Getting energized: What work have you done or will you be doing at Lawrence that gets you the most excited?��

The past two years I’ve enjoyed my term as director of First-Year Studies. I took up this position midway through COVID, and it has been at times a challenge to reestablish traditions around the course. Because of my work in religious studies, I’m interested in scripture and the way texts come to serve as touchstones for groups of people. One thing I like about First-Year Studies is the way it gives us a common set of works at the center of our college community. There’s nothing else like it in our curriculum where every student and a subset of faculty are reading the same text. This communal value is most clear for longstanding works like Native Guard by Natasha Trethewey and Kind of Blue by Miles Davis.

Through this experience I’ve also discovered that I enjoy thinking about questions regarding the introductory education of students. I’m on the task force redesigning the First-Year Studies class, and that raises all kinds of questions. I’m also working now in another group to design the Business and Society course that all students will take at the start of the business and entrepreneurship major. I guess this is another part of my resistance to specialization the instant students arrive on campus. Humanities courses are a great place to build connections across subjects and to give space for reflection.

Going places: Is there an example of somewhere your career has taken you (either a physical space or something more intellectual, emotional, or spiritual) that took you by surprise?

I’ve definitely surprised myself with the course of my intellectual journey. I came to Lawrence with Cairo and Egypt on my brain. Up through tenure a lot of my work centered on medieval Cairo. But then in the 2010s it got more difficult to travel to Egypt with all the political upheaval, and so I started to think more about sacred space from a global perspective. During these years we developed the global studies major and I had opportunities to travel to new countries like Indonesia and Senegal and Dubai. So, you could say that I’ve pursued a larger canvas for my questions about Islam and the way humans experience place.

Out of the classroom

This or that: If you weren’t teaching for a living, what would you be doing?

I would probably rephrase this question to be more like: If you weren’t teaching at Lawrence for a living, then what would you be doing? And my answer would be teaching someplace else, if not at a college, then at a high school. Teaching is the task of bringing students into contact with the larger contexts of their human experience, and as a democratic society we can’t move forward without good teaching. But if I had to think about what I would do besides teaching, then my mind goes to owning a bookstore. When I was in my 20s, I worked at bookstores, such as Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena. It wasn’t so long ago that colleges and universities weren’t the only places where intellectual exchange took place, and I think it would be healthy if there were more outposts for thinking seriously about the world and sharing ideas.

Right at home: Whether for work, relaxation or reflection, what’s your favorite spot on campus?

I like the trees on campus. I was thrilled last year to learn about the existence of a map that identifies all the trees on our campus. Over the years I’ve tried to learn the names of the tree species around campus, and now I know there’s a place I can go if I get stumped. One of the goals in my class, Forests and Human Flourishing, is to get students thinking about the names of the natural things they see, and to move beyond the generic terms of “tree” and “flower” as we move through the world.

It’s always nice in the spring term as the weather warms and students get out onto the Main Hall quad to study or chat with friends. I enjoy taking walks down along the Fox River. It’s amazing to live so close to a river. I grew up in Southern California, so the abundance of water in Wisconsin continues to be a bit mind-bending. We’ve got a river that runs past our campus, the Great Lakes aren’t so far away, and then “up north” we have all these smaller lakes.

One book, one recording, one film: Name one of each that speaks to your soul? Or you would recommend to a friend? Or both?

Book: The Amur River: Between Russia and China, by Colin Thubron. More than any other genre, I love travel writing. I like to follow someone through a landscape and read about their experiences. This book is by the dean of English travel writers, and in it he follows the Amur River from its origin in Mongolia and then along the vast stretch where it serves as a border between Russia and China. Thubron goes back and forth across the river and he describes the striking contrast between the Russian and Chinese sides of the river. The book has only become more interesting as events of the past year have drawn these two nations closer together. It’s not that I would ever be drawn to travel along the Amur River, but to me that’s the point of reading a travel narrative: getting somewhere I couldn’t otherwise visit.

