Ignatius Seminars
“Participating in an Ignatius Seminar was a truly worthwhile experience and a highlight of my freshman fall semester. The intimate classroom setting fostered genuine relationships with my fellow classmates, and the professor’s eclectic curriculum enabled me to explore a variety of literary styles and works that I would not have discovered and enjoyed on my own.”
— Tyler White, C’14
For many incoming students, the wealth of educational options and courses of study offered at Georgetown College can be both incredibly energizing and at the same time a bit imposing. Georgetown College’s Ignatius Seminar Program —so named for Saint Ignatius of Loyola, on whose philosophy Jesuit education is based — offers first year students the opportunity to delve into one-of-a-kind courses of study that provide interaction with College faculty in a way that makes very real the Jesuit educational theme of Cura personalis: educating the whole person.
Professor Mak Paranjape of the physics department recently taught a seminar that combined his own interest in cooking with scientific concepts. "The Ignatius Seminar allowed me flexibility to choose a topic that was of interest to me—and that is cooking," said Paranjape. "So I combined cooking with some science background, and the first 'Art of Cooking: Practical Science in Action' course was conceived. The course also allowed me to show that science is truly everywhere, and that by understanding the underlying principles in something as common as cooking, anyone can become an expert chef."
These personal expressions of each professor's scholarly pursuits show the academic exchange of their mind and spirit—an important aspect of college to share with incoming first year students. Furthermore, each seminar seeks to cultivate the two goals associated with the teachings of St. Ignatius. The first is to cultivate an academic environment in which a faculty member can mentor each student in a personal, even individualized manner. The second goal is to elicit in the student an intellectual response that is both integrative and holistic. The professor’s own particular intellectual pursuits provide students with real-life, tangible examples of the interplay of the physical and spiritual, of disciplined work and intellectual excitement, of academic rigor and creative play.
Dowload a .pdf of the 2011 First Year Options brochure here!
Who may apply?
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All first-year students in Georgetown College.
Application procedures
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Admitted first-year students are sent application materials in early June.
Course/credit equivalencies
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1 course and 3 credits
Semester-long or year-long?
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The Ignatius Seminar is a fall semester commitment only.
Requirements fulfilled?
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Counts as one elective course toward graduation.
2011 Ignatius Seminar topics will include:
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Living Global (Georgetown University President John J. DeGioia)
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Shifting Selves: Changelings and Doubles (Marcia Morris - Department of Slavic Languages)
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Faith, Fiction and Film (Barbara Mujica - Department of Spanish and Portuguese)
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Creating and Sustaining Community (Jennifer Woolard - Department of Psychology)
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Navigating the Moral Terrain (Alisa Carse - Department of Philosophy)
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Science and Religion in the West: Historical Perspectives (Fr. David J. Collins, S.J. - Department of History)
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Computation, Computers and Computer Science (Mahendran Velauthapillai -Department of Computer Science)
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Touching the Middle Ages (Kelley Wickham-Crowley - Department of English)
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Following in the Framer's Footsteps: Rewriting the Constitution for the 21st Century (James I. Lengle - Department of Government)
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Race, Color, Culture (Tim Wickham-Crowley - Department of Sociology)
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Us and Them: The United States and Mexico in Film, Literature, and History (John Tutino - Department of History)
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Culture and Identity in Egypt (Reem Bassiouney - Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies)