Welcome to Practicum in the Humanities! For the Fall 2025 semester, we’re meeting in Rounds Hall 203 from 4:00-4:50 PM on Tuesdays.
Professor Nic Helms (they/them) (nrhelms@plymouth.edu)
I’ll be in touch daily this semester via email and MS Teams (an Office 365 app available in my.usnh.edu). For drop-in appointments, I’ll be in my office in Ellen Reed 14 (top of the main stairs on the left) on Mondays & Wednesdays from 10:00-11:45 AM. If you’d like to schedule a meeting for another weekday, contact me.
I try to respond to all communications within twenty-four hours, except on weekends. (I treat the weekends as days of rest for me and for you! If something breaks over a weekend, let me know, but don’t worry: it can always wait until the following Monday.)
EN 3060: Practicum in the Humanities (2-4 Credits, experimental)
Catalog Course Description: This practicum answers the question: “What can I do with my humanities skills”? This experience lets students put into practice their writing, communication, and creative and critical thinking outside the typical classroom setting. Provides cohort support for student engagement in organizations like Centripetal, The Clock, WPCR, Pemi Baker TV, the Museum of the White Mountains, and other humanist internships.
This is a four-credit course for the full semester; students may take it for a half semester for two credits, depending on their chosen humanities-affiliated organization. The course may be repeated for a maximum of eight credits. [For instructions on how to change the number of credits for a variable credits course like this one, click here.]
Practicum in the Humanities is being offered as a class this semester as a means of giving credit to students who put in time and effort in working for various Plymouth State student humanities-affiliated organizations, most notably The Clock, Centripetal, and WPCR. It is also meant to be a means by which the amount of work done by student practicum workers can be monitored. All students will meet (Virtually) with the instructor/practicum overseer once a week to report on their practicum activity for that week. These can be posted to canvas. The instructor will then confer with the editors of The Clock and Centripetal to monitor the time and effort put forth by the practicum students.
Prerequisite(s): none
Schedule
The class will also meet weekly as a cohort for fifty minutes to discuss that weeks’ work and the applications of various humanities skills to that work, such as reading, writing, storytelling, and creative and/or critical analysis. Weekly discussions will be framed around short readings from Grobman and Ramsey’s Major Decisions: College, Career, and the Case for the Humanities, which can be accessed digitally through JSTOR via Lamson Library.
Over the first two weeks of classes, Practicum students will decide officially which humanities-affiliated organization they will be working with this semester. All Practicum students will turn in a signed Contract by 9/10, identifying their organization and their supervisors. All Practicum students will then begin turning in Weekly Reflections on their work.
Student Learning Outcomes
Upon completion of this course, you will be able to:
- Display analytical skill in their reflective responses to work experiences.
- Write fluently and understand writing as a creative and/or critical process
- Capably use research to accomplish their reading, writing, thinking, and work goals
- Understand the role of emerging digital technologies in writing, and communication, and the humanities.
Required Texts
Grobman and Ramsey’s Major Decisions: College, Career, and the Case for the Humanities, which can be accessed digitally through JSTOR via Lamson Library.
Sprockets and Springes 