The New York Times Habit

With the Russell Program delivering copies of The New York Times to the Spring Campus Center and the Senior Dorm, faculty members have incorporated the newspapers into their syllabi in optional extra credit projects, required writing assignments, oral group or individual presentations, or simply daily discussion. They are excited about the results. To connect class material with the real world; to help students keep up with recent events; to improve students' writing, speaking, and critical thinking skills; to make course material relevant--these are the objectives of faculty members who use The New York Times. Many also hope that students develop the daily habit of reading a newspaper.

Extra Credit Options
Several faculty members use New York Times articles as optional extra credit assignments. Jerry Frey offers extra credit in General Psychology for reports on an article related to the class. An advocate of online discussions, George Ramsey gives students in Contemporary Use of the Bible the extra credit option for writing about an article in The New York Times on his Blackboard Discussion Forum "The Bible in the News." In one political science class last semester, Don Raber offered students extra credit for an e-mail summary of an article. He limited them to one article per day and says, "Students usually took me up on it." Justin Brent gives extra credit for relating recent New York Times articles on fugitives to characters and themes in the literary works in Composition and World Literature.

Peter Hobbie, whose objectives are to "get students to learn how to look through and read a newspaper" and "to allow students to see connections between articles they read and the general subject matter in the course," offers one point on test scores as extra credit for a summary of an article a week. The summary includes a paragraph explaining the relevance of the article to class material.

Oral Presentations
Bob Hudson incorporates The New York Times into a current assignment of his to ensure that students prepare the day's class reading. He asks one student each class period a question about the assigned reading, and the student earns points for a correct answer. Hudson's new angle is that students "may 'trump' a question" about the reading if they do not know the answer by giving a report from a Times or other newspaper article not more than two days old. "They come prepared most of time since they do not know when their name will be drawn," says Husdon. He finds that his new assignment works well because students read the assigned reading and hear brief reports on current science in the news.

Hudson says he has run "into difficulty in genetics since there are fewer articles available, unlike ecology where there were a couple each day." He solves this problem by encouraging students to use "the Web to search more newspapers." He says the record keeping is easier with these daily questions than with quizzes "while maintaining daily reading in the text and the newspaper." He adds, "I love the fact that the students come to class having read some of the material which we will cover during the lecture. The questions seem to stress students more than the quizzes (one student told me that she did not want to get shingles again!) -but the direct question approach does allow the use of the newspaper in the class, and the benefits are evident. Students often follow the article report with some questions and discussion, often (in ecology) with varied opinions. I think this is invaluable."

Combining group oral presentations with a written group report, Anita Gustafson suggests The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal as main sources for the final group project in World Civilizations II on countries in the Islamic World. Students present a twenty to twenty-five-minute talk using a format of their choice, which may include a computer presentation, overheads, or handouts. The group hands in "one written six-to-eight- page double-spaced report that includes an introduction, a description of the country, a brief historical overview, a synopsis of at least ten newspaper articles, and a conclusion that includes the key challenges faced by the country. The historical overview should include the past fifty years or so of the country's history."

Bob Bryant's students are involved in making presentations to the class in Hebrews and General Epistles, and several groups have used articles from The New York Times as discussion pieces for relating the biblical text to contemporary issues and situations. George Dupuy asks students to search The Times and other periodicals to find out what's happening in the business field and to apply course concepts to the real world. His students make a ten to fifteen-minute, extemporaneous oral presentation from notes on the article they have read. Students later tell him, "I was nervous in your class," but they find these presentations very useful when they get jobs. He evaluates students on the article summary, its course applications (worth 40%), presentation skills, and audio-visual support.

Writing Assignments
Mike Nelson assigns three-to-four page reviews of three separate articles of historical significance from The New York Times to students in World Civilizations II. Each article, according to his assignment sheet, should contain an introduction putting the subject of the article into a larger context and a thesis statement of what the student is going to argue in the review. The body of the review "provide[s] an overview of the main points, ideas, event, and actors . . . and an historical analysis of the background (roots) to the topic of the article." Students need to do some basic research from other sources to complete the historical analysis. The three reviews together count 15% of the total grade for the course. This assignment allows students "to synthesize, analyze, and evaluate historical material, illustrate the relevance of recent world history" and "improve . . .writing and critical thinking skills." In addition, Nelson wants "to encourage a daily reading of newspapers."

