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Dinner in the dark. Early morning forays in the fresh markets in old
Parisian neighbourhoods. Team presentations and group projects.
FirstBridge professors Charles Talcott and Georgi Stojanov began
their students’ AUP learning experience with a bang by taking them
to an exotic restaurant in the heart of Paris, where all customers
are served a delicious dinner by blind waiters in complete darkness,
allowing diners to focus on the total experience of eating. Working
from day one to create bonds of trust within their learning
community was one of their primary goals and it worked. Professors
Celeste Schenck and Susan Perry built a community of committed
activists by leading their FirstBridge students to create their own
virtual NGO—a project presented to a jury of leaders from UNESCO,
the OECD, and local humanitarian organizations.
Undergraduate students start their AUP careers in the FirstBridge
learning communities, a selection of paired interdisciplinary
courses that take different disciplinary approaches to issues such
as global warming, artificial intelligence, human rights, civil
conflict, visual thinking, food, global cities and citizenship,
urban landscapes, urban histories, and filmic and anthropological
visions of the human.
The City of Light is always at the heart of the FirstBridge
experience, a city known for its beauty, its exquisite museums and
monuments, its avant-gardism, and more recently for its edgy
demographic and linguistic shifts, new urban developments, and
global communications. At AUP, a University that prides itself on
being in the heart of this beautiful city, the first-year
FirstBridge program embraces this concept, linking the adventurous
learning experiences of entering AUP students first to the
cutting-edge events of the city, then to the challenges of a global
context, eventually bringing all explorations back into our
multicultural classroom for analysis and project building.
In FirstBridge, you are invited to explore the crucial place
interdisciplinary learning will occupy throughout your AUP
education. As early as your first year, you will begin to learn the
skills, perspectives, zest for risk-taking, flexibility and
creativity that you will need to meet the challenges of today’s
globalizing world. You will build the personal and professional
bonds that will follow you beyond your college careers long after
you have walked across the stage to collect your diploma. In a city
whose geography is marked by a profusion of gorgeous bridges, your
first bridge from high school to college will leave you with a
desire to question, to explore, to understand and to master what you
are learning.
Trust, team-building, interdisciplinary perspectives, and adventure
are the trademarks of this signature AUP program. FirstBridge pulls
you into the AUP classroom where students of different nationalities
bring new perspectives to the big questions of liberal education. It
also initiates you to the academic rigor required of you later when
you select and enter your major. Seasoned professors explore their
disciplines while working closely with their teaching partner in a
FirstBridge pedagogical team. Learning happens in all
directions—between the teachers, amongst the students, and between
teachers and students--while lasting friendships form in each
FirstBridge learning community. |
