Learning for Life at Boise State - Recently Updated Pages

Final L4L Report

boisebarbara — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 11:24:27 CDT

Learning for Life:

An Initiative of Boise State University Faculty

July 4, 2008

History of the Learning for Life Initiative for the Liberal Arts
In November 2006, a committee of Boise State University professors compiled the materials necessary for application to Phi Beta Kappa, the prestigious honors society founded in 1776. Phi Beta Kappa’s website notes that

Phi Beta Kappa celebrates and advocates excellence in the liberal arts and sciences. Its campus chapters invite for induction the most outstanding arts and sciences students at America’s leading colleges and universities. The Society sponsors activities to advance these studies — the humanities, the social sciences, and the natural sciences — in higher education and in society at large.

When Phi Beta Kappa rejected Boise State University’s application, that rejection need not have been a crushing blow to the university, since few institutions gain acceptance by Phi Beta Kappa in their first attempt. Yet, the details of the honors society’s rejection letter were in fact demoralizing: “[your] institution was not among those the Committee asked me specifically to encourage to make prompt future reapplication.” This was, we believe, a rather genteel way of telling us that Boise State University has a lot of work to do to make the grade with a venerable organization that is a guardian of liberal arts education in the United States of America. The chair and one member of the committee that had made application to Phi Beta Kappa forwarded a copy of the rejection letter to President Bob Kustra, assuming he would appreciate being kept informed of a negative assessment of Boise State University. He was quite unhappy with the letter and all that it implied for Boise State and requested a meeting with the two faculty who sent him the letter. At the meeting, President Kustra expressed concern for the state of the liberal arts at Boise State University and asked whether the faculty at this university shared his concern. He asked the faculty members present to undertake an initiative that would explore ways to enhance the liberal arts at BSU and seek opportunities to propel liberal arts disciplines toward the university’s goal of becoming a metropolitan research university of distinction. The president’s response was gratifying to the faculty members present at that meeting. In August 2007, a steering committee of ten faculty members from diverse disciplines was formed (see Appendix A). The committee drew up plans to solicit faculty ideas and involvement in addressing both of President Kustra’s charges. The steering committee laid plans for eleven events: a kick-off luncheon in mid-October and ten follow-up forums to be hosted by the Center for Teaching and Learning. Eighty faculty and administrators attended the luncheon and jointly identified areas of concern (see Appendix B). Each follow-up forum focused either on one of these areas or a small cluster of issues. Overall faculty involvement in the forums was moderate, with just over seventy faculty attending at least one forum, and many attending multiple forums (see Appendix C). Notes from each forum were posted on a wiki website (http://l4l.wetpaint.com/) in order to facilitate ongoing conversation about the ideas discussed at the forums . Members of the steering committee held an all-day retreat at the Center for Teaching and Learning on May 20, 2008, to assess the results of the year-long conversation. This report reflects the steering committee’s deliberations and consequent recommendations concerning undergraduate studies and faculty engagement in the Liberal Arts at Boise State.
Summary Conclusions Reflecting its own views and those of the faculty who participated in various forums, the committee has drawn the following general conclusions:

The liberal arts lack a both a physical place and a sense of place at Boise State University.
The liberal arts involve a type or style of pedagogy as much as they involve certain disciplines, and the exchange of ideas essential to that pedagogy requires connections among students and between students and faculty. Some of the sources of connections that we believe need to be enhanced are the university’s commitment to diversity, internationalization, and interdisciplinarity.
Some of what ails the liberal arts at Boise State University can be cured through attention to the curriculum, including the Core.
Faculty in many liberal arts disciplines – especially those that have limited opportunities for access to grants and other outside funding -- note that research funding opportunities on campus for their disciplines have shrunk in recent years; those opportunities should increase.
That the single overarching requirement of any successful mission to invigorate the liberal arts at Boise State University will be adding new faculty lines.

A Place for the Liberal Arts Faculty in many of the liberal arts disciplines note that they are housed in two different colleges (Arts and Sciences, Social Sciences and Public Affairs). Furthermore, even those departments that are in the same colleges are dispersed around campus in ways that limit their interaction. A shared physical space would be an excellent starting point for reinvigorating the liberal arts, as it would bring together students and faculty who work in disciplines that may differ in modes of expression but share common interests and methods of inquiry. We suggest that a building (modeled on the new CSED building) be designed and built to house the liberal arts disciplines. Other possibilities to solve the “proximity” problem might include a realignment of the colleges, by which certain liberal arts disciplines are placed in a college of their own (taking from both Arts and Sciences and Social Sciences and Public Affairs). Another alternative could follow the lead of Notre Dame’s Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts (http://isla.nd.edu/). These three recommendations emerge from two different models: the first two would bring disciplines together literally, with the ultimate goal of providing a physical or institutional focus, or both, for every aspect of the liberal arts at Boise State University – from teaching to research to service; the third, were it indeed modeled directly on Notre Dame’s example, would serve primarily as a research institute, although we can imagine ways that its mission could be more far-reaching than Notre Dame’s ISLA. The building, or a reconfigured college structure, would undoubtedly include the institute, but the institute could easily stand alone. Ideally, the institute would be directed by a distinguished faculty member. To provide strong leadership and a focus for the efforts of liberal arts faculty, the director could be a prestigious national figure in the liberal arts hired specifically to help create an identity for the institute. Or, if such a hire could not be made, the director could come from within Boise State University; for this option we would suggest a three-year, renewable term. The institute would serve any number of functions:

Assistance in external grant procurement
A support structure for engaging undergraduate students in scholarship in the liberal arts
Coordination and promotion of liberal arts events on campus
Sponsorship and coordination of scholarly seminar series in the liberal arts
Coordination of team-taught, interdisciplinary courses
A home for Gender Studies, Environmental Studies, and other interdisciplinary programs involving the liberal arts
A home for relevant international programs
Advising for programs in the liberal arts
Perhaps most importantly, the institute would offer the chance to build an identity for the liberal arts at Boise State University

In addition to a director, the Institute would require some staffing support:

An “embedded” staff member from the Office of the Vice President for Research (Mark Rudin has already pledged this form of support at the college level)
A full-time administrative assistant
Other staff, depending on the nature of the institute’s mission

There are obvious areas of potential overlap in this list with existing centers/programs at Boise State University (the Center for Teaching and Learning, the Gateway Center, and International Programs would all have something to say about parts of this list), and we readily admit that there are aspects of this proposal that would require further examination. Nonetheless, we believe that some sort of institutional location for the liberal arts is the best starting place for establishing Boise State’s identity as a home for liberal arts instruction and research and to distinguish it from other large, public universities in the region.
The Liberal Arts: Pedagogy and Curricular Issues Many of the forums covered similar ground, likely because as new individuals attended, issues inevitably were rehashed. The most common element of the discussion at many of the forums was curricular issues. We divide them here into two sets: one is pedagogy, the other is curricular substance. With regard to pedagogy, we would summarize the concerns expressed as follows: participants in the forums and on the steering committee agree that connections are critical. “Connections” here means interactions and engagement among students, among faculty, and between faculty and students. We also refer to connections of particular sorts (after all, every classroom experience could be defined as a connection of some type). A consensus emerged that interdisciplinarity in a variety of forms would serve well the goal of making valuable intellectual connections, and that a move away from large, anonymous classroom settings (i.e., the assurance that at least certain critical subsets of courses could be taken in small settings) would be critical to that goal as well. The available means of achieving the sort of connections that we believe are critical to a liberal arts education include: student learning communities, course stacking, increased funding for and incentives to engage in interdisciplinary teaching, and perhaps a creative approach to University 101-type classes. All of these alternatives are available now, but for fairly obvious reasons they are not pursued: the difficulty of managing such offerings at the departmental level, the lack of funding to make it possible for departments to compensate for the diversion of resources to interdisciplinary offerings, and the lack of incentives for faculty to work together on an interdisciplinary basis (in particular, funds to use as incentives for faculty who develop interdisciplinary offerings), and the more general lack of incentives for faculty to work creatively with the curriculum. A relatively small annual budget could easily ameliorate these problems, were the funds focused on faculty and departmental incentives for participation. Three examples from our current situation highlight the problems faced by faculty interested in curricular innovation. One is the interdisciplinary Environmental Studies major, which currently has over ninety students, but whose budget provides only one course buy-out per year for administrative purposes and only enough adjunct monies to offer the required ENVSTD 121 course once per year. Another is the Diversity Requirement, which was created with much fanfare, but which has floundered as faculty prove unwilling or unable to develop new courses to support it. The third is the report of the Internationalization Task Force, which which we believe has received far too little attention since it was issued. Internationalization, globalization: by whatever name, the world in which our graduates will live and work is highly connected, and the connections that define it are lacking at Boise State University. The underlying problem in each of these cases is that faculty are asked to take on significant work on a volunteer basis, and volunteerism is not something that the university should count on. As it happens, such reliance has not produced satisfactory results. Pedagogical issues lead inexorably to the single most popular suggestion to emerge during the forums: faculty wish to see our Core Curriculum reconceived and restructured. Faculty find our Core to lack focus, to be a collection of courses that suggest no particular goal, and to be organized in a pro-forma fashion. With the overwhelming support of the faculty who attended the various forums, we thus recommend a radical overhaul. We make this recommendation advisedly, because we are well aware of some of the costs that would be incurred (both human and fiscal) and challenges that would be introduced. Recognizing the practical obstacles to overhauling the Core, we offer suggestions for further work. We have been inspired by the general education program at Portland State University, whose most appealing feature is that it places students in concentrated courses at both the beginning and the end of their academic careers. We believe that such a program is capable of making the kinds of connections that our faculty indicate are missing here: connections among students, conceptual connections across disciplines, and connections between coursework and life beyond campus. It is similar to the academic programming currently offered in the Honors College, but it would be available to every undergraduate student at Boise State. Any of the elements could be implemented as a stand-alone feature of a future Core, but their joint implementation promises a coherent curriculum experience for our students and offers a way for Boise State to distinguish itself from other universities. Features of such a Core could include:

New lower-division Core courses, detached from major programs of study: Nearly all current Core courses serve primarily as gateway courses for the given department’s major. We believe that they are ill-suited to serve the aims of a liberal education. Many faculty at our forums expressed strong support for separating lower-division Core courses from majors (many departments already do this). For example, we envision a HIST 100 Core course that would not be required for History majors, which would present a more comprehensive view of the methods of historical inquiry and situates the discipline within the broader intellectual landscape. The content focus of such a course would be variable, which would allow it to be geared to different conceptual outcomes, while retaining its focus on methods and goals of historical inquiry. The same type of course could be taught in other departments. (See #6 below, where we discuss Diversity, Globalization/Internationalization, and Citizenship as possible tracks within the Core).

Upper-division Core courses (possibly even Core capstone courses): We found widespread agreement among faculty that students are better able to appreciate the “big picture” later in their career, after having acquired the detailed, discipline-specific knowledge from their major requirements. Further, sustaining the broad, interdisciplinary approach to learning throughout the college experience will be more likely to produce graduates who continue to find value in exploring ideas and traditions outside their major area of study and training.

“Stacking” of courses and co-curricular work for more than 3 credits: Team teaching and other opportunities for interdisciplinary course structures are severely constrained by the three-credit course model. Course stacking involves coordination of more than one class – and often co-curricular activity, such as service learning – into a single course structure which typically carries six to nine credit hours. Such an arrangement not only fosters interdisciplinary connections, it also provides for greater instructional flexibility and more efficient use of class room space.

Greater use of Student Learning Communities in the Core: There was agreement that linking core courses through Student Learning Communities and giving faculty the time/reward for coordinating with others would foster these connections.

Freshman seminars: Freshman seminars offer another substantive way to engage students in a liberal education. They could be designed to resemble current UNIV 101 courses in that one of their goals would include helping students to learn about the how to be a successful university student. They would differ in that each course would include substantive content chosen by the faculty member.

Construct “modules” of new and existing Core courses designed to cater to various academic plans: As it exists now, the Core requirement can be satisfied by any arbitrary collection of designated courses, making it challenging, if not impossible, for students to see the connections intrinsic to a liberal education. We suggest replacing the arbitrary list of classes with a series of well-designed modules that are thematically focused and consistent. Three such modules could be Diversity, Globalization/Internationalization, or Citizenship, while many others are possible. We would encourage the development of new courses to serve these modules, keeping in mind the problems associated with our current Diversity requirement (see above).

The consensus of faculty at the forums was that a foreign language requirement is not practical at Boise State University, given the enormous growth it would require in the size of the Modern Languages Department. But, where appropriate, and specifically in some of the modules discussed above, a foreign language requirement would be highly desirable, and we encourage continuing discussions of the place of foreign language study at Boise State University. We also suggest that where there is a foreign language requirement, it demand two years of study rather than the usual one year, as it is only after two years that students begin to be able to actually use the language.

Research in the Liberal Arts Needs Support Faculty in the liberal arts disciplines expressed concern that they are being left behind by a new model of research at Boise State University that urges faculty to seek outside funding. While recognizing that this emphasis places a burden on all faculty, we would note that for many disciplines in the humanities, opportunities to secure external funding are quite rare in comparison to the opportunities for disciplines in the sciences and applied arts; where such opportunities exist, the funding is comparatively weak. One explanation for this fact is that research in many of the liberal arts disciplines is typically a solitary task, not involving infrastructure or a team of researchers. Thus, the shift at Boise State from funding travel and research grants to “seed grants” for the preparation of applications for large outside grants leaves many of our faculty without options for funding the comparatively modest needs of scholarship in the liberal arts. To be clear, we recognize that funding is available for scholars in the liberal arts – but not the sort of funding that brings “indirects,” course buy-outs, and travel with it. That is why the shift outlined above has such negative consequences for many disciplines. We thus urge the university to consider various ways of ensuring more support for research in the liberal arts. We would suggest the following, as a start:

Departments should have an adequate Operating Expenses budget to guarantee a minimum of $1,000.00 per year in research travel per faculty member, without having to cannibalize other operating expense needs.

Faculty in disciplines that are not well-funded by outside sources be guaranteed a minimum of $2,000.00 per year in a research account. This is in line with the minimum that occurs at recognized research institutions. If the goal of Boise State University is to become a research university, such monies need to become part of the landscape here.

We are encouraged by the fact that the Vice President for Research has given approximately $20,000.00 per year to the Colleges of Social Sciences and Public Affairs and Arts and Sciences for research, but note that the amount does not come close to meeting the need.

Release time needs to be more readily available. Funding for release time for faculty to work on research projects has shrunk at Boise State University. In part this is due to the fact that large grants typically come with “buy outs,” but, again, many disciplines are unable to play the “buy out” game.

Encouragement needs to be given to faculty in the liberal arts to incorporate students in their research. This is more difficult than it might seem at first blush, because, again, much research in the humanities is in fact solitary. Nonetheless, creative solutions must be sought.

