Is Everyone in Penn Arts and Sciences a Benjamin Franklin Scholar
BFS classes are designed to be engaging and challenging, although they recieve varying opinions from students.
The Benjamin Franklin Scholars program promises to offering undergraduates a fulfilling, intellectually rigorous way to pursue their interests at Penn, but some students say the plan could use improving.
BFS takes dissimilar forms in each of the four undergraduate schools, and each has its own requirements and acceptance procedure. In the Schoolhouse of Nursing, the School of Engineering and the Wharton School, students bring together immediately upon acceptance into Penn, while interested students in the College of Arts and Sciences must use separately subsequently being admitted.
Although each school requires different courses inside the plan, Higher students who participate in BFS take arguably the most comprehensive experience: Freshmen live together in Riepe College House and accept an intensive, interdisciplinary multi-credit course called the Integrated Studies Program.
Students have raised concerns nigh the curriculum, proverb that the program'southward goal of meaningful interdisciplinary study isn't always accomplished.
"The programme could ideally amend on its consistency to choose adept subjects to integrate and good methods of integrating them," Higher freshman Richard Potter said. "There was a wide disparity betwixt this semester and concluding semester with the force of integration."
"It felt like nosotros were doing the same matter over and once again. We weren't actually learning," one student, in the plan who requested to remain anonymous, said. "Information technology felt like nosotros were really just throwing out words that had to do with each subject, but no ane knew what they meant. Information technology can be kind of disheartening, like, 'Why am I doing this?'"
Next autumn, students in Isp volition study themes of identity, inheritance and alter through the interdisciplinary lens of anthropology and classics. In the spring, they will investigate decisions and learning through the study of cognitive neuroscience and philosophy. It's a downgrade from the past three years, which integrated three subjects instead of two.
The courses are meant to be engaging and challenging, classical studies professor and BFS Managing director Peter Struck said.
"What's distinctive about the program is a certain corporeality of raw intellectual curiosity," he said. "We're looking for students who want to do something difficult — and that'southward not everybody."
Students in the Integrated Studies Program hold the feel is engaging, but also say that improvements could be, and have been, made.
"My initial experience was kind of rocky because there wasn't much transparency between the administration of the programme and the students at first. Everything was a petty vague," College sophomore and BFS Informational Board representative Mary Peyton Sanford said of her beginning year in the program. "They have improved this and continue to do so, which I imagine would be extremely helpful for incoming students."
Students take varying opinions on the programme's sense of community. Some feel that living in Riepe and taking pocket-sized classes together creates a sense of unity.
"Your classmates become your closest friends, considering that these are the same people that you study with, go to grade with and alive with," College freshman Ivana Kohut said. "It was a style for me to find a niche at Penn and to make a big campus seem smaller."
Other students, however, report different experiences.
"It would be nice if the BFS community was more tightly knit," Sanford said. "There are so many interesting, bright and unique students in the programme, and it would exist incredible if nosotros could all get together more than often to learn about and be inspired by each other."
"Some people notice their community at that place, only some people really don't," the anonymous student added. "I'm non there [in Riepe] very frequently, and most of my hall isn't either."
Struck says the plan will go along to integrate feedback and improve. In order to gauge and implement educatee opinion, the BFS program has included student representatives on its Informational Board and encourages students to voice whatever concerns at Monday night written report hours and other programs.
"As we proceed and develop and change pieces of BFS, nosotros're doing that with constant feedback from students and trying to be responsive every bit we tin," Struck said. "Each year, we do revise and streamline the offerings, so we're definitely very interested in what our students tell u.s.."
Despite whatever difficulties students may see, near say their experience in the Benjamin Franklin Scholars and Integrated Studies plan has been worthwhile.
"At the fourth dimension I thought, 'This is useless, why am I doing this?'" College sophomore Alex Palmer said. "But a lot of the readings were key readings that people mention all of the fourth dimension. In a lot of other classes, I recognized things I knew from Internet access provider."
"The procedure of existence able to discern exactly what pieces of knowledge you need to find the 'sweet spot of integration' is challenging, only once you encounter how things can come together, it's not merely rewarding but beautiful and elegant," Kohut added.
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Source: http://www.thedp.com/article/2015/04/benjamin-franklin-scholars-program
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