The forums — a new two-year program in the College of Arts and Sciences designed to fulfill the College area requirements — hosted a welcome dinner for participants Thursday.
First-year College student Garrett Lukens is participating in the “Visions of the Good” forum and participated in the planning committee for the dinner.
“We thought, how cool would it be if we could bring all these people together,” Lukens said. “[There are] a lot of different views throughout these five different forums.”
“Essentially, we want to turn this into more of a community,” Lukens said.
There are five forums: Creative Processes and Practices, Epidemics, Human Impact on the Environment, Mobility and Community and Visions of the Good.
Each forum has about 40 students, and participants take a variety of courses related to the forum topic over their first four semesters at the University.
First-year College student Tim Crump is a member of the “Mobility and Community” forum.
“This is our first chance to go outside of that and meet some people from the other groups, so it’s definitely going to be interesting,” Crump said.
The social aspect of the forums community is student organized, Lukens said.
“We want to have more social events, we want to arrange lunches with different professors … go the extra mile to try to set a really positive tone for the inaugural year of the forums,” Lukens said.
The event started with time for students to socialize and transitioned into short speeches from each of the faculty members participating in the forums program. First-year College student Blaise Sevier introduced the program.
“We are taking the steps in order to create a community,” Sevier said.
She emphasized the newness of the program as a strength and urged members to form one community.
“What we can do together as a group, as an inaugural forum class, is tremendous,” Sevier said.
Archaeology Prof. Rachel Most, associate dean for undergraduate academic programs, is one of three instructors for the “Human Impact on the Environment” forum.
“To say that we don’t need to change it is to say that the world is the same as it was 40 years ago,” Most said.
The forums program was developed over five years as an alternative to the College area requirements and aims to encourage students to embrace a more holistic course of study.
“The issue is that what we have now is that it’s really a checklist,” Most said.
Most said the program hopes to expand to include five more Forums next fall.
Associate Biology Prof. Iggy Provencio echoed Most’s sentiment on creating a comprehensive course of study.
Outside of the new forums program, “I think there’s a lack of continuity in much of what we do,” Provencio said.
He emphasized the desire to create a true liberal arts education.
“We try to teach students across disciplines to expose them to thinking about humanities to social sciences to the sciences,” Provencio said. “We want you to be critically engaged.”
Laura Hawthorne, associate vice provost for administration and policy development, is an instructor for the “Visions of the Good” forum.
“I was excited about creating a community that has intellectual curiosity at its heart,” Hawthorne said. “I think all of you in this forum are going to take this mindset of deep intellectual curiosity into your other worlds here at U.Va.”
First-year College student Devin Willis helped organize the dinner and spoke about creating a common experience among members.
“Forums have about 200 students,” Willis said. “[They] have something in common. A common boldness, a willingness to try a new program that doesn’t have a long established tradition, name, prestige.”
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