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The Undercover Professor - "My Freshman Year"

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

  Publicity Contact:  Heidi Lovette 607-277-2338 x230, HSL22@cornell.edu

Professor Goes “Undercover” to Experience Student Life

Ithaca, N.Y. — Hesitantly peeling the employee parking sticker off her car and giving up her faculty ID, Professor Rebekah Nathan enrolled as a freshman at her own university to see what life is like for students today. After more than fifteen years of teaching, Nathan, a professor of anthropology at a large state university, realized that she no longer understood the behavior and attitudes of her students. She realized from conversations with her colleagues that they, too, were perplexed and wondered:

• Why don’t students ever do the assigned reading so we can have a class discussion?
• Why is it OK to bring whole meals and eat and drink in class?
• Why do students feel no embarrassment about taking a nap during lecture?
• Why are students today so different and so hard to teach? Are they, in fact, more likely to cheat, ruder, and less motivated?

Nathan decided to put her wealth of experience in overseas ethnographic fieldwork to use closer to home. She applied to her own university (“AnyU”) under a pseudonym and accepted on the strength of her high school transcript, she took a sabbatical and enrolled as a freshman for the academic year. She immersed herself in student life, moving into the dorms and taking on a full course load. She ate in the student cafeteria, joined clubs, and played regular pick-up games of volleyball. Nathan had resolved that, if asked, she would not lie about her identity; she found that her classmates, if they were curious about why she was attending college at her age, never questioned her about her personal life.

Based on her interviews and conversations with fellow classmates, her interactions with professors and with other university employees and offices, and her careful day-to-day observations, My Freshman Year provides a compelling account of college life that should be read by students, parents, professors, university administrators, and anyone else concerned about the state of higher education in America today. Placing her own experiences and those of her classmates into a broader context drawn from national surveys of college life, Nathan finds that today's students face new challenges to which academic institutions have not adapted. At the end of her freshman year, she has an affection and respect for today’s students: being a student, she discovers, is hard work. But she also identifies fundamental misperceptions, misunderstandings, and mistakes on both sides of the educational divide that negatively affect the college experience.

By focusing on the actual experiences of students, My Freshman Year offers a novel perspective from which to look at the achievements and difficulties confronting America's colleges and universities in the twenty-first century.

Rebekah Nathan is a pseudonym.

Advance Praise for My Freshman Year

“Nathan’s research brought forth three defining aspects of student life—choice, individualism, and materialism—and found that university efforts to build community among the freshmen were largely unsuccessful. In addition, the author learned why many students find cheating an acceptable response to managing tight schedules and gained insights into the nature of the informal conversations students have about their professors and courses. In the end, she offers a good understanding of the current generation of college students and the broader culture from which they have emerged.”—Library Journal, August 2005

“Nathan said she wishes other professors would at least be more curious about the people they’re teaching. . . . Understanding the enormous gap between student and faculty values has prompted Nathan to be more inventive about the way she presents things in class. ‘I would have preferred less noise, drama, throwing up, but it made me a better professor,’ she says. ‘If kids have to sleep through lectures, I understand. At this point, it’d be pretty hard for me to feel alienated.’”—Rachel Aviv, “Undercover Mother,” The Village Voice, August 2, 2005

"This volume is a page-turner from beginning to end. Rebekah Nathan reveals how little intellectual life matters in college and explores the lives of students who are enveloped by notions of individualism, choice, and materialism. Traversing topics as far ranging as friendship, social life, engagement in university classrooms, dorm life, and the experiences of racial and ethnic minorities as well as those of an increasingly growing number of international students, Nathan uses her well-honed anthropological skills to study the 'university as village.'  Faculty, students, and parents alike will find this volume illuminating as we get 'up close and personal' with those undergraduates who attend our large state institutions."—Lois Weis, author of Class Reunion: The Remaking of the American White Working Class

"This is an outstanding book, one of the most important books I've read in this century, and I know it will transform and inspire my teaching and writing. Rebekah Nathan's project--to go undercover as a college student, living in a dorm--is bold and intriguing, especially for a woman anthropologist in her fifties. She comes back with a fascinating story of students who are frazzled but astute at working the system in a world that's invisible to most university faculty.  This memoir reveals secrets and solves many a mystery, such as--Why do so many students ignore reading assignments? Why are Friday classes usually disasters? What makes students reluctant to take part in class discussion? Why don't most college students discuss ideas outside of class? My Freshman Year is funny, sad, true, eye-opening, and sometimes mind-boggling."—Emily Toth, Louisiana State University, author, "Ms. Mentor" column and ten books including Ms. Mentor's Impeccable Advice for Women in Academia and Unveiling Kate Chopin

"My Freshman Year is unpretentious and yet full of insights and sharp observations. It is novel, spare, and speaks (delightfully) to many interests. Rebekah Nathan's careful fieldwork and savvy topical selection provide a moving and important take on American college life." —John Van Maanen, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

"The author's account of living in the dorm and taking classes on a campus where she had worked as a professor for many years is fascinating. From her experience enrolled as a freshman and through her anthropological lens, we learn how different the world of students is from what professors imagine it to be. I think anyone with an interest in undergraduate life—whether in academe or not—will want to read it and will enjoy it."

—Margaret Eisenhart, University Distinguished Professor and Charles Chair of Education, University of Colorado at Boulder

"Using her skills and insights as an anthropologist, faculty-turned-freshman Rebekah Nathan gives us a unique look into the student experience in the first year of college. She provides an unfiltered view of the cultural norms, social rules, and community expectations faced by our new students. It is an intriguing read for all who work with undergraduates today."

—Susan H. Murphy, Vice President, Student and Academic Services, Cornell University

  My Freshman Year: What a Professor

Learned by Becoming a Student

Rebekah Nathan

Cornell University Press

September 2005 • 186 pages • Cloth ISBN: 0-8014-4397-0 • Price: $24.00 £12.95