Seminar Enrichment Series
Explore questions both timely and timeless.
Each semester, a stimulating lineup of live performances, films, interactive workshops, and talks by Saint Mary’s faculty, visiting scholars, and guest artists enriches the Seminar experience.
Designed to deepen the encounter with texts from a wide range of eras and cultures, Enrichment Series programs foster the skills of inclusive conversation, build habits of life-long learning, and illuminate the world we live in.
Spring 2025 links
Mission statement
The Enrichment Series aims to kindle a love of intellectual exploration, to encourage students and faculty to pursue interests outside their home disciplines, and to cultivate the habits of life-long learning -- all in order to better illuminate the world in which we live. Through lectures, colloquia, performances, films, and workshops the Enrichment Series creates opportunities for Saint Mary’s faculty, visiting scholars and guest artists to share their disciplinary expertise, and fosters interdepartmental collaborations and co-sponsorships.
Enrichment Series programming is intentionally flexible, complementing the stability of the formal curriculum and the pedagogy of the Seminar classroom. Each semester, a rotating series of events enriches and expands students’ Seminar experience and introduces genre-specific reading strategies, while also supporting faculty formation as Seminar leaders. Enrichment Series programs often explore questions raised by particular Seminar texts or situate those works within their historical and cultural contexts. But they may also highlight thematic links bridging the four-semester Seminar sequence, respond to campus initiatives and concerns, or engage with works of art, scientific practice, or personal testimonies.
Learning goals
Enrichment Series events are designed to support the learning outcomes of the Seminar Program, and for this reason may be incorporated directly by Seminar faculty into the design and delivery of their own Seminars. SES programs supplement classroom learning by helping students further develop specific abilities, including:
- to approach texts from the perspective of different disciplines, using strategies appropriate to specific genres;
- to build the habits of life-long learning, including curiosity and a tolerance for ambiguity, provocation, and controversy in the pursuit of deeper insights;
- to learn to disagree with civility, and to distinguish impact from intent, in the context of reasoned discussion;
- to understand how texts are situated within specific historical and cultural contexts;
- to encounter the intellectual perspectives and artistic achievements of marginalized voices;
- to see how texts address and respond to each other, within and across traditions and eras;
- to discover how texts speak to our own concerns and lived experiences, and how they illuminate the world we inhabit.
By providing occasions for all members of the Saint Mary’s community to gather and discuss questions and interrogate ideas across disciplines, the Collegiate Seminar Enrichment Series cultivates the kind of inclusive and collegial conversation that is essential to liberal education.