A "New York Times Culture/Current Events Activity" is what Mike Joy assigns to students in Introductory Spanish II to help them "learn a bit more about the culture, society, politics, and current events of the Spanish-speaking world." Students choose one of the following countries or country groups: Spanish-speaking culture and people in the US, Mexico, Colombia/Venezuela, Caribbean nations, "South Cone" (Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, Chile). They clip twelve to fourteen articles (not more than two in any week) about their chosen area. At the end of the semester, students write a state-of-the-nation or region report.

To encourage creativity in this summary, Joy suggests students adopt a role in writing the report. For example, they may write as a foreign service officer at the State Department assigned to track the news and culture of that region. The essay will be a memo to the President in preparation for a state visit. Or students may write a short radio program for the Voice of America about Spanish-speaking culture in the United States. Joy sets aside one or two days of class time for students to meet in small groups to share what they have learned.

Several faculty members recommend Times articles as sources for students' research papers. Ann Stidham's students use current articles as part of their outside resources in papers for Abnormal Psychology. Anita Dutrow uses The Times to have students research topics to keep current on issues in education. "It has the advantage of being on top of education issues around the country and abroad," she says.

In the fall Dutrow asked students in The Teaching of Reading and General Elementary Methods to find a current article in their particular area, write a report, and share their findings with the class orally. While those in Reading looked for articles about literacy, students in Methods had more options, such as school violence or new developments in education around the nation. Both classes also used The New York Times as a resource in their research papers. The newspaper "opened up our horizons beyond just local news," says Dutrow. "Having access to the archives is really powerful." The education majors use both current and past articles in their resource files for teaching units.

Miriam Ragland requires journal entries on at least five relevant newspaper articles from The New York Times in the Fundamentals of Acting and in Movement Styles. She asks students to write about why they choose to include the particular articles and why the article seems relevant.

Visual images
Art professor Ann Stoddard found a way to incorporate The Times into her students' learning. She asks those studying the basic elements and principles of design in the 2-Dimensional Design class "to look for an image or advertisement that is using one of the design principles they are learning in class that week, for instance, line." Stoddard is excited about the new approach for an assignment because as the semester moves along, students will find themselves "looking" more. And, she adds, "maybe reading a few articles in between the search for images!"

Class Discussion
In his interdisciplinary studies class on the Holocaust, Terry Barr asked students "to see how often and in what context stories about Holocaust survivors, anti-Semitic acts, or other racially-ethnic-motivated hate crimes were committed. The Holocaust itself was also referenced more often than most students originally believed it would be."

Teaching political science, Don Raber sees The New York Times articles as "beneficial for keeping up with current events for relevant classes. I start all my classes with discussion of what's going on in the world," he says. "I expect students when possible to bring The Times to class, and they can point out articles about which they have questions." He also wants students to get in the habit of reading the paper.

In the History and Literature of Music II: 1750-20th Century, Karen Buckland uses The Times as a reference for writing about music and also for "open" discussion in class. Unfortunately, she says, "It is rare when articles relating to music coincide with the specific subject matter being taught that day." However, she does begin class discussion with a relevant article when she finds one.

Bob Bryant "thought The New York Times (and later The Wall Street Journal) quite beneficial" for the fall Introduction to Inquiry course (i2i) he and Wally Ott taught: The Universe Through Science and Religion: "The weekly science section seemed always to have something of relevance for us and nearly every weekday paper had several articles pertaining to religious matters, especially Christianity, some of which related directly to our study of the interface between science and religion. I wish that we could have received the Saturday paper . . . to use its religion section. We did not build any projects specifically around articles from The New York Times," Bryant adds. "They fed class discussions, and we brought several articles to our students' attention."

Supporting Class Preparation
Bryant notes a further result of reading The New York Times: its use in faculty preparation for class. He remembers that in his discussions with Ott about their team-taught class, "Many of our conversations included at some point the query from either or both of us, 'Did you see that article in The Times about . . . ?'"

Other professors mention this point as well. Frey says he takes recent articles to share with psychology classes, such as one on the relationship between sleeping pills and depression. Raber too "spend[s] time pointing out specific articles and editorials that I think [students] ought to take a look at." Bryant brings relevant articles to class nearly every period in Hebrews and General Epistles this semester "to highlight key themes and issues as they relate to our study of the biblical text."

"We simply incorporated The Times into our course's makeup in an integral but informal way," Bryant concludes about his i2i course. The New York Times is becoming an integral part of many classes at PC, either formally or informally, and as the newspaper pile in Elizabeth Anderson's Senior Dorm room testifies, reading the Times is becoming a habit for students as well as for professors.

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