Freshman Studies was first taught in 1945. It was designed by Nathan Pusey, who left Lawrence for the presidency at Harvard, and it has always served as an introduction to liberal learning.
In the last few years, Freshman Studies has been recognized as one of the most distinctive programs of its kind. Especially gratifying was the announcement, in 2002, of a $500,000 challenge grant in support of the program from the National Endowment for the Humanities. In making that announcement, the NEH noted that "few institutions of Lawrence's caliber have successfully engaged students in a common learning experience."
As that remark suggests, the great strength of the program lies in the fact that we do Freshman Studies together. Every student in the college and the Conservatory takes two terms of Freshman Studies, and every section uses exactly the same reading list. Works for the course are drawn from every division of the curriculum, including natural science and music, and that means that everyone at Lawrence has a chance to learn about Einstein and Plato, Chuang Tzu and John Coltrane.
Because we believe that Freshman Studies helps to build community, we also expect every department to do its part in staffing the course. Last year, instructors came from twenty-one departments, including studio art, chemistry, biology, and economics. The expectation that colleagues will teach Freshman Studies is written into most letters of appointment to our faculty, and it figures into faculty searches from start to finish. We believe in practicing what we preach-if it's good for students to take risks, then it must be good for faculty members, too-and we don't want job candidates to be under any illusions on that point.
Freshman Studies is only a beginning, to be sure. But because it helps students to build a strong foundation for their later work in more specialized courses, it has proven to be an especially good one. Given the scope and ambitions of the course, and given its rich history and distinctive strengths, it's probably no surprise that Lawrentians have, for the last sixty years, proudly described Freshman Studies as the class in which they learned how to think.