At the University, student forums are intimate classes led by students, accommodating up to 15 undergraduates. Students at the University often seize the opportunity to contribute to the broader community by sharing their academic passions with fellow students. In these spaces, you can forget about dull lecture-based courses with mountains of assignments and grade-related stress. These forums offer a fresh learning experience where peers, not professors, take the lead. Students collaborate to foster a relaxed environment where knowledge is freely exchanged and stress is left at the door.

This semester, Wesleyan’s student forums span a diverse range of topics, from hands-on farming at Long Lane Farm to a critical exploration of psychedelics and a deep dive into aviation. The Argus had the privilege to interview three Student Forum leaders: Matthew Lecher ’24, who heads “Wine Culture and Literacy”; Ebuka Akubilo ’25, the leader of the “Technical Interview and Data Structures” course; and Reed Schwartz ’24 and Ethan Geiger ’24, who jointly lead “The Politics of 90’s Media at the End of History.”

“Wine Culture and Literacy”

Lecher shared his unique perspective on the value of leading the “Wine Culture and Literacy” student forum, which investigates the influence of wine on culture, economics, science, history, and politics. 

“It’s the most intimate peer-to-peer session you can have on this campus because you’re conferring with your colleagues about an issue they value,” Lecher said “And I think that if they’re learning alongside you, that’s a great academic and social moment of growth.” 

Seizing this opportunity, Lecher uses his platform to create a student-led forum that merges wine tastings with culturally enriching contexts, all inspired by his personal experiences.

“Wine has definitely embodied that idea of cultural heritage and cultural intangibility,” Lecher said. “I have a little bit of history with wine. I mean, my uncle’s a collector. My brothers worked in the restaurant business for many years in New York. So obviously, I’ve had different exposures.”

Drawing from his immersion in wine culture, Lecher articulated his aspiration to broaden his understanding within a fresh context of the student forum.

“I wanted to ensure that students would not just take it seriously but make up different perspectives,” Lecher said. “Because if everyone is the exact same as me, that really wouldn’t offer anything. That wouldn’t give me anything. It wouldn’t lead the students to gain anything…. I wanted someone that’s never had a glass of wine in their life. And I also wanted someone that knows a lot about the subject.” 

Although Lecher has a strong passion for the subject, he emphasized that this is his first time teaching and acknowledged the challenges that come with this, particularly on the topic of engaging students in this topic.

“When students aren’t engaged, maybe my stuff isn’t as interesting as I thought it would be,” Lecher said. “So I’ve completely changed the role of student presenters…to effectively give my responsibility to them for one hour. However, [if] you want to present to the class [or] lead the discussion, that’s up to you.”

“Technical Interview and Data Structures”

Ebuka Akubilo ’24, who leads a seminar focused on applying and reinforcing the principles from computer science (CS) courses, discussed the value of a student forum in contrast to a conventional classroom.

“It’s hard for professors to get a genuine perspective on what students actually care about and what they actually want to learn about,” Akubilo said. “I think student forums are nice because we are fellow students. We know exactly what it is that we’re missing from the curriculum or that would be interesting to learn. If I’m good at something, I teach you guys about it, in a way that’s less formal and more community-based than a class…. I want to create an open, transparent platform in the way that you wouldn’t have for a class.” 

Akubilo also stressed that his forum is an opportunity for computer science majors, who typically operate in isolation, to come together, socialize, and build a sense of community experience.

“We don’t get too many opportunities to meet outside of class,” Akubilo said. “It’s a nice way to familiarize myself with all the other CS majors. So it’s been a social bonding process. I’m happy to have our little nerd environment because the nerds we have in there are pretty chill.”

Akubilo also highlights that student forums offer a chance for emerging leaders to both contribute and learn.

“They provide a way for me to refine my presentation skills in a low-stakes environment too,” Akubilo said. “It’s my first time teaching it, so we’re kind of learning as we go too.”

Akubilo teaches computer science to give back valuable knowledge, help others learn from his past experiences, and avoid the same challenges he faced.

