Taylor Swift expert? This Carnegie Mellon class tests your knowledge

Jun. 9—Taylor Swift isn't just a music and pop culture icon. She's also the subject of an elective, three-credit course at Carnegie Mellon University.

"Taylor Swift Through the Eras" was a spring semester offering through CMU's Student College (StuCo), which allows students to develop and teach academic courses on topics of their choosing.

It proved so popular that it will be offered again in the fall.

The course is the brainchild of rising senior Brenna Slomsky, 20, a mechanical engineering major from Georgetown, Mass.

"I think she's a really good role model. You can learn a lot from her," Slomsky said. "She definitely has a big presence in today's media and she's definitely a huge influence in culture today.

"I think it's really cool to study how she's shaped youth and culture."

Syllabus topics include Swift's music, career trajectory and advocacy work, along with related issues such as song publishing rights and effects on the ticketing industry related to the Eras Tour ticket sales fiasco.

Lest anyone think that StuCo classes are "jokey or tongue-in-cheek," program adviser Miriam Wertheimer said that's not the case.

Although student instructors choose their own topics and develop the curriculum, they must go through a rigorous approval process. A prospective instructor must submit a course proposal and fill out informational paperwork during the preceding semester.

"The application is reviewed to meet requirements for rigor, registrar assessment, attendance and high academic standards," Wertheimer said.

If the proposal is accepted, the student is interviewed by the StuCo Executive Committee, which grants final approval. The course must not duplicate any other university offering.

StuCo instructors receive credit for their work.

Swiftie since 6

Slomsky began imagining a Swift class after taking a StuCo course about the history and design of roller coasters. She's been a Swiftie since about age 6.

"I started thinking about, 'If I were going to run a course, what would I do it on?' and I immediately thought of Taylor Swift," she said. "I started telling friends, and they were like, 'Oh, you should totally create a course.'

"The more I talked about it theoretically, the more I decided I wanted to make it a reality."

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She submitted her proposal prior to the 2022 fall semester, which she spent studying abroad, and it was approved for the just-completed spring semester.

"I had to have a syllabus and fill out a form describing the course," she said. "I came up with a weekly outline, so I knew what I would be teaching every week, but I didn't have to have the slide shows and the PowerPoints all planned out."

The 25-member, lecture-discussion class met weekly for 50 minutes. During the semester, students completed three assignments centered around viewing Swift-related streaming content.

Their midterm assignment was to write a one-page essay about their favorite Swift song that made the Billboard Top 200. The final was a presentation in a format of the student's choice presenting three theories about what Swift will do next.

Slomsky will have new lecture material for her fall class after attending Swift's Eras Tour concert on May 21 in Boston.

Passion project

"Our StuCo instructors work incredibly hard, and they take this on on top of their academic requirements," Wertheimer said. "It's a unique opportunity to engage in a deeper way with something that you're passionate about and to practice teaching."

Slomsky said she has no plans to teach after graduation, but she described the experience as fun.

The Student College, established in 2001, is overseen by Carnegie Mellon's Leonard Gelfand Center for Service Learning and Outreach.

"Our work in educational outreach makes us uniquely qualified to support student instructors," said Wertheimer, who is the center's director of student instructor development and K-12 community partnership.

Center services include professional development activities for teachers, educational workshops for children, and hiring students to tutor in the Pittsburgh Public Schools and in programs offered by community organizations.

"What makes StuCo so unique and special to CMU is that many students have been able to create high-quality courses on nontraditional subject matter because they take their passion for the subject matter, the guidance and support and the academic rigor that they've learned at the university, and combine the two," she said.

This year, a student-taught software development course was cross-listed for graduate student credit.

"The course was considered to be of enough quality and rigor," Wertheimer said, "that there was a request from the electrical and computer engineering department to cross-list it."

Shirley McMarlin is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Shirley by email at smcmarlin@triblive.com or via Twitter .