The Need for New Faculty The plea for additional faculty was second only to interest in curricular issues at our forums. Participants from many disciplines, but particularly those in the liberal arts, described the strained human resources available to meet the increasing demands on them and their departments. Given the shared opinion that faculty numbers are currently too low, any hope of successfully implementing any of our recommendations is borne by the promise of new faculty lines, whether as full time, tenure-track faculty or special lecturers.
Conclusion This is a time of unprecedented change at Boise State. Many faculty have been energized by changes that have recently taken place and are excited about the university’s prospects as an emerging locus of creativity and economic development for the Treasure Valley. There is, however, significant concern among very many faculty about preserving balance in the university’s mission and establishing parity among the academic units that serve it. While a few faculty who participated in our forums expressed some doubts about the results of this committee’s work, everyone voiced gratitude for the opportunity to discuss the status and role of the liberal arts at Boise State. We wish to emphasize the fact that a metropolitan research university of distinction is in the first place a university: an institution with diverse academic “organs” that each serves an essential role in its preservation and flourishing. None of the recommendations outlined above can be implemented without further investigation, and their implementation will undoubtedly cause some pain to individuals and units within the university. Pain is never good as such, but growing pains are an appropriate response to maturation, and far graver fates than pain can befall an institution that resists directing its development in a thoughtful and purposeful way. We hope that this report serves as an opening move in further determining the ways in which Boise State University will continue to develop and grow.
APPENDIX A
Learning For Life Steering Committee

Lisa Brady History

Craig Hemmens Criminal Justice, Honors College

Nick Miller History

Amy Moll Materials Science

Tara Penry English

Tony Roark Philosophy

Susan Shadle Chemistry, CTL

Sarah Toevs Community and Environmental Health

David Wilkins Geosciences

Scott Yenor Political Science

APPENDIX B
Learning For Life 10/17 Kick-Off Luncheon Attendeees

Bruce Balinger	Mike Markel
Barton Barbour	Suzanne McCorkle
Michael Blain	Vera McCrink
Lisa Brady	Nick Miller
Marcellus Brown	Amy Moll
Ingrid Brudenell	Nicole Molumby
Mark Buchanan	Marilyn Moody
Peter Buhler	Janice Neri
Joan Carnosso	Marcy Newman
Mary Frances Casper	Beret Norman
Bill Clement	Jacky O'Connor
Dora Dhoore	Charles Odahl
Lee Dubert	Gloria Ostrander-Dykstra
Dewey Dykstra	Julia Oxford
Emma Easteppe	Jack Pelton
Amy Elliott	Lynda Ransdell
Heidi Estrem	Tony Roark
Patricia Frederickson	Bruce Robbins
Pam Gehrke	Roy Rodenhiser
Jim Girvan	Mark Rudin
Andy Goodman	Michael Samball
Steve Grantham	Rena Sanderson
Charles Hanna	David Saunders
Mark Hansen	Sandra Schackel
Craig Hemmens	Marty Schimpf
Heike Henderson	Diane Schooley-Petis
Robert Henry	Susan Shadle
Mariah Devereux Herbeck	Gail Shuck
Jason Herbeck	Rick Stoddart
Greg Hill	Sarah Toevs
Cheryl Hindrichs	Elaine Watson
Peter Hodges	Mark Wheeler
Uwe Kaiser	Liz Wiatr
George Knight	Dave Wilkins
Melissa Kozel	Russell Willerton
Bob Kustra	Steve Wilson
Clifford LeMaster	Wita Wojtkowski
Shelley Lucas	Shelton Woods
Lynn Lubamersky	Scott Yenor
Daryl Macomb

APPENDIX C
Faculty Who Attended At Least One Learning For Life Forum

Robin Allen Sona Andrews Teresa Boucher Lisa Brady Kara Brascia Mark Buchanan Joan Carnosso Mary Frances Casper Bill Clement Memo Cordova Marty Downey Dewey Dykstra Emma Easteppe Heidi Estrem Wayne Fischer Eric Forte Charles Gains John Gardner Ginny Gilbert Jim Girvan Bhaswati Ghosh Steve Grantham Trevor Hall Denise Heald Craig Hemmens Bob Henry Robert Hency Jason Herbeck Peter Hodges Janet Holmes Ginna Husting

Jim Jirak Uwe Kaiser Sabine Klahr Richard Klautsch Joanne Klein George Knight Melissa Kozel Lynn Lubamersky Sharon McGuire Nick Miller Amy Moll Marilyn Moody Beret Norman Tara Penry Tony Roark Larry Rogien Mike Samball David Saunders Sandy Schackel Susan Shadle Gail Shuck Sarah Toevs Barbara Schroeder Misty Wall Thad Welch David Wilkins Shelton Woods Scott Yenor Richard Young John Ziker

Schedule

nmiller — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 14:40:21 CDT

Date		Time	Notes	Venue
Wednesday, October 17, 2007	Kickoff Luncheon	12:40-1:30	"Post It" Notes Compilation	Hatch Ballroom
Wednesday, October 31, 2007	What Do We Mean by Liberal Arts?	1:30 to 2:30 pm	Forum Notes	ILC 315 (Center for Teaching & Learning)
Tuesday, November 13, 2007	The Liberal Arts and the Core I	11:00 am to noon	Forum Notes	ILC 315
Thursday, December 6, 2007	The Liberal Arts and the Core II	3:00 to 4:00 pm	Forum Notes	ILC 315
Thursday, January 24, 2008	Interdisciplinarity and the Liberal Arts	11:40-12:30 pm	Forum Notes	ILC 315
Wednesday, February 6, 2008	Professionalization and the Liberal Arts	1:30-2:30 pm	Forum Notes	ILC 315
Tuesday, February 19, 2008	Citizenship and the Liberal Arts	10:30-11:30 am	Forum Notes	ILC 315
Monday, March 3, 2008	Internationalization and the Liberal Arts	2:30-3:30 pm	Forum Notes	ILC 315
Thursday, March 20, 2008	Physical Plant, Administration and the Liberal Arts	10:40-11:30 am	Forum Notes	ILC 315
Tuesday, April 8, 2008	The Role of Research in the Liberal Arts	1:40-2:30 pm	Forum Notes	ILC 315
Wednesday, April 23, 2008	Final Words	12:40-1:30	Forum Notes	ILC 315

April 23, 2008 Notes

nmiller — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 14:39:31 CDT

April 23 2008
Final Session

Tony Roark
Nick Miller
Susan Shadle
Lisa Brady
David Wilkins
Shelton Woods
Memo Cordova
Gail Schuck
Mark Buchanan
Lynn Lubamersky
Craig Hemmens
Janet Holmes
Mike Samball

This is the wide open session, where we consider our hopes, dreams, fantasies. What do you want to see?

Have there been other sessions where ideas have been discussed?

Yes, but this is our opportunity to enjoy a wide open exchange

1. An emphasis from the president’s office on the importance of an excellent grounding in the liberal arts. And also in BSU’s striving for an excellent liberal arts curriculum. Seems like kind of a black hole. It’s never foregrounded, it’s always that we come here for practical training. Stanley Fish has a really good piece on the notion that it is hard to argue that LA will get you paid more, but that there are intangibles without which democracies fail. Really interesting pursuit, trying to torque a la education into something that has a dollar value

2. DW: it’s more a personal value – how do you understand other people if you’re trained to do one thing. You need the grounding in all of it, have to tie it together. It’s linking things together recognizing that disciplines are not silos, ought to be more porous, permeable. We ignore that for our own disciplines, focused on the end game, which is getting students out efficiently, expeditiously, can do that but must do it well too.

3. MB: thinking that what if we begin to – for those of us who are more professional – of getting them into the major and saving some of the interdis etc. core till later; maybe they’ll appreciate it more. Maybe they’ll resent it. But what if they took it after the professional stuff. A break to get out of their discipline. Undeveloped idea.

4. Great, but I have advisees who have math late and they just don’t like it.

5. DW a more mature audience might actually be able to take those courses with more depth in mind, not as preparation. Year away from your major? Like a year away from campus.

6. GS: we have capstone courses of some kind, some kind of culmination. What if we used that capstone experience to come back, cross disciplinary, we all like those kinds of connections, opportunity for students to use core areas for that depth at the end. Cross listed senior seminars, things like that.

7. DW I like this thought process

8. GS last year read, not first year read.

9. Read is not a noun!!

10. Memo: little passion for what you really believe in, whatever it is. Where is th epassion to do what we do? What’s our carbon footprint in our drive to become a better person? What’s our primary purpose in being here? What’s your passion?

11. No way to tell a student that because we are passionate about it, we sometimes have to leave the classroom to do something else – present a paper, etc.

12. LL: I do research, I do teaching, I am not your high school professor, you are not in high school – we have split obligations, university Is a place of the exchange of many things

13. The life of the mind, it’s the life of the mind

14. LL: we want a raise could go at the top of the list

15. ??: ML: encouragement to think innovatively, to do things differently, exciting to do it differently than other schools; also to think sequentially, what if it was in this or that year, when do we want students to do what? Mid career, beginning, end, etc.

16. ??: ML: material conditions; adjuncts are challenged, we are challenged, materially, they are serious and need to be addressed, and can be part of the conversation

17. LB to create better facilities, a center, etc. something to focus the Liberal Arts, a place for them to go and feel comfortable, part of a larger initiative
18. GS students treat each other differnretly, have a different discourse than a prof would get; wouldn’t it be great if we had a time during th eweek like 12-2 every Wednesday when we have no classes, nothing to do, totally open, to sit and reflect. Part of the program to have reflection time?! Really cool to have time where everything would be put on hold. Everyone could talk to each other.

19. Some colleges call it a colloquium period.

20. SS: ok, then I can schedule work during that time.

21. SS: another thing she (MY Freshman Year) experienced is that she saw opportunities for students to be engaged in lots and lots of things – she saw them go off in their particularized ways; several times during these for a, “what if we had a series, an institute…”—what we need to do is frame what we already have as a more coherent mission; how is a dist. Lect. Series part of the care and feeding of the liberal arts? Of students and faculty? In a way that becomes explicit, etc.

22. LB also developed in isolation, not getting enough visibility, not marketed to right people.

23. DW students all already overbooked – they get mass emails too.

24. LB making the links would be nice

25. DW could we have university seminar series where students sign up for credit hours, requirement is to take part in these things; team taught, pre-scheduled because we know what is going on ahead of time.

26. That would be great.

27. DW libart prefix, have it as an Area I or II core class. Meet once a week, activities every week.

28. CH: students don’t think about doing these things; do we have to impose these things on them, have to force it on them? How to reach them all?

29. LB how do we pay for it? Biggest problem facing this group? We are all in different disciplines, but there are demands on time and funds that we can’t necessarily shift to other places? We need to hire twenty new professors to do this new thing? Adjuncts to do this?
30. We already have huge needs? If we can’t take a step without hiring, then why are we here? If they don’t want us to innovate until we get paid, then it won’t happen.

31. DW: adjuncts come with own problems for this type of program

32. TR we might be able to do it without a net increase in classroom hours

33. Memo: are the examples of satellite campuses that focus on arts, lit – other examples of places that have a foothold, but we have no basis on which to start it?

34. LL need a change in structure, change in governance, change in ... greater faculty self-governance, we have the ideas, the expertise, the inspiration to do it here

35. Problem in self-governance is that I won’t have time to teach, to do my own writing, etc. if more governance comes my way; so many new initiatives are being offloaded on faculty; there have got to be recognitions of how much work they want faculty to do

36. LL things that are planned are not conducive to the future plans as announced

37. Would be nice to see, but I see no indication that it would be heard

38. MS: we need to market this to upper admin, I’ve been hearing this for 30 years; look at PSU, which did this 15 to 20 years ago…my point is that the prez and the provost have to be, they have to, we have to put the big sell on them. They have to see why rethinking this and the liberal arts, even in the classroom, people flinch when they hear that they are getting a LA education – have the philosophical discussion, with upper admin, get them to see why it matters. Also, what is the incentive for faculty members. This was a long discussion – support for idea that gen ed can go on throughout four years; the point though is that you have to sell promote propagandize etc. and make create excitement for this next four years for students, in a world where everyone is into getting a job.

39. SS general sense is that we’ve talked about creating programs with all the attendant stuff. That may well have a strong impact, but what we may well need is something big, that is part of how BSU is marketed with people, something that tinkers with the way the uni is structured – it is scary to think about rethinking th ecore structure…creating a course…talking to other department…credit for this or that…it’s difficult. But if we do things within our current structure, it could go away.

40. Memo; students are tech savvy – will need to deal with students who are 20 30 40 miles away; that element is there, another dimension.

41. MS: single course that everyone takes; they only do that with hundreds..we have too many students. But you know that argument is bogus these days with hybrid courses, etc.

42. Memo: who’s heard of second life? That idea of another level of access is what interest’s me

43. Mike: what we’d want is something that allows us to think into the future, to be imaginative, to be malleable, not just be these ex number of courses sitting there…need some ablity not to be locked in, not to say ten years later, how do we change it. Instead, have it be flexible.

44. DW needs to be flexible. Lower division tends not to change. It needs to be changeable. Starts with the silos. Higher level classes, they are in a silo. This is ours, that’s theirs.

45. Gail: The metaphor of the silo: huge structural thing. We operate in departments. It’s all about departments. Everything. Starts there. Whatever the big thing is, it’s gotta be looking at how to solve that issue. Then within our department we have disciplines. How they get built. Tends to be within departments. Has to be in here somewhere, don’t know how, what it would look like. Look at what students are doing to get around this stuff? They make the connections…but then they need an advisor, who is….within a department! Will have some type of designation, that gets to be hard.

46. Mike: there has to be someone who is assessing leading pulling in faculty…administration is important, and nobody likes to hear that.

47. LB Center that has resources, library, grant getting resources, engagement…

Home Page

nmiller — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 14:35:24 CDT

Learning for Life: An Initiative for the Liberal Arts at Boise State

Schedule

“Learning for Life: An Initiative for the Liberal Arts at Boise State” is a faculty-led initiative designed to explore and enhance the values of liberal arts education at Boise State University. Over the course of the academic year, the initiative will provide a forum that will engage faculty in generating a set of recommendations: (A) to ensure that we offer our students opportunities to engage in the liberal arts in a variety of ways; and (B) that our graduates are prepared to learn for life.

President Kustra hosted a faculty luncheon on October 17 in the Hatch Ballroom to kick off the initiative. In his address to the faculty, Dr. Kustra challenged the faculty to think of our graduates as the “citizens of tomorrow” and to consider the ways that liberal arts add value to our undergraduate degrees and the role we have to play in shaping the future. The 70 faculty members gathered for the kick-off followed up with a brainstorming session to describe the state of the liberal arts at Boise State, identifying what they felt were both strengths and areas for improvement in the liberal arts.

The ideas generated are now being used by the faculty steering committee to identify topics for further discussion. Follow up sessions on these topics, to be held throughout the remainder of the academic year, will focus on generating concrete ideas to both address issues that influence the quality of the education we provide to students and to preserve what is already positive about the liberal arts at Boise State.

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ForumNotes

nmiller — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 10:26:51 CDT

This page will provide links to all of the forum notes. You can also access the forum notes through the Schedule link.

October 17, 2007 (Kickoff Luncheon)
October 31, 2007
November 13, 2007
December 6, 2007
January 24, 2008
February 6, 2008
February 19, 2008
March 3, 2008
April 8, 2008

Forum Notes April 8

nmiller — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 10:24:53 CDT

Learning for Life
April 8, 2008

Research in the Liberal Arts
Notes submitted by Susan Shadle

Faculty in the humanities have a sense that we’re losing a struggle for resources and support in comparison to departments who can do a lot of external fundraising.

When these conversations were focused on the CORE, people sometimes expressed that they might be losing the commitment to teaching as we moved toward more research.

However, it doesn’t seem like there are few resources there for faculty in the liberal arts. In fact, what resources have been available seem to have disappeared or dwindled. For example, the FRAC grants are gone for many faculty ($5000; anyone could apply). Now the program is explicitly for pre-tenure faculty. Research fellow – course release – is also gone (at least in some colleges). SBOE grant used to fund larger amounts ($30K). No longer there.

Seems like the emphasis is on getting external funding, and as that has happened, it seems the internal funding has decreased. It is cheap to do humanities, etc. Small grants/”seed” money could fund the whole research project.

How does our doing research serve the university and our students?
What can be done about it?

The ISLA from Notre Dame is a model. It must be very well-endowed and it may not be possible to replicate it here, but it would be useful to have a source of internal funding and other programs
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I don’t know how many people realize how difficult it is to get external funding in the humanities. There are travel costs to go to sources/archives, but doesn’t cover other costs (hotel, copy costs, etc.). In arts and humanities it is hard to get funding to cover financial costs or to release faculty from time constraints (e.g, course buy-out).

Regardless, our research enhances our teaching, in that it moves the field forward
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Does this raise the question of which departments are in the liberal arts? Which need support?
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Yes, many of the people who originally got interested in this initiative were from disciplines in which this part of supporting scholarship is difficult. It is hard to articulate without sounding like you’re whining. The easy thing for the university to do is to pursue the external funding b/c it takes care of real costs.
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Also, sometimes it is people within a department whose field is less well supported than others.

