Revolution in Learning

Classes go wild during CentreTerm, but it’s all in the name of better education

CentreTerm at Centre brings out the most unusual classes in the catalog. As a three-week term in drab, gray January, it cries out for rays of creativity: the 2006 CentreTerm featured classes as bright and varied as the Beatles, CSI—Roman style, and what it takes to rebuild a hurricane-devastated city.

Nicole Wendschlag ’09 of Lexington, Ky., says the week she spent with a leadership class in New Orleans opened her eyes.

“You can’t really understand destruction until you’re there,” she says. “Houses turned sideways . . . houses on top of cars.”

Her classmate Tyler Hinkel ’09 of Lexington also was “shocked” by his personal view of Hurricane Katrina’s wrath.

“There’s 60 percent of the city still without power, after four months,” he says. “People just seem so desperate for food and shelter.”

Centre president John A. Roush usually teaches his leadership class, “Rainmaking: The Study of and Preparation for Leadership,” on campus, but decided to head south this year after a student asked him what the College was doing in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. In addition to helping the Salvation Army pass out food and water to residents—what Roush calls “a ministry of food”—the 17 students heard from New Orleans leaders involved directly in the disaster, including the city’s fire chief.

Many CentreTerm classes go even farther afield: this year to the Bahamas (tropical ecology), Barbados (primate behavior), and Bulgaria (the Balkan crossroads), to name three, though not every off-campus destination had to begin with a “B.” An economics and law class studied American colonialism in Hawaii with a trip to 50th state; other classes went to New Zealand and Vietnam.

Those who stay closer to home find the short term/one-class format particularly suits certain topics. It enables the writer-in-residence—this year, Sena Jeter Naslund, Kentucky’s poet laureate and author of Ahab’s Wife—to work with students for the entire term instead of just a few sessions. Classicist Jane Wilson Joyce explores the murder of Julius Caesar in a CentreTerm class called “The Ides of March: A Crime Scene Investigation.” Toga-clad students recreate the Theater of Pompey, where Caesar was betrayed, for the grande finale. And biochemist Stephanie Dew ’89 says the CentreTerm schedule is ideal for her class on lab techniques. If an experiment doesn’t work out on the first run through, she notes, students have the time to redo it instead of racing to their next class, an experience that more accurately reflects what they’ll find in graduate school and professional labs later on.

The three-week CentreTerm dates to 2002, but the College first began offering a short term (then six weeks long) in 1968 after a massive curricular overhaul. Recalling those bygone days of change and optimism this year was a music class that looked at the Beatles and the culture of the 1960s.

Sarah Stoycos, whose interests include the interaction of music and politics in the 20th century, designed her CentreTerm class around the band many consider to be the greatest of all time.

“The music of the Beatles changed drastically throughout their comparatively short career,” she says, reflecting not only their constant striving to re-invent themselves, but also the social upheavals of the 1960s. “At various points in time the Beatles found themselves greatly influenced by, for example, the 1960s drug culture, a fascination with Indian music and religion, [and] the rise of protest musicians like Bob Dylan.”

The class was open just to freshmen, all of whom were born almost a generation after the Beatles disbanded in 1970.

“I think the thing that surprised me the most was how regular the Beatles were when they started out,” says Beth Milby ’09 of Danville. “In the beginning they were just four boys from Liverpool, but then they became these mythical figures.”

In addition to costume day (which revealed a surprisingly large amount of sixties garb still out there), reading that included Philip Norman’s book Shout: The Beatles in Their Generation, and the inevitable papers and presentations, the syllabus featured watching the five Beatles movies and a field trip to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland.

All that work added up to a class that was “challenging but fun” says Ben Schodowski ’09, of Kingsport, Tenn., who admits he did not have much prior knowledge of the Beatles. “It is definitely not the type of class where we just sit back and do absolutely nothing,” he says. “The course has challenged me to listen [more closely] not only to Beatles music but to all music in general.”

—D.F.J.

Centrepiece
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