Fall 2010 - Asian University for Women

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