College 1 and the Entry Level Writing Requirement

College 1 provides an introduction to university discourse and critical reading while also serving as the first step towards fulfilling the university's Entry Level Writing Requirement (ELWR). The course's objective is to both introduce you to College Nine's theme of International and Global Perspectives and, in the process, to assist you in building the skills as a critical reader and thinker that will enable you to be successful through your university career.

Keep in mind that All UCSC students must satisfactorily complete college 1, and it is a prerequisite for Composition 1 and 2. If you do not pass the class, you will be required to take it again, and will not be able to enroll in further writing classes until you meet this objective. For more information about the lower-division writing requirements (including College 1), please see the Writing Program's web page, or ask me.

Materials

• Course Reader
• Access to on-line subscription of New York Times
• Reading Journal
• Online access to extra course materials and hand-outs, videos, and podcasts (on course website)

ORGANIZATION

UC Regulations: A five-unit course at the University of California is equivalent to fifteen hours of work per week for each student. Class meetings account for three hours and ten minutes of that time, meaning that each week you should plan to dedicate eleven hours and fifty minutes to preparing for the seminar: reading, taking notes in your texts, re-reading, revising your notes; discussing the reading with classmates and visiting your instructor during office hours; preparing to write, writing, and revising your writing.

Student Workload: A five-unit course amounts to 150 hours for one quarter. You will spend 20% of your time attending class meetings (30 hours), 45% reading (~65 hours), 35% (55 hours) working on writing projects, including the reading journal.

Seminars: Each section of College 9 Core meets in seminar format. Seminar meetings will provide opportunities for you to read and discuss texts closely and deepen your understanding of them. As participants in the seminar, you are expected to pose questions, share new ideas, and engage other students in discussion. Be sure to bring the Course Reader, any other assigned readings, and your reading journal to all class meetings, having marked up the passages you’d like to discuss. If you don’t bring print copies of assigned readings, you will be marked absent.

ASSIGNMENTS

These assignments are designed to help you understand the course materials and to develop the repertoire of reading strategies covered in the course. In the last instance, this course will hopefully aid you with cultivating your own original style of thinking. These assignments will require you to think carefully about your readings and furthermore demonstrate your understanding of the course material in carefully written language. Be intentional and purposeful with how you write. You must word-process all written work and submit paper copies in class -- I will not accept emailed assignments.

READING JOURNAL

Throughout the quarter, you will keep a reading journal (worth 35% of your final grade), which will afford you opportunities to consider the form, content, context, and style of the texts we read. It is central to the course, and will be the main place that you will be engaging with the reading, reflecting on your own reading practices, wrestling with the ideas of the reading as well as responding to conflict you might have with some of the ideas in the reading, teasing out conflicting interpretations, experimenting with different reading and analytical approaches, and becoming conscious of your own reading practices.

At the very minimum, you must have TWO journal entries for the assigned reading for that day. You must come to class with your reading journal completed for each class meeting (that means, coming to class having written about whatever readings are assigned for that day). Please clearly mark the date and the text you are discussing in each entry. While your entries should be thoughtfully completed before coming to class, not sketched out as class is beginning, you are welcome and encouraged to revisit readings and previous ideas that you were thinking and writing about; as the course develops, it will be particularly important to try to make connections between readings and the various units of the course. This is not the place to take class notes (that needs to happen in a separate notebook), but you may certainly use your notes to develop ideas in your reading journals.

There are many possible forms that each entry may take, but, at the very least, your journals should include specific passages (or a brief excerpt of a passage with the page number for the full passage), some discussion of the passage, and specific questions or specific ideas that are arising for you in that particular passage. In other words, the journals should have a clear textual basis. I will occasionally give specific instructions for a journal assignment. But most often, it is up to your discretion what you write in your entries. Consult the following list of ideas for your journal entries, and feel free to take up other ideas as well:

