Faculty from around the world will be on the University of Colorado at Boulder campus this summer for the Faculty-in-Residence Summer Term, or FIRST program.
Offered for the first time last year, FIRST brings world-class faculty to the Boulder campus to teach and to forge relationships with their respective departments. Registration for summer session begins March 5.
"FIRST allows departments to broaden their summer session offerings and expose students to different perspectives," said Carol Mehls, director of the summer session. "It also facilitates collaboration among the visiting faculty and our faculty along common research interests."
The program will feature courses taught by faculty from the Blekinge Institute of Technology in Sweden, Wilfrid Laurier University in Canada, the University of Toulon and University of Versailles in France, and visiting faculty from U.S. universities such as Rutgers, Temple and Michigan State.
One of the FIRST offerings will be taught by Jim Geier, chief engineer at the Colorado Air Pollution Control Division. Geier, who has 25 years of experience in his field, will teach a course on air resources and air quality control for the College of Engineering and Applied Science. The class will include an examination of issues surrounding air pollution controls on industrial sources, and the impact of these controls on the environment.
"I want to help show students the real-world applications of this topic - hands-on applications of these issues," Geier said. "I have a lot of information in this area, and I'm looking forward to sharing it with people who want to learn more about it."
Mehls and Anne Heinz, associate vice chancellor for summer session, have worked with CU-Boulder departments, schools and colleges to foster different learning opportunities for degree and nondegree students through summer session. In addition to FIRST, they have developed Maymester, a three-week, intensive term; a five-week residential program for high school students; special topics and field courses not typically offered in the fall and spring; and two academic minors in computer science and business.
The idea of a summer session at CU-Boulder started in 1904 when 60 students registered for summer coursework. The summer session was an outgrowth of the well-known Chautauqua effort near campus and was designed to "comply with popular demand that the best facilities of university instruction and research should be brought within the reach of students otherwise engaged during the ordinary academic year," as the brochure from 1904 states.
Today, almost 100 years after the program's inception, approximately 7,000 students are served on an annual basis. And since 1996, summer enrollment has grown by about 800 students, according to Mehls.
The 2003 FIRST program will include five classes in the College of Arts and Sciences on topics ranging from applied math to Greek and Roman drama. Other courses will be offered by the Leeds School of Business, the School of Education, the College of Engineering and Applied Science, the College of Music and the School of Journalism and Mass Communication.
For more information on summer session at CU-Boulder visit www.colorado.edu/summersession or call (303) 492-5148.