101 Things To Do Before You Graduate Living In History ... - Alumni

Message from Marilyn Thie, Core Revision Committee Chair
When asked about their most meaningful academic
experiences, many Colgate alumni are quick to bring up the core curriculum. Core courses, they say, gave
them new ways of looking at the world, fuller perspectives on problems and issues, reasoning abilities they
use every day, and, sometimes, an unexpected interest in a new subject of study.
And they often report that things they learned in the core show up in
their personal and professional lives in intriguing ways. Some identify a
particular text, such as Plato’s Apology or a new interpretation of Genesis;
another says their career in an Asian city was inspired by a Core Japan
course and study group; yet another credits a Scientific Perspectives
course with helping them sort through priorities in health care.
When they arrive on campus, the Class of 2014 will be the first to take
Colgate’s newly revised core curriculum. Many of the core’s goals remain
the same — virtually unique among undergraduate general education
programs, the core remains interdisciplinary and still represents what
we believe all students should study. In this revision, our committee of
faculty members from across the university considered the question,
what should be the heart of a liberal arts education today? We asked
ourselves, what is different about the world now, compared to when we
designed the current core program in the mid-1990s? How have students,
and teaching, changed? What will our students need to know, to have
thought about, and to be conscious of, so that they can live responsibly
and well in today’s complex, interdependent, and diverse world?
Under the theme “Crossing boundaries,” we built on the known
strengths of the four existing core components and continued
expectations of critical reading, thinking, and writing. In addition, we
encouraged greater commonality among courses in each component.
Andrew Daddio
Shining a spotlight on the reality of our globalizing world — for
good and ill — is the major change. Two important implications follow
from this new emphasis. The first is to break down the bifurcation
between “the West and the rest of the world” inherent in the core’s
structure. The second is the introduction of a fifth component called
Global Engagements. The revised core embodies these two points in the
following ways:
• The original Western Traditions (Core 151) course has become
“Legacies of the Ancient World.” This new focus recognizes that those
who helped to shape Western culture, tradition, and thinking were not
solely from the West. Acknowledging this allows for examination of
the interactions among these groups; for example, the peoples who
generated the Hebrew Bible were from the Middle East, and so, different
from the ancient Greeks and Romans.
• Challenges of Modernity (Core 152) now features six common
texts and will include non-Western materials. The modernity course
has always centered around the ideas, problems, and phenomena
surrounding the intellectual, social, and material forces that have
transformed life in the modern world. The increased commonality
of readings and broadening of subject and time period will more
effectively ensure that students learn to examine their own habits of
mind, presuppositions, and prejudices within a global and historical
perspective, as they practice real-world problem-solving skills.
• The component Cultures of Africa, Asia, and the Americas, which
offers a variety of courses about geographically defined areas, has
become Communities and Identities. This broader framework, which
is still largely internationally focused, can now also include courses
that emphasize multi-ethnic complexities and tensions within diverse
communities in Western Europe and North America. In effect, this more
inclusive framework ends the outdated approach of framing “non-
Western” cultures in the context of “others.”
• Changes to the Scientific Perspectives on the World (SP) component
were essentially in instructional planning and organization. Each
interdisciplinary SP course focuses on a specific, compelling area of
scientific research to deepen students’ understanding both of how we
use the scientific method to acquire knowledge about the world and how
to apply it to a broad range of issues inside and outside of science.
• Global Engagements, the new fifth component, will consist of
departmental and interdisciplinary program courses, as well as new
courses. Most students will complete this requirement after the first four
components through a course in their major or minor.
Thanks to this refined version of our longstanding model of
liberal arts education, our future graduates will have an even sounder
foundation for the global reality they will live within.
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Core conversation
What was the most important thing you learned in the core? Go to
www.colgatealumni.org/corecurriculum and post your thoughts.
News and views for the Colgate community
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