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A Transformed First-Year Studies Program Places Chicago at the Center of the Curriculum

By Cara Jepsen ’86

Imagine the sight when nearly 350 first-year Lake Forest College students armed with sack lunches and CTA passes poured from a Metra train into the Ogilvie Transportation Center in Chicago’s Loop. The date was August 26, 2003, and the train that day was a few minutes late because extra cars had to be added to accommodate the Class of 2007. These new students were getting their first taste of the richness of the city of Chicago, and they couldn’t wait to get started.

“Chicago is so amazing,” John R. Caracciolo ’07 said, shortly after disembarking. The Virginia Beach-based student had been to the Windy City before, but it was his first time taking the train to visit it. “I don’t really know the city,” he admitted.

Caracciolo and his first-year classmates received this day-long immersion in Chicago as part of Lake Forest College’s new Creating a Geographically Extended Classroom program, which was underwritten by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Caracciolo was one of a dozen “Roots Music in American Society” seminar students who huddled around Irvin L. and Fern D. Young Presidential Professor of Politics Rand Smith as he showed them their location on a map of the city. They turned their heads in unison as he pointed to one end of the depot. “If you’re ever running to catch the train for Lake Forest, it will be down here,” he said. Good to know.

A Commitment to the First-Year Experience
In 2003 the College implemented a $250,000, three-year grant from the Mellon Foundation to help Lake Forest students—particularly first-year students—take greater educational advantage of the city of Chicago. The result was the creation of day-long immersions in Chicago neighborhoods and cultural institutions for the entire first-year class that would expose them to a variety of experiences and contacts.

The quality of the first-year experience has always been of great importance to Lake Forest College. First-Year Studies seminars have been mandatory since 1992, when the faculty devised a program with the goal of integrating newly matriculated students into academic life. The program features small seminars of 12 to 14 students, each of which explores a specific topic, with the instructor becoming the students’ academic advisor. The subject matter of the seminars has been diverse, including “Religious Approaches to Existence,” “African American Literary Voices,“ “Health Care in the U.S.: Problems and Prospects,” and “America and the War on Terrorism.”

In 2002, with strong encouragement from College President Stephen D. Schutt, the faculty began to think afresh about reinforcing the central place of first-year studies in the curriculum, and drawing more significantly upon the advantages offered by the College’s proximity to Chicago. Twelve additional seminars were introduced that focused substantially on Chicago, including “Chicago Labor History,” “Sociology of Chicago,” and “Music in Chicago.” By immersing students in academic experiences beyond the traditional boundaries of the classroom, the College sought to present them with a model for lifelong learning at the outset of their college years.

“Lake Forest College is unique among many of its peers in its proximity to a big city,” said President Schutt. “This is the first of several key initiatives that will give Chicago a central place in the curriculum.”

The program provides a common experience for students, advancing first-year class unity. It also strengthens the College’s relationships with Chicago institutions, which will be mutually beneficial to all involved. A continuing, dynamic exchange with the city will help students negotiate urban resources, encourage civic engagement, and connect them to important institutions throughout their undergraduate years and thereafter.

“It’s one of the goals of a liberal arts education to provide students with the tools to be global citizens,” said Professor of French and Associate Dean of the Faculty Cynthia Hahn. “The lessons that can be learned by exploring Chicago can be applied to the rest of the world.”

Taking a First Look at the Second City
Students in 29 first-year seminars visited Chicago last August, and each professor tailored an assignment around the trip. After arriving at the station, the classes fanned out to such sites the School of the Art Institute, Jane Addams’ Hull House, the Field Museum, the Newberry Library, the near West Side scene of the 1886 Haymarket Riot, and the Alzheimer’s Brain Bank at Northwestern Memorial Hospital.

Next year there will be half a dozen more first-year seminars focusing on Chicago, said project director and A. B. Dick Professor of History Michael Ebner. “We see it as a big positive, because individual instructors devise their own plans for the students.”

Taking the train into the city was a deliberate move, designed to teach students how to get to the city on their own. “We don’t want students to come to the unrealistic conclusion that the only way to get to Chicago from Lake Forest College is on a chartered coach,” Ebner said.