In other cases, having money is crucial to being a scholar. For example, one colleague (philosopher) of mine tells me that they have only $100/faculty for travel in their budget. However, going to a conference and talking with other philosophers is what philosophers do to move their field forward. Part of the philosopher’s mission is to work scholarly issues out in active discussion.
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Departments with external funding end up having flexibility w/ respect to faculty workloads, shifting money around to support all faculty, etc.
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There is also the issue of being able to do research here at home. For example, resources in the library. Databases have improved and other resources. There is also a difference in the cost of resources for different disciplines.
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Sciences are forced to go after money. It seems more available. It seems the approach has become: the university will not be supporting anyone. If you want funding, you’ll have to go after it yourself.
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However, some departments get matching and other supplemental funding and there isn’t necessarily an effort to be sure all departments get what they need to be successful.
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Social scientists can get grant money.
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You can’t always remake oneself to address local issues, for example, to go after sources of funding.
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Do you not feel like what you are doing is appreciated – by the administration?
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People tell us what we do is neat and cool, but there isn’t really support.
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Is there more competition than there is colleagiality and support?
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History is the “odd” discipline in SSPA. It isn’t really a public policy department. However, we’re high functioning . There hasn’t been competition. Intellectually we are appreciated, but the sources for funding are less available.
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“Area studies” – sources of funding for some historians- is very competitive – shifts with the politics.
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It used to be in SSPA, could get $500 to travel for research. However, most of that got pooled into a “seed money” section to support development work to prepare to apply for larger grants. Well meaning people didn’t realize how $500 could matter in the arts/humanities.
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How do other universities support this? In many places it is supported by large endowments (e.g., the Notre Dame center). In other schools, liberal arts departments are just teaching/support departments. At KU, there is the Hall Center for the Humanities. It supports endowed professorships, set of seminars, grants, and a dedicated staff person to search for funding sources; helped to write grants. That would be great to have here.

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When Mark Rudin was being hired, it was his goal to have embedded people in each college. It would mean a huge growth in his office. I wonder what the chances are of having this happen now and have a person who could support arts/humanities faculty - someone for the Liberal Arts. Perhaps we could advocate for it.
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The university tells the stories of people in the sciences and engineering. It seems to tell the stories of humanities and arts scholarship less often.
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Overhead/indirect costs from big federal grants matter, because they help fund the costs of running the university.
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Scholarship is important – it helps us to be more relevant for teaching. Anectodally, there seems to be a direct correllation between active researchers who are engaged in the discipline and course evals. Staying engaged matters.

SteeringCommittee

nmiller — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 23:34:36 CDT

The steering committee for the initiative includes representation from a broad spectrum of disciplines and includes the following members:

Nick Miller (History)
Tony Roark (Philosophy)
Lisa Brady (History)
Scott Yenor (Political Science)
Susan Shadle (CTL, Chemistry)
Sarah Toevs (Health Science)
David Wilkins (Geosciences)
Amy Moll (Materials Science)
Craig Hemmens (Honors College, Criminal Justice)
Tara Penry (English)

March 20 forum notes

nmiller — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 09:48:57 CDT

March 20 L4L Forum
Structuring the University to Support Liberal Arts:
How Can Physical Plant and Institutional Organization
Enhance a Liberal Arts Experience?

Attendees:
Craig Hemmens
Nick Miller
Tara Penry
Tony Roark

Tara: We can pursue either of the two threads in the title question independently. I have some views about one of the two threads, but I’d like to hear what others think is important.

Nick: Because it’s easier for me to conjure up a mental image what I’d like the campus to look like, I have a preference for discussing physical plant issues.

Craig: I’d also prefer to talk about physical plant.

Tony: There’s so much room for improvement of the physical campus, I’m with you three. I can’t get in to my office without ascending stairs that smell strongly of cat urine. Our department copier is in what used to be a shower. Our communal refrigerator is in the department bathroom. It’s pretty bad.

Tara: I’m also more interested in physical plant. We’ve got all of these new buildings going up on campus, so it seems like we might be able to exercise some influence on their design and use that would be beneficial to liberal arts goals. I don’t know whether a contemplative walking circuit next to the river is in the cards, though.

Tony: Actually, the Master Plan includes enhancement of the greenbelt that flanks the campus. I think we’d be wise to try to piggyback some of our ideas onto initiatives that are already in the works.

Nick: There might also be some accidental benefits to be had. Todd Shallat’s center is moving out to the new land on Parkcenter, and other space configuration is underway. We might be able to direct some of the reallocations of space in ways that benefit more interaction between faculty and different departments.

Craig: The rate at which residential buildings are being constructed here is phenomenal, partly because these buildings can be bonded. In addition to the recent openings, there are more planned for the property south of the Lincoln Ave. parking structure. So it might actually be quite important for us to think about how we can capitalize on these projects in the queue.

Tara: What are some of the issues that need to be addressed in physical plant?

Nick: One basic problem in our college is that we don’t know each other, because we’re so spread out. The fluidity I mentioned earlier might create opportunities to centralize and concentrate faculty offices within a college.

Tara: So we’re facing a potential sprawl problem. What can we do to make it more likely, rather than less likely, that we’ll be seeing our colleagues regularly and interacting with them?

Nick: There’s also some talk that some departments feel out of place in their college. Since we’re brainstorming, we might want to think about that.

Tara: This obviously touches on the other thread in the forum’s title question: institutional organization.

Craig: Are you talking about creating a new college, Nick, or just reconfiguring the existing colleges?

Nick: Well, one option would be to create a new college. I’m not advocating that right now, though.

Craig: That would require new administrative positions, and some are complaining even now that we’re moving towards being top-heavy.

Tara: Maybe one part of our recommendations should be to ask the deans to have a conversation about whether there are reasons to consider shuffling the composition of colleges. They’re in the best position to identify and assess the relevant issues.

Craig: One of the reasons why Econ hasn’t left COBE is that they’re the only dept. that publishes regularly, so they keep the college’s pub numbers up. They’ve made noise about leaving the college, but the college won’t let them leave.

Tara: What sort of day-to-day realities would be affected by such restructuring of colleges? Might there be some other way to “peel the egg” and get the same outcomes? What is it that people want from changing their college?

Nick: In History, we feel like the other departments share publishing patterns and practices that we don’t, so we spend a lot of time explaining ourselves. So I expect that I’ll be having a conversation with our new dean and explaining how things work in our discipline, because social work is about as far from history as can be. From the student perspective, it would be really beneficial if disciplines that are closer to one another could interact more regularly.

Craig: Would we want to be housed with departments that are a lot like us? Maybe interdisciplinarity would be best fostered by mixing things up even more.

Nick: That’s a good question.

Tara: I see the kind of explaining that you talked about, Nick, happening in Arts and Sciences. When someone in English is writing a grant proposal in our college, we find ourselves having to explain what constitutes research in our discipline, how our methodologies differ from the sciences, and so on. There are huge disparities between the sciences and the humanities in terms of collaboration with other colleagues and students. How would this be affected by college changes? What dictates the college structure in a university? Probably budgets, student numbers, and the like. But maybe we could give the deans the agenda of discussing how college structure can promote connections, collaboration, and interdisciplinarity. If they’re resistant, we ought to be prepared with a Plan B to pursue those same ends, though.

Nick: We can solve the proximity issue without changing the college organization.

Tara: That points out the relation between the two threads in the title question.

Craig: So maybe there could be a building with all of the liberal arts-ish departments in it?

Nick: Sure, with a quad and lots of ivy! Seriously, though, I’d like to explore ways of getting faculty more together without affecting deans’ budgets.

Tara: Would it be good to have eating areas and comfortable furniture to study on?

Nick: Craig, you have that in Driscoll Hall.

Craig: That’s true, and it’s great. My office is vibrant and alive, with lots of student activity. From where I sit, BSU feels like a residential campus.

Tara: So one solution would be to have a common area in every building. The LA building, where my department is housed, has absolutely nothing in it. Our conference room is a storage room. We live and work in cinderblock rooms with high windows that you can’t see out of. We hear constant traffic noise from the parking lot and University Drive. Every spring brings fumes from the Art department when they start cooking things

Nick: So maybe the conclusion is that what we’re working with now is hopelessly irremediable. Our space at the back of the Library wasn’t designed for anything in particular, and we were told that we’d be there for just a couple of years. I don’t see any way of reconfiguring that space to make it more hospitable to creative activity.

Tara: Let’s propose that we turn our “warrens” into storage space, because we always need storage. Then we’ll move all faculty offices into buildings like this one we’re in now, where we can have natural light, decent air, and comfortable places to work and meet with students.

Nick: I’m disappointed that they didn’t do more with this building.

Craig: The open space is really nice, but given our needs, they probably could have done more with this space in terms of efficient use of space. Was there any faculty input in the design of this building?

Nick: Not that I know of. Here’s a related peeve of mine: we can’t even get into the library without exiting the building. There we are in the library building, and we don’t even have easy access to it. It’s clear that there was no faculty input on that score.

Tara: That’s another thing for our list: we should ask administrators to talk to faculty about how to design buildings. The faculty senate could form a standing subcommittee whose task would be to provide direction for the growth of the campus over the next twenty years.

Craig: We still want architects to design the buildings, but we should provide them with a list of desiderata that put constraints on their designs.

Tara: That’s a great idea. If nothing else comes out of our meeting today, I think that’s one thing that we ought to do.

Sessions

nmiller — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 09:44:40 CDT

Tuesday, April 8, 1:40-2:30

Research and the Liberal Arts

Center for Teaching and Learning (ILC 315)

Join us for the next problem-solving forum in the Learning For Life Initiative in the Liberal Arts.

Solutions and ideas generated at this forum, and others to come, will ultimately be delivered to University vice presidents and faculty governing bodies. Drop in or register your plan to attend on our Fall Workshops page and select this event.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Learning for Life Initiative Steering Committee

Links of Interest

nmiller — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 11:13:03 CST

Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts, University of Notre Dame
Washington Center, Evergreen State College (on Learning Communities)
Harvard Curriculum Reform, Comment by Thomas Ehrlich (see attachment below for both commentaries)
The Case for History and the Humanities, by Gabrielle M. Spiegel, President of the American Historical Association
The Goals of A Liberal Education, by William Cronon, University of Wisconsin
Liberal Education and Global Responsibility, by Martha Nussbaum, University of Chicago

Martha Nussbaum on Global Education

nmiller — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 11:12:04 CST

Liberal Education and Global Responsibility

A talk for The Council of Independent Colleges, CAO conference
Santa Fe, New Mexico, November 3, 2002

Martha Nussbaum

I
The towers of Troy are burning. All that is left of the once-proud city is a group of ragged women, bound for slavery, their husbands dead in battle, their sons murdered by the conquering Greeks, their daughters raped. Hecuba their queen invokes the king of the gods, using, remarkably, the language of democratic citizenship: "Son of Kronus, Council-President of Troy, father who gave us birth, do you see these undeserved sufferings that your Trojan people bear?" The Chorus answers grimly, "He sees, and yet the great city is no city. It has perished, and Troy exists no longer." A little later, Hecuba herself concludes that the gods are not worth calling on, and that the very name of her land has been wiped out.
In one way, the ending of this drama is as bleak as any in the history of tragic drama. Death, rape, slavery, fire destroying the towers, the city's very name effaced from the record of history by the acts of rapacious and murderous Greeks. And yet, of course, it did not happen that way, not exactly. For the story of Troy's fall is being enacted, some six hundred years after the event, by a company of Greek actors, in the Greek language of a Greek poet, in the presence of all the adult citizens of Athens, most powerful of Greek cities. Hecuba's cry to the gods even imagines him as a peculiarly Athenian type of civic official, president of the city council. So the name of the land didn't get wiped out after all. The imaginations of the conquerors were haunted by it, transmitted it, and mourn it. Obsessively their arts repeat the events of long-ago destruction, typically inviting, as here, the audience's compassion for the women of Troy and

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blame for their assailants. In its very structure the play makes a claim for the moral value of compassionate imagining, as it asks its audience to partake in the terror of a burning city, of murder and rape and slavery. Insofar as members of the audience are engaged by this drama, feeling fear and grief for the conquered city, they demonstrate the ability of compassion to cross lines of time, place, and nation – and also, in the case of many audience members, the line of sex, perhaps more difficult yet to cross.

Nor was the play an aesthetic event cut off from political reality. The dramatic festivals of Athens were sacred festivals strongly connected to the idea of democratic deliberation, and the plays of Euripides were particularly well known for their engagement with contemporary events. In this case, the audience that watched The Trojan Women had recently voted to put to death the men of the rebellious colony of Melos and to enslave the women and children. Euripides invites them to contemplate the real human meaning of their actions. Compassion for the women of Troy should at least cause moral unease, reminding Athenians of the full and equal humanity of people who live in distant places, their fully human capacity for suffering.
But did those imaginations really cross those lines? Think again of that invocation of Zeus. Trojans, if they worshipped Zeus as king of gods at all, surely did not refer to him as the president of the city council. The term prytanis is an Athenian legal term, completely unknown elsewhere. So it would appear that Hecuba is not a Trojan but a Greek. Her imagination is a Greek democratic (and, we might add, mostly male) imagination. Maybe that's a good thing, in the sense that the audience is surely invited to view her as their fellow and equal. But it still should give us pause. Did compassion really enable those Greeks to reach out and think about the real humanity of others, or did it stop short, allowing them to reaffirm the essential Greekness of everything that's human? Of course compassion required making the Trojans somehow familiar, so that Greeks could see their own vulnerability in them. But it's so easy for the familiarization to go too far: they are just us, and we are the ones who suffer humanly. Not those other ones, over there in Melos.

America's towers, too, have burned. Compassion and terror are in the fabric of our lives. And now we must face the possibility that we, like the Greek army, will be not only victims but also causes of devastation in foreign lands. In the lives of Americans since 9/11, we do see

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evidence of the good work of compassion, as Americans make real to themselves the sufferings of so many different people whom they never would otherwise have thought about: New York firefighters, bereaved families of so many national and ethnic origins, even, sometimes, Arab-Americans who have suffered unfairly from airport searches and other types of mistreatment. Sometimes our compassion even crosses that biggest line of all, the national boundary. Tragedy has surely led many people to sympathize with the women of Afghanistan in a way that feminists tried to get people to do for ages, without success. All too often, however, the nation is the stopping place. In the New York Times issue this September, commemorating 9/11, I was asked to comment on how America has changed. I wrote that Americans are becoming more curious and at least a little more knowledgeable about problems of poverty and lack of education in other parts of the world. But when my piece came out, it was on a page with about 20 other pieces, not one of which mentioned any other nation but the U. S., thus casting grave doubt, at least, on my optimistic contention.
This narrowness is well known, in philosophical debates about the value of compassion as a moral sentiment. Adam Smith, in the mid-eighteenth century, offered one of the best accounts we have of sympathy and compassion, and of the ethical achievements of which this moral sentiment is capable. But when he came to revise his work after a life spent in politics, he added a section that issues a solemn warning against trusting this imperfect sentiment too far when we are trying to get clear about our obligations to people at a distance. The compassionate imagination, he argues, is fickle and partisan:

Let us suppose that the great empire of China, with all its myriads of inhabitants, was suddenly swallowed up by an earthquake, and let us consider how a man of humanity in Europe, who had no sort of connexion with that part of the world, would be affected upon receiving intelligence of this dreadful calamity. He would, I imagine, first of all, express very strongly his sorrow for the misfortune of that unhappy people, he would make many melancholy reflections upon the precariousness of human life, and the vanity of all the labours of man, which could thus be annihilated in a moment....And when all this fine philosophy was over, when all these humane sentiments had been once fairly expressed, he would pursue his business or his pleasure, take his repose or his diversion, with the same ease and tranquillity, as if no such accident had happened. The most frivolous disaster which could befal himself would occasion a more real disturbance. If he was to lose his little finger to-morrow, he would not sleep to-night; but, provided he never saw them, he will snore with the more profound security over the ruin of a hundred millions of his brethren, and the destruction of that immense multitude seems plainly an object less interesting to him, than this paltry misfortune of his own.
That's just the issue that should trouble us, as we think about American reactions to September 11. We see a lot of "humane sentiments" around us, and extensions of sympathy

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beyond people's usual sphere of concern. But how often, both now and at other times, those sentiments stop short at the national boundary. The genocide in Rwanda didn't even work up enough emotion in us to prompt humanitarian intervention. Floods, earthquakes, cyclones – and the daily deaths of thousands from preventable malnutrition and disease – none of these makes the American world come to a standstill, none elicits a tremendous outpouring of grief and compassion. At most we get what Smith so trenchantly described: a momentary flicker of feeling, quickly dissipated by more pressing concerns close to home.

