What Quest participants are saying....
From Jackie Knupp '06 after participating in the Quest-sponsored seminar and performing in "Classic Kite Tales"
I was standing in the wings, butterflies in my stomach and breath held-partially because I was super nervous and partially because my costume was so tight it was sucking all the air out of my lungs. The curtain ascended and as light flooded the stage, I gazed out at the black set pieces that had carried the weight of the original five dancers who performed in the premiere of Erik Hawkins' Classic Kite Tails in 1972. The costume I had donned was also a relic of the past, preserved within the walls of the Library of Congress since Hawkins first created the piece. And as I stepped out onto the stage with my fellow dancers that evening, I was acutely aware of the fact that somewhere in the sea of faces in that audience were four dancers from the original cast.
I was about to perform a reconstruction of Erik Hawkins' Classic Kite Tails for the last time that year. My fellow dancers and I had spent countless hours not only learning the steps to the dance, but the feeling and intent behind them as conveyed by one of Hawkins' original cast members. We had performed the piece with a live, twelve-string orchestra in the Modlin Center for the Performing Arts in the University Dancers' annual dance concert. And now we were sharing Hawkins' work with the dance community as part of the Sharing the Legacy Festival in New York City at Hunter College....
We may have been able to explore the connection between dance and history by reading textbooks and writing papers on the subject. But there is nothing quite like making dance history by being part of preserving the origins of an art form. The experience was life-changing in a way that books never could have been. The financial support of the Quest Program made it possible.
From Dr. Della Fenster, Associate Professor of Mathematics after teaching the Quest course, "What moves us? A Biographical Excursion to the City of Vienna"
This course has allowed me to stretch my faculty position in the mathematics department into that of a true Liberal Arts Student and Professor. This course brought me into contact with literature, scholars, and students I would not have met otherwise. I remember listening to Music Librarian Linda Fairtile's outstanding lecture on Arthur Schoenberg, for example, and thinking to myself, "am I really here? Is this part of the mathematics curriculum?"...
The very design of the course lent itself to personal and professional engagement in a way only possible through a travel course with students and faculty from various disciplines and schools...
Students repeatedly expressed appreciation for the analytical skills and insights they gained from the opportunity to recast business school ideas in an arts & sciences frame or leadership ideas in a business school context...
The content of the course and the travel component combined to create an impossibly rich environment for student-student and student-faculty interactions. Curiosity was the order of the day every day, whether we were discussing a text here in Richmond or taking in a sight together in Vienna. I assumed the role of a curious, non-expert who was (and is) eager to learn. Somehow, the students adopted this same perspective. We all learned&together. I enjoyed profound freedom in my "non-expert" status. The students did too.
From Dr. Suzanne Jones, Professor of English after teaching the Quest course, "Race, Identity and Community in Contemporary American Fiction and Film"
I had taught one other Quest course and had such a terrific intensely engaged response from students that I wanted again to bring writers to campus for mini-residencies (3 or 4 days). During these mini-residencies, students in my seminar had multiple contacts with the writers: asking questions after a public event, participating in a small-group discussion in the seminar, and having a meal. Students recognized that a Quest seminar was truly a very special seminar, very different from the type of experience they would have gotten at another University.
In both Quest seminars students wanted to continue our class meetings beyond the fall semester. This has never been the case with other classes I have taught, at least I don't think so. In my first Quest course we did actually meet two times in the spring. In the second Quest course we continued the course via email exchanges. Several students were abroad in the second semester so we could not meet as a group.
The students really seemed to engage as equals with me in an intellectual endeavor, in part because the subject under discussion had not already been fully researched by scholars. As a result the students felt empowered to do their own research and excited that they might be among the first to write about a film and/or novel. Two students presented their research in the University's research symposium and a couple of others might have if they had not been going abroad.
From Dr. Rick Mayes, Associate Professor of Political Science after teaching, "International Public Health and Human Rights in the Developing World"
I was approached by several students last spring (2007) after reading a book on international public health and human rights that made a big impression on them and me in my PLSC 365 "Health Care" course. The students, most of whom are pre-med/pre-health, wanted me to construct an independent study that would allow them to delve much deeper into the issues and policies related to infectious diseases, public health and human rights. Quest provided us the vehicle to do this on Friday nights with dinner from 5-6 pm and our weekly seminars with guest speakers and readings from 6-9 pm. Quest also generously supported us with the necessary funds to travel to Peru over spring break to do research on malnutrition, prenatal care, child and maternal health, infectious diseases (TB), and the importance of infrastructure in providing basic public health in rural and urban areas of a developing country.
Without Quest, this extraordinary trip--which transformed our independent study and deepened tremendously the faculty-student interaction--would not have been possible.
...This Quest-funded and supported course and trip has been my most gratifying and rewarding professional experience to date. No other class has matched its intensity and intellectual stimulation.
My students were the most engaged of any course I have ever taught at either the undergraduate or graduate level. They willingly and eagerly met every Friday night for 4 hours and even on some Saturdays and other times that were necessary to prepare for our trip and to present our research to prospective students who were visiting UR.