General Overview
While traditional in content, setting, and instructional style, a Cistercian education strives to be more than “classical.” In a few words, Cistercian education tries to be “intentionally thoughtful” about the ways it seeks to attend first and foremost to the needs of the student. The School intends to impart more than just content or experience. It hopes to provide a structure for a young man’s personal growth and a path to greater self-knowledge.
There are few periods within the Cistercian experience that call for more personal growth than senior year. The senior year is already in many ways distinct from other years because it encapsulates all of the imbued hopes and expectations of the prior years while at the same time it reaches forward and connects with the goals and growth that lie ahead. It is a time when students explore their past, present, and future – each facet of life offering avenues of insight into the others. It is a time of anticipation and natural pressure (imposed both externally and internally) coupled with elevated coursework and (hopefully) with elevated maturity and responsibility. It is a time that calls for greater reflection and conversation, for deeper friendships between classmates but also with teachers and Form Master. It is a time for navigating inevitable changes in friend and familial relationships as students forge their own paths.
It is appropriate then that seniors leave behind the elective system of prior years and enter the more serious and demanding realm of Honors Senior Seminars. Each student will choose an Honors Senior Seminar (three periods per week instead of the two for electives) with the intention of exploring that general area of study for the full academic year. These courses are intended as a substantial intellectual experience. While each course is intended as a year-long academic arc, each semester will have its own character (see below) and will be graded separately.
- Honors Senior Seminar I (fall semester): While respecting necessary differences in content, style, and assessment for various academic disciplines (and the interests and abilities of seminar directors), all courses will encourage habits of inquiry, reflection, and discussion to try to answer some of the “eternal questions” as expressed in the context of that area of study.
- Honors Senior Seminar II (spring semester): While again respecting necessary differences in content, style, and assessment for various academic disciplines (and the interests and abilities of particular directors), these courses will move from reflection and conversation towards practice, culminating in an academic project/presentation sparked by individual student interest and guided by the elective seminar director.
Senior Honors Seminar Course Descriptions
Below are the tentative descriptions and faculty assignments for the Honors Senior Seminar courses that have been offered between 2016 and 2020. All courses may vary from these initial descriptions in terms of both content and style, depending on the interests of the students. The broad strokes below are intended to act as an umbrella for exploration as students decide which course they should take. The passions and interests of the students, under the guidance of the directors, may affect both the arc of a course and a student’s eventual choice of project. Since all projects are designed to potentially meet a wide variety of interests, students should still be able to find an appropriate course within which to pursue a field of interest. Students are expected to engage in dialogue with multiple seminar directors before registering, to explore the ways an area of personal interest might be more fully developed within a given seminar.
The Cold War
Mr. Peter Saliga
With Russian-American diplomatic relations shakier than they’ve been in nearly thirty years and with generation z’s distance from (and oft-romanticized view of) our country’s past as an economic-military- cultural superpower anchoring one end of a socio-politically bipolar world, this course seeks to acquaint its participants with life as it was actually lived during the Cold War (1945-1971). From a measly $6,000 budget, an ultimate $2 billion project spawned the first atomic bomb 74 years ago… to the unanticipated horror of the men who brought it into being. In July 1945, Glenn Seaborg, Leo Szilard et al. pleaded that the A-bomb never be tested, that we should put the genie back in the bottle. But it was too late. A Promethean industrial-military complex had captured fire and was determined to enlighten the world with it. Far beyond Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the fallout was terrific. Humanity would quickly come to understand this terror, a dread fear of the total destruction of the planet, as something practically absolute. Though students in this course will study the political, military, and diplomatic highlights of this period, we will also familiarize ourselves with the peaks and valleys of a sometimes bizarre social and cultural landscape. Novels, film, and music all contributed to our ability to navigate the scientific, political, and moral-philosophical dilemmas that surfaced during an era that has thoroughly shaped our own. So, to better understand the world and our place in it, we will engage in conversation about them all in this course (a specific reading/viewing/listening index will depend on the background of the students who sign up for the course). More than a research class with a fixed end toward which our efforts tend, this will be a thoughtful retreat, a rich dialogue about the tremendous and the trivial that helped humanity survive and thrive during the first phase of post-modern life.
Finessing Whole Language Acquisition (French and Spanish)
Madame Obels-Robinson (French)
Señorita Kennedy (Spanish)
This course will be taught in the target language and provide students with numerous opportunities to improve their written and spoken Spanish or French. Students will review vocabulary and grammatical structures through the use of authentic materials, such as magazines, newspapers, and television and radio broadcasts. Concepts taught in prior years will be reinforced and the finer nuances of the language will be polished. The majority of class time will be spent improving students’ abilities to hear, understand, and respond orally in the target language. Students will apply interpersonal, interpretive, and presentation skills in simulated “real-life” scenarios. Instructional time will also be devoted to improving writing and reading comprehension skills. By the conclusion of the course, students will be more than adequately prepared to perform the tasks of the AP Spanish or French Language and Culture exam, and also in making extended presentations in the target language.
