Convocation Responses

Convocation Journal: For every convocation, please write a 1 – 2 page typed journal entry in which you respond to a main idea of the convocation.  On occasion, there may be more specific assignments for convocation journal entries.  These entries should include minimal summary and should instead focus on your intellectual reaction to the convocation.  Please avoid describing the convocations as “interesting” or “boring” but rather, focus on the content of the presentation in your responses.  These responses will be due the day after the convocation at the beginning of class; they are "low risk" assignments: you will receive feedback on your ideas only, and you will either receive a check, check minus, or check plus (not a letter grade).

In addition to the convocations that are integrated into the course and that are a shared requirement of all sections of ILA, you must attend two additional public campus events of your choosing, writing a one-page convocation response in reaction. These public events can include but are not limited to theatrical events and public lectures. I will, on occasion, identify events that qualify; you may also ask regarding specific campus events at any time.

Convocation journal entry on Dean Jakoubek's lecture:

Take careful notes on Dean Jakoubek's presentation.  Take one or two of what you believe to be her main points, and explore the significance of them to your life and education.

Title of Dean Jakoubek's convocation: "What is Liberal Arts?"

Abstract:  As human beings, our lives are controlled by internal and external forces unless something intervenes, and the liberal arts is a way and kind of knowing that can set us free to determine for ourselves what to do with our lives.  Dean Jakoubek will connect Jill Ker Conway’s experience of leaving home and pursuing higher education with some of her own experiences in college.  The dean's goal is to enable students to see how a liberal arts education is connected to their own desires to become responsible for and live their own lives even while it connects them to the universal experience of human beings in other times and places.

Mary Oliver's "The Summer Day"

 

 

 

Upcoming

 

Convocation Thursday, October 20th   Professor Bill Ayers, Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago and former Weather Underground member, will speak on the role of the liberal arts.

"The unexamined life is not worth living" (Socrates).