Individual Section Topics

Course Description:
Cornerstone Seminars introduce students to the rigors and rewards of the college experience. Faculty from all academic departments design these seminars, and they develop topics that will lead first-year students into college-level study and reflection. As students explore the seminar's topic, they develop and refine critical academic skills and the habits of mind necessary for success in college. While students choose from course topics that vary with each professor, all Cornerstone Seminars are unified through their pursuit of common educational goals.

The primary goal of COR 101 is to help students begin a pilgrimage of curiosity-driven, transformational learning in a Christian liberal arts community.

Each seminar's limited enrollment of sixteen allows for substantial dialogue between teacher and students, student-to-student interaction, and experimentation with teaching/learning methods. Throughout the course, students will explore, explain, and analyze the seminar topic through expository writing.

All first-year students arrive on Greenville 's campus for orientation knowing what Cornerstone Seminar they will join. The seminar groups first meet in the orientation period so that students are introduced to the academic life of the college at the same time that they learn to find their way into a new social environment. COR 101 instructors also serve as the faculty advisor for the seminar members as they develop vocational vision and academic plans during their freshman year.

Common Course Goals:
In order to achieve the desired course outcome of helping first-year students become active scholars who own and shape their learning and education, each COR 101 seminar is designed to achieve the following goals and objectives:

• Common Goal #1:
  The Cornerstone Seminar will help students explore the broadly integrative nature of the Christian liberal arts tradition and Greenville College 's specific commitment to education for character and service.
• Common Goal #2:
  The Cornerstone Seminar will help students begin to develop the foundational critical and creative thinking, reading, speaking, writing and technological skills necessary for success in any academic discipline.
• Common Goal #3:
  The Cornerstone Seminar will help students build bridges from their previous experience to the religious values, social matrix, and academic culture of Greenville College in order to help them create plans to shape and achieve life goals.

Educational Objectives:
COR 101 will enable a student to:

1. Identify the elements of a Christian worldview and explain how a “worldview” shapes a person's approach to spiritual formation and lifelong learning. (CG 1, 2, 3)
2. Explain in their own words the value of approaching a problem from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. (CG 1, 2,)
3. Recognize and articulate relationships between the Christian faith, the intellectual life, human creativity, and vocational vision. (CG 1, 2, 3)
4. Demonstrate competence in the foundational skills of active reading and annotation. (CG 2)
5. Begin to demonstrate competence in critical thinking skills:
   
   • Through identifying and developingtheir personal learning and thinking patterns
   • Through employing strategies of invention, inquiry, and problem-solving
     (CG 1, 2)
6. Begin to develop competence in their oral communication skills in class discussion, informal small group interaction, and formal class presentations. (CG 1, 2, 3)
7. Begin to demonstrate competence in the expository writing skills of summary and analysis. (CG 1, 2)
8. Demonstrate foundational skills and critical discernment in the use of technological tools such as e-mail communication and the World Wide Web. (CG 1, 2, 3)
9. Demonstrate the value of integrity in the academic community of Greenville College (as described in the Catalog and Student Handbook). (CG 1, 2, 3)

Advising Objectives:
COR 101 will enable a student to:

1. Identify behaviors and tasks that will help them to succeed in college, and formulate and implement a plan (using those behaviors and tasks) to integrate themselves into the academic and social fabric of the college. (CG 2, 3)
2. Articulate their unique God-given strengths, and use those strengths to explore vocation in the context of their college experience. (CG 1, 2, 3)