And sometimes things are still worse: our sense that the "us" is all that matters can easily flip over into a demonizing of an imagined "them", a group of outsiders who are imagined as enemies of the invulnerability and the pride of the all-important "us." Just as parents' compassion for their own children can all too easily slide into an attitude that promotes the defeat of other people's children, so too with patriotism: compassion for our fellow Americans can all too easily slide over into an attitude that wants America to come out on top, defeating or subordinating other peoples or nations.
One vivid example of this slide took place at a baseball game I went to at Chicago's Comiskey Park, the first game played there after September 11 – and a game against the Yankees, so there was a heightened awareness of the situation of New York and its people. Things began well, with a moving ceremony commemorating the firegighters who had lost their lives, and honoring local firefighters who had gone to New York afterwards to help out. There was even a lot of cheering when the Yankees took the field, a highly unusual transcendence of local attachments. But as the game went on and the beer flowed, one heard, increasingly, the chant "U-S-A. U-S-A," a chant left over from the Olympic hockey match in which the U. S. defeated Russia. This chant seemed to express a wish for America to defeat, abase, humiliate its enemies. Indeed, it soon became a general way of expressing the desire to crush one's enemies, whoever they were. When the umpire made a bad call that went against the Sox, the same group in the stands turned to him, chanting "U-S-A." In other words, anyone who crosses us is evil, and should be crushed. It's not surprising that Stoic philosopher and Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, trying to educate himself to have an equal respect for all human beings, reports

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that his first lesson was "Not to be a fan of the Greens or Blues at the races, or the light-armed or heavy-armed gladiators at the Circus."
How can we educate American citizens who do take seriously the reality of lives outside America, and who think of political events accordingly? Citizens who are not simply Americans, but citizens of the entire world, committed to both compassion and justice for the millions who suffer, not only from war, but from daily preventable tragedies such as malnutrition and disease? A child born in the U. S. today has life expectancy at birth of 78.6 years. A child born in Sierra Leone has life expectancy at birth of 38 years. In approximately one third of the world's nations, less than 50% of women can read and write. How can we educate American citizens who think responsibly about such problems, and America's role in forming a world community to work on their solution? And what role do our independent colleges and universities play in this process of forming imaginative and compassionate world citizens? In this talk I will first confront a problem about the imagination, the one that is mentioned in my example from Greek tragedy. Then I shall talk about the role of the idea of liberal arts education, an idea increasingly taking hold around the world, in producing the sort of citizen who is well placed to solve this problem as well as it may be solved.

II

Let's look first at the compassionate imagination. Compassion is an emotion rooted, probably, in our biological heritage. But this history does not mean that compassion is devoid of thought. In fact, as Aristotle argued long ago, human compassion standardly requires three thoughts: that a serious bad thing has happened to someone else; that this bad event was not (or not entirely) the person's own fault; and that we ourselves are vulnerable in similar ways. Thus compassion forms a psychological link between our own self-interest and the reality of another person's good or ill. For that reason it is a morally valuable emotion – when it gets things right. Often, however, the thoughts involved in the emotion, and therefore the emotion itself, go astray, failing to link people at a distance to one's own current possibilities and vulnerabilities. (Rousseau said that kings don't feel compassion for their subjects because they count on never being human, subject to the vicissitudes of life.) Sometimes, too, compassion goes wrong by

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getting the seriousness of the bad event wrong: sometimes, for example, we just don't take very seriously the hunger and illness of people who are distant from us. These errors are likely to be built into the nature of compassion as it develops in childhood and then adulthood: we form intense attachments to the local first, and only gradually learn to have compassion for people who are outside our own immediate circle. For many Americans, that expansion of moral concern stops at the national boundary.

Most of us are brought up to believe that all human beings have equal worth. At least the world's major religions and most secular philosophies tell us so. But our emotions don't believe it. We mourn for those we know, not for those we don't know. And most of us feel deep emotions about America, emotions we don't feel about India, or Russia, or Rwanda. In and of itself, this narrowness of our emotional lives is probably acceptable and maybe even good. We need to built outward from meanings we understand, or else our moral life would be empty of urgency. Aristotle long ago said, plausibly, that the citizens in Plato's ideal city, asked to care for all citizens equally, would actually care for none, since care is learned in small groups with their more intense attachments. Plato tried to remove partiality by removing family ties, and asking all citizens to care equally for all other citizens. Aristotle says that the difficulty with this strategy is that "there are two things above all that make people love and care for something, the thought that it is all theirs, and the thought that it is the only one they have. Neither of these will be present in that city" (Pol. 1262b22-3). Because nobody will think of a child that it is all theirs, entirely their own responsibility, the city will, he says, resemble a household in which there are too many servants, so nobody takes responsibility for any task. Because nobody will think of any child or children that they are the only ones they have, the intensity of care that characterizes real families will simply not appear, and we will have, he says, a "watery" kind of care all round (1262b15).

Aristotle's followers, the ancient Greek and Roman Stoics, denied this: they said that we can and should care for all people equally. Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius, who was also the Roman Emperor, wrote a book of solitary self-scrutiny entitled To Himself. He argues that our moral task is to unlearn systematically all our local attachments. As I said, he reports that the first

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lesson he learned from his tutor was "not to be a fan of the Greens or Blues at the races, or the light-armed or heavy-armed gladiators at the Circus" (I.5).

The question Marcus's reflections raise for us is, whether this negative lesson leaves the personality enough resources to motivate intense concern with people anywhere. Marcus tells us of the meditative exercises that he regularly performs, in order to get himself to the point at which the things that divide people from one another do not matter to him. Getting to the point where we can give concern even-handedly to all human beings requires, as Marcus makes abundantly clear, the systematic extirpation of intense cares and attachments directed at the local: one's family, one's city, the objects of one's love and desire. Thus Marcus needs to learn not only not to be a sports fan, but also not to be a lover. Consider the following extraordinary passage, describing his spiritual exercises:

How important it is to represent to oneself, when it comes to fancy dishes and other such foods, "This is the corpse of a fish, this other thing the corpse of a bird or a pig." Similarly, "This Falernian wine is just some grape juice," and "This purple vestment is some sheep's hair moistened in the blood of some shellfish." When it comes to sexual intercourse, we must say, "This is the rubbing together of membranes, accompanied by the spasmodic ejaculation of a sticky liquid." How important are these representations, which reach the thing itself and penetrate right through it, so that one can see what it is in reality. (VI.13)i

Not being a fan of the Blues means, too, not being a fan of this body or that body, this soul or that soul, this city or that city.
But getting rid of our erotic investment in bodies, sports teams, family, nation – all this leads us into a strange world, a world that is gentle and unaggressive, but also strangely lonely and hollow, a world of justice without a basis in love, even-handedness without any strong reason why even-handedness should matter -- a life that is in crucial respects not human life any longer. The human life we know is unfair, uneven, full of war, full of me-first nationalism and divided loyalty. But Marcus sees that we can't so easily remove these attachments while retaining humanity. So, if that ordinary humanity is unjust, get rid of it. But can we live like this, once we see the goal with Marcus's naked clarity? Isn't justice something that must be about and for the living? It is not very surprising that Marcus, while a basically good emperor, was a terrible father, producing a son whom the film Gladiator correctly depicts as a moral monster. (The film actually iBased on Hadot/Chase (1998), with some modifications.

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errs in the direction of softening, since it leaves out the ways in which Commodus systematically tortured wild animals, arranging mass giraffe hunts, etc.) It's hard to say, given what we know, but such a man, caring for nothing, might have been produced by this gentle father's utter lack of particular love.

III

Let me proceed from now on on the hypothesis Marcus was in one way right: removing attachments to the local and the particular does deliver to us a death within life. Let me also proceed on the hypothesis that we should reject this course as an unacceptable route to the goal of world justice, or even one that makes the very idea of justice a hollow fantasy.

It looks as if we are back where Aristotle leaves us: with the unreliability of the compassionate imagination, and yet the need to rely on it, since we have no more perfect motive. This does not mean that we need give up on the idea of equal human dignity, or respect for it. But insofar as we retain, as well, our local attachments, our relation to that motive must always remain complex and dialectical, a difficult conversation within ourselves as we ask how much humanity requires of us, and how much we are entitled to give to our own. But any such difficult conversation will require, for its success, the work of the imagination. If we don't have exceptionless principles, if, instead, we need to negotiate our lives with a complex combination of moral reverence and erotic attachment, we need to have a keen imaginative and emotional understanding of what our choices mean for people in conditions of many different kinds, and the ability to move resourcefully back and forth from the perspective of our personal loves and cares to the perspective of the distant. Not the extirpation of compassion, then, but its extension and education. Compassion within the limits of respect. How might such an extension be arranged? And what role might the idea of liberal arts education play in its education and extension?
The philosophical tradition helps us identify places where compassion goes wrong: by making errors about fault, about seriousness, about the circle of concern. But the ancient

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tradition, not being very interested in childhood, does not help us see clearly how and why it goes especially badly wrong. So to begin the task of educating compassion as best we can, we need to ask how and why local loyalties and attachments come to take in some instances an especially virulent and aggressive form, militating against a more general sympathy. To answer this question we need a level of psychological understanding that was not available in the ancient Greek and Roman world, or not completely. I would suggest that one problem we particularly need to watch out for is a type of pathological narcissism in which the person demands complete control over all the sources of good, and a complete self-sufficiency in consequence. This pathology occurs repeatedly in human life. Aristotle saw it in people who thought they could never suffer, and who in consequence, he said, cannot have compassion for others: he called this a hubristike diathesis, an overweening disposition. Rousseau saw it in the kings and nobles of France, who thought that they were above the usual frailties of human life – and who once again, in consequence, prove unable to have compassion for the sufferings of those "below" them, sufferings that they themselves largely cause. But perhaps this pathology occurs with particular regularity in America, where young people are brought up to think that they are part of a nation that is on top of the world, and that they should expect to be completely in control of everything important in their lives, in consequence. Recent studies of troubled teens in America, particularly the impressive work of Dan Kindlon and Michael Thompson, in their book Raising Cain, has given strong support to this idea. Kindlon and Thompson focus on boys, and they do believe that the problems they bring to light have a gendered aspect, but they are also signs of more general cultural problems. The boys that Kindlon and Thompson study have learned from their culture that real men should be controlling, self-sufficient, dominant. They should never have, and certainly never admit to, fear and weakness. The consequence of this deformed expectation, Kindlon and Thompson show, is that these boys come to lack an understanding of their own vulnerabilities, needs and fears, weaknesses that all human beings share. They lack the language in which to characterize their own inner world, and they are by the same token clumsy interpreters of the emotions and inner lives of others. This emotional illiteracy is closely

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connected to aggression, as fear is turned outward, with little real understanding of the meaning of aggressive words and acts for the feelings of others. Kindlon and Thompson's boys, some ten years later, make the sports fans who chanted "U-S-A" at the ump, who think of all obstacles to American supremacy and self-sufficiency as opponents to be humiliated. It is more than a little unfortunate that the foreign policy of our nation is formed and expressed, today, in terms that reinforce these pathologies: we won't let anyone threaten our preeminence, we'll strike first against them, etc. Put these sentiments in the mouth of a kid in high school, and we see them for what they are.

So the first recommendation I would make for a culture of respectful compassion is one that was also made by Rousseau. It is, that an education in common human weakness and vulnerability should be a very profound part of the education of all children. Young people, especially when they are at the crucial time when they are on the verge of adulthood, should learn to be tragic spectators, and to understand with increasing subtlety and responsiveness the predicaments to which human life is prone. Through stories and dramas, history, film, and the study of the global economic system, they should get the habit of decoding the suffering of another, and this decoding should deliberately lead them into lives both near and far. That ability lies at the core of the classic idea of liberal arts education, which insists on common experiences of imagination and understanding, as young people prepare for citizenship and for life. Our independent colleges typically follow Rousseau, bringing young people together not just around a pre-professional or a technical training, but around a larger cultivation of their common humanity, and a deepening of the understandings that can connect one human life to another.

But let me now dissect the concept of liberal education a little more analytically. I shall focus here on its humanistic part. I do not mean to deny that the sciences also contribute crucial elements to liberal education, but perhaps I will be forgiven for focusing on the humanities, since it is that part of the curriculum that is so often under fire, criticized both as useless and as politically controversial.

The very term "liberal education" derives from the Roman philosopher Seneca, who was also a leading politician, in an era of great anxiety and conflict. So let me begin with his

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reflections: Let me begin with Seneca, who lived in a Rome torn by conflict of many kinds. In the letter that invents our modern concept of liberal education, he begins by describing the usual style of Roman education, noting that it is called "liberal" (liberalis, "connected to freedom"), because it is understood to be an education for well-brought-up young gentlemen, who were called the liberales, the "free-born." It was an acculturation into Roman traditions, in which young people simply absorbed received values. He himself, he now announces, would use the term "liberal" in a very different way. In his view, an education is truly "liberal" only if it is one that "liberates" the student's mind, encouraging him or her to take charge of his or her own thinking, leading the Socratic examined life and becoming a reflective critic of traditional practices. (I say "him or her" not just out of contemporary political correctness: Stoic philosophers of the first century AD wrote at length about the equal education of women, and defended the radical view that women as much as men should lead the examined life.) Seneca goes on to argue that only this sort of education will develop each person's capacity to be fully human, by which he means self-aware, self-governing, and capable of respecting the humanity of all our fellow human beings, no matter where they are born, no matter what social class they inhabit, no matter what their gender or ethnic origin. "Soon we shall breathe our last," he concludes in his related treatise On Anger. "Meanwhile, while we live, while we are among human beings, let us cultivate our humanity."
So that is the basic idea, and it is that idea that Rousseau is reappropriating in modern form when he urges his young pupil Emile to develop an understanding of the general shape of human life, the vulnerabilities and possibilities that link all human beings to one another. This concept of a link between liberal education and a deeper and more inclusive kind of citizenship has a special urgency in our times, as we struggle with the burdens of being American in an era of American domination, asking ourselves what we owe to the rest of the world, how we can rightly take our place in international debates of many sorts. Americans especially often link up to the rest of the world through a very thin set of connections: in particular, as consumers and people involved in business, we connect to the rest of the world above all through the global market, that sees human lives as instruments for gain. If institutions of higher education do not build a richer network of human connections it is likely that our dealings with one another will be

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mediated by the impoverished norms of market exchange and profit-making. And these impoverished norms do not help, to put it mildly, if what we want is a world of peace, where people will be able to live fruitful cooperative lives. So that is the general task of the independent college in our era, as I see it: to cultivate the humanity of students so that they are capable of relating to other human beings not through economic connections alone, but through a deeper and wider set of human understandiings.

I have argued, in Cultivating Humanity, that three capacities, above all, are essential to the cultivation of humanity in today's world, and they are all, I believe, built into the structure of education, in differing degrees, in many of our independent colleges and universities. First is the capacity for critical examination of oneself and one's traditions -- for living what, following Socrates, we may call "the examined life." This means a life that accepts no belief as authoritative simply because it has been handed down by tradition or become familiar through habit, a life that questions all beliefs and accepts only those that survive reason's demand for consistency and for justification. Training this capacity requires developing the capacity to reason logically, to test what one reads or says for consistency of reasoning, correctness of fact, and accuracy of judgment. Testing of this sort frequently produces challenges to tradition, as Socrates knew well when he defended himself against the charge of "corrupting the young." But he defended his activity on the grounds that democracy needs citizens who can think for themselves rather than simply deferring to authority, who can reason together about their choices rather than just trading claims and counter-claims. Like a gadfly on the back of a noble but sluggish horse, he said, he was waking democracy up so that it could conduct its business in a more reflective and reasonable way. Our democracy, like ancient Athens, is prone to hasty and sloppy reasoning, and to the substitution of invective for real deliberation. We need Socratic teaching to fulfill the promise of democratic citizenship. A liberal arts college that helps young people speak in their own voice and to respect the voices of others will have done a great deal to produce thoughtful and potentially creative world citizens, citizens who can understand Hecuba's suffering without imposing on it their own schemes of domination.

