each other鈥檚 faces, fully.鈥

Meeting in person felt strange at first, Smith said. 鈥淲e were all a little nervous, I think 鈥 like a foal trying to walk, or really, more like putting on skis or roller skates after a long time of not wearing them. But after the first 15 minutes, it started to be a relief, more than anything: 鈥楢h, life is possible again.鈥欌 

Smith said he was eager to teach an upper-division seminar when he learned of the opportunity from department chair Tim Lenoir. 鈥淚鈥檓 a big believer in capstone courses, and have only so far been able to teach intro classes in 鈥榲isual storytelling鈥 (or screenwriting),鈥 Smith said. 鈥淪o I was thrilled for the chance to go deeper into the form. To do so in a small class that also gave seniors a last chance to be 鈥榓t鈥 school, was something I didn鈥檛 want to pass up.鈥 

A healing experience

Anna Uhlig headshot
Anna Uhlig

Anna Uhlig, an associate professor of classics, said the challenges students have faced during a year of remote learning motivated her to offer her in-person seminar, 鈥淭he Ancients and Us.鈥

鈥淧rofessors and lecturers have been heroic in adapting their courses to a fully online format on an almost impossibly compressed timeline,鈥 Uhlig said. 鈥淣evertheless, students across the board have been missing those all-important elements that only in-person instruction can deliver.鈥

For classics students, she said, the absence of traditional class community was compounded by the loss of a beloved faculty member, Professor Rex Stem, who died of cancer last fall.

Eight students signed up for 鈥淭he Ancients and Us,鈥 which meets at an outdoor theater near Putah Creek Lodge in the Arboretum.

Each week a different student selects the topic and the material, and then runs the discussion. Class sessions so far, Uhlig said, have focused on ancient textile art, a comparison of Norse and Greco-Roman mythical narrative, modern depictions of Helen of Troy, adaptation of ancient myth in the Disney animated film Hercules and the Tony Award-winning musical Hadestown, and a student-prepared feast of ancient Roman recipes. 鈥淚nspired by our theatrical classroom, we will end the quarter with a dramatic performance,鈥 she said.

Uhlig said she designed the seminar to emphasize the value of each student鈥檚 voice and contribution, and to create a healing collective experience. 鈥淚 think that I can speak for the group as a whole when I say that the course has been a balm for us all as we navigate this strange time.鈥

SPRING 2021 SENIOR SEMINARS IN L&S

  • Art 鈥 ART 198: 鈥淐apstone Seminar for Art Studio Majors,鈥 Professor Robin Hill
  • Cinema and Digital Media 鈥 CDM 198: 鈥淎dvanced Screenwriting,鈥 Professor Andrew Smith
  • Classics 鈥 CLA 198: 鈥淭he Ancients and Us,鈥 Associate Professor Anna Uhlig
  • Human Rights 鈥 HMR 198: 鈥淐apstone Seminar for Human Rights Majors,鈥 Professor Keith Watenpaugh
  • Physics 鈥 PHY 198: 鈥淐omputational Physics,鈥 Distinguished Professor Richard Scalettar
  • Statistics 鈥 STA 198: 鈥淒ata Handling and Analysis,鈥 Professor Christiana Drake
  • Psychology 鈥 PSC 198: 鈥淣euroscience of Attention, Awareness and Consciousness,鈥 Distinguished Professor Ron Mangun

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Kathleen Holder is a content strategist and writer in the marketing and communications unit of the College of Letters and Science. She can be reached by email or phone, 530-752-8585.

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