Recording: FOREVERANDEVERNOMORE by Brian Eno. This is such an outstanding album that I have to mention it. I try to find art that recognizes our environmental crisis and responds by reimagining the human relationship to the world. This album draws on the ambient work Eno has spent a lifetime producing (Music for Airports, Apollo), but is still an album of songs in the vein of Another Green World. The lyrics move toward an earthy or environmental perspective. The first song asks: “Who gives a thought about the nematodes” and the album proceeds to move up and down the scales of the cosmos, but always working to shift our point of view from the human. I’ve thought for a while that music would be a great way to introduce students to questions about climate change.

“What gets me excited is the idea that we’re not talking about a first-year experience in isolation with academics,” Koshuta said. “We are really thinking about the holistic needs of students. I got that out of the Gardner Workshop. It was so amazing. I hadn’t even started yet, and here I am sitting in a room with faculty and staff who want to support the whole student.”

She would start her work in the Office of Student Life a week later confident Lawrence was all-in on its commitment to elevate the experience of first-year students in and out of the classroom. She spent her first weeks on the job reaching out to departments across campus, building relationships and laying the groundwork for collaborations that are expected to improve the student experience in everything from the pre-orientation preparations to Welcome Week activities to first-generation and transfer student transitions. She’s working closely with faculty leaders who are studying possible changes to the First-Year Studies course, with a target of Fall 2024.

Academics and campus life—residential living, mental health, career preparations, academic advising, community connections—are part of the same conversations. That, Koshuta said, is a must, and it was reinforced in the Gardner Workshop.

“To be at the table with people who are willing to have those conversations is really, really exciting,” she said.

Koshuta, a first-gen graduate with a bachelor’s degree from the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire and a Master of Education from UW-Oshkosh, comes to Lawrence following a stint as a manager in Enrollment Services at UW-Green Bay and four years as the director of student transition and success at Piedmont University in Demorest, Georgia. Much of her focus at Piedmont was in improving the student retention rate. Prior to that she spent 15 years teaching math at the high school and college levels.

As Lawrence’s first-year dean, she is back in a student-facing position. She finds that appealing. And the chance to bring positive change and build first-year programs and traditions that will be sustainable was a huge draw, she said.

“I’m all about building relationships,” Koshuta said. “I always have been. You keep people by building relationships, and you elevate people by the relationships you build with them.”

“I’ve always been interested in and intrigued by the widest array of disciplines, and First-Year Studies seemed to be a great way to fill in some of the holes of my own personal background,” Mast said.

Martyn Smith, director of First-Year Studies, takes us on a tour of this year’s syllabus

Celia Barnes, associate professor of English, calls teaching First-Year Studies “one of the most rewarding experiences” she’s had in her 12 years at Lawrence. She’ll be teaching the class again during Winter Term.

“I always learn so much teaching the class, in part because it exposes me to so many texts well afield of 18th-century literature—my area of expertise—but also because it’s a class that’s almost ‘flipped’ from the get-go,” she said. “That is, in order to learn together, my class and I���󲹱�����to teach one another. When we get to the periodic table, my chemistry enthusiasts get to shine; when we talk about Kind of Blue, my Conservatory students can talk a bit about what’s important to notice in the work. It’s a chance for students to teach��and��learn—and for faculty to do that as well.”

This dance with these diverse works has been part of the first-year experience at Lawrence since 1945, when then-President Nathan Pusey first introduced the concept. The original reading list included a film and had a laboratory component that required participation in music, art, or creative writing. It has been adjusted, tweaked, abolished, restored, and extensively revised in the years since, with the most extensive revision coming in 1997, with an emphasis placed on introducing the first-year students to the liberal arts while building skills in reading, writing, and speaking.

Throughout, it has been a differentiator for the Lawrence experience.

The syllabus changes frequently—this year saw “Jaya Semara,” a gamelan musical work, added to Fall Term, and Matthew Desmond’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, added to Winter Term.

One constant through the years has been Plato’s The Republic, a connector for Lawrentians from today and generations past. A second constant is the faculty participation, teaching across disciplines in ways that take them into new territory.

