Evy Brunelle ~ Staff Writer
The University of Lynchburg’s senior symposium topics for the fall 2020 semester focuses on democracy and American ideals.
Dr. Edith Simms who has taught the senior symposium class since 2014 said, “participating in students’ growth as writers and critical thinkers” is central.
This semester she is facilitating the class in-person with a strict social distancing and mask wearing policy. She also stated that even with the social distancing and bouncing between in-person and online, “students are [still] engaging in wonderful class discussions.”
Dr. Nina Salmon has been the director of the senior symposium for three years but studied under Dr. David Freier for approximately nine years before stepping into this role.
Salmon’s major challenge for this year was determining the class would be taught in light of the pandemic restriction. She said, “We usually bring speakers to campus and have all seven or eight class sections of Senior Sym together in the Ballroom on Mondays,” but due to Covid, those lectures are now posted online for students to watch from the safety of their homes.
This semester the lectures include a webinar, an interview, the musical Hamilton, and lectures from professors Laura Kicklighter, Adam Dean, and Naomi Amos.
Another change Salmon has made to the course is the introduction of unit papers. Salmon said, she “implemented unit papers in order to allow for a revision component, which was in response to our Writing Enriched initiative on campus and best practices in writing.”
This now means that there are fewer weekly papers and exam essays for students to complete.
Senior accounting major, Nicole Diienno is currently enrolled in the senior symposium class and believes that it is important for everyone to take because of the topics being discussed this year. She said, “If not for this class, I would never have read The Underground Railroad, which is a book I have discovered I like a lot. I am learning things about slavery and racial/social injustice in America, that I had never learned in school before or been exposed to.” She believes that without this class, she would have not been exposed to these ideas and issues in a critical thinking environment rather than from the news or social media.
Senior Nickolas Louvros said he appreciates, “the fact that the discussions are centered around contemporary issues and that we analyze older documents to show progressive advancements over time.
However, the discussions also point out a large array of areas in which U.S. society has been lagging behind, so the discussions are all-encompassing in a sense.” An example of this would be having to write a paper about a contemporary issue while citing Whitehead’s “The Underground Railroad,” The Declaration of Independence and a Webinar called “Interpreting Slavery at Monticello.”
Louvros also believes this class to be important because he has, “…spent a lot of time in Richmond during the protests, which definitely had the largest influences on me in terms of modern discrimination in U.S. society. I do enjoy the fact that the class discussions provide me with an opportunity to share that information and the things that I have seen/learned throughout the protest though.”
Dr. Salmon also noted, “Let me be clear in saying that the goal of the course is not to promote a particular agenda or position–it is to invite students to bring their own experience and expertise to the discussion and to interact with the lecture presentations and readings. Senior Sym is not a course that intends to convey a particular body of knowledge; it is a course that teaches thinking and use of reading, writing, and speaking to discover and explore ideas.”
More background on senior symposium can be found here https://www.lynchburg.edu/news/2020/08/we-the-people-theme-of-2020-senior-symposium/