Perspectives on the Renaissance
Fr. Gregory Schweers
This is a seminar where students and mentor can investigate the richness of this period and see where that leads them intellectually. Of course, the director has some favorites of his own from the Renaissance, but each student is invited to think broadly about this seminar as a jumping off point for his own further study. In past years, we’ve explore things like the stories of Boccaccio’s Decameron; the politics of Machiavelli; the art of Michelangelo and da Vinci; and the scientific revolutions of Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler. With the Renaissance being a gateway to modernity, just about any modern topic from engineering to economics, and from architecture to music, has some roots in this period worth exploring. And these ideas can be seen not only in Italy, but in England (Shakespeare), in the Low Countries (Erasmus), in Germany (Hieronymus Bosch) and in France (Château de Chenonceau). If there is a topic that interests you, then you can go there from here! Just bring those ideas to my attention before we begin the course so that we incorporate them into the class. da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man resonates with so many people because of the fundamental question it poses: ‘What Is the Measure of Man?’ Perhaps by exploring the Renaissance together we can see where the answer to the Vitruvian Question might be!
Philosophy (Humanities/History)
The course will begin with a basic and general introduction to philosophy and the many questions it raises about man, the cosmos, and God, and will include a brief historical overview of the birth of philosophy in ancient Greece. We will consider the philosophical quest as one which is rooted in the common experience of humankind and which seeks to deepen, enhance, and fully articulate our understanding of that experience. From here we will move down various avenues of philosophical inquiry, including the philosophy of knowledge, the philosophy of being, the philosophy of history, logic, and moral and political philosophy, among others. It should be noted that, since this is a course offered under the rubric of the History Department, it is likely that substantial time will be devoted to an inquiry concerning human nature and human society.
Philosophy of Education: Faith and Reason at the University
Fr. John Bayer
Should universities be secular, or does faith play a role in the life of the mind? What is reason? What is truth? Is it enough to study the natural sciences, or are the humanities necessary for an education? What is so “liberating” about the liberal arts? Should research be driven simply by economics? Oh, and what should I major in at college? This seminar engages these questions and many others through a study of the origins of the university as an institution in the Latin middle ages (universitas) and its evolution through modernity. Concretely, after reading excerpts of Plato’s Republic on philosophy and education, we will look at social and intellectual developments in the middle ages in order to account for the birth of the university in the heart of Catholic Christendom. Our chief ideas and texts for this period will come from Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventure, two great scholastics and authors of grand visions for the intellectual life. We will then turn to modernity, and especially to the rise of modern science, as a very important and powerful challenge to the grand medieval synthesis. Extended time will be spent on historical lightning rods that are hotly debated today, such as the trial of Galileo Galilei, the secularization of the universities following the Enlightenment, and the place of Darwinian evolutionary theory in education. Our chief ideas and texts for this period will come from Francis Bacon, Rene Descartes, Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Nietzsche, John Henry Newman, Joseph Ratzinger and Hans urs Von Balthasar. Students will read and discuss assigned texts for most classes. In the first semester, there will be mostly short (and fairly easy) writing assignments, such as summaries of the reading and personal reflections. In the second semester, students will develop a personal research project designed to engage at least one of the historical, philosophical or theological questions related to the seminar.
Political Theory
When you hear people discuss controversial topics such as “bathroom” bills, border walls, or free college tuition for all, it is usually within the context of arguments. Arguments are often made with principles in mind. Whenever a high profile individual (e.g. a politician, news anchor, late night show host, or radio personality) or a common citizen engages in conversations over difficult questions (whether with the general public or within intimate social circles) then he or she has begun the quest of political philosophy. In seeking to find principle-based solutions to problems, citizens are following in the footsteps of many great thinkers. The goal in this course is to take the rough beginning of a controversy-based argument and take it to a higher level, to make it more rigorous by looking at the implicit assumptions or logical consequences behind the arguments partisans make on the hot button issues of our day. Along the way, we will explore some of the important writings and documents that have come to frame and support political conversations of past, present and future. The hope is that examining the issues through this lens will lead to greater clarification of the topics and thus towards more civil discussions, and in a few cases might even lead to a resolution (at the very least in one’s own mind). Students will accomplish this progression toward deeper thought about societal issues by participating in seminar-style discussions, debates, and by offering their own presentations on thinkers or issues. They will also work toward a substantial final project or paper about a topic of their interest chosen from those discussed within the course.
Principles of Computer Technology
Mr. Greg Graham and Fr. Mark Ripperger
Computer technology has permeated almost every area of human life, yet many people continue to go through life not really understanding how this technology works, so the goal of this course is to help students gain such an understanding in order to help them to live in the modern world. While there will be some programming using the Python and Go languages, we will also explore underlying concepts of abstraction, data and information, and algorithms. We will also discuss big picture topics like how the Internet works and how it is affecting our world. Students in this class will be prepared to take the Computer Science Principles AP exam at the end of the year. The course will include two projects that are required as part of the AP exam. These projects will be the subject of the paper and presentation at the end of the year.