“I do embrace the idea of teaching subjects beyond my own expertise,” said Kuo-ming Sung, Wendy and K.K. Tse Professor of East Asian Studies and professor of Chinese and linguistics. “That’s no problem and I always consider this a great opportunity to learn something new.”

Garth Bond, associate professor of English and a former director of the First-Year Studies program, is teaching again this term. He said he’s particularly taken with the challenge of teaching about Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue even though he has no formal music education. He’s learning, studying, listening right along with his students.

“It’s a great opportunity for Conservatory students to think about how they can bring their specialized knowledge of music into a general conversation; and for me to think about how I can facilitate those discussions,” Bond said. “That process of helping others to incorporate their expertise and specialized knowledge into a more general conversation productively is both a challenge and a joy.”

Fall Term has First-Year Studies students exploring Tretheway’s Native Guard; Plato’s The Republic; the Berenice Abbot photo, Tri-Boro Barber School, 264 Bowery, Manhattan; Amy Stanley’s Stranger in the Shogun’s City; and “Jaya Semara.” Winter Term brings Desmond’s Evicted; Tony Kushner’s Angels in America; the periodic table of elements; Jeremy Waldron’s The Harm in Hate Speech; and Davis’ Kind of Blue.

“When I teach Shakespeare or other Renaissance literature, I’m working with texts that I’ve spent decades reading closely and thinking about,” Bond said.��“For better or worse, I’ve reached my own conclusions about the most important questions that those texts raise. But when I’m faced with a history of early modern Tokyo or—even moreso—the periodic table, I can safely say that I haven’t made my mind up about anything. In fact, I’m often still in the position of having to figure out what the questions are to begin with.��It’s that early stage of learning and thinking, trying to figure out what the important questions posed by a work are and how an educated non-expert might try to answer them, that really energizes me.”

And that experience, shared by those nearly 50 faculty, creates a community all its own on campus.

“I think that students feel how our shared syllabus across all sections of First-Year Studies creates a shared experience for each class—and because of the links in that syllabus from year to year across the university as well,” Bond said.��“It does that for faculty as well, and not only in terms of fostering a shared intellectual community with our students, but also in forging bonds with colleagues across departmental and even divisional lines.��I have close friends in the physics and economics departments, in art history and the Conservatory, pretty much across campus.��Even at other liberal arts colleges, that’s pretty uncommon—but here at Lawrence, it’s the norm. Part of the reason is that I have so many awesome colleagues, but I also think that the annual practice of coming together and figuring out how we are all going to teach these works from other people’s fields plays a huge role in encouraging friendships and fostering a shared sense of purpose and intellectual community.”

First-Year Studies: The unbagging video

Martyn Smith takes you through the works to be explored in this year’s First-Year Studies.

As we work through the continuing changes stemming from the pandemic, we see more than ever that First-Year Studies has an important role in setting the tone for the student experience at Lawrence, Smith said.

“The course serves as an ambitious introduction to the liberal arts, and one point of connection between these works is that they demand careful attention,” Smith said. “These are works where students are encouraged not to read or look or listen in a passive manner; they require sustained attention.”

The following is Smith’s guide to this year’s works, in the order students will encounter them:

Fall Term

Natasha Trethewey,��Native Guard.�� We are again starting off the year with poetry. This collection of poems asks students to see a relationship between private experience and the larger narratives of history. This work sets the tone for thinking about racism in America, demonstrating that one part of a liberal arts education is learning to talk about the pressing issues of our time. Reading these poems, we begin to see the threat to community when stories are suppressed or erased. At the same time, we see through these poems the importance of memory and memorials in establishing a flourishing community.

�ʱ����ٴ�,��The Republic.��There’s a reason why this book has been on the syllabus, almost continuously, for 75 years. It raises big questions that can be worked through in class discussions. Since the work itself is in the form of a dialogue, it serves as a model for the discussions that are at the core of��First-Year Studies. It’s hard to think of a major issue that doesn’t turn up somewhere in this work, but at its core is a question about the ideal city. No students or instructors will agree completely with the prescriptions for community given by Plato (through his character Socrates), but his questions prompt us to think about what an ideal community should look like.

