Roman philosopher Seneca the Younger had this to say about a liberal arts education: \u201cI respect no study, and deem no study good, which results in money-making.\u201d That idea of education, as \u201cstudies worthy of a free-born gentleman,\u201d divorced from practical concerns, which held sway over the liberal arts for much of the twentieth century, is increasingly being challenged in American colleges. And as the paradigm shifts away from what one scholar called the \u201ccold war model,\u201d educators are rethinking the benefits of the liberal arts, and how best to go about reaping them.<\/p>\n
A recent survey of employers by the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AACU) found overwhelming support for the idea that \u201ca candidate\u2019s demonstrated capacity to think critically, communicate clearly, and solve complex problems is more important than their undergraduate major,\u201d and employers\u00a0rated \u201cintegrity; intercultural skills; and the capacity for continued new learning\u201d as highly desirable\u00a0skills among employees. In other words, colleges like Goucher have been teaching job skills all along.<\/p>\n
The idea of an all-encompassing curriculum has stood the test of time better than many, more vocation- oriented, approaches, though the specifics of that curriculum have varied. (Astrology, for instance, a staple for Seneca, is now largely absent from the halls of academe.) Now academics are tweaking the formula for a new century. At Goucher, professors and administrators have been taking a hard look at the traditional way of teaching the liberal arts, and they\u2019ve come up with an innovative system to replace it, scheduled to take effect in the fall of 2017.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe handwriting has been on higher education\u2019s wall for some time,\u201d says political science professor Eric Singer, who took part in an ad hoc committee\u00a0to look at changes to Goucher\u2019s curriculum. Higher costs, and dwindling numbers of students able to\u00a0pay them, are putting colleges and universities in a bind. \u201cAnd converging with those sorts of business\u00a0and demographic challenges has been the question of relevance. In a changing world, is the traditional liberal arts curriculum the appropriate delivery system for students who were wanting to find out how they can navigate an increasingly complex, chaotic, and perhaps interdisciplinary world?\u201d<\/p>\n
T<\/span>he \u201cCold War curriculum,\u201d\u00a0a phrase coined by AACU President Carol Geary Schneider, takes breadth and depth for its organizing principles. In her 2010 essay, \u201cGeneral Education 1.0,\u201d Schneider says the breadth\u00a0comes early, in the form of general education require- ments during the first two years of school, while depth comes later, once a student has chosen a major. The problem, she argues, is that too often \u201cthere is\u00a0no intention and certainly no game plan for helping students make their general studies serve as a context for their major studies. The entire design fosters specialization rather than integration, and critics have complained vehemently about exactly that design flaw ever since \u2018breadth and depth\u2019 began to gain steam.\u201d<\/p>\n In an age of disruption and change, the argument goes, students need to be ready for dramatic shifts. Rather than teaching a body of knowledge, colleges should concern themselves first with the tools to\u00a0gain that knowledge. The AACU\u2019s 2007 report on the subject lists inquiry and analysis as essential preparation for students, but also teamwork, ethical action, and intercultural competence.<\/p>\n The question remains, though, for educators: How does one teach inquiry? And is it different than teaching, say, biology? For Goucher Physics and Astronomy Professor Rodney Yoder, who also took part in the curriculum committee, it made sense to start with the students.<\/p>\n \u201cOne of the things the committee did at the outset was to say \u2018we don\u2019t need to have discussions about our historical identity,\u2019\u201d Yoder says. \u201cBut we have a pretty good sense of who our students are\u2014what their challenges are, what their interests are, and where\u00a0we need to meet them. They\u2019re not just any students, they\u2019re the ones who choose Goucher.\u201d<\/p>\n Yoder says the committee developed a shorthand to describe Goucher students\u2014curious, creative, and collaborative. \u201cThen there\u2019s the social justice side,\u201d he adds, \u201cthe global outlook that we get. And this is an amazingly non-competitive culture. The students don\u2019t like to compete with each other. They like to see themselves as all in the same boat, and to work together.\u201d<\/p>\n Faculty looked at the experiences of other colleges to see how they\u2019d handled the integration of learning requirements and majors. Some curricula focus on one concept\u2014say, \u201cevidence\u201d\u2014and carry that through required classes in the sciences and humanities. Goucher faculty considered this course,\u00a0Yoder says, but \u201cin the end we concluded that it\u00a0was more Goucher-like to give students the tools they needed, and guide them toward a personally relevant integrated learning pathway, rather than telling them how to do it up front. The addition of a required capstone experience for seniors, in which students reflect on and bring together their learning experiences, is designed to reinforce this goal.\u201d<\/p>\n Yoder says that surveys and focus groups with students, along with faculty experience, showed that Goucher did some things well, but fell short in other areas.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was a really great opportunity for us all to reexamine where we are and where we\u2019d like to be,\u201d he says. \u201cTo be honest about what we\u2019ve been able to achieve, and what we\u2019ve been more aspirational about.\u201d<\/p>\n On the achievement side: the majors. \u201cOur students have experienced the Goucher education as a path to the majors,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd they tend to be very satisfied with their major.