Citizens who cultivate their humanity need, further, my second element, an ability to see themselves as not simply citizens of some local region or group but also, and above all, as

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human beings bound to all other human beings by ties of recognition and concern. That is the problem, of course, that I have been focused on since the start of this lecture: jolting the imagination out of its complacency, and getting it to take seriously the reality of lives at a distance – without losing its moorings in family and local loves. Cultivating our humanity in a complex interlocking world involves understanding the ways in which common needs and aims are differently realized in different circumstances. This requires a great deal of knowledge that American college students rarely got in previous eras, knowledge of non-Western cultures, and also of minorities within their own, of differences of gender and sexuality. I believe that all undergraduates should be led into the rudiments of world history, and a basic understanding of the major world religions; they should then learn to inquire in more depth into at least one unfamiliar culture.

One further point that I would make in this area is that the study of a foreign language is an extremely important part of developing this sort of global understanding. Even if the language is that of a relatively familiar culture, the sheer activity of seeing the world from the viewpoint of another culture's ways of carving it up and expressing what is important in it, the sheer understanding of why translation is always imperfect and a reinterpretation, is humbling, the best reminder there can be that not all intelligent people have the same view of life.

But, now, let me turn to the third part of my proposal. Citizens cannot think well on the basis of factual knowledge alone. The third ability of the citizen, closely related to the first two, can be called the narrative imagination. This means the ability to think what it might be like to be in the shoes of a person different from oneself, to be an intelligent reader of that person's story, and to understand the emotions and wishes and desires that someone so placed might have. That is why I began this lecture with Hecuba and why I have focused throughout on the development of capacities for imaginative and emotional understanding, capacities that we associate with literature and the other arts. The great John Dewey long ago argued that the arts were modes of intelligent perception and experience that should play a crucial role in education, forming the civic imagination. Even before him, Rousseau, argued that young Emile would only become a good citizen, with compassion for the poor and the downtrodden, if he did have an education nourished by the narrative imagination of human predicaments.

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Courses in literature and the arts can impart this ability in many ways, through engagement with many different works of literature, music, fine art, and dance. But thought needs to be given to what the student's particular blind spots are likely to be, and texts should be chosen in consequence. For all societies at all times have their particular blind spots, groups within their culture and also groups abroad that are especially likely to be dealt with ignorantly and obtusely. Works of art can be chosen to promote criticism of this obtuseness, and a more adequate vision of the unseen. Ralph Ellison, in a later essay about his great novel Invisible Man, wrote that a novel such as his could be "a raft of perception, hope, and entertainment" on which American culture could "negotiate the snags and whirlpools" that stand between us and our democratic ideal. His novel, of course, takes the "inner eyes" of the white reader as its theme and its target. The hero is invisible to white society, but he tells us that this invisibility is an imaginative and educational failing on their part, not a biological accident on his.

So we need to cultivate our students' "inner eyes," and this means carefully crafted courses in the arts and humanities, which bring students into contact with issues of gender, race, ethnicity, and cross-cultural experience and understanding.

What I have just outlined seems pretty unsurprising, since these values are already well entrenched in American concepts of liberal education, and realized in many different ways in colleges and universities of many different kinds. Though more work clearly needs to be done, especially in the international part of the proposal, there are signs of broad commitment to these goals. But in concluding I'd like to mention that this conception of education is by no means to be taken for granted. In fact, although its origin is ancient, as I've said, in modern times it has flourished more or less only in the U. S. In Europe and Asia, for the most part, university students enter to read a single subject only, and higher education is understood to be basically preprofessional, rather than a general preparation for citizenship and life.

Recently, educators around the world have begun to worry about this problem, and have begun to feel the absence of a general liberal arts focus in higher education as a defect that makes it much harder to produce citizens who can think well about the problems of difference that increasingly vex the European nations and the problems of international understanding that

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are urgently on the agenda for all nations. I have been involved in efforts to get liberal arts education going in Sweden and in Italy, in Germany and in Bangladesh. Let me just say a little about the last example, in order to show why the idea of liberal education is increasingly taking center stage.
One of the gravest problems faced by all developing countries is the education of women. In about one third of the world's nations, fewer than 50% of women can even read and write. In the nations of South Asia – India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan – the gender gap is large, although regional variations, and the shining example of Sri Lanka, show that this gap is not caused by economic necessity and can be solved by wise public planning. Public universities do far too little to recruit women from deprived rural backgrounds and to give them the remedial training they often need. Moreover, even more important, the narrow preprofessional training on offer at such universities does not do well at preparing women for leadership positions. Often trained to be passive and unassertive, women do not learn to think critically, or to question dominant assumptions of gender that define their role. In general, the female leaders of the nations of South Asia, both academic and political, tend to be people who have been lucky enough to go and get a liberal arts education abroad; these, of course, are likely to be the wealthy few. For this reason, some new efforts at educating women have increasingly turned to the liberal arts model: both in Dubai and in Karachi, such enterprises are being tested.

The most ambitious such enterprise is still in the planning stages, and I am excited about being involved in it. An international group is establishing a new University for Women. Called Asian University for Women, it will focus on women from South Asia and on women from less than prosperous rural backgrounds. It has been given a land grant by the government of Bangladesh, quite a progressive government on women's issues, and so it will be located in Chittagong, on the seacoast. The curriculum committee consists of four people: Savitri Goonesekere, internationally know former Chancellor of the University of Colombo in Sri Lanka; Ayesha Jalal, a Pakistani-born historian of India, who got her undergraduate degree at Wellesley; Fran Volkmann, the former acting President of Smith College, and me. Other groups working on

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other aspects of the University are a wonderful mixture of nationalities and backgrounds. One thing we all feel very strongly about is the idea of liberal arts education. Even though this is not a popular type of education in the region, AUW is committed to it, out of the shared belief that nothing else can produce the sort of resourceful and critical world citizen that these nations badly need if they are to solve their problems. Our curriculum is still in progress, but here is what it says about the core principles for the Humanities:

The general aim of this part of the curriculum should be to produce young women who can think resourcefully for themselves, participate in discussions of current events and the problems of their region with the capacity to criticize received ideas, with sufficient confidence in their own ideas and initiatives, and with respect and understanding for people who think differently. It is very important that these women be widely and generally informed about world history, world religions, and the ethical debates surrounding globalization and other related pressing issues, and that they should become intelligent participants in these debates, with a strong awareness of ethical issues. At the same time, it is also very important to develop the imagination, so that these women are able to express themselves through the arts and to think creatively about the predicaments of people near and far.

We intend to have, in the first year, a focus on critical thinking and writing, and then a study of major accounts of social justice, with special emphasis on the problems of developing countries. Throughout the curriculum the theme of gender will be woven in, and women will be encouraged to think critically about gender roles, even while being encouraged to do gender differently, becoming active and participatory rather than docile and quiet.
All of this is familiar stuff to people who know American higher education in the humanities. What I want to suggest is that our own preference for this mode of education is no mere accident, and no mere local prejudice, but an idea that has good arguments behind it, when we think about citizenship in the contemporary world. It is for this reason that, despite the fact that this ancient idea looks like an American import, it is increasingly catching on in places that do not have any particular love of America, as a way to empower women, to energize democracy, and to enrich global debates. There are signs today that Americans are turning away from these values, with decreasing expenditures on the humanities and arts. Let us bear firmly in mind that these are among the commitments of which Americans can be most proud, commitments that we can most appropriately recommend, and export, to other nations.

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Let me now return to the example from Greek tragedy with which I began, drawing together these ruminations about American colleges with my problems about compassion and the tragic imagination. As Hecuba's example shows, we need to understand the suffering of distant people, if we are to produce a world that is at least a little better than the one we currently know. As that example also shows, however, and as my talk has emphasized, we always risk error when we imagine the predicament of a distant person. But there are dangers in any act of imagining, and we should not let these particular dangers cause us to admit defeat prematurely, surrendering before an allegedly insuperable barrier of otherness. We should also not follow the path of Marcus, trying to pry ethical reasoning loose from its roots in the imagination and in particular loves. Instead, we can educate our imaginations, through criticism and self-criticism, through learning and artistic creativity – then trust our imaginations, then criticize them again, listening if possible to the critical voices of those we are trying to understand. Perhaps out of this dialectic between criticism and trust something like understanding may eventually grow. At least the product will very likely be better than the obtuseness that so generally reigns in international relations. And I think that this dialectic can best be fostered by schools, colleges, and universities, that take as their goal the task of producing independent, thoughtful, critical citizens of the world, and who use the arts to enrich their historical, ethical, and political thinking.
Rousseau said of such an education, "Thus from our weakness, our fragile happiness is born." Or, at least (since we live in difficult times) it might be born. But if this happiness is to be born, our independent colleges and universities – along with the Asian University for Women in Chittagong -- will be, I believe, its cradles.

February 19 Forum

nmiller — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 11:40:35 CST

“Citizenship and the Liberal Arts”
L4L Spring Forum #3

Present:

Kara Brascia
Nick Miller
Tony Roark
Susan Shadle

Discussion focused on how the University can prepare students for engagement in civic life after college, whether by curricular, co-curricular, or extra-curricular means.

Kara brought up Thomas Ehrlich’s proposal that students need to get 3 things out of a university education to become engaged citizens: content knowledge, motivation, and skills (including consensus building, public speaking, etc.). Particular couses are well suited to providing content knowledge, but the are arguably less well suited to providing skills and motivation, at least in their current form. Class size and pedagogical methods greatly affect how well a course can instill skills. Extra-curricular activities (like service learning) are especially effective in providing motivation and habits.

Kara and Susan then introduced the subject of a new category of scholarship students (President’s Scholars) who all now take an introductory seminar on citizenship; this year’s is focused on voter participation, but the course is expected to evolve. Perhaps this class could serve as a model for a future course offered to a greater number of students (or even required of all students).

The majority of the free-flowing discussion addressed possible ways to introduce some type of requirement that all students would fulfill that would somehow prepare them for engagement in civil society after college.

1. A set of courses? Drawn from political philosophy, sociology, other fields…how many? Will all 3 or 4 thousand students be taking this (or these) classes every fall? What will that do to the structure of the core, the current enrollment balance across disciplines?

2. A single course? Where, in which department? What are the ramifications?

3. An interdisciplinary course or set of courses? How, again, to project the ramifications?

4. Each department has a course that would fulfill the “citizenship” requirement?

5. How would the imagined “citizenship” requirement relate to the current “diversity requirement”?

Each of these alternatives introduces acute practical challenges at all levels of the institution, but particularly at the department level. A provisional consensus emerged that some type of interdisciplinary course(s) might hold great promise in minimizing the staffing challenges to departments while maximizing the opportunity to engage issues and values central to civic preparedness.

March 3, 2008

nmiller — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 11:37:21 CST

March 3 L4L Forum
Internationalization

Attendees:Teresa Boucher
Lisa Brady
Mark Buchanan
Craig Hemmens
Sabine Klahr
Sharon McGuire
Nick Miller
Beret Norman
Tony Roark
Gail Shuck
David Wilkins
Shelton Woods
Scott Yenor

Nick: Is there a place for international issues in a liberal arts curriculum? I assume we all think that the answer is ‘yes’, but we might be concerned about practical difficulties that stand in our way. But let’s try to think about the very best possible outcome that we can imagine and then we can make adjustments. We don’t want our efforts here to duplicate the efforts of the internationalization task force. One of the things we might talk about is the universal foreign language requirement.

Sabine: It’s under consideration by the advisory board.

Nick: I know that one concern is that Modern Languages would have to be as large as English or Math to staff all of the sections required if every student were required to study a foreign language.

Sabine/Beret: That’s a concern.

Shelton: Craig, do all Honors students have to do a language?

Craig: No.

Gail: There’s also skepticism among folks (e.g., on the diversity committee) that one year of a foreign language will confer the kind of appreciation of different cultures that we’re looking for.

Sabine: But the language is just one facet of what we’re hoping they’ll get when international issues are worked into courses across the curriculum.

Gail: I just want to make sure we don’t view the language requirement as a sufficient condition to the achievement of those goals, but rather as a necessary condition.

Beret: We’d need an MA program in Spanish to make it work, because we’d need GA’s to carry the teaching load; we can’t rely on adjuncts to teach the numbers we’d get.

Sabine: That’s one of the problems in integrating internationalization across the curriculum: we don’t have TA’s that can work between departments in the kind of way we’d like. There’s too much isolation.

Nick: We’ve got the diversity requirement, the international advisory board has done its work. Is there some way we can achieve some of the desired outcomes without growing departments?

Gail: We’ve got a faculty learning community here (CTL) working on putting together cross-cultural sections of different courses. A couple of years ago, 7.5% of BSU students identified themselves as non-native English speakers, and I suspect the number is higher now. We’ve got these cross-cultural sections of ENGL 101 and 102 that are purposefully designed to have an even higher percentage in order to expose folks to cultural diversity right there in the class room. Lisa will teach HIST 101 as a cross-cultural section, someone else is doing it in Biology, so I think we’re already doing the sort of thing we’re talking about to some extent.

David: Would you be interested in a Geography course?

Gail: Absolutely. We’re still working out the details of this faculty learning community, but that’d be great.

Scott: Can I ask what kind of connection you see between cross-cultural and LA?

Gail: When I think of a LA curriculum, I think of opportunities to bridge disciplines and get different perspectives on the world. It also includes being self-reflection and thinking about how you came to view things the way you do. When you’re forced to confront different cultures, you can’t help but notice and begin to reflect on your assumptions and values in a way that’s otherwise difficult.

Lisa: Internationalization is an easy way to bridge some of the gaps between disciplines, because although we all work within our own disciplines, confronting different cultural aspects of our disciplines is something we all do, something common that can help us work together without having to learn the details of our collaborator’s discipline.

Nick: This is a low-cost thing, isn’t it?

Gail: Yes, it is. I get a one course release each semester to do the training and organizing. That’s a modest investment for a program involving colleagues from a variety of departments and a good number of students.

Mark: We already offer everything that small liberal arts schools offer. What if some of our students could choose a liberal arts “track” within their chosen field? So a student working in business management could take a specified compliment of courses and get a BA in management without adding extra credits.

David: We’ve thought about that in Geology. We could offer a BA in Geology for someone, say, who would go to work for Exxon Mobile in their marketing department and wouldn’t have to know all of the science. This might increase demand in some of the humanities courses already offered, but maybe not.

Scott: Some of us are working on proposals of this kind.

Gail: I like that idea. My father is a surgeon, and he says with pride that when he’s interviewing interns, he always prefers the English majors, the music majors, the art majors. He says they think better thinkers in many ways than some of their science peers.

Gail: How can a group this small craft a program “template” that would work for every department?

Scott: This group can’t presume to tell departments how to structure their degree programs, but we can consolidate some of the courses that we already teach and designate them worthy of a liberal arts certificate.

David: Certificates are problematic, as lots of students and employers don’t know how to use them. Maybe there would be some way of putting it on the diploma, “I’m internationalized,” or “I’ve got liberal arts.”

Lisa: Maybe the CTL could help put together some kind of template.

David: A minor in internationalization or liberal arts would be viewed much more favorably by students, because they want it on their diploma. It wouldn’t cost very much, but I

Sabine: The internationalization task force didn’t propose a minor as a sort of add-on because we thought that it ought to be woven into the curriculum, not more work tacked on. I see liberal arts as the sort of way; I don’t think it ought to be just something extra that they’re required to do.

Lisa: Nussbaum recommends creating a culture of respectful compassion. This isn’t a suggestion for any particular course of study of an particular field, but rather an ability to appreciate other cultures in order to prevent becoming jingoistic.

