Fall 2010 - Asian University for Women

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8 OCTOBER 2010 VOL. 4, NO. 2 Undergraduate CURRICULUM Ethical Leadership, Educated Lives Since its founding in 2008, the Asian University for Women has sought to integrate the best of Western and Asian educational traditions to form a curriculum that will prepare its students for a lifetime of extraordinary careers and leadership roles in their respective fields. In the first year of the undergraduate program in AUW’s 2009–2010 academic calendar, AUW adopted an interdisciplinary approach to the undergraduate curriculum that emphasized integration across the core courses and team teaching in the classroom. This year, AUW will build upon that foundational year to incorporate a more traditional “modes of thought” approach to the core curriculum and five new majors. The new academic program is considered one part of a more comprehensive educational strategy that focuses on developing leaders.
UNDERGRADUATE CURRICULUM 9 New Directions in AUW’s Undergraduate Curriculum If the Asian University for Women is to demand critical thinking and excellence from its students, it must deliver the same to them in return. AUW’s undergraduate curriculum, revised under the leadership of Dr. Mary J. Sansalone, the recently appointed Provost and Chief Academic Officer, demonstrates both the University’s capacity for self-examination and its resolve in supplying students a first-rate education. As a young institution, AUW has avoided the pitfalls of complacency by approaching every new academic year with a renewed sense of rigor and zeal. The most recent changes in AUW’s undergraduate curriculum reaffirm the University’s dedication to progress as its academic programs and students evolve. AUW’s liberal arts program has numerous objectives. The University seeks to provide its students with a curriculum that is at once enduring and contemporary; that develops exceptional critical thinking, writing, and speaking skills; and that encourages tolerance and creative problem-solving in a world faced with complex problems for which there are no simple solutions. AUW must offer its students a breadth of study in the core curriculum, depth in the individual majors, and preparation for graduate study. Most important, AUW’s academic program strives to instill an ethos of public service in its students, who will be trailblazers for a generation of confident and ethical leaders in Asia. To achieve these goals, AUW’s curriculum has been tailored to meet the needs of Asia while also drawing upon the best aspects of liberal arts programs at renowned universities in the West such as Oxford, Harvard, the University of Chicago, Stanford, Yale, and Cornell. In this way, AUW hopes to expose its students to established methods of teaching without ever compromising the fundamentally regional nature of the program. In the “Regional Challenges” courses, for instance, students apply critical thinking skills to learn about the challenges facing Asia, including environmental and public health challenges, human rights, and education and literacy. “It was a wonderful intellectual endeavor to meld the best of Western educational traditions into a curriculum that speaks to Asia and its challenges and seeks to nurture leaders.” “It was a wonderful intellectual endeavor to meld the best of Western educational traditions into a curriculum that speaks to Asia and its challenges and seeks to nurture leaders. Our new core curriculum focuses on developing in each student a broad worldview, creativity of thought and vision, critical reasoning skills, ethical responsibility, and a vision of self that engenders the confidence to think boldly about the future,” Professor Sansalone says. In addition to the Regional Challenges courses, the core curriculum consists of four modes of thought: “Social Analysis,” “Ethical Reasoning,” “Literature, Civilization Studies, and the Arts,” and “Sciences and Mathematics.” The core curriculum is designed to introduce first-year University students to the important modes of thought and critical reasoning that will underpin their entire undergraduate experience at AUW. In the Social Analysis category, for example, students study the classic texts of social and political thought; explore themes of power, identity, and resistance; and examine philosophical, psychological, and scientific approaches to understanding how the brain works in a course called “The Mind.” All first-year undergraduate students must also take two writing and rhetoric intensive seminars, which are offered in all the academic disciplines. Each seminar will have no more than 20 students in the classroom and will explore topics such as “Banned Books: Writing about Incendiary Topics,” “Writing of the South Asian Diaspora,” “Human Rights,” and “Women’s Issues in a Transnational World.” Professor Sara Amin, now in her second year of teaching at AUW, comments: “I love that PROFESSOR SANSALONE
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Fall 2010 - Asian University for Women

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