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’ 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.
This fall, Honors College dean and English professor Kevin Gustafson and local landscape painter Dawn Sutherland 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.
Gustafson said the writing and art assignments are radically open-ended for a reason: adult life doesn’t come with a manual.
“These students are very good at turning out a five- to 10-page essay,” he said. “They’re used to being praised for following the rules, and they can be uncomfortable when there aren’t rules. My goal is to show them that there’s joy in deliberately and playfully breaking from convention, both in this class and in life more generally.”
“We live in a world that’s full of distractions; there are all sorts of things calling us away from being a keen observer,” he said. “I see students learning to break away from the distractions and mastering the power of concentration and observation.”
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.
But that doesn’t mean creative thinking can’t be instructive for them, Sutherland said. Learning how to translate a scene to the canvas can hone your observational skills: “You pay more attention to colors, shadows and details around you because you’re constantly thinking about how you would paint or draw the scene.”
In Gustafson’s mind, that’s a huge asset no matter your industry.
“I was not expecting the level of freedom we have,” he said. “The rubric was open to interpretation, which is not like most of my classes. We can do almost anything we feel.”
Zachary Seberino, 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.
Sophomore music major Adam Anderson also came in cold. What he found was a one-of-a-kind experience that reminded him why he came to NAU’s Honors College in the first place.
“If the Honors College is about finding ways to change the way you see the world,” he said, “this class epitomizes that concept.”
Jill Kimball | NAU Communications
(928) 523-2282 | jill.kimball@nau.edu