CLEVELAND -- A few years beyond their own childhood, Case Western Reserve University students will revisit what it means to be a child as they go to the Children's Museum of Cleveland and the Cleveland Museum of Art for new classes.

Two new offerings in the fall 2001 and spring 2002 semesters are among an increasing number of undergraduate classes in the College of Arts and Sciences that tap the resources of area institutions for learning, according to a report from the college, "Enriching the Environment for Learning at Case Western Reserve University."

Stanton Thomas from the Cleveland Museum of Art, and a CWRU graduate who received his Ph.D. in art history in 1998, will teach the Department of Art History's "Childhood Through Art."

The course examines the role of children from the dawn of humanity to 2001 as portrayed in the visual arts and artifacts in the Cleveland Museum of Art's collections and other local exhibits. Gallery visits to the museum and to the Western Reserve Historical Society, visiting lecturers, readings, and projects will be part of the class syllabus.

For spring semester, students can enroll in the new childhood studies course "Childhood Play and Learning." James Spilsbury, a doctoral candidate in anthropology, is working with Virginia Desharnais, director of educational programs at the Children's Museum of Cleveland, to design it.

Faculty members have been able to create or revise courses with support from a three-year McGregor Fund grant, targeted to transform the undergraduate curriculum by partnering with local institutions. The grant has funded 19 established or planned courses.

The new courses continue a move to integrate the institutions of University Circle into the undergraduate curriculum, according to Samuel Savin, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.

Jill Korbin and Richard Settersen, co-directors of CWRU's Schubert Center for Child Development, proposed the new childhood-related courses. "The McGregor grant facilitates innovation in connecting our excellent undergraduate students with the outstanding institutions in our midst," says Korbin, also the associate dean of arts and sciences.

"Part of the museum's mandate is to educate the public about the importance of providing young children with high quality, enriching experiences," says Desharnais.

Spilsbury adds that through lectures by child development experts, students will learn the importance of play as a specific mechanism for child development.

"Play is how children learn," agrees Desharnais. The interactive exhibits at the children's museum develop a child's motor, language, cognitive, and social skills.

"So much goes on when children play," says Spilsbury. He adds that the children's museum is an ideal setting to study play, because it is a social setting where play occurs and is fostered.

Students will have the opportunity to practice what they learn when they undertake anthropological research, using their skills of observations, recording information, and interviewing at any one of the museum's exhibits, geared for children between the ages of 2-6.

According to Desharnais and Spilsbury, the students will examine how the children use the exhibits. The students also will watch and record how the adults accompanying the children use the exhibits' manual and printed display materials to help children take full advantage of the exhibit.

Students also will have the opportunity to suggest and implement changes to the exhibits and, if time allows, observe children's reactions to the changes, says Spilsbury.

The art history department will offer the new "Childhood Through Art" class that is crosslinked to the childhood studies program.

"The art history department wants to interest non-majors in art," says Thomas, who works as a medieval and renaissance specialist at the art museum.

While art history is usually studied chronologically, Thomas says looking at from the perspective of its psychological or sociological context is relatively new. "It's surprising what we have in the collections. It's like finding hidden treasures when you look at the collection from this new perspective," adds Thomas.

Creating the "Childhood Through Art" course gave Thomas a new perspective on the Cleveland Museum of Art's holdings.

While the art museum is "rich with materials" involving children, Thomas notes that "it's a relatively unexplored area for art historians." He welcomes this challenge to create the new class and expand his scope as a guest lecturer this fall. Last year, he took up a similar challenge when he developed the art history course comparing Jewish and Christian architecture.

One object that particularly has fascinated him is a child-size throne made for the presumed successor to the French monarchy, who ruled briefly as Henri V in 1830. "It was extraordinary that they made this child throne as a way of molding and encrypting him to what his role in life would be," says Thomas.

"Childhood Through Art" will pose several questions for students to ponder. Thomas says that they will search for answers to why some periods like the Victorian era are filled with child images, while others are not, and why the Medieval period sometimes depicts the Christ child as the perfect child and at other times portrays him as human rather than divine.

The off-campus classroom experiences began in spring semester 1999 when music students attended concerts at the Cleveland Orchestra for a redesigned course to introduce non-majors to music. The off-campus experience expanded into theater, film, and art history classes which utilize a variety of University Circle institutions for planned events.

"Works of Art, Images, and Artifacts" is a first-year class offered as an alternative to the two-semester survey course that takes advantage of collections not only at the art museum, but also at the Dittrick Medical History Center, the Sculpture Center, the Cleveland Institute of Art, the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, and the Cleveland Center for Contemporary Art.

Since 1999, more than 1,000 students have been exposed to Cleveland's institutions and cultural resources through courses in American studies, anthropology, art history, Asian studies, English, history, music, political science, religion, and psychology. The College of Arts and Sciences projects that another 1,000 students will have class this year at such places as the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, Severance Hall, Lakeview Cemetery, and the Western Reserve Historical Society.