\u201d<\/p>\n Less successful, in Yoder\u2019s opinion, were the so-called Liberal Education Requirements (LERs)\u2014 which put forth a set of subject areas that students had to cover during their time at Goucher. Yoder and others on the curriculum committee felt that the LERs had become a set of hurdles to jump, and weren\u2019t connected to the rest of the curriculum in any meaningful way.<\/p>\n \u201cThe other side of the curriculum is the changing of the LERs,\u201d he explains. \u201cPersonally, I feel that the LER system was old fashioned. It was unimaginative, and I think many of our students were encouraged not to pay much attention to it.\u201d<\/p>\n Provost Leslie Lewis agrees. \u201cI would say one of the main problems with general education require- ments everywhere is that they become a formulaic, check-the-box kind of requirement for students,\u201d she says. \u201cEven in advising students, we\u2019ll say things like,\u00a0\u2018Oh, just take this course to get this requirement out of the way.\u2019 That\u2019s a third or a quarter of your college education being treated in this off-hand, almost throwaway manner. The real question is, \u2018How can we really utilize that time that students are in classes to be just a little bit more purposeful?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n A<\/span> model presented itself\u00a0in something Goucher was already doing, and\u2014 according to student feedback\u2014doing well. Frontiers courses, the required seminars for first-year students, have been popular, if sometimes offbeat-sounding, presentations, driven\u00a0by professors\u2019 own interests. German professor Antje Krueger, for example, offers a seminar on international comics and graphic novels, while Peace Studies professor (and poet) Ailish Hopper takes on \u201cthe relationship between poetry and social change.\u201d The similarity in the disparate offerings is the excitement of the presenter.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen we were thinking about the new curriculum, that was very much an important piece,\u201d says economic professor Gina Shamshak. \u201cTo have students see us and have us model how to be passionate, how to conduct research and how to talk about certain topics using the language and framework from a particular discipline or blend of disciplines.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not so much that it\u2019s about everything that you ever wanted to know about this topic,\u201d says Lewis, \u201cbut more a demonstration of an area where a faculty member is really passionate about something, about a set of ideas.\u201d<\/p>\n The main changes in the curriculum build on that idea of being inspired by passion. While the nominal subject of a first-year seminar may be, for example,\u00a0American romantic comedies, the students are actually learning the methods and tools of scholarly investigation.<\/p>\n The next step, faculty involved in the design of the new curriculum say, is to transfer that leadership role to the students, to get them to follow their own scholarly passions over three courses designed to\u00a0be more open-ended than the usual lecture method of university teaching allows. They may start with a topic, or question, but the path the courses take over a semester will be determined by the students. In a more traditional course, say, Political Science 101, the professor is the expert at the front of the class, imparting the elements of their discipline. In these inquiry-based courses, the professor acts as a guide, allowing a certain amount of latitude. How much latitude will depend on the course and the professor.<\/p>\n \u201cYou can imagine it would be chaos if you had 400 students who walked in the door and each wanted\u00a0to do something different,\u201d says political science professor Singer. \u201cThere have to be some organizing themes and parameters that define these inquiry courses.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cRather than telling a student, \u2018You should be learning about the latter stages of the Enlightenment,\u2019\u201d Singer continues, \u201cwe\u2019re going to be saying \u2018If you\u2019re interested in any historical era, what are the approaches that allow you to learn about it? How do The inquiry courses are, in some sense, an attempt to build in a little of the chaos Singer references, to allow for the sort of happy accident that can awaken a new interest in a student, without allowing it to derail things.<\/p>\n \u201cBecause it\u2019s so open-ended,\u201d says Yoder, \u201cour hope is that students can use that as a jumping off point into a future major, as well as taking whatever is interesting to them and taking that back to their eventual field of study.\u201d<\/p>\n Introductory classes, which have been tradition- ally used to satisfy requirements in the liberal arts, are great for educating students about a specific discipline, less so for teaching this sort of overall approach\u00a0to learning. The inquiry-based model, then, allows students to satisfy the requirements for a multi-disciplinary education, while reserving the straight intro courses for students looking to pursue a specific interest, or even a major.<\/p>\n \u201cSome people sort of prickle at that,\u201d says economist Shamshak. \u201cWe\u2019re not saying the content doesn\u2019t matter, but it\u2019s more about the process. I think we can relinquish these hang-ups we have with needing to deliver particular content in our general education courses. That\u2019s not the role of the course anymore. The bigger question is \u2018What is it about how this discipline approaches this problem or question, and what tools do they use in their analysis?\u2019 Delivering content in the major is a separate endeavor from exposing students to an area of study, especially when that exposure is student-driven by design in the course.\u201d<\/p>\n Another change in Goucher\u2019s curriculum is a college-wide shift from offering three- and four-credit courses, to scheduling around four-credit courses only (some electives will be offered for two credits).