The College Preparatory Option
Level: Open to students entering grades 11 or 12 or freshman year of college in fall 2010.
Session: I, June 28-July 16, 2010; II, July 20-August 6, 2010
Days & Time: Monday-Friday, 10:00 AM-12:00 PM and 2:30-4:30 PM
Instructor(s): Kate Bieger, Nicholas Boggs, Derrick Higginbotham, Irvin Hunt, Rose-Ellen Lessy, Jasia Pietrzak, Andrew Porwancher, Dobromir Rahnev, Daniel Scanlon, Steen Sehnert, Kathleen Smith, Lytton Smith, Margaret Vandenburg, Debbie Yuster
"I’m surprised how much my writing has improved. Writing an essay is no longer a fight for me. The subjects we wrote essays about were interesting and the teacher was inspiring."
–Anders Sorensen, 2009
"The approach we used in this class was very different from the approach we generally use in school....I really enjoyed it!"
-Iria Focarelli, 2009
"This class was surprisingly interactive and fun."
–Elaine Chu, 2009
Course Description
An intensive review in four major skill areas for students who wish to strengthen their preparation for college-level work. Each skill module meets two or three mornings or afternoons per week. Students enrolled in this curricular option are required to take all four modules.
Foundations of Mathematics
Kate Bieger, Jasia Pietrzak, Dobromir Rahnev, Steen Sehnert, Debbie Yuster
This module lays a foundation for college mathematics, drawing on a variety of topics from the theory of numbers, graph theory, and basic combinatorics. Students focus on what it means to solve a problem mathematically and learn a variety of methods of mathematical proof. The final weeks of the module are devoted to theorems and applications drawn from combinatorics and elementary probability theory. Rather than using the standard lecture approach, the moduleinvolves a great deal of in-class group exercises, which makes it much more enjoyable and educational.
Expository Writing
Nicholas Boggs, Derrick Higginbotham, Irvin Hunt, Rose-Ellen Lessy, Kathleen Smith, Lytton Smith
Students reinforce skills in grammar and punctuation as they learn to narrow a general subject into a usable, focused thesis and to write a coherent and informed essay. Through reading, debate, and writing, students develop writing strategies for different types of assignments such as examinations, reports, and term papers. Through careful readings of a variety of short articles and excerpts, students develop an appreciation for the writing skills essential in an academic setting.
Reading and Critical Thinking
Irvin Hunt, Rose-Ellen Lessy, Margaret Vandenburg
Students develop an understanding of how language and form work in what they read and see in order to develop methods for identifying and critically evaluating conveyed messages. A variety of literary and visual media is considered, including fiction, poetry, drama, newspaper and magazine articles, movies, and television programs.
Study Skills and Research Techniques
Andrew Porwancher, Daniel Scanlon
Students practice the skills required to complete college assignments productively and to do research in a university library. Extensively considered are time management, note-taking, outlining, examination preparation, and effective class participation. Students are trained to use the full resources of a library, including traditional research tools as well as computerized catalogs, abstracts, indexes, and bibliographic databases.
Instructor(s)
Faculty
Kate Bieger
Kate Bieger completed the Ph.D. in cognitive psychology at Columbia University in 2005. She is now working toward a respecialization in clinical psychology at Adelphi University on Long Island. She has taught undergraduate psychology courses at Columbia, including a statistics laboratory for psychology majors and a course on memory in the Science Honors Program. Dr. Bieger has a love of mathematics, in particular Logic and problem solving, and has tutored students in mathematics over the years.
Faculty
Nicholas Boggs
Nicholas Boggs received his B.A. in English from Yale, his Ph.D. in English from Columbia, and most recently, his M.F.A. in creative writing from American University. A former Andrew Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Humanities at Wesleyan University, he has also taught courses in literature and writing at The New School for Social Research and George Washington University. The recipient of fellowships and artist’s residencies from the Millay Colony for the Arts, the DC Commission on the Arts, Blue Mountain Center, and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts (as a Cafritz Foundation Fellow), his writing has appeared or is forthcoming in James Baldwin Now (NYU Press), Callaloo, and African American Review. He is currently writing a novel and a book about James Baldwin.
Faculty
Derrick Higginbotham
Derrick Higginbotham earned a B.A. in English from Dalhousie University and two M.A.s--one from Simon Fraser University and the other from Columbia University. He recently finished a four-year teaching position as a preceptor of Literature Humanities, the Great Books course at Columbia. Currently, he is finishing his dissertation on medieval and early modern English theater, which investigates the relationship between the theater and different facets of economic life.
