Conference System and Seminars
The majority of courses at Sarah Lawrence are small seminars limited to 15 students. Most seminars are yearlong, although students may leave a seminar at the end of the first semester and join another for second semester, if space is available. Seminars are offered in disciplines throughout the curriculum and have carefully designed plans of study. Each seminar student has a private meeting with the teacher every other week. (In First-Year Studies courses taken by all first-year students, each student meets with the teacher weekly.) In these meetings, known as conferences, student and teacher work together to define and explore what it is the student needs to know and what ways are most appropriate for acquiring this knowledge. In a literature class, for example, students may be reading Blake’s “Songs of Innocence.” In conference, a student excited by these poems may choose to read much more of Blake’s work and discuss, in a long paper or series of shorter papers, a common theme expressed in the poetry. Another student, new to poetry, may be better served by reading the work of several of Blake’s contemporaries or by undertaking a line-by-line analysis of a single long poem. The seminar/conference system at Sarah Lawrence makes it possible for students to study that which will prove most rewarding. These independent enterprises help each student develop and refine his or her skills of analysis, interpretation, and writing.