“I think the program is good because it gives us our first chance to experience [taking public transportation],” said West Dundee sophomore Claudia A. Warner ’06, an orientation leader who accompanied Professor Smith’s students on the trip.

On a southbound CTA bus, Smith handed out a backgrounder on Chess Records, the first of two stops that day. Smith had previously taught a roots music seminar and said this year’s Chicago focus had allowed him to place a greater emphasis on the city’s role in the development of the blues.

“The Chicago focus is essential for understanding the evolution of blues music from ‘country’ blues (solo performer, acoustic-based Delta music) to ‘urban’ blues (electric ensemble music in the 1940s and 1950s),” he explained. He also required students to write a research paper on a Chicago roots performer.

At the Blues Heaven Foundation at historic Chess Records on Chicago’s near South Side, students learned about cofounder and bluesman Willie Dixon and the Chess Brothers, Leonard and Phil. They took careful notes as the guide explained how such leading figures as Aretha Franklin, John Lee Hooker, Bo Diddley, James Brown, and the Rolling Stones recorded there. The guide also welcomed them to attend a series of free summer concerts at the adjacent park.

Getting Up Close and Personal with the City’s Offerings
Across town, students in Assistant Professor of Biology Caleb Gordon’s “Natural History of the Chicago Region” seminar got drenched while searching for migrating birds in Jackson Park on Chicago’s South Side. It took an hour to get to the location from the train station on Chicago’s El, but students were rewarded by catching sight of several types of fowl, including some colorful Monk parakeets. “The park is one of the green oases where migrating birds fly during the night when they’re looking for a place to land in Chicago,” Gordon explained.

A nondescript gray building housing the regional headquarters of the Federal Emergency Management Agency was the destination for Assistant Professor James Marquardt’s seminar, “America and the War on Terrorism.” There, his students took a tour and spoke to regional director of Homeland Security Edward Buikema and his colleagues, who debriefed them on a recent mock plague war attack on Chicago as well as last summer’s East Coast power blackout.

Marquardt said the DHS visit was surprisingly easy to arrange. “My sense is that they didn’t have people knocking down their door, and they were very pleased to share their experience with an interested audience. I give them an A-plus,” he said. “There are a lot of places to go in Chicago that you wouldn’t necessarily think are relevant to the war on terrorism but actually are.” Later in the semester the class returned to the city to hear former secretary of state Madeleine Albright speak at the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations. The class also planned to visit the Mexican Consulate to learn about a Cook County initiative to issue I.D. cards to Mexican citizens.

At the Harold Washington Library Center, students in the “Richard Wright and the Chicago Renaissance” seminar went on a treasure hunt, led by Associate Professor of English and African American Studies chair Judy Dozier. They searched for the bronze head of poet Gwendolyn Brooks and a piece of art depicting the journey of Chicago’s first settler, Haitian immigrant Jean Baptiste Pointe DuSable. Students gazed at a mural depicting Chicago’s history and took notes for a paper that was due later that day.

The group included St. Louis native Fredrica N. Hendrix ’07, who chose Lake Forest College partly because of its proximity to Chicago. “I liked that it was a small school close to a big city—that you get to go downtown and do things like this,” she said. She chose the class because she’d read Wright in high school and wanted to learn more. Fellow student Alexander W. Edness ’07 said it was his first trip to Chicago, but it wouldn’t be his last. “People here are a lot nicer,” said the Boston native. “Since I got off the plane, everyone has been smiling.”

Taking the Chicago Connection Beyond Orientation Week
Later in the semester, Dozier’s seminar returned to the city to see Sundown Names and Night-Gone Things, a play by Leslie Lee at Chicago Theatre Company on Chicago’s South Side. The play was set in the summer of 1939 and focused on the South Side Burial Society (an insurance company) and the four men who worked there. Wright himself was once an insurance agent. Chicago-based novelist Sandra Jackson-Opoku also visited the College and spoke to the class.

“One of the goals [of this program] is not merely to take students to Chicago, but to bring Chicago to Lake Forest College,” Ebner explained. “That makes our campus a more lively, more enticing place and a place where students, without even leaving campus, find themselves connected to opportunities in Chicago.”

