First-year students meet virtually to discuss their first-semester work and experiences
A young man retraces James Baldwin’s steps in his hometown of Istanbul. A trombonist dons costumes and shoots several videos of himself playing “Time Warp” from The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Another student wrestles with the ethics of free will in decision-making.
The “Together Apart” freshman colloquium presented these and dozens of other contributions from first-year students across USC in a forum designed to promote discussion, critique, praise and debate among a group of students who have yet to meet in person.
“The main purpose was to bring people together who couldn’t be together on campus,” Richard Fliegel, associate dean for undergraduate programs at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, said. Adding that the name of the colloquium was especially chosen to underline this point. “What we wanted to demonstrate is that while we couldn’t all be on campus in the fall, students were doing extraordinary work, and the community across the globe exists and thrives, and we’re proud to recognize their accomplishments.”
Planning for the colloquium began in fall 2020, when then College Dean of Undergraduate Education and Academic Affairs Andrew Stott asked Fliegel to put together a program for first-year students that would showcase their creative work, research papers, personal essays, videos, musical productions and other projects they had completed during the semester. The organizing committee, including faculty and staff from USC Dornsife’s Writing Program, the Thematic Option program, and the USC Dornsife Office of Undergraduate Programs, put out a call for submissions, and 60 were accepted.
The works were divided into categories, such as analytical essays, creative work, and ethics and moral reasoning, and posted on the colloquium’s website. A panel of instructors from USC Dornsife’s Writing Program, led by Assistant Professor (Teaching) of Writing Mary Traester, judged entries. Traester organized the online colloquium with technical support from Curtis Fletcher of the USC Sidney Harman Academy for Polymathic Study’s Ahmanson Lab and his colleagues.
At an awards ceremony in early December, first-place winners received AirPods, honorable mention recipients got Beats Flex earphones and the “popular vote” winner (determined by votes from visitors to the colloquium website) also received AirPods. Following the ceremony were several panel sessions in which the colloquium award recipients could discuss their work further and meet each other for the first time.
Fliegel points out that the program was international: Contributions came from students currently living in China, Turkey, the United Kingdom and other countries as well as the United States.
Personal journeys through Istanbul and the world of sports
One participant who took a creative direction is Fethi Yasar, an economics major at USC Dornsife who wrote a short essay in which he meditated on the experiences of James Baldwin, who lived in Yasar’s hometown of Istanbul for a time in the 1960s. Yasar’s story traces his own journey through the city, and his shifting attitudes toward it, its culture and the people he meets, and juxtaposes it against Baldwin’s testimonials.
“Baldwin perceived Istanbul as a haven for intellectual development, inspiration and emotional relaxation. Only, emotional relaxation does not apply to me as the city has made me feel different kinds and versions of amalgamating emotions day-by-day, leading me to experience an emotional overload,” Yasar says.
One of the first-place winners, Raymond Lu, an environmental science and health major at USC Dornsife, also used his personal experience to craft a research essay, this one on doping in sports. A swimmer himself, Lu analyzed cultural attitudes toward winning versus competition, the impact of money on amateur sports and the ways in which publicity — even bad publicity — can boost sales of doping agents once their use receives media attention.
Lu said the panel discussion in which he participated proved especially valuable.
“The questions we received from the moderators and the audience were super insightful. I was able to see themes in my essay that I completely missed before, just from discussing it. It was one of my best online learning experiences so far,” he says.
Apart but not alone
Fliegel notes that many of the student works were deeply personal, and having a venue in which to share and discuss them helped the participants bond, despite not meeting face-to-face.
“One thing I found surprising about the panel discussion is students shared things about themselves to the USC community and the larger world that they haven’t even shared with their own families,” he said.
Yasar agrees that the colloquium brought out an unexplored aspect of himself. “This colloquium allowed me to dig deep and somehow find my creative voice eventually, which I had not known about before.”
The opportunity to bond with each other and the school in a time when many face isolation was one reason the colloquium was a success, Fliegel notes.
“I think it spoke to the students’ need to affirm their connection to the school and to express what they were feeling,” he says.
Although the date students can return to campus is still uncertain, Fliegel says that the school will work to continue to provide extra support for this year’s freshman class, providing more opportunities for them to connect with each other and explore what the school has to offer.