he Explore the Nation’s Core field trip to Washington D.C. is a part of Elizabethtown College’s Explore the Core program. “The Explore the Core program is designed to help students understand the different areas of understanding for core, the different courses offered to meet those areas of understanding and the different academic departments or disciplines that sponsor those courses,” Director of Student Transition Programs Jean-Paul Benowitz said.
Explore the Core offers many different types of programming to help students make informed decisions about the core courses they choose and get to know the professors teaching the courses. These include faculty presentations and the Explore the Core fair.
“For first-year seminars, it is three credits of seat time and one credit of outside of the classroom learning,” Benowitz said. “So that fourth hour, professors have to find ways to engage their students.” One of these options is attending the Explore the Core speaker series. Another option is to go on the Explore the Core field trip to Washington D.C.
“The trip is open to all professors who teach core classes,” Benowitz said. “It just is a coincidence that because the first-year seminar requires additional activities outside of the class, a lot of first-year seminars choose to go to Washington D.C.”
However, students who are currently enrolled in core courses other than first-year seminars are able to go, because participation from anyone taking a core class is welcome. “It’s focused on all students who are taking core classes, because you could be taking core classes in your first year, second year, sometimes even third,” Benowitz said.
The trip is only capable of accommodating a certain number of classes. “This is an interesting program where the professor has to give a proposal, and the proposal has to demonstrate how what they’re going to do with their students in Washington directly related to the objectives of the course,” Benowitz explained.
This year, there was a forensic science class that visited the National Museum of Crime and Punishment. A first-year seminar about World War II taught by Assistant Dean of General Educational and Assess and Associate Professor of History Dr. William Newsome, visited the Holocaust Museum.
Benowitz is currently teaching a course about American culture titled Discovering America Now. His class toured the city to see various historical sites. Adjunct Faculty Member Jennifer Besse of the English department is teaching a course about antiquity. Therefore, her class went on a walking tour to see the city’s architecture. All of these classes are examples of the diverse academic opportunity within the city of Washington D.C.
“The course is directly related to what they’re going to go and see,” Benowitz said. “This is not just a day away from campus; this is not a day in the city on your own. The courses are very specific and they’ve been approved to go on the trip, because it relates to the content of the course.” The Explore the Nation’s Core field trip allows students to go and see for themselves the things they have been learning about in their courses at Etown.
“It’s really about learning, and it fits in nicely with this new emphasis at the College called real-world learning,” Benowitz stated. Real-world learning is a new experiential learning program here at Etown that involves choosing two of five programs. These include supervised research, internships or field placements, capstone courses or portfolios, community-based learning and cross-cultural experience.
“The first-year program started in the fall of 1989, and this is also the beginning of the core curriculum as we know it today,” he said. The field trip to Washington D.C. began in that same semester. Taking students on field trips to the nation’s capital has been a staple of the program for over two decades.
“It’s a positive experience,” He continued. “Getting on the ground and thinking critically, it made the experience very different. You go into a museum with your professor and it’s amazing then because you are able to almost walk through those pages with them as it unfolds.”
