Expanding Your Academic Experiences at UW Oshkosh

Odyssey 2008 begins your adventure as a UW Oshkosh student. During your first weeks on campus, we’ve planned activities to help familiarize you with the University, giving you a chance to get actively involved in and outside the classroom.

Because your college career and life beyond college will be filled with diverse opportunities to discover and weigh perspectives and information—often conflicting—several opportunities that allow you and your peers a chance to reflect upon an ideal and the values that we embrace, or reject, as a result of that ideal.

In keeping with this philosophy, your fall semester begins with a cultural experience, the play True West by Sam Shepard at the Fredric March Theatre, during the second week of classes. Attendance is a required part of the Odyssey program. Attendance also is a likely requirement for your WBIS 188, English 100, English 110, Communication 111 and Communication 112 courses, so please plan to attend. The play is sponsored by the UW Oshkosh Theatre Department, the Provost and Vice Chancellor office and the Dean of Students office.

True West by Sam Shepard
True West is a comic nightmare of confrontation. The play is about two brothers. Austin is an ambitious Hollywood screenwriter working on a potential million-dollar deal. Without warning an ill wind off the desert blows in Lee, a hobo thief with a six-pack and a case of sibling rivalry. The conflict arises when a film producer offers Lee to write a "true" western. In a role reversal as intricate as it is riveting, the brothers head toward Shepard’s outrageous version of the Western movie showdown.

A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah
Students enrolled in WBIS (Writing Based Inquiry Seminars) will read A Long Way Gone, by Ishmael Beah, the fascinating story of a young man’s growth to maturity under a military regime in Sierra Leone. One of hundreds of child soldiers forcibly recruited to fight in a brutal civil war, Beah’s story, could be disaffected and angry but is instead one of hope. His love for his family and homeland, combined with his earnest efforts to help the world understand the plight of children affected by war and poverty, make this memoir unforgettable reading. Sebastian Junger, author of The Perfect Storm, calls the book “one of the most important war stories of our generation.”  Now 26 years old, Beah writes that his purpose is to “tell people that I believe children have the resilience to outlive their sufferings, if given a chance.” Beah will be speaking on campus on March 10, 2009.

James M. Chitwood, Dean of Students

Go to Dean of Students Home Page

University of Wisconsin Oshkosh Student Orientation
Odyssey 2008 is sponsored by the Offices of the Provost/Vice Chancellor
and the Dean of Students

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Last update: June 12, 2008