AMSTEMM > Current Students > Place-Based Courses

Place-based Discovery Seminars -- Many studies have found that intensive first-year seminars have a positive effect on student performance, satisfaction, and retention. UK offers new students the opportunity to enroll in a first-year Discovery Seminar. This highly praised program provides incoming first-year students with a small seminar, taught by a highly skilled and motivated faculty member, on a subject of deep personal interest to that faculty member, such as poverty and homelessness in Appalachia, the physics of time travel, and the science and politics of mercury. UK tracks students who take a Discovery Seminar: they return for their second year at a much higher rate than their peers who do not take one, and earn significantly higher overall grade point averages.

All incoming AMSTEMM students are strongly advised to enroll in a Discovery Seminar. In each year of the AMSTEMM program, one or more STEM-discipline, place-based Discovery Seminars will be developed or refined and offered to incoming AMSTEMM students. Since Fall 2005, forty-five place-based STEM discipline discovery seminars have been offered.

UK has particular expertise in place-based education. The UK Appalachian Center, has sponsored a workshop for cultivating and promoting place-based education and published a report on the subject. The past President of the Appalachian Studies Association, Dr. Billings, and the director of the Discovery Seminar Program, Dr. Badagliacco, both Appalachian scholars, serve as consultants to AMSTEMM to assist faculty members to develop new place-based, STEM-discipline Discovery Seminars for incoming AMSTEMM students.