• Analyze passages and relate them to the overall main point of the reading, thinking about how they relate to the main point(s)
• Analyze passages and relate their ideas to your own interests, ideas, and concerns; this can mean you have similar as well as different ideas
• Analyze passages to develop an understanding of the main point of a reading, or to sharpen your understanding of a portion of the reading
• Analyze passages to show how and where a particular question you have arises, with an eye toward answering or responding to the question
• Summarize the text as a whole or parts of the text, including passages to demonstrate your engagement with the text
• Discuss the evolution and development of your thinking about a reading, or particular set of ideas in the reading
• Address the genre, style, and language of a text
• Define and explain unfamiliar vocabulary, terms, or concepts
• Discuss your level of agreement with a reading, including why you agree, disagree, or both with a reading or set of ideas (this last part is extremely important, as journals are not just a record of your taste and initial reactions, although they can include this, too; the important point is that you offer informed, detailed, and analytical explanations of your reactions)
• Compare and contrast ideas in the course readings, making connections and distinctions among the texts.
• Discuss a reading (or part of a reading) that you found difficult and why, aiming to pinpoint what exactly you found difficult about it and working toward a strategy to develop an understanding of the text
• Discuss a reading that you found easy to understand and talk about why it was so for you, trying to pinpoint what about the text made it accessible for you.
• Challenge your own reading practices, methods, and ideas, with the aim of being open to experimenting with and changing how you read, your assumptions about reading, and your thoughts about its purposes, aims, uses, etc.
• Include outside information that you look up to give more context, historical background, additional knowledge to a reading

The key thing to remember is that your reading journal is one of the cornerstones of your engagement in College 9 Core. You will use it to prepare for and participate in class, you will use it to record your experience in the course, you will use it to refine and lay our ideas for your formal written work, and you will use it to develop ideas for your creative project. While you don’t want to censor yourself (we all want to know what you think), your reading journals are more formal and structured than, say, a diary that records your first thoughts and impressions about a subject. It should be proofread, carefully written, and composed. To that end, I will be working closely with you on developing it, and I will collect it and comment on it at least 2-3 times throughout the quarter, although I will not announce when I will collect it. You will turn your journal in at the end of the quarter during finals week, when I will fully evaluate it and assign it a grade.

READING JOURNAL PRESENTATION

Each student will sign up to share his/her/their reading journal entry at the beginning of one class. These are called ‘presentations,’ but they are not as formal as a typical presentation. Be prepared to share your journal with the class for about 5-10 minutes, specifically focusing on sharing passages, topics, and questions for discussion.

CURRENT EVENTS

You will need to sign-up for an online subscription from a reputed news source and to read the news as the quarter progresses, tracking any stories that are aligned with the four central topics of the course: global economy, climate change, global wealth inequality, or political polarization. You will be expected to read at least 1 article per week, annotating, taking notes, and jotting observations and responses to the articles you read. You will post a weekly reading response about an article in any of the approved news sources and post at least one ‘comment’ on fellow classmates’ posts on a weekly basis on Canvas, starting the first full week of the quarter (no post the week of Thanksgiving). In your posts, you should demonstrate the ways some of the conceptual ideas we are discussing in class are playing out in current events and the news. More details of this assignment are posted on the assignments page on the course website.(Satisfies course objectives 1-4).

SLUG STORIES

This assignment will be a 2-3 page autobiographical narrative that focuses on one life-defining moment. The aim of this assignment is to bring into conversation the course materials we have read throughout the quarter with a specific moment in your life that has proved to be of some significance. This is not a story of your life as such, but rather how a particular event in your life has made some enduring impact on you and how this event relates to the class themes in general. (Satisfies course objective 3 & 8).

FINAL REFLECTION

At the end of the quarter, you will write an essay that synthesizes the course material and news articles relevant to one or more of the course themes: global economy, climate change, global wealth inequality, or political polarization. The aim of this final reflection paper will be to construct an interpretation and critical analysis of your chosen theme by reviewing what has been said by others (course content and news) while constructing your own interpretation of the issue. (Satisfies objectives 1-4 & 8).

READING & CLASS PARTICIPATION

Class discussions are the bedrock of this course. This means that your reading and engagement with the course materials and active contributions to class discussions are essential.

