Enduring Questions Seminars
The Enduring Questions Seminar program raises questions that are both universal and urgent and that engage the whole person throughout life. Because all seminars at each class level share a common general topic and a common text, they create a shared Dominican experience by embodying the distinctive community of learners each student has joined.
Students choose from a variety of seminars that explore a common theme:
- The Examined Life First-Year Seminar (LAS 1xx)
- Life in the Natural World (LAS 2xx) (to be taken in the sophomore or junior year)
- The Good Life Senior Integrative Seminar (LAS 4xx)
Enduring Questions seminars are designed to be integrative, helping students see and articulate connections between information and ideas originating in other courses; between their coursework and their lives beyond the classroom; and between their own lives and the lives of others―past, present, and future. These courses are taught by skilled instructors from various disciplines who help students consider alternative approaches to the general themes, but seminars are also courses in which students learn with and from each other. Students will “take” from their seminars no more and no less than they “give.” Students gain new information, new insights, and new perspectives by:
- Engaging actively with the seminar materials and the ideas of classmates,
- Participating thoughtfully in class discussions, and by
- Completing diligently their portion of the work of the group.
More important, though, they gain a "new" way to learn and respect for the power of the mind that, we believe, they will carry with them into their lives beyond the classroom. The Enduring Questions Seminars are at the heart of everything Dominican does in the university’s efforts to guide the new generation of students who will create a more just and humane world.