{"id":73297,"date":"2024-11-04T10:08:38","date_gmt":"2024-11-04T17:08:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/?p=73297"},"modified":"2024-11-04T10:08:38","modified_gmt":"2024-11-04T17:08:38","slug":"hc-340","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/hc-340\/","title":{"rendered":"It\u2019s not like a regular class. It\u2019s a cool class.\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

College is full of rules: deadlines, attendance policies, page counts.<\/span><\/p>\n

But one class at NAU is ditching the rule book in an attempt to push students outside their comfort zones.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"students<\/a>Along the way, the class has studied others\u2019 depictions of the northern Arizona landscape, reading the words of Edward Abbey, John Muir and Terry Tempest Williams and getting up close with paintings in the Kolb Studio at Grand Canyon National Park.<\/span><\/p>\n

This fall, Honors College dean and English professor <\/span>Kevin Gustafson <\/span><\/b>and local landscape painter <\/span>Dawn Sutherland<\/span><\/a> are jointly teaching an Honors College elective called Finding Place in Northern Arizona. Equal parts art class, creative writing class and humanities seminar, the course has taken nine students from the Flagstaff mountain campus to the Grand Canyon, Sedona and beyond, asking them to depict what they see on the canvas and the page through their own unique lens.\u202f<\/span><\/p>\n

Gustafson said the writing and art assignments are radically open-ended for a reason: adult life doesn\u2019t come with a manual.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThese students are very good at turning out a five- to 10-page essay,\u201d he said. \u201cThey\u2019re used to being praised for following the rules, and they can be uncomfortable when there aren\u2019t rules. My goal is to show them that there\u2019s joy in deliberately and playfully breaking from convention, both in this class and in life more generally.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\"students<\/a>\u201cWe live in a world that\u2019s full of distractions; there are all sorts of things calling us away from being a keen observer,\u201d he said. \u201cI see students learning to break away from the distractions and mastering the power of concentration and observation.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Almost every student in the class came in with no painting, drawing or creative writing experience. Most hope to find jobs in STEM fields like electrical engineering, psychology and exercise physiology.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But that doesn\u2019t mean creative thinking can\u2019t be instructive for them, Sutherland said. Learning how to translate a scene to the canvas can hone your observational skills: \u201cYou pay more attention to colors, shadows and details around you because you\u2019re constantly thinking about how you would paint or draw the scene.\u201d\u202f<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In Gustafson\u2019s mind, that\u2019s a huge asset no matter your industry.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"students<\/a>\u201cI was not expecting the level of freedom we have,\u201d he said. \u201cThe rubric was open to interpretation, which is not like most of my classes. We can do almost anything we feel.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Zachary Seberino<\/span><\/b>, a fourth-year student who aspires to become a physical therapist, went into the course with few preconceptions: He signed up simply because it fulfilled a requirement and fit his schedule. The flexibility he encountered was both scary and exciting.\u202f<\/span><\/p>\n

Sophomore music major <\/span>Adam Anderson <\/span><\/b>also came in cold. What he found was a one-of-a-kind experience that reminded him why he came to NAU\u2019s Honors College in the first place.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIf the Honors College is about finding ways to change the way you see the world,\u201d he said, \u201cthis class epitomizes that concept.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Northern<\/span><\/p>\n


\nJill Kimball | NAU Communications
\n(928) 523-2282 | jill.kimball@nau.edu<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

College is full of rules: deadlines, attendance policies, page counts. But one class at NAU is ditching the rule book in an attempt to push students outside their comfort zones. Along the way, the class has studied others\u2019 depictions of the northern Arizona landscape, reading the words of Edward Abbey, John Muir and Terry Tempest…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":95,"featured_media":73307,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-73297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-research-academics"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/95"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73297"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73297\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}