“My freshman year during winter, everyone had left, so I was alone on campus,” Akubilo said. “I got the idea while applying to tech internships. I did a few interviews and I horrifically bombed them because I didn’t really understand the technical interview and data structures. So that winter, I did about 200 problems, grinding it out every day, and from there, I became proficient at interviews. Many people don’t have the time or opportunity to sit down and focus on a plethora of coding topics. So, having a class like this is beneficial because it’s led by someone who already possesses comprehensive knowledge, distilling the essential topics you need to grasp in the real-world context.” 

Just like Lecher, who instructs individuals with diverse wine experiences, Akubilo faced the task of managing differing levels of expertise within his classroom setting.

“It’s pretty hard to come up with lessons because there’s some people in the class who have just taken the introductory computer science courses and don’t really know the topics I’m talking about,” Akubilo said. “And then there’s people who are super good at the topics and are only taking the class for review, basically. It’s hard to tell who I should teach it for.”

“The Politics of 90’s Media at the End of History”

Reed Schwartz ’24 and Ethan Geiger ’24 lead a forum that immerses students in the political landscape of the 1990s through various cultural mediums such as film, television, and music. It covers the period from the fall of the Berlin Wall to the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. 

“We wanted to take an interdisciplinary approach to create the lens of everything else that’s going on at the time,” Schwartz said. “So, not separating out the economics or the politics or the history. There isn’t a lot of history of the recent past that you study at Wesleyan, but even when we do talk about stuff like this, it’s often siloed off into ‘just history,’ ‘just psychology,’ or ‘just music,’ and we thought that doing this all together would be a valuable way to understand the totality of  what’s going on in the 90s.”

Schwartz explained how his personal experience shaped his interest in this interdisciplinary approach between politics and media.

“As [College of Social Studies (CSS)] majors, we’ve talked a lot about globalization, policy, and intellectual thought of this period that we see is very clearly reflected in media from music like Nirvana, the movies at the time or the birth of the internet,” Schwartz said.

Geiger elaborated on how their prior experiences in the CSS path not only fueled their enthusiasm for the subject but also influenced their teaching approach.

“Nina Hagel’s class that we were both in was the junior colloquium for CSS, and we were both really inspired by the way that she structures her classroom: Socratic, with enough lectures to have a good base of information without drowning out the voices of the actual students,” Geiger said. 

Drawing inspiration from their previous academic experiences at the University, Geiger described how he and Schwartz collaborate as co-teachers, using their complementary strengths in the academic environment.

“I think maybe I’m a little bit more familiar with the media, the celebrities, and the pop culture going on at the time, and Reed’s a bit more familiar with the nitty-gritty of politics and history,” Geiger said. “I mean, we both have a good knowledge of both, but I think that it’s nice to know that I can lean on Reed to talk about the Federal Reserve, interest rate, and Alan Greenspan.”

Like both Lecher and Akubilo, Geiger and Schwartz emphasized that teaching a student forum is challenging. However, they also faced additional obstacles, such as struggling to communicate with the administration to organize the forum without much support.

“The English department is kind of ghosting us,” Geiger said. “We’ve had some difficulties with the administration and technical aspects of setting up the course on Moodle and a lack of any engagement from the University bureaucracy. At this point most of the syllabus is settled, but the logistical stuff of communicating with admins, getting a room—getting a room is the brunt of the work right now. We wanted to be able to use Moodle, but it’s been fine with just communications via email.” 

Akubilo also encountered comparable challenges in organizing the course with administrators and academic departments, but he has also been confident in navigating these issues.

“The guidelines weren’t really impressed upon us,” said Akubilo “There’s no student forum meeting that we all go to, so we were in the dark for a bit. I think [it] just being my first go-around of starting a student forum was what made it challenging at the start. I had no idea what to expect, but I don’t think it’s been too challenging.”

In a nutshell, Wesleyan’s student forums offer student instructors the opportunity to teach their passions while students enjoy a relaxed and collaborative environment where open discussions and constructive criticism thrive. If you’re considering joining one, remember to support your senior leaders as they learn alongside you. It’s a win-win opportunity!

Dove Bonjean-Alpart can be reached at dbonjeanalpa@wesleyan.edu.