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| Assistant Professor of English Karen Mura, right, teaches Thought and Civilization, an Honors-level Core curriculum course, in the Steele Hall Presentation classroom. |
Development, Skills, Knowledge
The goals of the Susquehanna Core experience are to develop critical thinking and problem-solving skills, cultivate values, and foster an understanding of the interdisciplinary nature of knowledge and the diverse human community. Such common ground is important not only to encourage discourse among students, faculty and others in the community, “but with other educated people they will come in contact with over the years,” says University President Cunningham.
The Core “is the piece of the university that makes us unique, it’s the truly Susquehanna piece,” explains Associate Professor of History Linda McMillin, chair of the University curriculum committee.
The Susquehanna Core comprises about one-third of the courses required to graduate. It includes three main components: intellectual skills, world perspectives, and personal development. The personal development component begins with “College 101,” a series of short seminars designed to prepare new students academically and socially for college life. A wellness/fitness course and a one-credit career planning course round out this component.
The intellectual skills component fosters proficiency in four key areas: using computers, mathematics and logic, foreign language and writing. The third and most extensive component, called “Perspectives on the World,” focuses on our common heritage. It includes a course each in history, literature and fine arts; and two courses on the contemporary world: one on society and the individual and a second in science and technology. Students also take one course focusing on values and one addressing the future.
Within each category, students may fulfill the requirements from a selection of approved courses, including a special series for members of the Honors Program. “The Core pushes students to learn a little bit about everything,” says Darcie Kurtz ‘96, who served as a student member of the University curriculum committee. “It really broadens what students have to offer employers when they enter the job market.”
Keeping the Core Current
To insure that the general studies requirements meet the needs of students graduating in a rapidly changing world, the entire Core is reevaluated on a regular three-year cycle. The constant reexamination reflects both local and national debate on content and trends in general education. Four years ago, McMillin, Associate Professor of Biology Jack Holt and a group of students participated in an extended examination of Susquehanna’s Core as part of national project sponsored by the Association of American Colleges and Universities. The faculty met as a whole in a special retreat in 1994 to reexamine the Core.
And while faculty have the responsibility for setting the requirements, students also have input, both as members of the curriculum committee and the ongoing Core Review course. Working in teams, students review course syllabi and the Core handbook. They also conduct interviews and surveys to compare faculty expectations and student outcomes. The teams then develop and present recommendations to the curriculum committee
“Students have a big voice here anyway, and this was a way to have an even bigger voice,” says Allen Arndt ‘97, who took the course last spring. One of his team’s suggestions, to provide more flexibility in the timing for required writing-intensive courses in each student’s major, will be acted on by faculty this year.
Two years ago student and faculty recommendations prompted a complete reorganization of the personal development component of the Core. The new version includes credit for required physical education, now called wellness/fitness, and the new “College 101” seminar series.
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| A newly-installed computer laboratory provides dynamic options for the teaching of calculus. |
Enhanced Options
Revamping the personal development component is only one of the ways the Core has been enhanced in the past decade. The original math/logic requirement has been upgraded with options now limited to logic, calculus or statistics. An introductory writing course has been replaced by a first-year writing seminar with expanded emphasis on critical thinking. Students also take an additional eight credits of writing-intensive courses that allow them to foster writing skills appropriate to their own major, even in mathematics and the sciences.
Change is also reflected in the selection of courses approved for Core credit in fine arts, history, values, society and science. While all such courses must meet a central list of criteria, new courses, such as “The Ethics of War,” taught by Assistant Professor of Philosophy Jeffrey Whitman, have been added and others withdrawn.
The Futures component of the Core was reviewed by the curriculum committee during the past academic year. Ideally taken during the senior year, Futures courses build upon the knowledge and experiences gained by students through the Core curriculum and major programs. Though topics and methods differ, each course examines alternative views of the future and how these views affect and are affected by present decision-making. They may explore predictions of what is likely to be, prescriptions of what ought to be, and visions of what could be in the futures of students, their societies or the world.
As it stands, the Futures component has been one of the most difficult areas to orchestrate, largely because it lacks a disciplinary “home,” says McMillin. A medieval historian, she developed a futures course on “Women in the 21st Century.” “It’s been a challenge, but also fun to teach,” she adds. Hers joins other examples of futures courses including “Future Trends in Biological Research,” “Leadership: Taking Us into the Future,” “Scenarios for Business in the Future,” and “World Order Models.”
New Ways to Learn and Teach
The use of new information technology is enhancing the way Core courses contribute to a Susquehanna education. Multimedia and interactive tools are providing new methods of teaching and learning and more efficient ways to help students and faculty access, and use effectively, a growing volume of information. A multimedia mathematics classroom/laboratory installed in Seibert Hall last winter, thanks to a grant from the Whitaker Foundation, is providing a dynamic approach to the teaching of calculus. In foreign language classes, tools such as videodisk and CD-ROM assist faculty to help students achieve oral competency. The Internet, new Blough-Weis Library databases, and an innovative on-line research service help to enrich Core courses through expanding access to information from a variety of databases in libraries and scientific and cultural centers around the world.
Such access also helps to increase the global perspective in all Core courses. Such global content helps acquaint students with the diverse people and cultures they will face in their future lives and careers in an increasingly shrinking world. “We want to provide both a more international focus and a more multicultural focus within the United States,” says Crumpacker. American history, for example, now emphasizes the experiences of a variety of cultural and racial groups. Crumpacker herself has taught courses on both colonial and native American women and working women.
The long-standing “Foundations of Western Literature” course has evolved into a literature and culture course common to all Susquehanna students. Though taught by a variety of faculty, each course section focuses on some common texts from Western and non-Western authors.
A University-wide Task Force on Diversity in the Curriculum recently surveyed the faculty to assess the status and plans for handling diversity issues their own teaching. Six faculty who attended off-campus regional conferences earlier this year to explore other ways to make the curriculum more inclusive will share their insights at a series of workshops beginning this fall.
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| Psychology courses, such as this one taught by Assistant professor Ira Blake, are one option to fulfill the Core requirement focusing on society and the individual. |
Tapping Faculty Energy and Expertise
The energy and expertise of faculty are helping to keep the Core current and dynamic. As experienced faculty reinterpret Core courses to meet the needs of today’s students, new faculty with diverse specialties are exposing students to broader choices. This year Assistant Professor of Modern Languages Adam John, whose specialty is Caribbean literature, arrives to teach both French and Spanish. Assistant Professor of History Dwayne Wiliams, a specialist in the African Diaspora joined the faculty in 1995.
Susquehanna faculty are also collaborating across disciplines to develop courses that will help students acquire valuable combinations of information and skills sought by employers and graduate schools. Assistant Professor of Political Science Brooke Harlowe, Assistant Professor of Environmental Science Chris Cirmo and Associate Professor and Modern Language Department Head Leona Martin are developing an innovative approach to the Core dubbed “Focus Ecuador.” First-year students and rising sophomores are taking Core courses in Spanish, environmental sciences and international relations Core courses in preparation for a 16-day, two-credit January seminar in Ecuador.
The project is yet another of Susquehanna’s innovative ways to interpret and refine the Core curriculum that is at the heart of the University’s mission: to educate capable undergraduate students for productive and reflective lives of achievement, leadership and service in a diverse and rapidly changing world.