Let there be seminars, UCLA tells undergrads

By Marcelle Richards
Daily Bruin Senior Staff

The College of Letters & Sciences said, “Let there be
light,” and there was light.

Beginning fall 2002, the Fiat Lux, or “let there be
light,” program will offer 150 one-unit seminars next year
under the university motto.

This signifies a university move toward smaller
interdisciplinary classes at the undergraduate level, especially
for freshmen, who often take introductory courses with as many as
400 people.

“Part of what we need to do is engage students in small
group dialogue, a small topic that allows students to
debate,” said Judith Smith, vice provost of the college.
“This is one way we’re looking at doing
that.”

Fiat Lux is a continuation of the Sept. 11 series offered this
year. The national tragedy sparked widespread faculty and
administrative support for the creation of small discussion classes
to address specific topics related to the attacks.

Fiat Lux brings something new to the table by boosting research
spending for faculty.

Chancellor Albert Carnesale, who taught two of the Sept. 11
seminars, is using his discretionary funds to pay each
participating faculty member $1500 to be used toward research,
travel or other educational expenses. This wasn’t done during
the Sept. 11 series.

The catch is that faculty must teach the seminars in addition to
a full teaching load to get the money. Depending on the number of
eligible faculty selected, Carnesale will spend up to $225,000 to
support the program.

All interested faculty will submit seminar topics by April
23.

The topics will be based on faculty research or areas of
expertise.

Some examples include The Gathering Storm: Winston Churchill,
Britain, and Nazi Germany on the Road to World War II; Civil Rights
Law in Higher Education; and Science in the News.

“The large size and superb quality of our faculty enable
us to offer seminars on a rich array of topics,” Carnesale
wrote in his invitation letter. “Moreover, undergraduates
will experience what is most distinctive educationally about a
premiere research university: learning from experts who themselves
create new knowledge through discovery.”

UC Berkeley is the main source of reference for UCLA. Berkeley
has had its freshmen seminar program in place since 1993.

“It’s really a program that led the way for other
campuses,” Smith said.

UC Davis offers a similar program on a smaller scale.

About 50 seminars are planned for each quarter under Fiat Lux.
Enrollment will be limited to freshmen for the first 24 hours, and
then opened to other students.

Fiat Lux is only one of many changes in L&S that has slowly
led to the evolution of undergraduate education at UCLA toward
interdisciplinary and more holistic learning.

The Student Research Program, started in 1985, headed the move
beyond classroom learning.

The freshmen General Education clusters, started in 1997, link
numerous academic fields in a yearlong topic of study.

Finally, the Sept. 11 seminars carried on this trend, straying
from the textbook approach by incorporating news articles and
personal experiences of faculty.

Information about Fiat Lux is available at
www.ucla.edu/fiatlux.