David: Does she have any specific recommendations?

Nick: Here’s one: have a course or limited number of courses that’s required of all students that delves deeply into the particular culture and history of a place. In our case, it might already be part of the curriculum.

Sabine: Another way is to require a study-abroad experience, perhaps done in the first year so as to take advantage of the flexibility of first year requirements and to inform the subsequent studies. Princeton has done this. Perhaps we could implement a more modest version of the program.

Nick: That’s quite different form the model in which internationalization is dispersed throughout the curriculum.

Scott: Seems to me that all the reasons to study internationalization can be recast as reasons to study history. If the goal is to get an appreciation of one’s current culture, studying Ancient Greece would be more useful than going to Europe, because Europe is much more like contemporary America than is ancient Sparta.

Sabine: But that’s not the only thing that we’re trying to do.

Mark: What’s the problem we’re trying to address? Is it a matter of market forces, what the students or their parents want? My own goal is to help students get a deeper appreciation of the different pieces of wisdom at a younger age than I was when I got them. I think that’s what the liberal arts are: the philosophy, the language. Until you confront another culture, you can’t really appreciate these things.

Sabine: Who do we want to be as an institution? Who do we want our graduates to be? Worker bees or critical thinkers? I think that all of these initiatives are trying to emphasize the latter, but there’s a lot of institutional inertia favoring the former.

Tony: But there’s lots of evidence that the kind of skills imparted by the disciplines that we traditionally think of as falling in the liberal arts are exactly what employers want. So one desirable outcome of this initiative, in my view, is to get a clearer conception of this truth, to be able to articulate it clearly so that we convince students and their parents of its truth. We are offering many excellent liberal arts courses and programs right now; we can increase the effectiveness of these simply by making students more aware of their actual value.

Lisa: Students always ask “how can a history degree help me?” When we tell them that critical thinking skills are highly desirable in the business world, their eyes glaze over and they can’t make the connection. Besides, our institution has the mandate to serve the community needs in public affairs. So I agree that we have to reconceptualize our mission and put our resources into the service of that end.

Gail: Part of the conversation has to be giving students some level of understanding of “the other.” I’ve heard comments about students walking past another student who looks vaguely Arabic and making a terrorist comment. How can a person who does that be called educated?

David: Next year’s first year read should be helpful in that regard.

Beret: Another idea is the UNIV 101 courses. In MLL we’re doing these in foreign languages. The student gets the training in language, but they also get instruction in what to expect in college, practical help, and also exposure to the importance of being aware of differences among students’ backgrounds, values, experiences.

Gail: Portland State incorporates the first year writing requirement into a course like UNIV 101, which seems like it would be effective. But if it only lasts one year, who knows how long it will stick.

Sharon: If it’s connected to their senior capstone experience, that helps.

David: But starting early on with that kind of intensity makes it much easier to integrate it into higher-level coursework than trying to take someone who’s been here for two or three years, who’s already cynical and inflexible.

Sabine: So where do you go from here?

Nick: We’re charged with producing a set of proposals. We’ll consider everything from the most practical to the most idealistic when we’re putting together the package.

Sabine: I think you should look at integrating your ideas into the existing initiatives, since our action plan is a work in progress and needs updating.

Lisa: One of the best things that has come out of these fora is seeing different faces at the meetings. We’ve got good ideas and proposals, but it’s encouraging seeing people from across the disciplines and realizing that there’s broad based support for improving the liberal arts education students get at Boise State.

Nick: Thanks for coming, everyone.

February 6, 2008

nmiller — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 13:10:13 CST

Professionalism and the Liberal Arts

Wednesday, February 6, 2008

Present:
John Gardner (Engineering)
Craig Hemmens (Honors)
Barbara Schroeder (Academic Technologies)
Susan Shadle (CTL)
Amy Moll (Engineering)
Shelton Woods (SSPA)
Sarah Toevs (COH)
Tony Roark (Philosophy & notetaker – source of any errors and vapidity)
Wayne Fischer (Education, grants)
Mark Buchanan (Business management)

Amy: “What are some of the so-called professional degrees?”

Susan: “Most programs include at least some focus on professional issues. Chemistry does.”

Mark: “The question is, to what extent does any program crowd out those classes that we think are part of a liberal education?”

Amy: “What about History?”

Shelton: “It depends. Some programs are rather regimented, like secondary ed in history. Others have more opportunities for exploration.”

Craig: “I doubt that any History major thinks, ‘I’m getting a history degree in order to get a job.’ A lot of CJ majors are majors just because they find it interesting, but others are looking to getting a job.”

Amy: “What about the constraints? In Engineering, there just isn’t a whole lot of room in the 128 credits for students to take courses of their choice.”

John: “That’s true of our program here, and most every other such program, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Almost all engineering programs have 50% more engineering courses than are required by the accrediting agencies.

Sarah: “It’s bound up with expectations. A lot of students and faculty are of the mindset that every course is supposed to serve a practical purpose, and that every minute within a particular course is supposed to contribute to that end. It’s a kind of culture of practicality.”

John: “If we were to encourage our Engineering students to take more liberal arts courses, they would not. They just hate the courses, hate to read, hate the classroom discussion.”

Sarah: “That’s evidence that they ought to take these courses.”

John: “Yeah, I agree. But a lot of our students are the introverted type who simply don’t get on well in classes where participation and discussion form a significant part of the treatment of the content.”

Amy: “We lose about ½ of our students, and they tend to be the expressive type. I’ve seen national studies that seem to confirm that the students who fail or drop out of an engineering program are on the expressive and creative side of things.”

Craig: “This raises an interesting question about self-selection: are personality types disposed to take particular courses, or do the courses form the personality type?”

Mark: “Here’s a fundamental question: what’s the purpose of education? Is it to allow the student to self select? Is it our job to be paternalistic and impose our idealized conception of an education, or is it to provide a way for the student to find their own way?”

Shelton: “Around the time of the industrial revolution, education became much more pragmatic and the notion that the unexamined life is not worth living went by the wayside. Since then, the connection between education and industry has only become stronger. I talked to my Eastern Civ. Students about the importance of keeping in touch with our past in order to appreciate our present and our future. They didn’t seem to get it until I cut the top off of a plant and asked them whether the detached part would live. Everyone said ‘no’, and they seemed to take the point I was trying to make. Unfortunately, the rest of the plant died, too.”

John: “Mark’s comment about self selecting is important. A lot of students say ‘I know I’ll never use this course’ when they come to me for advising. My stock response is ‘We are offering an education, not job training.’ I don’t know whether the students buy it, but it does shut them up. We need to be responsive to outside forces, but not determined by them. Our responsibility is to craft requirements in such a way that it’s very difficult for students to evade the intention of the core.”

Susan: “In answering the ‘Why do I have to take this course?’ question, when they do take the course, they get a lot of content and facts, but not a lot of thinking about the methods and processes that are characteristic of the discipline, about how that knowledge can foster lifelong learning, help them develop their own problem solving skills, and contribute to their longer term goals.”

Sarah: “When is the appropriate time in a student’s career to introduce them to the idea that a liberal education has some value? Freshman might not have the experiences and context necessary to facilitate what Susan just talked about.”

Amy: “Our standard core courses are all introductory level, and maybe that’s just too early, when students are just figuring out how to work through their major program. I tell some of my students to take an on-line art class, because they can do it in two weeks and then get on with their ‘real’ courses. I think it might be in the upper-division courses when students are in a position to draw the kind of connections between methodologies that we’re talking about.”

Craig: “At this institution there is a good deal of remediation helping students make up the context that they should have build in K-12. Some of these students haven’t read major literary figures, haven’t studies history beyond Idaho history, and don’t know any math beyond the basics. That’s a serious impediment to doing what we’re talking about.”

Susan: “The trend in K-12 and some professional degrees (like those in health) seems to be such that there are high-stakes tests that preclude broad study and engagement outside of the curriculum.”

Sarah: “But our accrediting agencies are encouraging civic involvement, so I’d like to turn the question around and look for opportunities rather than obstacles. We could be organizing cohorts of students within professional programs to emphasize community-based activities throughout the curriculum. This is what’s being required by the agencies, and it certainly enriches the student’s experience and retention of that core knowledge we’re trying to instill.”

Susan: “In the interdisciplinary session, we talked about what kind of structures can be set up to get students involved. The way student communities work right now is that they students are all co-enrolled (so they see each other a lot), but there’s not much beyond that. What if we took a health sciences course and a philosophy course and told these student communities ‘You might not see how these are connected, but they are.’ It wouldn’t take much work on the part of the collaborating faculty to play off of each other and help the students discover that the two really are connected in an interesting way.”

John: “An unstated assumption in this conversation is that the engineers and scientists teach the lower division courses and then ship our students off for the liberal arts aspect of education. I’m not sure that’s true, but to whatever extent it is true, I think that’s a bad set up. I think we ought to be more involved in helping out.”

Amy: “Our accreditation requires that we take a direct measurement of student outcomes in education, and as you can see [holds up the handout], there are a lot of what might be considered liberal arts requirements.”

John: “Those used to be called the ‘soft skills’; now they’re called ‘professional skills’.”

Amy: “We’ve created Calc. 1, Engineering 1, and Chem. 1 learning communities, but we don’t even connect those courses together. I feel obliged to meet the student where they are. Some of my students are people who’ve been laid off from Micron and need to get a job. We’re not a four year liberal arts college. A lot of students who come here have pressing needs that I feel obliged to help them meet.”

Craig: “That’s another facet of remediation. We work with the students we’ve got, not the ideal students in an ideal situation.”

John: “There are some good things that come from putting courses online. But the sort of outcomes we’re talking about here can’t be had in the den at night looking at the computer monitor.”

Susan: “That shows the importance of face-to-face communities.”

Sarah: “Unless core courses are permeated by things like service learning that compel you to interact with other people. I think BSU has made a lot of progress in instituting things like that that engage students in ways that extend their appreciation of the course content.”

Amy: “Didn’t our freshman task force say that service learning should come out of the core courses?”

Susan: “No, that was about Univ. 101. Just too much going on in the courses.”

Wayne: “More and more students are coming to college having done service learning in high school, and they’re excited about doing this stuff. I teach Univ. 101, and there are important issues that need to be dealt with – moving away from home, time management skills – so there isn’t enough time to do service learning in a one-credit course”

Craig: “There isn’t an applicant to the Honors College who doesn’t have a long list of community service on their application. My daughter’s guidance counselor in 7th grade told her she had to start doing community service in order to get into a good college.”

Wayne: “Some classes like social work have an obvious tie-in with service learning, and those students are really excited about doing it.”

Susan: “I have a question about what we mean by ‘liberal education’: to what extend to we want people in health sciences or engineering to be engaged in lifelong learning vs. what we want them to understand about the nature of inquiry and the values associated with different disciplines? Are we trying to instill a kind of curiosity, or an appreciation of diverse viewpoints? I take it that even in the core, students can choose courses that would introduce them to the kind of breadth and diversity that would foster both of these, but it’s too easy for them to miss that, either by design or by accident.”

Wayne: “I’m trying to get my students to be good learners. Many of my students have never read a book; they’ve worked their whole life, or they’ve just hung out. I’m all for liberal arts introducing perspectives, but many of my students don’t want that when they begin their college career, and they’re certainly not ready for that.”

John: “Developing the ability to be a lifelong learner is a good thing, but getting the student to be able to think like people who work in different disciplines is the real goal.”

Amy: “When does that happen? How do we do that? The way we administer the core doesn’t do that.”

John: “It’s capable of doing that, even in its current form.”

Craig: “If a student wants to avoid thinking, they can choose courses that will allow them to do that. But there are plenty of courses in there that require it.”

John: “I taught an area 3 core course recently, and some of my students said things like ‘I’d never thought of that before’, which was really rewarding. So it can happen, and it often does. I think it’s practically impossible for an engineering student to take a literature or philosophy course without being affected, because these are profoundly different ways of approaching issues.”

Wayne: “I do try to get students to take courses in areas of their interest just to keep them in school.”

Amy: “I tell my students ‘take your math, pass your math – after that, you can take your art classes.”

Wayne: “Three of 25 students passed my Math 025 class last semester. The rest failed.”

Susan: “I think we all ought to be required to teach Math 025 so we can experience that kind of failure rate. It’s easy to be critical of that particular program, but in fact probably all of us know enough math to teach it, and we’d be a lot more circumspect if we were put through those paces. So whose responsibility is it to incorporate the liberal arts into the professional degrees?”

Amy (laughing): “I think Craig should! He’s got the Honors College.”

Craig: “I think all of us are doing it. Engineering is doing their share. We can’t think, ‘Oh, we’ll ship them off to philosophy or literature, and they’ll get it there.’ That way of thinking about it is counterproductive to our goals.”

Amy: “I agree. It’s our responsibility to ensure that our students get it. I connect my materials science class with chemistry, but I don’t relate it to history. I’m not sure how I’d do that.”

Susan: “So when engineering demonstrates these outcomes, you can’t appeal to core courses, because you don’t know what classes the students take, right?”

John: “We appeal to the core, but we also have elements within our classes that satisfy these requirements. So I’ve had conversations with students and instructors about things like grammar, because there’s a disconnect between certain professional goals like clear writing that can be remedied pretty easily if we’re thoughtful about what we’re doing.”

Susan: “Where do the responsibly lie outside the professions? My content is so important, and my textbooks just keep getting thicker. What confidence should I have that my students are seeing those connections between different disciplines and modes of inquiry?”

Mark: “Students in business are like businesses and respond most directly to threats. Think about Enron and Sarbanes-Oxley. This is a case of reactions, and students are like this. It takes an extreme threat to get students to take action that might well be in their interest. Interestingly, my department no longer requires business ethics, which I have taught. Here’s where a profession meets the liberal arts, and the course has been cut.”

John: “It’s not clear that the liberal arts folks are making an effort to incorporate the sciences and other quantitative disciplines into their courses.”

Tony: “I teach a bit of chemistry in my ancient Greek philosophy course. (To Amy) Plato invented chemistry, you know.”

Susan: “We need to come to the point where we view lower level courses not as gateways to specialized fields of study, but rather as ways of engaging students and getting them interested in material that might well be new to them and that isn’t being delivered in service to some specialized field.”

Craig: “Maybe we should think about making core offerings terminal, stand-alone courses.”

Amy: “Also pull them away from 100 and 200 level, make our 400 level students show us that they can relate material science and history.”

John: “A Capstone Core course!”

Sarah: “And we should make it a priority that our core courses be taught by our best and brightest teachers. If what we want is an inspiring, interconnected presentation of material we’re going to have to devote our best intellectual and pedagogical resources to it.”

John: “One result from the freshman task force is that 25% of our first year students don’t take a single class from a tenure-track faculty. There’s no assumption that adjunct faculty are essentially or even uniformly worse teachers than regular faculty, but they typically aren’t as invested in the program.”

Susan: “One reason why so many core courses are gateway courses is that each discipline is required to offer these courses, and it’s expedient to let majors double-dip into a course both as a core requirement and as a major requirement. One remedy would be to relieve, say, science majors from having to take area 3 core courses, so that those core courses could be terminal course without threatening the integrity of the major housed in that department. There’s a potential political issue here, because departments have come to rely on core courses for FTE’s; if there were, for example, a logic class for majors and one for non-majors, that would impose new requirements on the philosophy department.”

Tony: “We’re actually looking into that possibility right now. I’m teaching a pilot course in the Honors College that could turn into an introduction to logic course for majors. But there are all sorts of practical problems associated with this. It introduces staffing problems and advising confusion. Most of our majors come out of intro courses, and a student who declares after taking the core logic course might complain about being penalized for discovering her interest in philosophy too late.”

Amy: “Have we made any progress here?”

All: “Yes. It’s hard, though.”

Amy: “Thanks for coming, everyone.”

Links

nmiller — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 07:52:55 CST

There is no abstract available for this page revision.

Kickoff Luncheon Notes

nmiller — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 14:16:34 CST

L4L Faculty Feedback
October 17, 2007

(This is a compilation of all of the post-it notes that were filled out and then collected at the luncheon, as they were categorized at the time.)