Berenice Abbott,��Tri-Boro Barber School, 264 Bowery, Manhattan.��Taken in 1935, in midst of the Depression as part of the WPA’s Federal Art Project, this photograph rewards close inspection. The barber-stripe column, the contrasting tiles, and the patterns of light and shadow evoke art styles like cubism and abstraction. As we continue to examine the photo, economic issues begin to stand out: questions about advertising and who is inside and who is outside of the “world’s up-to-date system.” Students and instructors try to decide on how to characterize Abbott’s complex view of the forces that were changing the face of New York City.

Amy Stanley, Stranger in the Shogun’s City.��This work is a biography of a woman named Tsuneno who lived in the first half of the 19th century in Edo, Japan (which would become Tokyo). On the strength of its storytelling this work was awarded the 2021 PEN and National Book Critics Circle awards for biography. The book takes a sympathetic look at the life of a woman who made her way from a village to the big city. After having read about Plato’s ideal vision for a city in��The Republic, this work of history will sketch for us the reality of life in a growing, modern city, and give us a look at the demands such a city makes on individuals.

“Jaya Semara” is a new addition to the syllabus. Itis the first (but not the last) musical work students will encounter in First-Year Studies. It is a gamelan work from the island of Bali in Indonesia. This style of music will likely be different than anything students have heard before, and students will be asked to reflect on their own categories of art and beauty (and hopefully expand them). Since Lawrence has an ongoing Balinese Gamelan Ensemble, students will see and touch the instruments for this musical style and come to understand how the piece is constructed.

Winter Term

Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City. This is a new work for Winter Term. This Pulitzer Prize-winning book looks at poverty in the city of Milwaukee. It is a work of social science that builds its argument through interviews of people who are trying to find and keep adequate housing. If many of the works from the fall asked us to think about community, this work begins Winter Term by asking about the systemic failures that erode our contemporary communities.

Tony Kushner,��Angels in America.��Set in the 1980s, this play offers a searching exploration of the political and ethical conflicts of the AIDS epidemic. The play has new resonance as we have recently recognized ourselves as a community whose sense of meaning is threatened by a virus. And as LGBTQ rights are threatened in various states, this work brings up questions about activism and how to change minds. As the title suggests, the play works to awaken a larger sense of possibility and wonder.

The periodic table of elements.��Many students will have been introduced to the table in high school, but few will have had the chance to explore it as a created object. Students will be asked to think about the table not as a passive container for information, but as an innovative visual representation of scientific knowledge. This approach will remind us that our shared ideas about the world are built by finding ways to share and disseminate them. There are lots of questions to ask about this iconic image: Who was responsible for designing it? What other possibilities were there for presenting this information?

Jeremy Waldron, The Harm in Hate Speech.�� This is a book that provides a philosophical and legal framework for understanding the contemporary question of hate speech. There are few questions that inspire such intense classroom debate as the limits to free speech. Waldron argues that sometimes words act more like bricks than as reasoned statements. One of the goals of a liberal arts education is to gain facility at close written argumentation about contemporary issues, and this work is a model of argument building.

Miles Davis,��Kind of Blue.��Lawrence’s Conservatory of Music is a fundamental part of our university community, and so at the end of Winter Term students encounter another musical work. This most famous of jazz albums invites students to explore the complex relationship between planned structure and improvised action at the heart of musical performance. If many of the works in��First-Year Studies��have taken us to questions about community, this final work reminds us of the place of human creativity.

Note to incoming students:��Looking for��First-Year Studies��books? The first book,��Native Guard, will be sent to domestic students in the U.S. mail or they will receive a copy in their mailbox. Copies of the Abbott photograph will be made available to students later. The other works are now available from our .��Wherever you get your books, you should make sure to get the editions we have chosen. .��

Björklunden in Winter

Björklunden is the northern campus of ����vlog. The 441-acre estate is on Lake Michigan in Door County, Wisconsin. The landscape covers meadows, woods, and over a mile of Lake Michigan shoreline.

Women's Hockey Hits the Ice

Highlights from the ����vlog Women’s Ice Hockey team as they practiced in preparation for their inaugural season.