<\/p>\n It\u2019s a practical change\u2014working out a schedule that permits blocks of three and four hours is a logistical nightmare\u2014but the effect is that slightly fewer classes will be necessary to graduate, and fewer classes will be offered. Some of those cuts will come from intro classes, as students who might have taken them just to satisfy requirements will no longer do so, allowing for fewer sessions tailored to more engaged students. Other cuts won\u2019t be so easy, but that\u2019s part of the plan, or at least\u00a0an anticipated consequence, says Yoder.<\/p>\n \u201cOne of the things I see over and over is that Goucher students are bright, they\u2019re energetic, they\u2019re committed, they\u2019re really curious, and I love that about them,\u201d he says. \u201cHowever, the level that they\u2019re able to follow through tails off badly at the end of the semester. They don\u2019t live up to their potential when it comes time to get it all done at the end.\u201d<\/p>\n That goes for faculty as well, Yoder believes. \u201cWe have a tendency to try to be all things to all students,\u201d he says. \u201cThis means that we\u2019re aiming above our weight class in some ways, and I think we manage it to a surprising degree. I think being realistic about ourselves\u2014what we\u2019d like to do, and what we can manage\u2014and making those priorities is the thing we ought to be doing. Those are all questions that all of us are having right now.\u201d<\/p>\n D<\/span>ance Professor Iyun Harrison is new to Goucher, but his time with the committee working on the curriculum changes has given him a crash course. \u201cI think at core, Harrison says the department system, with its divisions of knowledge into separate \u201csilos,\u201d doesn\u2019t work for students raised in an age when anything is available online. \u201cWhat it\u2019s doing,\u201d he says, \u201cit\u2019s asking us to move immediately into the future. …You have folks that have been teaching in a tradition, for a very long time. They\u2019ve written a syllabus and they\u2019ve been teaching that same way. And then we have young people coming in who don\u2019t think in silos. Because they have access to information.\u201d<\/p>\n Most of the elements of the new curriculum were passed by faculty vote at a meeting in May (discussion of a foreign language requirement were postponed until a September meeting, where it also passed), but faculty members who took part in the revisions are careful to acknowledge that the changes are not without dissenters.<\/p>\n \u201cEverything I say, you should recognize that there\u2019s someone else out there saying \u2018No, that\u2019s not the case,\u2019 or \u2018You\u2019re exaggerating the situation,\u2019\u201d says Singer.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve just asked\u2014and the faculty has agreed\u2014 that they\u2019re going to start from scratch in some ways,\u201d says Yoder. \u201cThis is a big change, so it\u2019s definitely going to be messy at first.\u201d One way the college plans to ease the transition is a new Center for Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching, which will focus on faculty training and research.<\/p>\n \u201cThe inquiry-based model is very different in that we\u2019re having a conversation and [students are] leading,\u201d says Shamshak. \u201cA lot of faculty are understandably unsure what that\u2019s going to look like. Faculty need the resources to learn how to teach in this new way, but I think a lot of us are excited by the opportunities it affords us.\u201d<\/p>\n One of the faculty members who feels at home with the inquiry-based classes is sociology professor Jamie Mullaney. She and others who\u2019ve received training in the method produced a sample syllabus to show how it could work. Mullaney says the professor needs to learn when to lead the class, and when to step back, to \u201cbring in good research, and make sure they know how to formulate questions in a proper way, ask the right questions, collect the data properly, if they\u2019re doing that. You can pepper the process with lectures and readings, but really you\u2019re introducing a problem that students will learn to explore on their own.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI think having this contoured curriculum and approach to all these things that we think are important components of an undergraduate education, makes us distinctive,\u201d Singer says. \u201cNot because we want to be distinctive in the marketplace, but because we think it will actually have some value to students when they leave this place.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe conundrum for learning is that it has to be both structured and unstructured at the same time,\u201d he says. \u201cThe challenge is: How do you invite a kind of discipline, but at the same time allow that sort of chaos? All of us, that\u2019s what we\u2019re in search of really.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSome faculty are nervous and anxious about how to implement it safely,\u201d says Yoder, \u201cbut [there is] very little outright disagreement with the philosophy. I think once we\u2019ve started seeing how it works, it\u2019s going to feel really good. I\u2019m excited about where we could go.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Rethinking the liberal arts at Goucher College<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":312,"featured_media":1065,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[12633,87510],"tags":[12633],"ppma_author":[87492],"class_list":["post-1064","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-feature","category-features","tag-feature"],"yoast_head":"\nFinding Passion in Learning<\/h2>\n
\nwe use primary source materials? How do we sift through different sorts of data?\u2019 The idea here is that it\u2019s about method and pedagogy, as opposed to content.\u201d<\/p>\nMoving Into The Future<\/h2>\n
\nwhat the curriculum revision has done\u2014regardless of what the general education requirements change to\u2014is that it\u2019s asked every program to look at what they\u2019re offering and ask why and how? Why and how are we doing what we\u2019re doing, and then the question is how can we do it with an integrative approach.\u201d<\/p>\n