Student courses praised
Rice has recently acquired various buzz-inducing rankings, including #1 Quality of Life from The Princeton Review, #1 in Materials Science from Times Higher Education, and #17 among national universities from U.S. News & World Report. However, Rice's student-taught course program has been steadily gaining a different sort of national reputation over the past two years.The student-taught course program at Rice started in fall 2007 with three courses at Wiess College and has since grown to include courses at Brown College, Hanszen College, Jones College, Lovett College, Martel College, McMurtry College and Will Rice College. In all, 30 classes are being offered this semester, with subjects such as North Korea, casino gaming and witches.
Each course is a one credit hour pass/fail class offered to all students regardless of their college. The instructor also receives credit for teaching the course. However, students cannot receive credit for more than three student-taught courses.
Wiess Master Mike Gustin, who was involved with the program from the beginning, said one of the greatest things about the program is the randomness of the courses.
"The anecdotes go on and on," Gustin said. "The student-taught courses are somewhat like an experiment. People come up with ideas, and once someone takes responsibility, it just builds enthusiasm."
Hanszen senior Amy Lanteigne is teaching a course this semester called "Lady Gaga as a Cultural Phenomenon: Implications of Art and Psychology." Lanteigne said that, for her, teaching a course was not only for the students.
"I thought that teaching this class would be a great opportunity to explore Lady Gaga in an academic way," Lanteigne said. "She's so new that most people haven't had the time to think about her intellectually, and I'm really pleased with how well everyone is participating in class discussions so far. I'm no Lady Gaga scholar; I'm just somebody who wants to know more."
Hanszen junior Ross Tieken said he is teaching a course to spread knowledge about what he feels is a sensitive topic. His course, entitled "Witches Weekly!: Neo-Paganism and Witchcraft in Britain and America," focuses on neopaganism as a religious identity.
"Everyone I talked to about neopaganism was either unaware or openly hostile towards it. I had just spent six weeks in the summer studying neopaganism, and this attitude bothered me," Tieken said. "With this course, I'm trying to spread a spirit of understanding about neopaganism. It's not what you think it is."
On Sept. 22, Tieken's class participated in an Autumn Equinox ritual to demonstrate what they were learning in class.
"There are two ways to learn: hearing someone talk about it and experiencing it for yourself," Tieken said. "The class is half lecture, half discussion and the other half crazy."
Many students have found student-taught courses to be an interesting change of pace from the academic grind.
"I've taken three student-taught courses, and I've enjoyed all of them," McMurtry sophomore Michael Apolinario said. "I really looked forward to each one."
Brown sophomore Sunil Bellur shared this enthusiasm.
"You get to take something that you're interested in that wouldn't necessarily fit into the conventional curriculum," Bellur said. "I like the fact that it's learning for learning's sake."
On Sept. 7, the AOL-based website "Asylum: For All Mankind" published an article documenting the rise in popularity of eclectic student-taught courses. This article, entitled "Geek 101 - University Courses on Batman, 'Starcraft,' Being a Jedi Knight," ranked one of Rice's student run courses in their list of top 5 student taught courses at universities across the English-speaking world. Coming in at #1 was recent alumnus Casey Michel's spring 2009 course entitled "The Cape and the Cowl: The Literary, Televised and Film History of Batman."
Michel (Brown '10) said he is thrilled to see a different type of recognition for Rice.
"I think it's fantastic," Michel said. "Obviously, Rice has a stellar reputation in the academic realm, but this reaches another audience. Batman had always played a large role in my life ever since I was a kid, and teaching other students about it was something I had wanted to do for a while.
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