• You must complete the assigned readings and assignments before the class session during which they are scheduled for discussion. Reading should not be a spectator sport! Read actively by underlining/highlighting passages of the texts, write notes, comment in the margins of your texts, summarize, draw diagrams -- relate to the texts as an active process and always try to clarify the meaning of the text. The Reading Journals will provide the medium for you to precisely do this.
• As the Core is based on a seminar format, active participation and attendance both inside and outside of class is required. I expect you to actively participate in discussions. But this can only be done if you are prepared to discuss the material. Again, the Reading Journals are there to help facilitate this, but you will need to come ready with questions, thoughts, and arguments to share with the rest of the class. Without this preparation on your part the seminar will be unable to function. Lack of participation on a continuous basis may not only be reflected negatively in your final grade, but may also prevent you from growing as a writer and speaker.
• Attendance is mandatory. I expect you to attend every class meeting and arrive on time with either the reader or a printed copy of the assigned readings since we will oftentimes reference and engage directly with the texts. Missing more than three classes may result in failing grade.

ASSESSMENT

College Nine CLNI 1 students, like all incoming frosh at UCSC, will complete an assessment exercise during the final weeks of the quarter. This assessment is tied to the expected course learning outcomes, and will be counted in the final grade for the class.

“Outcomes” identify concepts and practices that we expect students to understand, and be able to apply in various situations, by the end of the quarter. Our outcomes include references to tools (such as different reading strategies), concepts (genre), practices (collaboration), and habits of mind (risk-taking, engaging productively in discussion over conflicting views).

“Assessment” allows instructors and the campus as a whole to understand how well students have understood and applied those outcomes.

The College Nine CLNI 1 assessment will take place on the last day of class on the tenth week.

COURSE POLICIES

Course Tutor

If you're having trouble with the material, we have a course tutor for to help you.

Chenlong Xiao // email: cxiao8 [at] ucsc [dot] edu

Chenlong is a former student of College 9 who expertly achieved all the objectives of the course and contributed to class discussions in a productive manner. Email him to set up an appointment, or general questions about the course.

Academic Integrity

This course places you immediately within ongoing debates and conversations at a relatively high level of rigor. It is assumed that your critical reflections and engagement are your own and NOT the work of someone else. In other words, plagiarism will not be tolerated. I expect each student to adhere to UCSC's policy on academic integrity. All written assignments must be your own work. If you borrow any material from another author, you must remember to cite their work. Claiming someone else's work as your own is a serious breach of trust -- so don't do it!

Plagiarism can include the submission of work:

• written by someone else as your own
• written by means of inappropriate collaboration
• purchased, download, or copy/pasted from the Internet
• fails to properly acknowledge its sources through standard citation practice

Such action may result in failing the course and possibly even expulsion from the university -- so please do not be tempted. For further information: UCSC Page on Academic Misconduct

Attendance

Attendance in this course is required. Missing more than two class meetings is grounds for failing the course. It is your responsibility to maintain an open channel of communication with your instructor should you find yourself in a situation that requires you to miss class meetings.

Reading Assignments, In-Class Writing, and Quizzes

You are expected to come to class having closely read and annotated all of the assigned reading for the day, with your reading journal completed. Due dates are listed in the schedule below. I will occasionally give brief quizzes, in-class writing assignments, or group work to encourage you to develop effective reading practices and keep up with the reading. Remember: effective reading involves extensive textual annotation, so be sure to mark up the texts as you read them and look up as well as define unfamiliar words and concepts. You should keep a running log of definitions and concepts in your reading journals, as mentioned above.

Classroom Environment

Our course is a discussion-based seminar, so it is important that we all work to foster a classroom environment that is inviting, respectful, non-judgmental, and lively. I hope that our classroom is a space in which we are trying out ideas, voicing a variety of opinions, and attempting to figure things out. I expect everyone to come to each class meeting on time, ready to actively engage with the course material and each other, share ideas, and expand and stretch our thinking. I also expect you to be fully present in our time together, which means avoiding laptops, cell phones, tablets, or other gadgets that may distract you in our discussions.

Course Website

The course web-site is an extension of this syllabus where assignment instructions will be posted, important due dates, and the class schedule. Please reference it whenever possible since I will be updating the course content as we progress through the quarter.

Accommodations for students with Disabilities

If you qualify for classroom accommodations because of a disability, please get an Accommodation Authorization from the Disability Resource Center (DRC) and submit it to me in person outside of class (that is, at office hours) within the first two weeks of the quarter. Contact DRC at 459-2089 (voice), 459-4806 (TTY), or http://drc.ucsc.edu/ for more information on the requirements and/or process.