Valparaiso University Experience
First-year students need particular skills to navigate the academic world and become successful students and global citizens.
VUE is designed to help students develop necessary academic skills such as argumentative writing, close reading and critical thinking. Additionally, students will work to develop their discussion skills (both leading and participating) as well as presentation skills. Great opportunities also exist in the course for students to become more adept at retrieving, evaluating, and managing information, as they connect to the rest of the world through our electronic information services.
More About VUE
- Student choice of topics to spark your curiosity
- Committed and skilled faculty excited to teach first-year students
- Opportunity to meet a diverse set of students, many of whom will become your close friends
- Thought-provoking texts, films, and other media
- Excellent discussions about real issues and the real world with real people
- Experiential learning events and projects that enhance your sense of belonging
- Strong foundation to set up student success at Valpo
- Go to class every day and come with a question.
- Be brave: try new things, open every text as if it is the one that will change your life.
- Take yourself and your classmates seriously: most people only get one shot at a college education, so make the most of that shot.
- Listen to others and enjoy what happens inside and outside of the classroom, because these things are related.
- Be open to new perspectives from people of diverse backgrounds.
In VUE, writing well means that each student engages in a revision process. With every writing assignment, students will receive and work with feedback from peers, their instructor, and often the Judith L. Beumer Writing Center consultants.
High school programs teach writing and information literacy primarily in the context of an English class. At Valpo, we build on students’ foundation in high school writing to emphasize research and writing to learn across different disciplines. In VUE, writing to learn is a process by which students think deeply about the texts they read, view, and discuss. They formulate new ways of interpreting and analyzing the meaning of these works. Writing instruction goes beyond writing with formulas such as the five-paragraph essay to presenting academic arguments that skillfully integrate evidence and logical reasoning with attention to audience, purpose, and context.
Students become both writers and peer reviewers as they write to learn. Composing multiple drafts encourages students to think continually about their arguments and how they can best communicate with an audience. Working as a peer reviewer helps students hone their own editing skills, critical reading strategies, and interpersonal communication. Reading and responding to peers’ work creates a community of readers, writers, and researchers who together make meaning of significant texts that speak to the human experience.
Follow this link to the Valparaiso University Writing Program to learn more about Valpo’s four-year sequence of writing and information literacy enriched courses.
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Research
The VUE Program works to develop a solid understanding of the research process and the ability to critically analyze and interpret information. Academic research allows students to work with their natural curiosity; VUE students get the opportunity to experience the excitement of undergraduate research. At VUE-approved Fieldwork events, faculty members and senior students divulge how they discovered their research projects, navigated the research process, overcame obstacles, and ultimately chose the best way to present their research findings. At the end of the year, VUE students will present at the VUE Symposium, taking the academic stage to share their research with their peers.
VUE Texts
- Graff, Gerald and Cathy Birkenstein. They Say / I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing. 6th edition. Norton (2024). ISBN: 978-1324070030
Other materials may be required by your instructor. Check the bookstore listing for your section.
- Graff, Gerald and Cathy Birkenstein. They Say / I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing. 6th edition. Norton (2024). ISBN: 978-1324070030
- Kouzes, James and Barry Posner. The Student Leadership Challenge: Five Practices for Becoming an Exemplary Leader. 4th edition. Wiley (2024). ISBN: 978-1394206087
Other materials may be required by your instructor. Check the bookstore listing for your specific VUE section.