The College Preparatory Option
Level: Open to students entering grades 11 or 12 or freshman year of college in fall 2012.
Session: I, June 25-July 13, 2012; II, July 17-August 3, 2012
Days & Time: Monday-Friday, 10:00 AM-12:00 PM and 2:00-4:00 PM
Instructor(s): Deborah Aschkenes, Nicholas Boggs, Alexander Ellis, Lindsey Freer, Irvin Hunt, Rose-Ellen Lessy, Barbara Morris, Daniel Scanlon, Steen Sehnert, Margaret Vandenburg, Debbie Yuster
"This was a great course; I learned a lot and I am glad that I took it. The skills that I learned will help me in the years to come."
- Henry Flannery, 2011
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
Steen Sehnert, Debbie Yuster, Alexander Ellis
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
Deborah Aschkenes, Nicholas Boggs, Irvin Hunt, Rose-Ellen Lessy, Barbara Morris
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
Lindsey Freer, 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
Deborah Aschkenes
Deborah Aschkenes is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. After earning her B.A. from NYU, Deborah worked at Saks Fifth Avenue as the Director of Learning and Development. She received her M.A. and M.Phil. degrees from Columbia University and was awarded the English Department’s Miron Cristo-Loveanu prize for Best Master’s Essay. Deborah taught Columbia’s essay writing course in the Core Curriculum for two years and then served as a consultant at Columbia’s Writing Center. Her dissertation project asks how theories about mental imagery influenced the form of description in nineteenth-century novels.
Faculty
Nicholas Boggs
Nicholas Boggs holds a B.A. from Yale and a Ph.D from Columbia University. He currently teaches in the Liberal Studies Master of Arts Program at Columbia University, where he also serves as Faculty Advisor for students concentrating in American Studies. His writing has appeared in the anthology James Baldwin Now (NYU Press), Callaloo, Mary: A Literary Quarterly, and Chelsea Station. The recipient of an Andrew Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Center for Humanities at Wesleyan University, two scholarships to attend the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, as well as residencies at the artist colonies Yaddo and MacDowell, he is currently writing a book about James Baldwin’s collaboration with the French painter, Yoran Cazac.
Faculty
Alexander Ellis
Alexander Ellis is a third year Ph.D. student in mathematics at Columbia University; he specializes in categorification and representation theory. He received his undergraduate degree in mathematics from Harvard University. After that, he spent a year on a fellowship studying mathematics at the University of Cambridge before starting at Columbia. He has been a teaching assistant for a wide range of courses from calculus through the graduate level.
Faculty
Lindsey Freer
Lindsey Freer holds a B.A. in English from Barnard College and an M.Phil. from the CUNY Graduate Center. She is an instructional technology fellow at CUNY’s Macaulay Honors College and teaches American literature and history at the Fashion Institute of Technology. She is currently completing a dissertation on twentieth-century literature, exploring how nationalist politics and postmodern aesthetics shaped American poetry communities in the 1970s and 1980s.
Faculty
Irvin Hunt
After graduating summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Morehouse College, Irvin Hunt went on to receive an M.A. from the University of California at Berkeley in English and American literature. 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, where he has received two M.A.s. Hunt's department also awarded him the John W. Kluge Fellowship for a New Generation of Faculty Excellence. In 2005, he released a book of letters titled Family. He has published articles in the Maroon Tiger and Independent School. In 2010, he appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show as an Oprah Scholar. Currently, Hunt is writing a dissertation on the politics of humor during the Civil Rights Movement.
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
Barbara Morris
Barbara Morris' career has encompassed academia, business and the non-profit realm. She presently works in the Master of Fine Arts program of Communication Design and Technology at Parsons New School for Design, and has been a professor of film studies and literature at University of California, Los Angeles, Rutgers and Fordham University, where she received research fellowships from Fulbright, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the governments of Spain, the United States and Argentina. Morris is the co-editor of a book on the Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar. As a communications consultant and editor, she has worked with Oxford University Press, Prentice Hall, KPMG, Sony, Hansol and PriceWaterhouseCoopers. She led a product design team at a technology start-up that developed artificial intelligence software and was technical director for NCEA, an international educational non-profit funded by the Ford Foundation. She has a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.
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 holds a Ph.D. in psychology from 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
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.
