What is Our New Dedicated Semester?

For the first time ever, Fontbonne University is offering students an exciting new concept: the “dedicated semester.”

This is a unique academic venture that allows the entire university — students, faculty and staff — to explore a single theme each fall semester.

In addition to courses offered by many of our academic departments, students have an opportunity to learn, in detail, about the semester’s chosen topic from films, panels, speakers and events. All freshmen, for instance, will undertake a common reading of a selected book. The entire campus will be learning together — as a community.

And, we will also involve the local community in relevant ways in order to extend the focus of this new endeavor beyond our campus borders.

"This invigorating new concept of a dedicated semester is not something you'll find at many universities," said Dr. Nancy Blattner, Vice President and Dean for Academic Affairs. "Our entire academic community is collaborating to give students a unique opportunity to look at subjects from a variety of perspectives and in many different ways."

Our first theme for the fall 2007 dedicated semester is “Judaism and Its Cultures.”

At Fontbonne, a Catholic university, we recognize that the joint Jewish and Christian tradition has been at the center of the best of Western Culture: that scholarship itself begins in the quest for the truth of scripture, and the very idea of the university follows from this.

According to Dr. Jason Sommer, professor of English and poet-in-residence, who is spearheading the fall 2007 semester, the idea for this topic was, in essence, prompted by the words of Pope John Paul II, who characterized the Jewish people as “dearly beloved brothers” and “elder brothers.” Speaking of the shared calling of being “a blessing to the world,” the Pope charged “Christians and Jews to be first a blessing to one another.”

Sommer points out that we are further inspired by the values of our sponsors, the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, who founded Fontbonne as a college rooted in the Judeo-Christian tradition.

See what special courses will be offered for the dedicated semester.