Virtual Campaign Celebration

We celebrated the conclusion of our hugely successful��Be the Light��campaign this year!��Together, we are making a difference for Lawrence. Together, we are transforming student lives. Together, we are the light!��

This video features Quinn Bingham ’21, Molly Ruffing ’22, Cameron Wicks ’23 and Nathan Graff ’22.

Viking Athletics: Ready the Ship!

We launched a brand new athletics logo in 2021! Big thanks to Tom Coben ’12, cross country alum and freelance motion graphics and visual effects artist in the Twin Cities who volunteered to put his talents to work to create this logo reveal video!��

This is Lawrence – Unpenned: A Collaborative Senior Recital

Emily Austin ’21, a double-degree student focused on English and music performance, worked across the college and conservatory to craft a collaborative Senior Recital.

Summer at Lawrence

Soak in the sights and sounds of summertime at ����vlog.

Unbagging First-Year Studies

Martyn Smith, director of First-Year Studies, unbags the 10 works being used in First-Year Studies during the 2021-2022 academic year.��Read the full list here.

Brighter Together: John Holiday

John Holiday, associate professor of music,��performs during an outdoor event welcoming new students on their first day on campus.��Learn more about the President’s Welcome.

Why Lawrence: Student Voices

����vlog students talk about their favorite memories, experiences, and why they love Lawrence.

This is Lawrence – Otāēciah

Chris T. Cornelius (Oneida), Principal Founder of Studio:Indigenous, collaborates with Lawrence students, faculty, and staff to install a permanent structure on Lawrence’s Kaeyes Mamaceqtawuk Plaza. Installed in late summer, the sculpture is intended to be a permanent piece that further acknowledges and honors the Menominee and Ho-Chunk people, who are Indigenous to the land where Lawrence is situated.��Read more about the new sculpture and the dedication of the plaza.

Lawrence Research Fellows

As a ����vlog Research Fellow, students have the opportunity to participate in funded student-faculty collaborative research.

This is Lawrence – The Scholar Athlete

Senior Ceara Larson, natural sciences interdisciplinary major (biology-physics) and Vikings Softball catcher, combines her work in class and on the field to research the biomechanics of a softball swing.

Thanks for watching!��

Unbagging First-Year Studies

Martyn Smith, director of First-Year Studies, unbags the 10 works being used in First-Year Studies during the 2021-2022 academic year.

While adjustments will be made as needed, Smith said he remains hopeful all��First-Year Studiescourses will be in person this year.

“I would like to suggest that our experience of the pandemic has thrown a new light on the works chosen for��First-Year Studies,” he said. “They continue to serve as an ambitious introduction to the liberal arts, but we can now see a strong sub-theme of community that runs throughout these works.”

Fall Term

Natasha Trethewey,��Native Guard.�� We are again starting off the year with poetry. This collection of poems asks students to see a relationship between private experience and the larger narratives of history. This work sets the tone for thinking about racism in America, demonstrating to students that one part of a liberal arts education is learning to talk about the pressing issues of our time. Reading these poems, we begin to see the threat to community when stories are suppressed or erased. At the same time, we see through these poems the importance of memory and memorials in establishing a flourishing community.��(Adopted Fall 2015)

Thomas Seeley,��Honeybee Democracy.��From Trethewey’s poetry, we move to a biologist’s study of the most fascinating of social insects: the honeybee. Seeley demonstrates that we now know a surprising amount about collective decision-making in the hive. It turns out that something like an argument can take place in the hive as they consider where they should move, and that there are mechanisms for resolving that difference. But while the honeybees are a fascinating look at another form of community, we also come to see how scholars have built on each other’s work and collaborated as a unit to learn about honeybees.��(Adopted Winter 2019)

�ʱ����ٴ�,��The Republic.��There’s a reason why this book has been on the syllabus, almost continuously, for 75 years. It raises big questions that can be worked through in class discussions. Since the work itself is in the form of a dialogue, it serves as a model for these discussions that are at the core of��First-Year Studies. It’s hard to think of a major issue that doesn’t turn up somewhere in this work, but at its core is a question about the ideal city. No students or instructors will today wholly agree with the prescriptions for community given by Plato (through his character Socrates), but his wide-ranging questions prompt us to think about what an ideal community would look like.

