Quest: A Gateway to College Learning

We want you to have fun learning, just as our faculty members enjoy doing their research. Of course, our professors can teach you about a great range of subjects. Perhaps more important, in Quest courses they can teach you even more about how to learn and how to make learning the habit of a lifetime.

These Quest courses may give you the most interesting classroom experiences you have ever had. You will be in a small class, with students who share your interests. You will work on solving problems. You will learn from a faculty member who wants to share with you how research works as a way of learning. The insights you gain will be valuable for the rest of your life.

Quest courses encourage conversation and collaboration: between teacher and student, and among students themselves.

  • They emphasize the following skills:
  • How to define a question in a meaningful way.
  • How to decide which arguments, evidence, data are required to best approach the problem.
  • How to find the information in library and computer databases, for example, or through the major literature sources in the field.
  • How to sort evidence by weeding out information that may be correct but irrelevant, and ranking the relevant evidence in order of importance.
  • How to decide what can and what cannot be concluded. In other words, which caveats must be imposed on the conclusion?
  • How to decide if the question has been answered. If it hasn't been, what further information is required? If it has been answered, what is the next good question?

More about Quest...

Do Quest courses satisfy requirements?
Yes. All courses count toward graduation credit, and many courses satisfy either a concentration requirement or lead toward a distributional cluster.
How do I register for a Quest course?
Registration for Quest courses will take place during August Orientation. You willl have an opportunity to discusss your interests with your freshman adviser prior to registering.
May I enroll in more than one Quest course?
Yes, if space is available, students are permitted to enroll in more than one Quest course.
Will Quest courses be available in the Spring Semester?
No new Quest courses are expected to be offered in the Spring semester. However, some courses are offered in the spring as continuations of the fall (e.g., CHM 172Q). Feel free to consult with an adviser in the College Center for Academic Support if you have questions.

Quest courses involve extensive work with original materials and data, in other words, sources found at the library; data discovered through qualitative analysis; or information discovered through laboratory experimentation.

In the humanities, Quest courses emphasize the study of primary texts rather than textbooks. In the social sciences, the courses involve the scrutiny of existing data; research that yields new data; and/or other techniques of social science research. Quest courses in the hard sciences and in engineering draw students into the generation and analysis of new experimental data, rather than the mastery of predetermined techniques and protocols.

When you learn from primary sources, from original writings, from film, or from research, some of the best insights occur when you review the data for a second time. That's why Quest courses feature "recursion," the perspective of the second look.