Residential College Seminars
The Residential College Seminar program, instituted in 1968, is devoted to the development within the residential colleges of innovative courses that fall outside departmental structures and that are created by the joint initiative of students and members of the faculty who are fellows of the residential colleges. In each of the residential colleges, committees consisting of both students and faculty review the course proposals that meet the criteria of student interests and intellectual merit. Those selected are forwarded to the Yale College Committee on Teaching in the Residential Colleges, which oversees the program. Courses accepted by this committee then go forward to the Yale College Course of Study Committee and, after scrutiny, are presented for final approval to the Yale College Faculty.
While the approval procedure involves a number of distinct stages, it assures that the courses meet the academic standards of Yale College. The program's roster includes about forty courses each year, many of them interdisciplinary, an important proportion of them in the arts, and some engaging instructors with unusual life experiences.
The faculty for the seminar program is drawn from many backgrounds, including Yale College and the professional schools. The program also attracts some of the leading scholars of other academic institutions in the New York and New England areas. At the same time, the services of individuals outside of academic life are enlisted: writers, artists, participants in government and the public sector, and experts from television, journalism, and film.
In a great variety of ways, these seminars attempt to realize the hope expressed at the time of the program's inception: that the residential colleges will help "to keep alive the dialogue between faculty and student body which alone can nourish a mutual respect for each other's interests and problems, which can reveal to the faculty the intimate concerns of the student, and to the student the relevance of his course of study." The college seminars have encouraged innovation and experimentation within the framework of academic excellence that is the hallmark of the Yale curriculum.
Most of the seminars in the Residential College Seminar program are supported by grants from the Old Dominion Foundation. Descriptions of the seminars are available on the college seminars Web site.