Faculty
Irvin Hunt
After graduating Morehouse College summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, Irvin Hunt went on to receive an M.A. from University of California, Berkeley, in English and American l iterature. Awarded the Ford Fellowship for Graduate Study, he then enrolled as a Ph.D. student in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, from which he recently received his second M.A. In 2005 he released a book of letters titled Family. He has published articles for the Maroon Tiger and Independent School. His dissertation research focuses on depictions of slavery and freedom in American, English, and Caribbean literature. As wide as his interests span, teaching is his first joy.
Faculty
Rose-Ellen Lessy
Rose Ellen Lessy holds an A.B. from Brown University in comparative literature and an M.A. from Cornell University, where she is currently completing her Ph.D. in English and American literature. She has served as an instructor for several years in the John S. Knight writing program at Cornell. Her dissertation focuses on the relationship between American literary realism and medical science in the early twentieth century.
Faculty
Jasia Pietrzak
Jasia Pietrzak is an assistant professor of social psychology at the University of Warsaw in Poland, having earned her Ph.D. at Columbia University in 2004. Her research interests revolve around intergroup relations, social justice and minority identity. She has taught basic statistics and assisted in various advanced statistics courses. She tutored mathematics in high school and college and participated in national math competitions.
Faculty
Andrew Porwancher
Andrew Porwancher is currently earning a Ph.D. in history at the University of Cambridge. He previously earned his M.A. from Brown University and B.A. from Northwestern University. His research focuses on the relationships between ideas and institutions in American society.
Faculty
Dobromir Rahnev
Dobromir Rahnev is a third-year Ph.D. student at Columbia University, focusing on cognitive neuroscience of visual awareness. In high school he participated in a number of mathematical competitions and earned two gold medals from the International Mathematical Olympiads. He completed his bachelor’s degree at Harvard University, majoring in psychology. Dobromir has been a teaching assistant for undergraduate psychology courses at Columbia and has tutored undergraduates in mathematics. This is his third year teaching in the summer program for high school students.
Faculty
Daniel Scanlon
Daniel Scanlon holds a B.A. from Columbia College and an M.Phil. from Yale University in comparative literature. He has taught at both Yale and Columbia. His current areas of interest and research include writing instruction, contemporary philosophy, and Irish language literature.
Faculty
Steen Sehnert
Steen Sehnert majored in psychology and philosophy at Colby College, and is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in social psychology at Columbia University. He studies the effect of engagement with material on learning and comprehension, investigating the best ways to engage students in the classroom and at home. He is drawing on this work as a Teagle Foundation Fellow, where he is working to evaluate the Columbia Undergraduate experience, particularly the effectiveness of the newest core course, Frontiers of Science.
Faculty
Kathleen Smith
Kathleen Smith is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. She holds B.A. degrees in Classics and English, and graduated summa cum laude from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2003, and received an M.A. from Columbia in 2004. She has taught and lectured for courses on Greek mythology, ancient Roman literature and civilization, and currently teaches University Writing at Columbia. She has presented her research on women in the Middle Ages at international conferences, and is working on a dissertation that reevaluates the rise of the legal concept of intention and its role in literature, religious life and the larger social sphere in the later Middle Ages and the early Renaissance.
Faculty
Lytton Smith
Lytton Smith is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. He has a B.A. in English from University College London, and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing (Poetry)from Columbia. He has taught University Writing to Columbia freshmen for over three years. His first book of poetry, The All-Purpose Magical Tent, will be published by Nightboat Books in 2009.
Faculty
Margaret Vandenburg
Margaret Vandenburg, Senior Lecturer in English at Barnard College, is the Director of First-Year English: Reinventing Literary History and former Associate Director of the Writing Program. Her published work includes essays on T. S. Eliot, Djuna Barnes, and the cult of domesticity as well as a historical novel featuring the avant-garde salons in Paris. She has recently completed critical studies of Oeditorial repression in Hemingway's fiction and the politics of aesthetics in Gertrude Stein's plays. Professor Vandenburg has been honored with the Emily Gregory Award, which celebrates excellence in teaching by the Barnard faculty.
Faculty
Debbie Yuster
Debbie Yuster received a Ph.D. in mathematics from Columbia in 2007. She is currently an assistant professor of mathematics at SUNY Maritime. Prior to this, she held a postdoctoral fellowship at the Center for Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science (DIMACS) at Rutgers University. Her research interests include combinatorics, computational geometry, and algebraic aspects of topological dynamics. Dr. Yuster has taught undergraduate courses at Columbia and other universities, and has worked with New York City math teachers and their students in order to promote interest in math, as part of the National Science Foundation's GK-12 program.
Specific course information, such as hours and instructors, are subject to change at the discretion of the University.
