Professor Isabel Fay
By Julia Bogdan
The new core curriculum will begin at Longwood University within the upcoming school year of 2018.
There are many new updates to the general education program, but the most crucial for the Communication Studies department is the addition of Citizen 110.
As the new general education curriculum will become necessary for incoming freshmen, two Communication Studies professors have been piloting courses.
“This new class fits in with our Communication department primarily because speaking and reasoning are the focus of this class,” says Dr. Kris Paal, Assistant Professor of Communication Studies.
“[In general, Citizen 110 is] an entry level for course for college freshmen, and is basically to introduce students into aspects of citizenship, but we also try to emphasize critical thinking, civil discourse, and ethical reasoning,” Paal said.
This class will be taught across different professors with different disciplines, as well. “It’s a kind of blanket course,” Paal said.
Paal has been piloting a Citizen 110 course that focuses on how to be a good citizen on social media.
The questions that Paal’s class focuses on are, “What does it mean to be a good citizen on social media?, How do we resolve the ethical dilemmas we face while using social media?”, and “What does it mean to critically engage the messages we see on social media?”
Paal wanted to teach this course because he loves working with freshmen, and Citizen 110 is a course aimed toward introducing the freshmen to an inquiry of citizenship.
Similarly, one of Longwood’s newest Communications Studies professors, Dr. Isabel Fay, is teaching Citizen 110 with a concentration in climate change.
“Part of being a civic leader is being an informed citizen,” Fay said.
Fay co-teaches Citizen 110 with Dr. Chris Labosier, a professor in the Biology and Environmental Science department.
Dr. Labosier teaches the informed, scientific material during the first part of the course while Dr. Fay comes in and teaches communication theory following.
“This course is basically a blend of rhetoric and science,” Fay said. “Essentially, this is a public
speaking class. Students are presented with problems [related to climate change] and have to come up with solutions to overcome it. They will need to be able to take scientific information and terminology and translate that for their audience, which is what a lot of journalists have to do in their research.”
The goal of citizen 110 is to be able to arrive at an informed opinion at the end of the course.
“Students can choose to believe whatever they want to believe,” Fay said. “We just hope that at the end of the class students will feel as if they’re stepping into adulthood to make their own independent opinions without feeling like they will disrespect others.”
With the addition of these two courses, students will effectively learn the ins and outs of citizen leadership.