Mar 28, 2024  
2017-2018 Academic Catalog 
    
2017-2018 Academic Catalog [ARCHIVED CATALOG]

Tutorials


In the tutorial every entering student explores a topic of interest to the student and the instructor in a small group, discussion-intensive setting. The objectives of the tutorial are to illuminate methods of inquiry rather than to cover topics comprehensively, focusing particularly on writing, critical reading and oral communication. In addition, the tutorial initiates the process of planning for a liberal education at Grinnell through advising conversations between students and their instructors. By promoting close working relationships between tutorial instructors and their students and by combining the roles of instructor and academic adviser, the College provides students with academic advisers attuned to the interests and abilities of their advisees.

A tutorial (4 credits) is required of all students who enter Grinnell as first-year students and of all transfer students below third-year student standing whose previous work does not qualify them for an exemption. A student must complete the tutorial with a grade of C or higher to meet the tutorial graduation requirement and to be eligible to enroll in a “Plus-2” or independent project. Students who receive a D or F in the tutorial must earn a grade of C or better in a course designated or approved by the dean’s office as Intensive Writing (IW).

Tutorials are offered only in the first semester.

The following tutorials are offered in 2017–18: 

  • Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Arner)
  • Born to Run? (Bentley-Condit)
  • Envisioning Nature (J. Brown)
  • Prima Donna: Women in Opera (J.W. Brown)
  • Envisioning Identities: Self, Subgroups, “The Other,” and Belonging (J. Chen)
  • The History of Reading (Cohn)
  • Humanities I: The Ancient Greek World (J. Cummins)
  • Humanities I: The Ancient Greek World (M. Cummins)
  • Knowledge and Doubt (Curtsinger)
  • Place and Performance; Landscape, Locale, Identity (Delmenico)
  • Is it only a game?? Soccer, Identities, and Nationalism (Escandell)
  • Data Stories (Fellers)
  • Environmentalism in the Radical Thirties (Guenther)
  • Rock, Rap, and Rebellion (Haenfler)
  • The Black Athlete: Changing 20th Century Society? (Hamilton)
  • The Supreme Court: The Last, Best Hope for Minority Rights? (P. Hanson)
  • Energy (Hasegawa)
  • The Haitian Revolution: Interpretations and Reverberations (Hess)
  • Are we too clean? Investigating the impact of microbial communities on our lives (Hinsa-Leasure)
  • Late Victorian Fantasies (C. Jacobson)
  • The Ethical Shopper (Jakubiak)
  • Copying/Remixing/Collaging (Kaufman)
  • Solitude (Lewis)
  • Coping with Climate Change: How Science, Politics and Ethics Interact (Moyer)
  • Cultivating Joy (Nyden)
  • The Beauty and Joy of Expertise (Osera)
  • The Truth (Perman)
  • American Detective Fictions (Phillips)
  • The Novels of Hermann Hesse (Reynolds)
  • Words and Guitar: From Rock to Hip Hop (Roberts)
  • The American “I am”: Autobiography and U.S. Literatures (Rodrigues)
  • Hast Thou Seen the White Whale? (Savarese)
  • Almost Human (Schimmel)
  • The Silk Road(s) (Shea)
  • Medical De$ign (Sieck)