Facilities – Positive

Morrison Center is terrific venue for Arts
Writing Center fills critical role
some wonderful facilities
Liberal Arts collection in library
Smart classrooms - need more of these for smaller classes (15-20)
small learning groups / good communication

Facilities – Negative

Independent bookstore where we can have author events (faculty too)
some decrepit facilities
space problems in classrooms
faculty offices are scattered, as are departments

Students – Positive

students often take courses seriously – they pay, they work, they want to learn
students are goal oriented, want training
civic
community engagements
service learning on the rise
students appreciate having their spheres of knowledge expand
library is providing library institution to students
First Year Read program
different socio-economic classes
we bring in students from economically disadvantaged background
our students are from economically diverse background
education provided to a diverse SEC background
students encouraged to be undecided majors
increasing numbers of students with varied interests
Honors College
Boise State brings in lots of opportunities for cultural enhancement
many cultural opportunities
do well with more easily measured knowledge

Students – Negative

students tend to regard core requirements instrumentally
commuter school – no time to just be
because we are a commuter school, it has been difficult to create a Liberal Arts tradition
commuter type campus
commuter campus – no time for community
students do not have time to informally discuss/process new ideas
large number of hours students need to work does not allow interaction
no time allocated to attend liberal arts events
too scheduled children
too entitled students
lack of curiosity
definition of liberal arts to students the value
no value
critical thinking only happens in discussion of sports
so many students ask “What can I do with that major?” – why would I be a (fill-in-the-blank) major is I can’t get a job with it
students are goal oriented – want education that is not liberal but skill based
practicality of degree outweighs desire to learn
limited skill set to process liberal arts
lack of student understanding of the concept
students are too over-scheduled with busy with work, family, etc.
challenge: how to get students to engage in extra-curricula activist
challenge: core is seen as checklist or hurdle for students, not connected to major
need to stop evaluating courses and degree plans in terms of their future financial impact for students
large number of non-traditional students

Really Great Ideas

more research competition
great book series to expose students to reading the Greats
a small writing intensive seminar for first year students would be a good intro to liberal arts and help with retention

find a way to reach out to society – the 75% who don’t go to college to make them begin to value the arts and education

Research – Positive

examples of excellence – research experience for undergrads
develop a university press for faculty research and publishing
BSU faculty is doing a lot of great research in the liberal arts
undergrad research conferences and other venues to present
an example of excellence: faculty incorporating/including undergrads in research
we support our research programs increasingly well
undergrad research becoming more widespread
research office has expressed interest in finding ways to advance liberal arts research efforts
flexibility in pursuing research interests

Research – Negative

funding is not equal
hiring problems
no course reductions/teaching loads
div. req.
more value placed on programs/fields that are not necessarily large contributors of research funding
define outcomes and measure – what gets measured gets done
resources for research (archival collections in particular)

Other – Positive

support from community – business, corporations, sports, music
good speakers come through
lecture series
good performances and exhibitions are available
SPB concerts
galleries in the SUB
need to speak to the value of liberal arts at the beginning of each year and throughout the year as a part of the core education for all students – we just don’t do this!
good creative classes in our Honors College
a question: to what extent should we be striving to provide a liberal arts education?
we have a College of Arts & Sciences that brings together faculty leaders across a broad range of disciplines on a regular basis
KBSU
The Big Read in the fall
the university core

Other – Negative

Many cultural opportunities re not well attended
our community does not value the liberal arts. – the priority is in technology, math, sciences – look at where the monies go starting with the university!
little evidence of communicating the value of liberal arts education to students and campus community
at no time is liberal arts spoken to the entire university community as a core value
lack of shared understanding of what the liberal arts are – limits on ability to articulate their importance to students and community
help prepare educated students to live and work in community
Arts & Sciences is split among several colleges – COAS/COBE/SSPA
tribal (departmental) culture often interferes with interdisciplinary program development
is there a consensus on what constitutes a liberal education?
faculty salaries and grant funding
not enough financial aid and scholarships

Administrative Support – Positive

clarity of purpose – CTL assists in process
Honors College – at least potential for strengthening it
accreditation recognizes value of liberal arts education and requires this
I am glad BSU is starting this discussion!
presidential and provost support (2)
CTL

Administrative Support – Negative

few interdisciplinary courses and no program to encourage their development
we as faculty are so overworked and thinly supported financially that we often don’t have time to be creative and we don’t have the resource to really be leaders in liberal arts
lack of oversight
administrative accountability
provide more funding for liberal arts research (course releases, etc.)
budgets for liberal arts departments have not increased with enrollment
our liberal arts dept. has no vision for itself. I suspect we’re not alone.
value of liberal arts degrees not communicated
shared (more) communication
more special lecturer slots
imperative that support be given to adjunct faculty
class size is getting bigger
need to defend arts for arts sake
emphasis on empirically measurable “outcomes assessment” is wrong headed
resources available to support new initiatives
operating expenses do not reflect need or goals and growth
State of Idaho too frugal
lacking financial support especially from the State
disconnect between community interest in the arts and the funding of the arts at BSU
increase funding for the arts
outreach to K-12 regarding value/need for liberal arts education
need intersession options for study abroad or shorts courses

Curriculum – Positive

core curriculum I & II
core curriculum (Area I) helps exposed students to liberal arts
Area Core I requirements for bachelor degrees include the arts and humanities
the core offers a broad based liberal arts intro to higher education
core requirements are right-minded whether we have the courses distributed correctly is a separate question
languages as a central component of Area I is correct
we have a core requirement that spans the liberal arts
core curriculum “protects” the liberal arts education
core curriculum encourages students to select courses from a variety of disciplines
core requirements are a great start
core curriculum
we have a core but….
core curriculum and assessing outcomes
the core is broad and inclusive , allows students to explore a range of topics
BSU provided opportunities to students in a balanced manner, including core curriculum and research/creative activities for undergrads well.
strong humanity core courses
Capstone courses
curriculum is here
there are some strong programs already in the arts and humanities
we have fairly significant credit hours dedicated to general education
talks/events offered outside of class are good
ISD major
requires 42+ hours of curriculum devoted to liberal arts
Capstone courses that require student presentation and defense of perspective
increased emphasis on interdisciplinary approaches/experiences
Service-learning (3) – promotes creativity
we have many programs that are easily measured
we have a large number of well educated and often published liberal arts professors
Honors College
good communication between departments when initiated
interdisciplinary programs – i.e. Enviro. Studies
interdisciplinary courses offer students insight into how diverse disciplines are intertwined
creative writing programs – MFA
residential college
the push for diversity as part of required curriculum
great effort t made by some departments to require foreign language knowledge

Curriculum – Negative

static core that hasn’t been revised since really the ‘80s
curriculum is 50 years old
review the core curriculum
core structure is amorphous
core objectives are ethereal
core connections are non-existent
is there a problem? no, however re-evaluation on a periodic basis is positive
we need to emphasize classical languages more as they are the basis for the original liberal arts of the university – grammar, rhetoric, logic, history, poetry, math & the sciences
don’t look at students’ prior experiences that aren’t in their transcripts (i.e. private lessons)
need more events during academic day (accessible to commuters
specialization – discourage wide involvement
too much focus on disciplinary requirements
no language requirement (4)
BA degrees require a language in curriculum
seriously consider requiring a foreign language competency for all majors
languages need emphasis in requirements for academic majors
challenge: nature of university makes interdisciplinary work challenging and hard for students to see
courses that require integration across disciplines are almost non-existent
no interdisciplinary
we don’t articulate intentional connections between majors and general education
too much separation of arts and science disciplines
more links should be made between COAS and the other colleges on campus
there should be a more comprehensive effort to offer cross disciplinary courses that bring students with different interests together
too much emphasis on “practical” training – not enough on creative thinking as a worthwhile goal in itself
need an informative literacy course that fosters critical thinking about information resources for liberal arts education
writing and critical thinking need to be incorporated into more required courses, not just Eng 101
no opportunities for intellectual engagement
learning outcomes emphasis instead of core knowledge
need to encourage all students regardless of major to study abroad
need international internships
lack of funding at BSU for liberal arts
too much emphasis on sciences
more support for developing cross disciplines for specific ethics courses, business, geosciences, geology, nursing, law etc.
preparedness of students
focus on professional education
too much focus on product – not on process
need to expand/market IDS major as option to students
lack of masters and PhD arts degrees
diverse curriculum
courses that reflect a global world with faculty to match
what general areas need attention? - integration of the areas
more reverence for preserving high culture and out cultural history for its own sake
world music offerings in the arts are limited or narrow in focus
too many classes taught by adjuncts
does not foster and measure civic engagement such as voting, community engagement, practices of engaged citizens
too much emphasis on business, engineering and athletics
little global focus
the community is not oriented to liberal arts education
isolated courses
we have programs that are easily measured but these do not tend to be arts, social sciences, etc.
difficult to measure well rounded, engaged thinking
writing requirements need to be more consistent for students exiting E101 and E102
the lack of interdisciplinary programs that focus on cultural issues
funding hires that promote the written goals of the university
racial disparities in faculty, staff and student body
where is the classics department?
lack of inclusion of liberal arts course work within some sciences
not enough rigor in classes, in programs
grade inflation
drive toward outcome assessments that are solely empirically driven can do damage to connection of liberal education
what problems need to be addressed?
we need to know what can be done (future employment) with a liberal arts degree

Faculty – Positive

great faculty
diversity and diverse faculty
active faculty
caring professors
great leaders
we have good faculty – well trained, well educated
faculty do good research and creative activity in spite of relatively few resources to support them
engaged faculty with great diversity
exciting talent in all liberal arts and sciences
excellent faculty to implement whatever initiatives are undertaken
historical grounding of disciplines
the CTL itself!
interdisciplinary
marketing speaks to culture
we have opportunity for lots of engagement, speakers, music, etc.
bring good events
opportunity forum for faculty exchange
good variety of liberal arts classes

Faculty – Negative

lack of communication among faculty
some faculty focus on multiple choice and put little effort into a rigorous class and others put enormous time
university doesn’t reward non-research
lack of interdisciplinary strength
support interdisciplinary faculty exchange
lack of collegiality between science and humanities departments – we don’t know each other – perhaps some team teaching for cross fertilization
faculty members who don’t enjoy teaching
too much of general education is farmed out to adjunct faculty
more support for faculty to rework courses to incorporate diversity, writing
support = time! course releases!
arts & humanities as the step-child of the university (re: funding, value, facilities, recognition, etc.)
advisors play a key role in encouraging students and pursue varied interests – the university could include advising in P & T outlines
lack of consensus – what is liberal arts?
faculty need more time to think in order to improve the interdisciplinary side of their courses
Bronco Guarantee = Finish in Four
we could have more team teaching between different disciplines on related topics
undiscovered resources in people and in knowledge
poor marketing (?) of lesser known corners of university
work load policy may send contradictory message about how to “count” interdisciplinary teaching
“real education: seen by students as not the liberal arts
BSU marketing starts with football
raise value in local community for liberal arts
there is not enough room and time for open-ended exploration
for critical thinking we must value adverse opinions
outcomes assessment may take attention from liberal arts as currently framed
lack of understanding of reasons for liberal arts education – students, faculty, public
large sections can reduce critical thinking
need to have a celebration at every faculty authored book
students not prepared with basic history and philosophy
department silos
challenge of adjunct labor – harder to have deep, disciplinary content-based courses (e.g. math 124)

kickoffluncheon

nmiller — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 12:44:16 CST

There is no abstract available for this page revision.

Jan 24 2008

nmiller — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 10:10:40 CST

Jan. 24, 11:40 pm

Interdisciplinarity and the Liberal Arts

Present:
C. Hemmens
S. Shadle
B. Henry
N. Miller
S. Woods
D. Wilkins
L. Brady
L. Rogien
L. Lubamersky
M. Buchanan

Discussion led by Brady and Wilkins.

Brady: welcome,.

Wilkins, welcome. We're here because interdisciplinary is what we do (Environmental Studies)

We'be been in it for years, it's a model for how to do and how not to do it. It's a degree program based on courses in other contributing disciplines. Has seminars, internships, a senior project, all taught by faculty from other depts. Has no dtp. home, per se, although Chris Hill is coordinator, in Anthropology dept.. We meet to be sure it is running smoothly. We have classes from anthro, history, geosciences, poli-sci, public policy, economics, business, philosophy. Students can explore options in different disciplines

At same time, has issues that we recognize haven't been overcome, including:

Lacking: connections, alignment, (no classes coordinated, just offered for other majors, not for ES -- no coordination, connections with ES per se); also, a lack of depth -- get overview, some courses sequenced, but not all, so a lack of depth of coverage -- more breadth than depth; a lack of official faculty

We do have: most courses are taught by tenure/track faculty -- no adjuncts teaching major courses.

Problems identified: Core classes end up silo-ed Get very large sections, not much discussion, very static/didactic learning. Lack of engagement between students and faculty.

Biggest: students don't see relevance, connections between all the fields

Brady: Question for all: this (environmental studies) is meant to be a liberal arts degree, so what do you see purpose of interdisciplinarity being in the liberal arts?

Lubamersky: need to build interdisc. into new structures; incl. buildings literally -- family studies in my case doesn't involve other faculty members, I never see the psych people, due to distance -- not just for lack of interest, but for lack of structures

Wilkins: we don't get credit for it, for working in interdisc.; we have to go out of our way to find that kind of interdisc.

Rogien: answer to original question: need to avoid absolute specialization; need to see outside our disciplinary box; my brother in law works at U of Oklahoma med school -- they recruit non premed majors into medicine; they are as strong as pure science majors, but have other team working skills, bedside manner; also, here in sec ed, we need to train our teachers to work with a myriad of constituents, not just in their fields/silos. (I don't like the word silo)

Shadle: we want to produce students who will be citizens and lifelong learners. Interdis give you breadth, tentacles go out in other directions -- not packaged in way that is usual; interdis can give students comfort knowing there are always more questions -- we all know that majors don't contain all there is, but the structure sends that message

Wilkins: yeah, like everything one needs to know in a field/topic will come out in 15 weeks (laughing)

Brady: goal is to overcome model of education that has been developed; (offers handouts) -- if students believe that there are hard and fast answers in 15 weeks, then we need to make sure they realize there is more Washington Center at Evergreen College: give three different types of learning communities; BSU is not there yet. What are some solutions?

Shadle: we do have students who take linked courses, but don't have collaborative faculty; the content in other words, is not linked. Kimber Shaw has some ideas for moving us closer to these models with more intentionality in them.

Lubamersky: BSU has problems with retention, with sense of community; CAL for instance has introduces "pods" or learning communities; would like to see BSU move in direction. When students feel loved, feel you can survive; faculty also need this community. Would like to see more interdis programs.

Brady notes that other state universities are doing this. Porltand State, Iowa State (learning communities, that is).

Miller: how could we solve the problem David noted about classes that are not devoted to the program?

Wilkins: set up pods; have an integrative seminar, or cohort leader? different levels of intentionality -- acc. to schedule, acc. to interest; intentionality where faculty have to be on board as well, where they bring in topics that make the link between English and History or Geog for instance; can bring each other in.

Wilkins: full time coordinator, training for faculty; Hill for instance gets nominal stipend; we get an overload stipend for senior project; two facuty share 3 credit stipend. None of this is enough for the work that is done. Why do faculty hate core courses? (If they do) They don't get credit for core classes, they want to support research, and upper div and grad do that. They like the dovetail effect. Core is service class only. Does not feed research. Incentive needed for core classes. Engage them at a lower level. Would result in retention, help identify students interested; we're the faculty who have been identified as having special skills and aptitudes -- may not have that with an adjunct. Sometimes do, but not always. Intentional incentive to get fculty back into core classroom.

Rogien: Honors College uses cohort model, have special classes that all honors attend. Has structure, director; also have cohort models in Education.

Brady: I didn't even know this was going on (not Honors of course). Students remind us that this is lacking. They realize something is missing.

