In fall 2018, Amanda Paule was a student in SEM 100, Syracuse University’s mandatory five-week course for first-year and transfer students. This fall, she’s a course facilitator.

She found that few students in her class finished reading the course’s assigned memoir over the summer.

The mandatory seminar was first implemented in fall 2018 with the goal of sparking discussions about diversity and inclusion on campus. The course’s five sessions, which began in September, are centered on a selected reading that addresses these themes. 

This year’s freshman and transfer students are required to read “Lab Girl” by Hope Jahren, a geobiologist who now works at the University of Oslo in Norway. Students last year read “Born a Crime” by Trevor Noah, who is the host of “The Daily Show.”

In “Lab Girl,” Jahren recounts her experience with the effects and stigma of a manic-depressive disorder, as well as gender exclusion in the STEM field. She also writes about how her identities as a parent, a scientist and a woman determine how people perceive her.

Paule said many students in her SEM 100 class didn’t read the book, and those students didn’t find the sessions productive. She doesn’t think the book was as engaging to students who read “Born a Crime.”

“Now there is more focused discussion through the themes of the book and Hope Jahren’s life,” Paule said. “Yet there seems to be less student interest in the book. I feel like students last year were really interested in Trevor Noah.”

After the conclusion of the SEM 100 sessions last year, more than a dozen first-year students and peer facilitators told The Daily Orange that the class did not accomplish its goal of starting conversations about identity and inclusion. 

The SEM 100 activities students participate in have not changed significantly from last year’s activities, with the main changes resulting from the new book selection. Facilitators begin each class with a passage from “Lab Girl” before providing their own comments, and students share how their life relates to the memoir.

Rachel Skipper, a SEM 100 facilitator and assistant director of undergraduate recruitment in the College of Arts and Sciences, was a neuroscientist prior to working at SU.

“The parallel between the two (memoirs) is that ‘Lab Girl’ does focus on what it’s like to be a female scientist in the same way someone of a minority ethnic background feels in some way outcasted or (is) perceived differently,” Skipper said.

The main goal of SEM 100, as outlined in facilitator guides, the class syllabus and a letter sent over the summer to first-year students, is to “introduce students to the communication skills, campus resources and nuanced understanding of identity necessary to integrate into the SU community.”

An optional section accompanying the activity guidelines asks facilitators to inform students that they can raise their hand if they would like to discuss a topic at the end of the activity. Those guidelines were added in response to feedback last year which concluded the former guidelines glossed over a lot of important talks about identity, Paule said. 

The makeup of students in a class determines the type of discussion students will have based on their experiences, Paule said. One question asked if a student has considered not attending an event due to their ability status. She said her students had trouble seeing the validity of a question if no one in the room identified with it.

“Experiences that aren’t represented in the makeup of the class can easily be glossed over,” Paule said.

Skipper said “Born a Crime” was more approachable to students because Noah is a well-known comedian and Jahren does not have the same personality associated with her name. Paule and Skipper both said their students gave them positive feedback and seemed to retain and resonate with the class material.

Students would be more likely to participate in the class if the shared assignment was to watch a movie instead of reading a book, Paule said.  

“There is something to a collective reading experience, but to carry that out on a mass scale clearly is not effective,” Paule said. “Even Trevor Noah’s book, which was well-received, some people didn’t read it at all.”

Published on September 18, 2019 at 11:34 pm

Contact Richard: rjchang@syr.edu | @RichardJChang1