Episode 5 - James Lang on Teaching First-Year Students
May 27th, 2008 by 
derek.bruff
In this episode, we feature an interview with James Lang, Associate Professor of English at Assumption College in Massachusetts. Dr. Lang is the author of Life on the Tenure Track: Lessons from the First Year, a memoir chronicling his first year as a faculty member, and On Course: A Week-by-Week Guide to Your First Semester of College Teaching. He also writes “On Course,” a column on teaching that appears in the Chronicle of Higher Education.
In the interview, Dr. Lang discusses the idea that undergraduate students can experience some kind of personal transformation during their first year of college. Is transformation a reasonable goal for first-year students? If not, what is a reasonable goal? What are some conditions that facilitate these types of goals? What are conditions that inhibit them?
Episode 5 - James Lang on Teaching First-Year Students
[MP3, 24 min 15 sec]
Relevant Links:
- “The Myth of First-Year Enlightenment” by James Lang
- The First Year Out: Understanding American Teens After High School by Tim Clydesdale
- “William Perry’s Scheme of Intellectual and Ethical Development” by William Rapaport
- The Commons, Vanderbilt’s First-Year Experience
If you have any comments on Dr. Lang’s thoughts about first-year experiences, we encourage you to leave a comment here. Vanderbilt instructors are also welcome to call the Center for Teaching at 322-7290 to arrange a meeting with a CFT teaching consultant to discuss teaching first-year students.
Posted in First-Year Students | 
July 29th, 2008 at 4:59 am
Our Dept. recently required us to word our syllabus objectives in the form of “promises” as Dr. Lang suggests. I resisted because in my 10+ years of community college teaching I have found that very few students actually “master” or even become moderately proficient in such skills as summary, discussion, evaluation. A fifteen week semester is just not long enough in English class. The promise is a thus a lie. Some students make progress, yes but not to the degree promised in the syllabus. Help! I am in an existential paralysis over having to promise what despite my best efforts and their (varying degrees of) effort is achieved so rarely.