Orienting Students to the Academic Statement

Orientation Week Course:  “Learning with Faculty at Evergreen”

Evergreen’s faculty warmly welcome new students to the college!  During Orientation Week, you will meet several times in small groups with other new students and a faculty member to learn about academics at Evergreen.[1]  Activities will include an overview of Evergreen’s philosophy of teaching and learning, as well as discussions of a book that will be chosen very soon for incoming students in Fall 2013.  You’ll also begin to write about your experiences with education thus far and your college plans, hopes, and dreams.

Last year's chosen book was A Mighty Long Way: My Journey to Justice at Little Rock Central High School, a memoir by Carlotta Walls LaNier. Students were encouraged to read and to learn more about the context for LaNier’s experiences.  Below were helpful links given over the prior summer to prepare students:

Historical background to A Mighty Long Way:

• On Reconstruction after the Civil War:  http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/reconstruction/index.html
• On Arkansas history:  http://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/
• On Black Migration in the 20^th century: http://www.pbs.org/jazz/places/faces_migration.htm
• On the Tulsa, Oklahoma race riot of 1921:  http://digital.library.okstate.edu/encyclopedia/entries/T/TU013.html

About La Nier’s era:

• On Thurgood Marshall:  http://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/122/hill/marshall.htm
• On Emmett Till:  http://www.emmetttillmurder.com/
• The text of the Supreme Court’s opinion in Brown V. Board of Education:  http://www.nationalcenter.org/brown.html
• On  Governor Orval Faubus:  http://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entry-detail.aspx?entryID=102
• On the Freedom Riders of 1961:  http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/freedomriders/

Miscellany:

• On historically black colleges:  http://www.pbs.org/itvs/fromswastikatojimcrow/blackcolleges.html
• On the N.A.A.C.P.:  http://www.naacp.org/
• The Little Rock Nine on the Oprah Winfrey Show: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75dhe5Zsy8k

About segregation and discrimination in the Pacific Northwest:

• On Seattle:  http://depts.washington.edu/civilr/covenants.htm
• On the Reservation Boarding School system:  http://content.lib.washington.edu/aipnw/marr.html#movement
• On Japanese Internment Camps during World War II:  http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&File_Id=311
• On anti-semitism in Seattle:  http://depts.washington.edu/civilr/laurelhurst.htm
• On discrimination against LGBT people in Seattle:  http://www.equalrightswashington.org/docs/discrimination-fact-sheet.pdf

 Academic Statement Initiative:

• http://www.evergreen.edu/academicstatement/home