Berenice Abbott,��Tri-Boro Barber School, 264 Bowery, Manhattan.��Taken in 1935 as part of the WPA’s Federal Art Project, this photograph rewards close inspection. The barber-stripe column, the contrasting façade tiles, and the patterns of light and shadow evoke modernist art styles like cubism and abstraction. As we continue to examine the photo, economic issues begin to stand out: questions about advertising and who is inside and who is outside of the “world’s up-to-date system.”��(Adopted Fall 2020)

Amy Stanley, Stranger in the Shogun’s City.��This work of history is one of the new works for��First Year Studies. It is a biography of a woman named Tsuneno who lived in the first half of the 19th century in Edo, Japan (which would become Tokyo). On the strength of its storytelling this work has been awarded the 2021 PEN and National Book Critics Circle awards for biography. The book takes a sympathetic look at the life of a woman who made her way from a village to the big city. After having read about Plato’s ideal vision for a city in��The Republic, this work of history will sketch for us the reality of life in a growing modern city, and give us a look at the demands such a city makes on individuals.��(Adopted Fall 2021)

Winter Term

The Harm in Hate Speech, Jeremy Waldron.��We begin the term with the second new work for��First-Year Studies. This is a book that provides a philosophical and legal framework for understanding the contemporary question of hate speech. One of the goals of a liberal arts education is to gain facility entering into close written argumentation about contemporary issues, and this work is a model of argument building. It also marks a turn in our approach to thinking about community. In this book, we examine a direct threat to any ideal community, and consider how words sometimes act more like bricks than as reasoned statements.��(Adopted Winter 2022)

Tony Kushner,��Angels in America.��Set in the 1980s, this Pulitzer Prize-winning play offers a searching exploration of the political and ethical conflicts of the AIDS epidemic. We find ourselves in the midst of a community whose sense of meaning is threatened by a deadly virus. As its title suggests, the play works to awaken a larger sense of possibility and wonder. Kushner’s script explores the complex motives of a politically, spiritually, and racially diverse cast as they struggle to find meaning in the midst of a tragedy.��(Adopted Winter 2020)

The periodic table of elements.��Many students will have used the table in high school, but few will have had the chance to explore it as a created object. Students will be asked to think about the table not as a passive container for information, but as an innovative visual representation of scientific knowledge. This approach will remind us that our shared ideas about the world are built by finding ways to share and disseminate them. There are lots of questions to ask about this iconic image: Who was responsible for designing it? What other possibilities were there for presenting this information? What is the argument made by the table about the nature of the universe?��(Adopted Winter 2021)

Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo,��Poor Economics.��Two distinguished economists offer a scientific approach to the battle with global poverty. Their conclusions are sometimes counterintuitive. Banerjee and Duflo advocate putting aside big ideas, like increasing aid or freeing markets, in favor of careful research addressed to small, specific questions. Reading the book helps students to see how answering these small questions can also give voice to the experience of those living on $1 a day. This book also brings students into contact with a way of thinking about global problem-solving that is highly influential in our time.��(Adopted Winter 2017)

Miles Davis,��Kind of Blue.��Lawrence’s Conservatory of Music is a fundamental part of our university community. This most famous of jazz albums invites students to explore the complex relationship between planned structure and improvised action at the heart of musical performance. If many of the works in��First-Year Studies��have taken us to questions about community, this final work reminds us of the place of human creativity. This deeply influential LP challenges students to think about the process of memory and the creation of meaning.��(Adopted Winter 2016)

Note to incoming students:

Looking for��First-Year Studies��books? The first book,��Native Guard, will be sent to domestic students in the U.S. mail or they will receive a copy in their mailbox. Copies of the Abbott photograph will be made available to students later. The other works are now available from our online bookstore,��. Wherever you get your books, you should make sure to get the editions we’ve chosen for you. Information about editions, including ISBN numbers, can be found at��.