Fresh approach at Holy Cross

Pioneering program introduces first-year students to (much) higher learning

Professor Estrella Cibreiro taught a freshman seminar at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester. ''This is the only class I have where I know everyone's name,'' said Sofia Spanos (with laptop, at right). (Christine Peterson for the Boston Globe)

WORCESTER - Students had barely taken their seats before the class turned philosophical, an intellectual icebreaker of determinism and metaphysics.

It was 8:30 on a rainy Friday morning, a time most college students are catching up on REM sleep. But at this Spanish history seminar at the College of the Holy Cross, 16 freshmen, assembled in a semicircle, were immersed in a highbrow discussion that explored the ideas of St. Thomas Aquinas, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Spanish author Emilia Pardo Bazan.

The intensive, interdisciplinary class, taught by a full professor, is akin to a senior symposium, a far cry from the typical freshman survey course. Adding to the close-knit feel, many students in the seminar live in the same dormitory, where they often discuss the readings and work on group assignments.

Starting this fall, all 740 first-year students at Holy Cross are required to take the full-year seminars as part of a pioneering program designed to create a more serious intellectual culture on campus and connect academic and residential life to create a more unified and universal college experience.

"We are starting with the idea of a senior seminar, but for freshmen," said Nancy Andrews, who directs the program. "We have very high expectations, but are confident students will stretch to meet them. They're not going to be able to just sit in the back and take notes."

The integrated program, which officials at the Jesuit school believe is one of the few of its kind, is called "Montserrat" after the mountain in Spain where St. Ignatius, the founder of the Jesuit order, laid down his arms to lead a spiritual life.

Placing new students into high-level courses that grapple with big-picture ideas, the college hopes, will promote self-discovery and reflections about what makes a life well-lived.

The program reflects a growing movement on campuses toward "learning communities" in which first-year students live and take classes together as a way of easing the often difficult transition to college life.

Holy Cross, however, has taken the unusual step of requiring all freshmen to participate in the program and creating a range of social activities that tie into the classroom experience.

"Colleges are saying, 'We have to pay more attention to first-year students,' " said John N. Gardner, executive director of the Policy Center on the First Year of College, a North Carolina group that works with colleges on programs for freshmen. "We've increasingly come to realize that even able students can be at-risk in the first year of college."

At Holy Cross, seminars are grouped into five themes - The Divine, Global Society, The Natural World, The Self and Core Human Questions - and students in each cluster share a dormitory and participate in common activities outside class, such as coffeehouse discussions, guest lectures, and community service projects.

College officials hope the clusters will make a small college feel that much smaller, creating a closer community and giving freshmen the chance to get to know professors. The close-knit enviroment will spark not only intellectual development, administrators and professors believe, but ethical and spiritual growth as well.

"We're trying to get a sense of wholeness," said the Rev. Michael C. McFarland, president of Holy Cross. "It reemphasizes our values, and puts them into action."

Montserrat builds on the success of a voluntary Holy Cross program that grouped about 150 freshmen into learning communities. Studies showed that students who participated did better academically, were more likely to become leaders on campus, and were more active in community outreach programs.

"We saw very significant differences," he said.

On a recent Friday, professor Estrella Cibreiro led a vigorous, 90-minute discussion on Bazan, an early 20th-century feminist who advocated for educational rights for women. For context, students read passages from Aquinas and Rousseau that asserted women's natural inferiority.

"Today we take it for granted that women have equal rights," Cibreiro said. "In the 19th century this was definitely not the case."

The quotations led to an analysis of a Bazan short story that reworked the Genesis story so that Adam, not Eve, first eats the forbidden fruit.

"Why is the guilt issue so important?" Cibreiro asked.

"If in the Bible, it had said that Adam had eaten the apple, starting at the very beginning of Christianity people would have had a different view of women," said Sofia Spanos, a freshman from Laconia, N.H.

Cibreiro agreed. Women might have had a different view of themselves as well, she added.

"Women came to believe the Genesis story," she said. "If you hear the message enough times, you begin to believe it."

After the class, students said the small setting gives them the confidence to express their ideas without fear.

In a larger class with older students, they would be more reluctant.

Students said they often work on assignments together in the dorms, and have bonded over the shared experience.

"This is the only class I have where I know everyone's name, where I talk to them and walk to class with them," Spanos said.

Cimmie Binning, a Philadelphia native, said the first-year program makes her feel like part of something bigger than herself. But it also makes her feel like she belongs, not like the average anonymous freshman.

"There's a sense of identity with the group," she said. "But the focus is also on the individual."

Peter Schworm can be reached at schworm@globe.com.