<\/a> I have taught sections of UMM<\/a>‘s First Year Seminar (FYS) course pretty much solid since it was created back in 1999. My topic has been American Roots Music, a subject I love dearly and have greatly enjoyed exploring with my students. I’ve met a host of really wonderful folks through that course, including some of my best student connections outside of Computer Science. That topic has drawn in a broad range of students, many of whom have gone on to play major roles at the radio station<\/a> and in the open mic night series, and it’s been a great excuse to buy, listen to, and talk about some really wonderful music.<\/p>\n

Thus it is with very mixed feelings that I am considering changing my FYS topic for next year when I return from sabbatical. I’ve taught this for a long time and feel like I’m running out of steam on it. I also continue to struggle with lifting the subject from being about “entertainment” to being about human life and culture; I’ve found it difficult to convey my belief in the vitality of the subject. Another issue I’ve struggled with has been critical thinking. FYS replaced a course called Inquiry that had critical thinking as one of its core elements; I always thought that was very valuable, but never really felt like I included that in a consistent way in my roots music course.<\/p>\n

<\/a> So I’m considering changing topics.<\/p>\n

In particular I’m thinking of something like “Climate change: Global crisis, or a tempest in a teapot?”. I think this is one of the (if not the<\/em>) major questions of our age, and that it can be damnedly difficult to make sense of all the contradictory things said on the subject. My vision is for the class to be an exercise in critical thinking, using climate change as the underlying source of questions and material.<\/p>\n

In a one semester, two credit course it’s clear that there’s only so much that we’re going to be able to address, so they’re not going to become experts on the subject (just as I would never claim to be one). Hopefully, however, they’d have a better understanding both of this subject, and of how to approach complex subjects like this in the future.<\/p>\n

Thoughts?<\/p>\n

Thanks in advance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m considering changing First Year Seminar topics from American Roots Music to Global Climate Change. I have mixed feelings on the matter, and am soliciting feedback from my readers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,16,2,15],"tags":[96,286,868,284,285,156,158],"class_list":["post-815","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-environment","category-music","category-science","tag-climate-change","tag-critical-thinking","tag-education","tag-first-year-seminar","tag-roots-music","tag-teaching","tag-university-of-minnesota-morris"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p90sy-d9","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":280,"url":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/2005\/12\/27\/r-crumb-does-charlie-patton\/","url_meta":{"origin":815,"position":0},"title":"R. Crumb does Charlie Patton","author":"Nic McPhee","date":"27 Dec 05","format":false,"excerpt":"Working through some grading on my American Roots Music FYS class, I stumbled across this wonderful bio of the early blues giant Charlie Patton by the great comics artist R. Crumb. Some digging suggests this is taken from from R. Crumb draws the blues, which I've dashed off and added\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Art"","block_context":{"text":"Art","link":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/category\/art\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":222,"url":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/2005\/08\/28\/gotta-see-the-polka-dude-discover-zydeco\/","url_meta":{"origin":815,"position":1},"title":"Gotta see the polka dude discover zydeco","author":"Nic McPhee","date":"28 Aug 05","format":false,"excerpt":"This week Ebert choose \"Schultze gets the blues\" as his video pick of the week. I'd never heard of the film before, but now I've just got to see it. A German polka accordionist who discovers a love for zydeco late in life through a chance snippet on the radio?\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Education"","block_context":{"text":"Education","link":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/category\/education\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":221,"url":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/2005\/08\/28\/nows-a-good-time-to-get-out-of-dodge\/","url_meta":{"origin":815,"position":2},"title":"Now’s a good time to get out of Dodge","author":"Nic McPhee","date":"28 Aug 05","format":false,"excerpt":"...POTENTIALLY CATASTROPHIC HURRICANE KATRINA NOW MOVING NORTH-NORTHWESTWARD TOWARD THE NORTHERN GULF COAST... -- From the National Weather Service \"Hurricane KATRINA Public Advisory\" Yikes! These folks don't use phrases like \"potentially catastrohpic\" lightly. I think I'm glad to be over 1,000 miles from this particular party. Spend a while at the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Environment"","block_context":{"text":"Environment","link":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/category\/science\/environment\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":229,"url":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/2005\/09\/07\/like-goin-out-of-the-world\/","url_meta":{"origin":815,"position":3},"title":"Like goin’ out of the world","author":"Nic McPhee","date":"7 Sep 05","format":false,"excerpt":"I've been re-reading Robert Palmer's excellent Deep blues as one of the texts for my FYS course on American roots music and just came across (again) one of my favorite lines from the book: I thought, oh, man, this cat is just jivin', he ain't goin' to Chicago. I thought\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Education"","block_context":{"text":"Education","link":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/category\/education\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":381,"url":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/2006\/09\/01\/a-pseudo-random-roots-music-meme\/","url_meta":{"origin":815,"position":4},"title":"A pseudo-random roots music meme","author":"Nic McPhee","date":"1 Sep 06","format":false,"excerpt":"I just assigned my American Roots Music First Year Seminar students a meme as their first blogging assignment for the course, and it only seemed fair that I answer the questions as well. Why did you sign up for a roots music FYS section? (It's totally OK if the answer\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Education"","block_context":{"text":"Education","link":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/category\/education\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"It wants to be an oil painting","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/static.flickr.com\/23\/31519241_e10b7e58f7_m.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":46,"url":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/2005\/01\/27\/singing-in-public-again-sad-but-true\/","url_meta":{"origin":815,"position":5},"title":"Singing in public again: Sad but true","author":"Nic McPhee","date":"27 Jan 05","format":false,"excerpt":"CAC Concerts has been hosting a series of open mic nights this year (a first at UMM in my memory). Lots of students I know (mostly from FYS) have been going, performing, and saying cool things about the event, but for various reasons I'd been unable to attend. I finally\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Events"","block_context":{"text":"Events","link":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/category\/events\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/815","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=815"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/815\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}