Survivor: Altoona

Imagine showing up for your first day of class and finding that your textbook list includes watching television. First-year students enrolled in English 15 encountered just that; in addition to reading the works of Thoreau, Krakauer, and others, their recommended texts included watching the TV show Survivor.

Professor of English Ian Marshall devised the theme of survival as the focus of his first-year English class and tied it into the Pathfinder Wilderness Experience. States Marshall, "The idea was that students who had been on the Pathfinder Wilderness orientation would like the idea of reading and writing about survival narratives and would be able to better understand those narratives as a result of their Pathfinder experience."

Marshall describes the course as "a season of Survivor: Altoona." Inspired by the television show, Marshall notes that "survival narratives and metaphors are becoming increasingly prominent in the national consciousness. Stories of survival seem to be everywhere, as witnessed by the popularity not only of the TV show but of books … and there are the metaphors of survival everywhere we look, it seems: articles with titles like 'How to Survive College' or 'How to Survive the Freshman 15,' and survival guides for dieters during the holidays, and so on. There are issues of survival involving endangered species in the news, as Congress recently has considered altering the Endangered Species Act."

"At a time when we live more comfortably than ever before, when our personal safety seems pretty much assured, when our day-to-day lives are less and less likely to place us in positions of physical peril, why all this concern about survival now," Marshall questions.

The broad objectives of the course are to improve writing skills, critical reading and thinking skills, and to introduce the first-year students to college, the "life of the mind," and the world of scholarship. Marshall hopes to attain these goals by exploring the issue of survival through reading and writing: what do we mean by survival; how does the term apply in a variety of academic disciplines; what are the character traits that enhance chances of survival; and how do those traits function in the modern world.