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Syracuse University faculty members hope that the first-year seminar course replacing SEM 100 next academic year will better equip students to talk about race and identity.

Chandice Haste-Jackson is the recently-appointed interim director of the course, called FYS 101. In this role, she’ll lead a team of SU faculty to oversee the implementation of the course and track its progress.

“I think what will change is that you have more students going to be able to enhance their intercultural communication by participating in this course as well as become aware of who they are, where they want to go, how they want to be,” Haste-Jackson said. 

SU announced the replacement of SEM 100 after criticism from students that the course did not effectively address issues of diversity and inclusion. Organizers from #NotAgainSU, a movement led by Black students that protested a series of hate incidents last academic year, included the revision of SEM 100 in their list of demands last year. 

The new course was designed based on feedback from students who have taken SEM 100, as well as from peer facilitators and lead facilitators. Faculty who are leading the implementation of FYS 101 said they hope it will resolve the shortcomings of SEM 100 to better facilitate conversations about race and identity and the transition to university life.

Unlike SEM 100, which only ran for six weeks, FYS 101 will be a 12-week, one-credit course. For three of those weeks, students will meet with other students in their home college to engage in activities related to their major, Haste-Jackson said. 

The overall course content will include a holistic view of the transition to college, which includes looking at mental, physical, social and academic wellness, and it will also discuss identity and belonging, Haste-Jackson said. 

“I think what will happen is students will, right from the very beginning, feel much more connected to the university but also connected to aspects of their identity,” Haste-Jackson said. “From there they can begin to plan out their experience.” 

Jimmy Luckman, program coordinator in SU’s Office of First-Year and Transfer Programs, was a facilitator for SEM 100 during the fall semester. From a facilitator’s perspective, six weeks wasn’t enough time to go over content and get to know each other, which made fostering open discussion difficult, he said.

“How quickly do you feel comfortable talking to someone, opening up about your lived experiences,” Luckman said. “Now that we have more weeks, it’s not just the content that gets spread out, but the comfortability.” 

For Luckman, creating a new course with a different name rather than just revising the current SEM 100 was important to emphasize the extent of the revisions being made. 

“We’re changing the culture,” Luckman said. “There were some associations with SEM 100 that you just had to read a book. It was a course that didn’t really focus on diversity, a sense of belonging and inclusion. Now, we’re changing that.” 

SEM 100 did not have a required reading book for students this year, said Kira Reed, an associate professor of management in the Martin J. Whitman School of Management and one of the provost faculty fellows on the FYS 101 leadership team. The course previously required readings such as “Lab Girl” in fall 2019 and “Born a Crime” in fall 2018.

SEM 100 previously required readings such as “Lab Girl” in fall 2019 and “Born a Crime” in fall 2018. Courtesy of Michelle Roberts

It was difficult to find a required reading that encompassed all the topics that the course sets out to discuss, Reed said. FYS 101 will include more required readings but will also incorporate videos, podcasts and other various forms of media. 

“We’re trying to look at, ‘How can we use our own treasures here on campus to build on this course?’” Reed said. “And we’re hoping that the three weeks when students go back to their schools and colleges, that’s where those discipline-specific talents will come through for them.” 

Another change to SEM 100 this year that will carry over into FYS 101 is the times of the classes. SEM 100 classes used to be scheduled in the evening because that seemed to be the best time that fit into students’ schedules, Reed said. But students said in feedback that the late times made them not want to participate. 

“Some students were hungry, they were tired. It was just a little bit more challenging,” Reed said. “We have been able to find scheduling times more throughout the day that fits with their schedule.”

Another goal of FYS 101 is to allow peer leaders, or students who will be paid to assist a faculty member in leading the course, more opportunity to directly engage with students and lead discussions on their own, Luckman said.

Reed said that students and faculty who lead FYS 101 will undergo more comprehensive training related to facilitation, learning methods and how to discuss sensitive topics. The goal is to have students and faculty leaders return year after year and build off the training they receive each time, she said. 

Haste-Jackson hopes that FYS 101 will ease the challenges of transitioning to college life for freshmen students, who may be adjusting to life away from home for the first time. 

“First-year students experience a lot of trauma, and you don’t think of it that way, but just transitioning can be traumatic,” she said. “You didn’t know how to wash your clothes, you didn’t know how to cook ramen noodles, you didn’t know these basic things.” 

Most especially, Haste-Jackson hopes that students who take FYS 101 will have better success in dealing with difficult discussions about race and identity than they did under the previous model of SEM 100. She hopes students will be more willing to open up about their identities but also any implicit biases that they may have. 

“Maybe you never interacted with a person of color until you came to campus,” Haste-Jackson said. “We hear this a lot: ‘My roommate now is a Black girl or an Asian guy, and I don’t want to say the wrong thing, but what is the wrong thing?’”

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More stories on SEM 100:

• SA working with campus committees to reform SEM 100
• Syracuse Thinks: Is SEM 100 an inclusive environment?
• SA to support new SEM 100 curriculum, diversity course
• Facilitator detail changes, challenges of SEM 100

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In addition to FYS 101, all incoming undergraduate students will be required to take at least one 3-credit inclusion, diversity, equity and accessibility course before they graduate. Students will choose a course from an approved list of about 140 options across all of SU’s schools and colleges, Reed said. 

FYS 101 will become available to first-year students for the upcoming fall 2021 semester. The University Senate approved the course in October 2020 after review from each school and college, the Senate curriculum committee, the Senate and the Board of Trustees, Reed said. 

A faculty advisory committee will convene after the course begins to ensure all the correct topics are being covered, Haste-Jackson said. She and her team will also review course feedback forms that students submit at the end of each semester. 

As the nation grapples with issues of inequity brought to light by the COVID-19 pandemic and a reckoning against racial injustice and police brutality, Haste-Jackson hopes that the course will have a particularly profound impact on students who participate.

“It’s a great time to come together and build community and build skills so that this generation going forward will be much different from my generation or my parents’ generation, where we did not talk about (these issues),” Haste-Jackson said. “If you can talk about it, you can recognize it. If you can recognize it, you won’t perpetuate it.”

Published on March 9, 2021 at 11:33 pm

Contact Sarah: scalessa@syr.edu | @sarahalessan