Freshman seminar students hit the road to see N.C. and produce documentaries

By JENA WITTKAMP
UNC News Services

CHAPEL HILL -- Forty University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill freshmen will produce multimedia documentaries about important issues facing North Carolinians after hitting the road Nov. 14 to learn first-hand during a bus tour across the state.

The documentaries also will be based on a semester of learning both in the classroom and through internships at community service agencies by the freshmen, all students in a first-year seminar taught by Dr. Todd Taylor, assistant professor of English.

The student’s documentaries will integrate text, sound and visuals as a capstone project for their course, "Multimedia North Carolina," part of a first-year seminar program matching top faculty with students new to Carolina.

The project grew in part out of Taylor’s participation in the Tar Heel Bus Tour, which began in 1997 with a goal of taking faculty and administrators new to North Carolina to learn about the state’s people, economy, culture, heritage and needs. Taking that trip in May 1998 gave Taylor the idea for a similar bus tour for new students to help them see North Carolina for themselves.

"The point is to be able to connect academic study to the learning the students are doing in the community," Taylor said. In-state and out-of-state students alike always learn new things on the trip, Taylor said. "The bus trip is intended to deepen their understanding and knowledge about the state."

Stops on the Tar Heel Undergraduate Bus Tour will include:

• A visit to the N.C. General Assembly meeting chambers in Raleigh where students will sit in the seats of legislators from their hometowns and districts. Students will meet with Rep. Verla Insko of Orange County and political reporters from The News & Observer.
• A Bunn tobacco farm in Franklin County.
• Fort Bragg in Fayetteville.
• Vollis Simpson’s whirligig farm near Lucama.
• Lowe’s Motor Speedway in Mecklenburg County.
• The Blue Ridge Parkway’s Folk Art Center and the nearby Grove Park Inn in Asheville.
• Mount Mitchell.
• Lexington Barbecue.
• White Furniture Factory and the Mebane studio of photographer Bill Bamberger, who documented the closing of a North Carolina furniture factory in the book "Closing: The Life and Death of an American Factory," and is now a fellow at the Center for the Study of the American South
  

Taylor said he chose the stops partly based on where the Tar Heel Bus Tour went. Additional places he added because he felt they were "essential to the profile of the state."

The students’ bus tour is supported through private and non-state sources including the James M. Johnston Center for Undergraduate Excellence, Taylor’s Ueltschi Service Learning Grant from the APPLES Service-Learning Program, the Schwab Fund at the Institute for Arts and Humanities, the First-Year Seminar Program and the English department.

"Everything looks like it’s going to be very fun," said Lauren Clark, a freshman education major from Raleigh. Even though she’s a North Carolina native, most of the places on the itinerary will be new to her. "I’ve never been to a tobacco farm before. Usually you just see them when you drive by."

The course ties together two recent initiatives at UNC and APPLES, a longtime student-run service program.

First-year seminars aim to start new students’ Carolina careers with in-depth intellectual experiences. Senior faculty teach the seminars of no more than 20 students each, designed to develop critical thinking, writing and oral communication skills.

Also integral to the course and the trip is APPLES, which stands for Assisting People in Planning Learning Experiences in Service. APPLES was founded at Carolina in 1990 as the nation’s first such program run by students. It helps students combine classroom learning with real-world service activities. In Taylor’s course, students participate in an APPLES internship, volunteering for three to five hours per week instead of typical homework.

The mission of APPLES helped prompt Taylor to develop the course focusing on North Carolina.

"In order to tie those experiences together we travel the state to meet people in other contexts," Taylor said.

For more information about the course, visit http://www.unc.edu/~twtaylor/teaching/06/.

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(Wittkamp, of Raleigh, is a senior majoring in women’s studies and journalism and mass communication.)

Contact: Todd Taylor, (919) 962-2248, twtaylor@email.unc.edu
News Services Contact: Mike McFarland, (919) 962-8593