| Senior Seminar course evolves
Teacher says earlier placement of class may work better for students
By Randy Klodz
Staff Writer
Whether or not it’s a popular course, all students must take and pass Senior Seminar in order to graduate from Columbia. And, although every student must complete the
evolving course, there are conflicting opinions regarding the program, its initiatives and whether it should be a requirement.
Senior Seminar meets once a week for two hours and 50 minutes and is offered through the School of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
“Senior Seminar was created to address both the professional and technical needs of the students as well as invite them to consider questions of personal identity
and values,” said Bill Hayashi, director of Senior Seminar.
With this definition, Hayashi pointed to Columbia’s mission statement, which states that students will “author the culture of their time.”
“Senior Seminar was created to place artistic and career training within the broader context of an enlightened liberal education.” Hayashi said.
The Senior Seminar program—which has courses titled: Designing Vocation, Media and Values, Arts and Community, Inspirational Leadership, Spirituality and Empowerment,
Story and Image and Creative Collaboration—offers its classes at a variety of times.
Hayashi currently instructs two sections of Spirituality and Empowerment, and though he fully supports the program, he and his staff are aware that some students are dissatisfied.
However, students were reluctant to comment about Senior Seminar on the record.
Hayashi doesn’t feel that most of the problems with Senior Seminar lie within course content, but rather in the timing of the course.
“Students need to be reflecting on their passions, values and career goals long before they are to graduate,” Hayashi said.
As far as timing’s concerned, Hayashi is recommending that the seminar “take place in junior year or even earlier [and] that a one-unit integrative seminar be
taken each year of a student’s Columbia career—so that issues of values, civic responsibility, career design and future envisioning can happen over freshman,
sophomore, junior and senior years and provide the student with a much more integrated and helpful approach.”
Because Senior Seminar at Columbia is still evolving, Hayashi said that he and his team are currently working with Project Zero at Harvard and the Educational Testing Services
of Princeton to “design a more effective and supportive program.”
According to Hayashi, the main thrust of resistance directed toward Senior Seminar is that it happens too late.
“When you are about to graduate and you’re asking ‘What is my passion?’ and you realize that your passion really isn’t marketing [for example],
what are you going to do at that point?”
Karen Smith, an academic adviser for Columbia, likens the disdain for Senior Seminar to student disdain of any other course, in general. “As with any course, Senior
Seminar appeals to some and not others—kind of like math, science, and/or history,” she said.
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