| Course Description |
Per its mission statement, “Barnard College aims to provide the highest-quality liberal arts education to promising and high-achieving young women… They graduate prepared to lead
lives that are professionally satisfying and successful, personally fulfilling, and enriched by a love of learning.” This course finds its roots in the connection posited here, between undergraduate study and professional life. Students will be asked to revisit a foundational text they have encountered in their major, and use it as a mode of exploration and reflection on an internship. They will consider how the text’s themes and ideas can be reinterpreted and recontextualized in the working world, and think about what practical, moral, political, aesthetic and personal
insights it affords. More broadly, students will be prompted to consider the relationship of the
liberal arts degree and, in particular, their major to their chosen career path. This course will further hone the critical thinking and writing skills that are translatable to any profession, and enables a Barnard student to put into practice the complexities they have learned in the classroom, by encouraging them to analyze the professional world from different perspectives, and in the context of other ideas and traditions.The foundational text will be selected in consultation with the course instructor to ensure focus connections between the student’s major, the internship and the reading chosen. .
On a weekly basis, in this discussion-based class, the student shares their ideas about their text
and how it relates to their internship. They respond to and engage with their classmates. They
are required to spend about two hours with their text per week. They are also required to
create a presentation, to be shared with the full group. The group is also
responsible for providing feedback on the presentation. The presentation ultimately evolves
into a final paper that explores the line of inquiry from their text as it is
instantiated in their work experience. Students are graded on their discussion (40%),
presentation (25%), and final paper (35%).
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