Academics

Experiential Learning

Vanderbilt Visions

Vanderbilt Visions is a first-year university core program that brings together faculty, VUcept student peer mentors, professional educational staff and the members of the Class of 2011 in a common task.  Together, we want to make the leap from high school to the challenging world of an internationally distinguished research university.

The subject of Vanderbilt Visions is the experience of “acculturation,” the transition first-year students will make as they become undergraduates at a research university like Vanderbilt.  Through collaborative small groups of fifteen first-year students, facilitated by a Faculty and a Student VUceptor, Vanderbilt Visions explores four areas of this change:

  1. academic acculturation, by fostering the perception among first-year students that their networks are intrinsic to the academic life of the university;
  2. cognitive acculturation, by fostering an understanding of the reflective and critical thinking that are the keys to success at a research university;
  3. social acculturation, by fostering collaboration and shared understanding among faculty, students, and educational professionals;
  4. civic acculturation, by fostering consideration of the norms, values, and ethics necessary for life in the democratic and global communities of the 21st century.

 

» Learn more at the Vanderbilt Visions website.