BLAST classes focus on group discussion

Sam Gauntt Managing Editor

Approximately a dozen AACC professors have converted their humanities courses into seminars that focus on class discussions rather than lectures.

Faculty from St. John’s College in Annapolis instructed AACC professors over the last three summers on how to teach seminar-style classes.

Seminar-style classes, said English professor Candice Hill, “re-emphasize … the value of community within classrooms. And if a community college isn’t valuing community, the classroom itself or the community outside, I don’t think it’s really doing its job.”

Through the program, called BLAST, or Bridge to the Liberal Arts through Primary-Source Texts, professors learned how to adjust their existing humanities cours- es—like English, philosophy, history, music appreciation, art history and anthropology—into discussion-based learning.

“The idea behind seminar is really simple,” English professor Steve Canaday, who is teaching all of his courses as seminars this semester, said. “And the idea is that you learn better when you figure stuff out for yourself in a group of other people who are trying to figure stuff out for themselves. … When I’m teaching the seminar, I try to keep my mouth shut, which is hard for me to do. And the students who’ve all read the same text discuss the text. We’re all equals; that’s the idea in seminar. I’m not trying to lead them anywhere.”

AACC and St. John’s partnered to apply for a $100,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to fund the training. The grant expired in January, but professors said they will continue teaching seminars.

Dean of the School of Liberal Arts Alicia Morse said the program is “absolutely moving into the future.”

“In fact, we offer more [BLAST classes] now than we had” last semester, Canaday said.

First-year computer science student Gaelle Milfort said BLAST classes are “amazing.”

“It’s very insightful; it’s very proactive and I think it’s a great way to understand the material and the book we’re reading,” Milfort said. “I look forward to coming to this class.”

St. John’s graduate student Siobhan Petersen, who attended AACC from 201316, sat in on one of Canaday’s classes.

“They had just started [learning] the ‘Tao Te Ching,’” Petersen, who attended the University of Baltimore from 2017-19, said. “It’s a very