FIGs bear fruit

This story appeared in the Spring 2019 Letters & Science magazine.

There is a scene in Season 3 of the AMC drama Breaking Bad known as the “RV scene” that generates feverish online discussion among fans. Two meth cookers, Jesse and Walt, are trapped in a dingy camper — which also serves as their home, lab and hangout — as Hank, the DEA agent, raps on the door. Out of options, Jesse hisses through the door: “I will not open up! This is my own private domicile!”

And so tightly is the audience wound into the lives of these fictional characters — their struggles, their failings, their one safe haven — that the line lands as an elemental truth. They have their rights!

The scene, says legal studies professor Ralph Grunewald, makes for a gripping discussion among students participating in his First-Year Interest Group called Imagining Crime: Criminal Justice in Fact and Fiction. What constitutes privacy? Is a search warrant always necessary? And why that creeping audience empathy for the bad guys?

“The 4th Amendment is very much a narrative construct,” says Grunewald. “We can see how our concept of privacy depends upon how we feel about a situation, or characters. The cool thing about this FIG is that the main seminar course, which deals with how questions of law, justice and due process are reflected in fiction, is connected to a more basic course on the criminal justice system in America. So I ask them: Which model is in focus here? Crime control, or due process? The idea of constitutional protection, or the goal of getting the bad guys off the streets? And they are well-prepared to have a discussion about narrative technique and storytelling that is also grounded in their knowledge of the legal system.”

For UW-Madison’s incoming freshmen, a First-Year Interest Group, or FIG, offers a highly interactive and holistic opportunity to learn via three courses that explore a common theme. Nearly 20 percent of freshmen enroll in a FIG, and measured learning outcomes include higher GPAs at the end of their first semester, better graduation rates and higher rates of reported satisfaction with their UW experience. FIGS, launched in 2001, are one of the high impact learning practices developed and administered in the College of Letters & Science.

At the heart of each FIG is a top-notch instructor who develops and leads a main seminar capped at 20 students. Grunewald’s Imagining Crime FIG has Law & Literature at its heart, and that small course is linked to two larger survey courses: Criminal Justice in America (Legal Studies 131) and Sociology of Race & Ethnicity in the United States (Sociology 134). What students are learning in the larger courses often serves as foundational knowledge that helps them make cognitive leaps in the smaller, more specialized course.

Grunewald’s students explore how questions of law, justice or due process are reflected in works of fiction such as Bernhard Schlink’s The Reader (where they explore the concept of a natural, or higher, law), Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird (where they analyze why Atticus Finch is often cited as the “ideal lawyer”) and Shakespeare’s e Merchant of Venice (which opens up a discussion on the meaning of contracts and the role of “mercy” in law). Shows like Breaking Bad and e Good Wife, as well as documentaries, reveal how much the media influences our notions about the legal system.

Then, the class flips focus — and students look at the law as literature.

“What happens if we apply some kind of literary methodology to the law?” Grunewald says. “How do we interpret a statute? We look at semantics and the role of narrative in the courtroom.”

Grunewald’s students often report, coming into his FIG, that they chose it because they are interested in law and social work, and the larger courses fulfill general education requirements. But they leave with very different feedback for their professor. 

“At the end, they say, ‘We loved the intense discussions. We loved working with professors in an intimate setting. We liked becoming a cohort,’” Grunewald says. 

The chance to develop bonds based on shared intellectual interests is one of the most important benefits of any FIG, according to Nathan Phelps, assistant dean and director of the FIGs Program. 

“Many students arrive at UW-Madison worried that they will feel lost on such a huge campus,” he says. “Through a FIG, they form an intellectual community that often becomes their social community as well. Many connections forged through a FIG last all four years, and beyond.” 

That’s certainly true for Callie Kutasi, now a junior, who vividly remembers entering Grunewald’s FIG her freshman year. 

“I came from a really small high school — there were 120 people in my graduating class,” she recalls. “On the first day, I felt super intimidated because everyone was talking about really intellectual things. But within the first week, we had all exchanged phone numbers. I started a Facebook page, a group chat. And within the first month, we were ice skating at the Shell. We had movie nights. Before tests or finals, we’d study together.” 

That FIG cohort continues to be close two years later, meeting once every semester for “FIG dinners,” and sitting together in other classes. What is evident, says Grunewald, is that academic and personal growth go hand in hand. 

“Here at UW, we have tutorial programs, learning centers, all sorts of tools to help students ‘get’ the material,” he says. “But what FIGs do is add the personal component. And that is when the intellectual growth happens.” 

Jennifer Brown, another member of that 2016 Imagining Crime cohort, said that through the FIG, she developed academic habits that would stick with her, after experiencing the value of study groups as well as the rewards of raising her hand and speaking out — in courses large and small. 

“I think it sets you up for success,” she says. “The great thing is that I can rebuild my FIG dynamic in every class. I really seek out, in all my other classes, what the FIG gave me freshman year.” 

Another unique benefit was forging a strong bond with a professor early in her college career. 

“Because Professor Grunewald was so open and encouraging, I started going to his offce hours right away,” she says. “That’s another thing I took with me — the confidence to do that. I imagine I would have been a bit more afraid, as an 18- or 19-year-old, to seek out my professors if I had not taken the FIG.” 

Kenny Allen, now a junior, says his writing skills vastly improved in Grunewald’s FIG. And that is gratifying for Grunewald, who asks Writing Fellows from the Writing Center to meet with his students and work with them on their drafts. 

“It’s very labor-intensive,” says Grunewald, of the back-and-forth feedback and revision process he requires. “But I can see their improvement.” 

Allen concurs — and adds one more thought.

“FIGs make you a better writer. As a result of learning to write well, you become a better thinker. Also, a FIG makes you a better arguer. And I enjoyed arguing in order to arrive at a position we could all support. I think it’s the fastest way to clear up where you stand on an issue, and why.”