Shadle: two categories of ideas; (1) Interdis programs (2) How to create more finite experiences for average student? Seems like part of what we need to do is figure out how do we create structures that reduce barriers. We could talk to each other about what is happening in our linked classes. Requires that we take time that we are not currently taking. We don't have the time. Might recommend broadly that if we want our students to have an interdis experience, have to be opportunities for buyout. Much like what happens in our classrooms - we see the connections, but studnets don't see it; will take work to make that happen.

Lubamersky: much literature out there to support this.

Shadle/Wilkins: needs to be a rewards structure, incentive. Not all will do it for the "right" reasons.

Lubamersky: important for faculty to be involved in shaping the course of the university; need to make a commitment to giving more energy and resources.

Wilkins: no community. Interdis has no cohort, no discussion, no links, they take classes, but are not in same community (grad); same with undergraduate students in interdis. Community is not there.

Lubamersky: There were some programs when we first got here; interdis humanities, don't know why it ceased to exist.

Rogien: part of this is just a political era that BSU is going through. Doesn't say Teaching University of Disticntion, it's Research. Yes you have to teach, but no sense that we're here to teach first. Uni level, it says teaching is the most critical role at the university.

Lubamersky: but interdis helps my own research. People who are interested in it, can link it to their teaching.

Rogien: told he should not do a lot of research; he was told to teach. Then the rug was pulled out. Not pretty in the college for a long time. It's an issue that we need to deal with.

Miller: research and teaching are linked; typical liberal arts faculty, though, are in disciplines in which the type of research that is done is not currently obviously valued. Making sure that their research is supported will have its benefits in the classroom.

Shadle: to build a culture that values research and builds research, and we need to avoid sacrificing teaching to research. Not a bad thing to get a teaching award. Need to keep teaching valued. Only have 24 hours in a day. Part of solution has to be when we are teaching we are doing a fantastic job and part of what you will be doing is linking with other faculty etc., that it's not enough to get your teaching assigment, do it, leave, and call it done. Need the part of what we do that is teaching to be rich and enriching.

Lubamersky: encourage deans reward new courses etc.

Brady: no reward for reaching out to other fields. No culture of communication.

Rogien: everyone wants to talk to teachers, abroad. Here it is reversed. This is a problem. Teaching gets you pats on the back. Research gets you money. There must be a value added attack.

Lubamersky/Wilkins: the value added can be in fundraising later on. Capital campaign could work better with good base of people who feel like we do.

Rogien: why don't we invite students to these? This is a learning community!

Brady: agreed. Students want to know what's going on. They could come.

Rogien: so how do we do this?

Brady: one nursing prof said "why don't we have liberal arts in our program?"

Brady: Housing has taken a big step in this. Global Village: intnl and local students taking shared courses. Tap into that (Miller thinks); Freshman Year Focus has three courses that all students will be taking together.

Shadle: would it be possible for student involved interdis conversation to take place? Can we create something like that with pairs or groups of faculty meet with students to discuss work; maybe something that needs to emerge from L4L are things to allow faculty to be connected, students to be connected --

Lubamersky: there was a gay marriage initiative at one election we had this one multidisciplinary meeting where faculty gave a variety of views from their perspective. Regular engaged discussions.

Wilkins: next week we have focus on the nation.

Rogien: regular roundtables. We need this.

Miller: could this be something that follows from, grows from L4L? Continuing commitment, funded? With stipends? Have a structure that will support/endorse/implement it?

Dec 6 2007

nmiller — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 13:24:58 CST

Notes from 12/6

L4L Forum: Six Options for Restructuring the Core (22 colleagues in attendance at 3:00)

3:05 Formed small groups (2-4 members each) to discuss the merits of the proposals on the two handouts.

3:20 Reconvene as a group; Scott outlines the merits of the Core Emphasis Option

(Mike Samball): Who is this aimed at? Who are these students? Is there a need?

(Scott): The student who’s interested in the liberal arts.

Q (Craig Hemmens): What are liberal arts courses? Can they be found in all three areas of the Core?

A (Lisa Brady): It’s more the way the course is taught than the discipline in which the course is offered. Interdisciplinarity is an important element.

David Saunders: A result of our previous meetings is that there’s too much separation between the disciplines and that we need to do something to make the Core work better as a general education tool. So I don’t think there’s a particular demographic that we need to have in mind. The Bachelor of General Studies has certain features of the changes we’d like to see implemented at the lower-level general requirements.

Susan Shadle: Students can (and do) simply discharge the general education requirements by checking off boxes. They have a lot of choices but very little perspective; and advising is to haphazard that we don’t know what they’re taking. We need to impose more structure on the general requirements so that

Scott Yenor: I’d add that how the courses get taught is also an important component: source texts, not textbooks; composition skills, not multiple-choice;

Tara Penry: I like the idea of adding some intentionality to the Core, and it seems like there are a number of structures that might serve the purpose. But I also think that we need to add intentionality to other aspects of the student experience. For example, we might link advising to the general education requirements; linking advising to the major is a missed opportunity. I agree with Scott that we need more consistent pedagogy across disciplines within the general education courses. Curriculum is important in core reform, but other items are also relevant.

Gail Schuck: I agree. I’d like to see more interdisciplinarity. If we faculty can’t connect ideas across our different disciplines, how can students do it? The Environmental Studies program is a good model: everyone looks at common issues through the lenses of different disciplines..

Mike Samball: The Core has looked pretty much the same since 1984, and its stated goals are admirable and resemble the goals in this proposal in certain ways. Scott’s proposal assumes that all courses are taught as an initiation into the discipline. But I don’t teach my courses that way. The core revision committee put together a nice package in 1993, but it died in upper administration on account of two insurmountable problems: who’s going to pay for it, and who’s going to administer it?

Lisa Brady: We’ve got President Kustra’s support, so this initiative isn’t doomed to fail. It sounds to me that you’re ahead of the curve in terms of teaching core courses in a broad and liberal way, but I live with students and hear them ask all the time, “Why am I taking this course?” The purpose of this initiative is to address the questions students ask. How can we better serve our students?

Scott Yenor: I wrote this proposal with this decision rule in mind: Don’t touch the Core. Too much has been invested in it. This proposal prescribes a way of getting through the Core.

David Saunders: Lisa’s right: Pres. Kustra is behind this initiative. And maybe it is time to mess with the core. We need to do what we can to make sure that students who graduate from this institution go away with a good exposure to the liberal arts.

Mark Buchanen: What is the definition of the problem? Pres. Kustra’s understanding might be very different from what we come up with. We might be thinking of citizenship, whereas he might be thinking of public relations. We might want to know up front what Pres. Kustra thinks the problem is.

David Saunders: My impression is that he wants us to define the problem and make the proposals.

Tara Penry: We have two bits of relevant evidence about Pres. Kustra’s state of mind: the strongly-worded rejection letter from Phi Beta Kappa irritated him, and he’s recommended Bok’s book to the steering committee. Emma Easteppe: I like a lot of what’s been proposed, but I’m surprised at how much it looks like what the Honors College is supposed to be doing. I thought that the point was to spark our interest in reconceiving what counts as a liberally-educated person. Pres. Kustra directed us to the Harvard task force report on their own general education

Charlie Gains: In 1979 we started the Construction Management program, the oldest interdisciplinary program, and it’s been tremendously successful. I am a “Core frustrated” person. I think we need to anticipate where this university and the general education requirements need to be not in 2008, but 2018. China is putting a thousand universities online in the next ten years. I think it’s absolutely essential that any proposal we make has some kind of global or international aspect to it. We should support international studies and travel abroad.

Susan Shadle: We should think big; we shouldn’t pre-censor ourselves. There are points along the way where might ask Pres. Kustra, “Is this what you’re thinking?” Tara is right that several models might work, but we send messages to our students by the structure that we employ. The areas of the Core are really still discipline-specific, and that inhibits students and faculty. I also agree with Charlie in looking forward. If we could determine how to complete the following open sentence, we’d be able to think about our task more clearly: “In order to be a liberally educated person, one has to have studied __________.”

Tara Penry: Let’s take a poll about the proposal. How many want to mess with the core doing something bigger and deeper? [Unanimity, or nearly so.]

(Unknown): The Core assessment process might reveal some specific problems and give us something to work with.

Susan Shadle: It might, but a lot of what we want isn’t in the stated goals of the Core, and that’s what’s being assessed. We won’t get any assessment of interdisciplinary work, lifelong learning.

Mike Samball: Wouldn’t it be nice if a revision of the Core could provide for all students the benefits that are being offered to just some students in this proposal?

Scott Yenor: Anything we do needs structure, and it also needs flexibility. The only way to tie those together, I think, is to offer choice.

November13, 2007

nmiller — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 13:16:27 CST

L4L Forum 11/13/07

Facilitator: Scott Yenor

General Education reflects what we believe students need to know/be able to do. Over the last century, its structure has been changing. To keep things concrete, we’re going to look at some examples. (current BSU structure, 1962 University of Michigan core, Columbia current)

Changes have occurred in Size, structure, content Size – has been shrinking BSU current: 1/3 of what it takes to graduate UM 1962 – ½ of what it takes to graduate

At Turn of century - 80% of what it takes to graduate

Structure Changed to provide more student choice

Content Used to be more mandatory courses

UM 1962 15% of curriculum were mandatory BSU current: 6 of 128 credits are required (E101, 102)

What do we want the core curriculum to accomplish? Don’t worry about barriers

Bill Clement (Geoscience) – if students all shared a common experience, it would help bring them together. Western Civ/Great Books, by having students all read the same books, they had something to discuss socially but also on an academic level.

Scott – what would the core look like, given that concern?

Bill C - All the students now take these two English classes, could we have another required class with texts from a variety of fields? So everyone has the same opportunity to contribute from their field?

Scott – why did we get rid of the idea of mandatory classes?

Bill C – students whining

Jim Girvan – in professional colleges, the # of credits needed has grown. – it explains the size change. However, you could still require one course instead of a choice, w/o changing the size

Craig Hemmens (Honors College) – What is the benefit of having a common experience?

Steve Grantham (Institutional Assessment) - what are the essential things? Someone has to make decision about what is included in a shared course? Then we get “Why is your stuff more important than mine?”

Bill C – we all think our disciplines are much more important. We see our knowledge as stuff you need to know. We’ve sacrificed general knowledge for specific knowledge. Students didn’t see the benefit of those general courses. We didn’t have a good answer for them. Or the content of the course wasn’t broad enough.

Beret Norman (Modern Languages and Literatures) – there is also the effect of professionalization of education.. “What will this do for me in my job?” (It was nice to see in 1962 that language was still required)

David Saunders (Music) – We’re sitting here now to get back to our roots. Professional education is important, but we need to get back to the idea of creating good citizens. Requiring certain courses rather than a menu? I’m not sure we need to increase the # of courses. I like the idea of a student to be able to pick from courses based on their interests, as long as any course will get at the basic prep of citizenship.

Larry Rogein (Education) – Schools adopted an assembly line education. If we teach them how to learn, then they’ll do fine in business. If we only teach them stuff, then we haven’t prepared them. There are multiple levels of knowledge from declarative on up to structural. How are ideas connected to each other? We should be working at the highest level. I’m not sure that courses is the problem. Maybe it is the process we need to focus on.

Scott – is the BSU general ed progress? Compared to UM (1962) or Columbia? (where there is a set of required courses w/ required syllabi)--- looking at Columbia syllabi---

David Wilkins (Geoscience) – The Columbia plan - is this different because it allows people to explore different paths? This looks like it would work for students who don’t declare a major for the first two years.

Scott – looking at the Columbia model: They use our learning outcomes language about process. They also focus on content.

Bill C – these things can be taught in any class. But if students have all read the same books, there some common knowledge. It provides a starting point. There are a lot of books that my generation thinks are important, but students aren’t reading them.… they are boring; they make a course more rigorous. What books are read may be less important as having something in common.

David W – there are Learning community models in which there is one common course for the LC. One discussion course – connected the ideas from the other courses. This creates the room for application of ideas. Have a course that is designed to have students bring thing together. Maybe team taught.

Marilyn Moody (Library) – one reason universities went away from UM/Columbia model was that there was a general sense that it wasn’t inclusive. It was geared to middle class white men. When universities changed, the curriculum changed. That is a piece of it. Great books supports the attitude that there is a fairly narrow band of culture and all kinds of other things are not included.

Scott – so is the BSU core progress?

Marilyn M – I’m just saying this is part of why we moved away from it.

Susan Shadle (CTL) – Our set up doesn’t encourage connections. Courses are in departmental silos. It is hard for courses to be intro to the discipline AND do process.

Larry R - I see little change from UM to BSU. What is the purpose of education? Creating citizens? Be informed, vote. Is that an old piece of our culture that is obsolete, or it a set of values… or is it about enculturation, is it about process?

Bill C – why can’t it be both process and a set of courses? It doesn’t have to be called “the great books”. It isn’t so critical which books they read, just that they read the same thing

Larry R – I don’t care if they even read the whole books. I’d like them to read parts of things – then see what engages them.

Bill C – if we all had the same background, then we know what to draw from.

Larry R – So is that educationally beneficial or convenient?

Bill C – It allows people to have a shared discussion. It doesn’t change anything except that students and faculty know ppl have read these books.

Helen Lojek (English) – students no longer have a shared experience in HS. For example, I can’t assume they’ve read Huck Finn.

Scott – should students be able to leave the university w/o taking a 2 course sequence in American History?

Bill C – yes

Helen L – no

Ginny Gilbert (Nursing) – no. My students don’t have the learning process down even at the (declarative) knowledge level. It takes quite a bit to get them to procedural knowledge They aren’t coming to us with a lot of knowledge. If they had the background before, then they could get out of it, but they don’t have it now.

Scott – I’m on a board that administers tests to incoming frosh and outgoing seniors. At elite colleges, freshman score better than seniors on American history and gov’t tests.

Ginny G – so we’re “teaching stuff out of them”

Beret N – Events such as the Distinguished Lecture Series offer so many things that connect. But students aren’t reaching back b/c they don’t have the background. They won’t care unless it effects them. Even when I try to dumb things down, they don’t care until it matters for them moving forward.

David S – in music history course I teach enlightenment in Europe. It is beyond my discipline but I include it b/c nothing happens in a vacuum. If we had a course or structure of course in western civ, then when they got to specialty courses, you could expect them to have a certain background of knowledge.

Heidi Estrem (English) – How much of this is about how faculty view our work? There is a tension between process and content. How would our courses need to change? Think beyond courses. E.g., Distinquished Lecture series. Are there ways to require or compel experiences that aren’t courses?

Bill C – like Service-Learning. I’m surprised there is so much resistance to having a required course with a set list of books. Ppl are afraid. Is it a slippery slope?

Craig H – I’m not resistant to one course. I’m curious about what it means. I see the value of a course. Or are we thinking about re-doing the whole curriculum. The size of Columbia is similar to our Core S

cott – Columbia has 8 required courses.

Bhaswati Ghosh (COBE) - do we have common syllabi for our Core courses.

Robin Allen (Social Work) – what about transfer students? Which may go way up when Community College opens? Doesn’t state board control core? Aren’t we required to have core certification for transfer? What about budgeting? Who gets credit for an indisciplinary course? For the courses that are large, can we achieve the lofty goals?

Mary Frances Casper (Comm) – E101, 102 are not shared experience b/c you can test out of them. (State Bd allows this). Sr. students get thrilled when they see connections. It is helpful to have depth that we can go back to. If everyone had something to build on, that would be helpful. Our country is founded on these ideals.

David S – I think we’re too worried about being exclusionary. It doesn’t mean that other things aren’t important, but we may be losing sight of our cultural roots.

Marilyn M – we have a lot of nostalgia for the good old days. I react to the Columbia list and feel it is exclusive.

Helen L – now anthologies are much more inclusive

Mary Frances C – how can we have student recognize where things came from? They know so little about where our contry has come from, even though they come in and are very patriotic. Isn’t it our job to help them know.

Bill C. – One of our fears is that we won’t teach them what they want/need to know.

Susan S. – we get stuck in the structure of our universities. Hard to really vision what we can accomplish.