Science Research
Dr. Stefan Rinaldi
The seminar offering in Science will revolve around advanced research in scientific methods and medical diagnostics. In the first semester, the format of the seminar will include research via scientific literature and a study of general research methods and analysis. During this time, we will cover numerous topics including, but not limited to: Genomics and Bioinformatics, High-Throughput Analysis, Virology, Immunology, Proteomics, Genetics, Cell Biology, Transgenic Technology, and a study of Model Organisms. Students will be expected to read and present scientific literature summarizing the applications of various scientific methods as well as characterization of disease states. Students should expect quizzes and exams in the first semester to demonstrate their understanding. During the second semester, students will begin independent research on a review paper that summarizes the current research being done in a scientific field of their choosing. The paper will have various deadlines and/or checkpoints throughout the semester where students will receive feedback on the current progress of their paper. Students will rotate updating the class on the current progress of their research throughout the semester via presentation. A final copy of the paper will be submitted at the end of the semester in addition to the Senior Seminar night presentation component of the course.
Tolkien and Lewis: Literature, Society, and Faith
Dr. Thomas Pruit
The expectations that World War I was to be “the war to end all wars” became instead a nightmare that ushered in the wholescale bloodbaths that would dominate the twentieth century. The civilization of Western Europe never really recovered, and the war left in its wake an anger and disillusionment whose artistic expression radically changed the direction of cultural life throughout England and the Continent. Among those whose lives were deeply affected by the horrors of the war were C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien, two remarkable writers whose personal experience of the horrors of that war did not lead them to bitterness and despair but rather to a deeper experience of their Christian Faith. Their response was rather to write stories which proclaimed a world in which there was real tragedy and deep suffering, but in which the tragedy did not have the final word. In the creation both of the mythology and tales of Middle Earth, and of the worlds of Narnia and space fantasy, J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis saw in the tragedy and growing chaos of the twentieth century something deeper, a “eucatastrophe” (to use Tolkien’s term) meant to bring readers (and later viewers) into a fuller participation in the mystery of Christian suffering. The works of both men, who were lifelong friends, became among the most widely published and influential works of fiction in the twentieth century. Both saw themselves as Christian realists who found in the Christian faith the surest answer to the growing materialism and nihilism which developed rapidly in the post-war years. This seminar will attempt to examine Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings (and the mythological framework provided by The Silmarillion and at least some of Tolkien’s other posthumously published writings) as well as Lewis’ Narnia Chronicles and Space Trilogy (and with some reference to the most significant of Lewis’s apologetic writings). The chief questions we want to pursue in this course are first, how did each author come to see the creation of such stories as his life’s work, and second, how did their storytelling give expression to the faith which sustained them and through which they saw the world?
Technology
Mr. Greg Graham and Fr. Mark Ripperger
Technology dominates our world today, and the capabilities technology gives us are advancing at an accelerating rate. Often we develop these capabilities faster than we are able to understand their ramifications, whether they are environmental, social, moral, or existential. Those who are entering technology related fields today have the opportunity not only to develop new technologies and products, but also to guide how they are used. The field of artificial intelligence and robotics is fast moving and full of frightening implications that range from the loss of jobs and human dignity to the destruction of the human race. The potential to replace humans with machines raises questions about the difference between a human and a machine. Is there are really a difference, or are humans just biological machines that can be mapped onto other technologies? This seminar will begin with looking at this question from a philosophical perspective. We will look at arguments rooted in the tradition of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas by means of readings, short papers, and student-led discussions. We will then move into looking at how some of these technologies actually work. Students will learn the Python programming language and learn to use some Python data analysis and machine learning toolkits. In the spring, students will begin a Senior Project that they will develop in the area of artificial intelligence and robotics, which can be any combination of research, hardware construction, and software development.
Utopian Literature: The Good Place that is No Place
Fr. Stephen Gregg
Allan Bloom wrote: “Utopianism is, as Plato taught us at the outset, the fire with which we must play because it is the only way we can find out what we are. We need to criticize false understandings of Utopia, but the easy way out provided by realism is deadly.” This seminar proposes a study of literature under the lens of the utopian and dystopian, to gain a deeper sense of how literature works, how the imaged and ideal places relate to reality, how philosophy can be performed in literature, and, indeed, to “find out what we are” and what we should do. A primary level of the course is the consideration of certain foundational works along the centuries, including these: Thomas More’s Utopia (1516), Francis Bacon’s The New Atlantis (1627), Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726), Samuel Butler’s Erewhon (1872), Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932), Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities (1972), and something from this millennium. In addition to various other literary works in other genres (science fiction, children’s stories, comix), we will consider mythological, theological, philosophical, folkloric, and political works that face the questions of what makes a perfect and imperfect world, trying to explain, for example, the paradise of Eden, the state of nature, the best of all possible worlds, the golden age, the beginning of the great city. Participants in the seminar will be called upon to write frequent short reflections on their reading in order to perfect their writing skills and prepare for class discussion. The final goal of the course would be that each student develops (in writing) a sense of what topics must be addressed by any human consideration of a perfect world and what preoccupations inspire our worries about this world, that he composes his own vision of how those considerations should be responded to in our actual lives (and questions the possibility of his ideas, and how what is perfect might go wrong). The student will either write a work of fiction based on his thoughts, or write a research paper on how other works of literature, film, etc., participate and innovate in the Utopian genre.