In late September, Professor Rand Smith brought his music-history seminar to a blues/gospel concert at the Old Town School of Folk Music on Chicago’s North Side. It featured a performance by 88-year-old singer and guitarist David “Honeyboy” Edwards, whom the class had read about prior to the show. “We also got to meet Honeyboy at intermission, which was a real thrill,” said Smith. “So it fit directly into the class.”

Students in Smith’s class also studied white-oriented folk-music traditions of the city (including Steve Goodman ’70 and others who performed at the Earl of Old Town). “I believe they will have a good understanding of Chicago’s role in the development of American roots music,” Smith said.

In September, scores of freshman and sophomore students signed up to take a pair of Chicago Architecture Foundation (CAF) river cruises arranged by former CAF employee David Bennett ’94, who currently serves as Lake Forest’s assistant director of admissions.

“This is so cool,” exclaimed one student as Chicago’s First Lady passed Harry Weese’s whimsical, nautical-themed River Cottages. Students pointed and snapped pictures as the guide explained the history and interconnections of Chicago landmarks such as the Wrigley Building, the Tribune Tower, the Merchandise Mart, the Civic Opera House, the Sears Tower — which was inspired by a pack of cigarettes — and the now-familiar Ogilvie Transportation Center. Nearly every head turned as he pointed out the House of Blues at Bertrand Goldberg’s distinctive Marina City complex.

“They should definitely do more things like this,” said Jamie Burnett ’06, an international-relations sophomore from Indianapolis, who noted that the trip had not been offered the previous year. “It was a free opportunity to see the city.”

“I’m into this stuff,” said Nepal native Pragya Upadhyaya ’07, noting that she’d been to Chicago several times on the Metra since the August visit with her “Sociology of Chicago” seminar.

Ebner sees the program—particularly as it applies to first-year students—as part of these students’ overall civic education. “They should think of themselves from the very beginning as citizens of a great metropolis whose center is Chicago,” he said.

“I want them to think of Chicago as a wonderful opportunity that is at their fingertips,” he continued. “I don’t want them to find that opportunity in the middle of their junior year. I want them to discover it the moment they arrive at Lake Forest. I think it will enhance their four years at the College.”

Oberlin College history professor Carol Lasser, who served as the outside evaluator for the Mellon grant proposal, said she hoped the program would provide a model for other liberal arts colleges. “[Lake Forest College] is, I think, really out in front in thinking of how to connect to Chicago in meaningful ways—as an extended classroom in which students learn not only traditional academic subjects but about larger issues of citizenship. [Lake Forest’s] access to the city gives the College both possibilities and responsibilities.”

Finishing Up Immersion Day in Thought and Reflection
The final stop for Smith’s class on that day in August was the National Vietnam Veterans Art Museum, a stone’s throw from Chess Records. The visit would tie into a later segment on the folk-music revival that coincided with the Vietnam War, and Smith assigned a group paper about the museum.

The students spent a quiet 40 minutes studying the photos, paintings, and sculpture in the warehouselike space. Afterward they discussed what they had seen and pointed out some of their favorites.

One student chose a Randolph Evans painting of a blue-clad woman walking through flames called “I Don’t Mind Dying, But I Hate to See the Children Cry.” Justin Lansing ’07, from Denver, pointed out that the title alludes to lyrics from Bob Dylan’s 1962 cover of Bukka White’s “Fixin’ To Die Blues.” Later, Lansing, who plays guitar and banjo and sings, said he found the exhibit depressing but inspiring. “It made me think about the war today. People think that Vietnam was such a tragedy, but they still want to go to war. They don’t look at history. I don’t think people are learning from it.”

After another bus ride, the tired-but-invigorated students chatted about their experiences as they regrouped at the Ogilvie Transportation Center. Their unique education had started off in a big way. And it was just the beginning. Lansing said he was inspired by the trip to the city. “It’s a huge place, and there’s so much to see. It’s so close—I have to take advantage of it. I [plan to] come back tomorrow night on the train, to see a show at Chess.” When they return to Chicago, Lake Forest College students will be equipped with the skills to use the vast resources of the city and to go beneath the surface. “She is a pretty good teaching assistant,” said Ebner of the city, “and we plan to make good use of her.”

Cara Jepsen ’86, a freelance writer based in Chicago, is a frequent contributor to The Chicago Reader. She last wrote for Spectrum on Commencement 2003.