Fiat Lux, GE clusters aimed toward freshmen

This year UCLA will gear two groups of courses primarily toward
freshmen in an effort to personalize their education within the
context of a 35,000-student university.

In addition to the six-year-old general education cluster
courses, UCLA is offering 32 one-unit seminars in the Fiat Lux
(“Let there be light”) series designed to expose
freshmen to specialized topics they would not usually learn in GE
coursework.

Some cluster students said having a 160-student class ““
relatively low compared with other GE courses, which can reach
upwards of 500 ““ helps to make the daunting UCLA world a bit
smaller.

“The small size of the class also means a great way for
solidarity with people,” said first-year student Pam Zai.

The eight clusters are supposed to give incoming freshmen a
yearlong academic “home base” to ease the transition
from high school, said Judith Smith, vice-provost of undergraduate
education in the College of Letters & Sciences.

“For many students the cluster becomes an academic
home,” Smith said.

Since their inception in 1997, the clusters have been popular
among first-year students. Smith cited a combination of honors
credit along with certain GE requirements like Writing II being
automatically fulfilled upon finishing the cluster as some
reasons.

The newest course group in the cluster series is “Work,
Labor and Social Justice in the United States,” which
explores the role of the labor movement as a social force. This new
cluster is being taught on the Hill at De Neve Plaza, a first for
the recently-completed building.

“It’s a nice way to come to students’ living
room and humanize their education,” Smith said.

The new labor cluster will address contemporary labor issues,
simulate worker-management bargaining negotiations, and will send
students out into the city to work with community-based labor
organizations, institutions and unions.

“Some students will have never heard of the background of
these issues and now they’ll be exposed to this,” said
Abel Valenzuela, coordinator of the labor cluster and a professor
in the Cesar E. Chavez Center in Interdisciplinary Chicana/o
Studies.

Many students in the class are hoping future applications of the
labor cluster will benefit them later.

“We come to college to help us eventually find a job, so
hopefully knowing more about work will help us,” said
first-year student Soroush Zaghi.

Labor negotiations have been an active part of the University of
California in recent months, with lecturers striking for higher
benefits and wages and nurses threatening to strike in the middle
of a longstanding nationwide nursing shortage.

Earlier this spring, 80 non-student food workers for the
Associated Students of UCLA successfully fought for the right to
unionize with the American Federation of State, County and
Municipal Employees.

Also catering to freshmen is the Fiat Lux seminar series, whose
origins lie in a similar series organized last year after Sept.
11.

Three weeks later, when the fall 2001 quarter began, the College
began to construct 50 one-unit seminars titled “Sept. 11
Perspectives” to help students better understand the issues
that arose from the attacks.

“It really did come out of something that was done in a
way that would address a tragic event, but we had been thinking
about this for some time,” Smith said.

Though there are only 32 seminars slated for this fall, Smith
said she hopes the College can increase the number to 50 in each of
the next two quarters. Ultimately, she would like to reach similar
numbers as those at UC Berkeley.

With reports from Christian Mignot, Daily Bruin Contributor.

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