Exploration and Discovery

Welcome to Exploration and Discovery

July 06, 2017

Agnes Flanagan Chapel

Welcome to the College’s innovative core program for incoming first-year students. “We’re so pleased to have you join us,” states Maureen Healy, Director of Exploration and Discovery.

Summer/NSO Reading

To prepare for the Fall 2017 E&D Kick-Off Lecture & first class on Friday, September 1st, we are asking that you do some reading beforehand. The reading is in two parts.

Sherman Alexi’s short article titled “What Sacagawea Means to Me (and Perhaps to You).” The link is below. You will need to login using your Lewis & Clark WebAdvisor login & password. https://login.watzekpx.lclark.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=6902653&site=ehost-live&scope=site
The second is 16 pages of excerpts from the Journals of Lewis & Clark about Sacagawea. The link is here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxE4jnpZaQ6FTFJvRThGUmQtbk0/view?usp=sharing

During NSO your NSO Leader will give you physical copies of the Journal Excerpts, but copyright issues prevent us from giving you physical copies of the Sherman Alexi article. There is a “Listen” function for the Sherman Alexi article where the program can read the article to you in 6 minutes.

This year’s E&D Kick-Off Lecture “What’s in a Name? Historical Memory at Lewis & Clark College” will take place on Friday, September 1st, in Agnes Flanagan Chapel at 1:30pm. Attended by all E&D students and faculty, this plenary event features a panel of faculty from across the College. True to the spirit of E&D, they offer interdisciplinary perspectives on our topic:

Dr. Jon Arakaki, Visiting Assistant Professor in CORE

“Explorare, Discere, Sociare:” The Legacy of Lewis and Clark at Lewis & Clark

Jon will provide an overview of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Using historical and contemporary media accounts, he will highlight the explorers’ time spent in Oregon and reflect upon connections between the explorers and the college named after them.

Dr. Rob Kugler, the Paul S. Wright Professor of Christian Studies in the Religious Studies Department

York between the Missouri and the “Main Ocian”: Some reflections on self-determination, you, and your liberal arts education

James Ronda, a scholar of western American history, has remarked on the freedom York, William Clark’s slave, must have experienced as a member of the Lewis & Clark expedition while beyond the Missouri; but Ronda correctly observes that in crossing back over the Missouri and returning to St. Louis, York also “reentered a world of slavery where slavery was everywhere,” a world from which he could not escape even after William Clark belatedly emancipated him a decade after the expedition ended. In these remarks, Rob will compare York’s tragically foreshortened experiment in free self-determination with your undertaking a liberal arts education to offer some advice on how to make the most of it, both in the four years that are before you and the long life he wishes for you beyond your years at Lewis & Clark as a liberally-educated person.

In these presentations, and in York: Terra Incognita, a short film about a member of the Lewis & Clark Expedition, we will begin to examine the historical legacies of exploration.

In the following video, Paul Powers introduces Exploration and Discovery—better known as E&D— the course where you can immerse yourself in an array of the great texts (Freud, Plato, and the Bible); improve your writing, reading, and speaking skills; and discover what the liberal arts are really all about.

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