Immersion Program Orients Students to Chicago’s Diverse Social Culture

The first week of September, DePaul University will roll out its welcome mat for incoming freshmen and then turn them loose on the streets of Chicago as part of its nine-year-old immersion program, Discover Chicago.

Students will enter a mosque for the first time; tour the city on bicycles in search of greater political consciousness; walk neighborhood alleys searching for rare species of rats, and a lucky few will get to spend a lazy afternoon at Wrigley Field.

DePaul’s unique orientation program is designed to acquaint first-year students with the peoples, cultures, neighborhoods, institutions, organizations and issues that make Chicago one of the most fascinating cities in the world.

Some 638 Discover Chicago freshmen opted to enroll in one of the 29 courses that begin one week before the fall quarter actually starts. The remaining 1,634 first-year students are enrolled in the Explore Chicago component of the program, which begins Sept. 10 and whose courses are also designed to provide insight on issues, people and ideas that shape Chicago.

Discover Chicago, according to Charles Suchar, associate dean of graduate studies in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (LA&S) and program founder, embodies the university’s mission of community service and connection.

“Discover Chicago allows students right away to gain a familiarity with Chicago and DePaul and to establish relationships that make their transition much smoother and more meaningful,” said Suchar. “It’s been largely successful because it delivers on our commitment to make students aware of their community and to give them an understanding of the issues that effect different people of different communities. Regardless of the discipline, there is a way of linking what the discipline is centrally about to issues of the urban community.”

DePaul’s programs for first-year students have been lauded and replicated by other institutions of higher education around the country. Two years ago, St. John’s University established a Discover New York program modeled after DePaul’s. The University of San Francisco recently developed a smaller-scale immersion program for its freshmen.

When it comes to actual courses, Midge Wilson, professor of psychology and director of first-year student programs for LA&S, said that appeals are made every year to faculty across the university to develop new courses that reflect their own areas of expertise with a local spin. “We do take into account whether students would be interested in enrolling in esoteric courses, and sometimes we ask faculty to change the title to make it sexier or more appealing to an 18-year-old,” she explained. “Not all of the classes are equally popular, but most students do wind up in the classes of their first or second choice.”

A sampling of program courses follows:

• Voices of Sculpture – Examines what motivated early Chicagoans to recruit sculptors from around the world and the role the art form has in helping to move the city to a position of sophisticated world leader.

• Portraits of a City – Takes a look at how Chicago has been portrayed in the movies.

• Chicago’s Disabled Community – More than 500,000 disabled people live in Chicago. The course focuses on disability issues and the impact they have on Chicago’s disabled community.

• Rat’s Eye View of Chicago – How rats and humans are linked by disease and illness is just one of the many questions answered by this fascinating foray into the world of rodents.

• Writing out of Bounds: Graffiti in Chicago – Students explore Chicago through an inquiry into issues surrounding graffiti.

• Comic Books– Chicago’s cultural diversity is examined through the interests and activities of subcultures represented in popular media.

• Exploring Chicago’s Cultural Diversity Through Food – Students will be introduced to various cultural communities through their most easily identifiable element –food.