As part of an ongoing internal evaluation of Fairfield’s academic program, 43 faculty members attended an open meeting to discuss the future of the core curriculum on Tuesday afternoon.
The primary focus of the meeting was for faculty to examine the vision, or mission statement, of the integration.
University President Fr. Jeffrey P. Von Arx was the first to initiate this discussion when he called for an integration of the core curriculum in his inaugural address last October.
Laurence Miners, director of the Center for Academic Excellence opened the meeting by saying, “I have a dream that 10 years from now, students will come to Fairfield because of the core, and that they will enjoy the classes so much that they will take them as electives.”
“There’s a lot that needs to be discussed,” said Miners. “We’re not really talking about changing any core requirements, but rather how do we identify and differentiate a core course from a non-core course.”
Students were not represented at the meeting in any official capacity.
“There was never any intention to exclude students,” said Dr. Miners, “but the faculty members are carrying out a 450-year-old Jesuit tradition, one that very few faculty members, let alone students, are aware of. The faculty knows what they’re doing when it comes to their discipline.”
One professor questioned the process being employed.
“We don’t really know what the affect of the core is right now; we have no clear understanding about what is actually coming out of the core, and we need to figure out what we’re doing right and what we’re doing wrong before we can decide what needs to change,” said Kurt Naser.
Another questioned the order in which issues were being addressed
John Thiel, a religious studies professor, told the gathering, “Looking at this ‘vision statement’ seems to me to be a step backward. The question we should really be asking is ‘who would disagree with this statement?'”
Still, others were interested in expressing their specific ideas for what the new core would look like.
“We need to decide the sort of wisdom we want students to have, so that they can understand the world in all of its complexity, to the degree that it can be useful to a 20 or 21 year-old,” said Paul Lakeland, chair of Catholic studies at Fairfield. “Then we need to nudge or perhaps shove them to ask how they fit into the larger picture.”
Kathy Nantz of the economics department added that “this is more about what kind of process students would go through in their intellectual and social development, and, on a bigger level, how do we give students something in each of their classes that they can take to the other 39 and beyond into the world.”
One engineering professor stressed the importance of the engineering core, and how it could be a metaphor for an improved core curriculum.
“I think that the purpose of the engineering core is to give the students a very broad background so that they never feel unfamiliar with a given task or problem they may encounter in their engineering careers. For the university core, I see this as important so that students are never unfamiliar with any setting they may encounter throughout their lives,” he said.
While the meeting yielded perhaps no tenable results, Vincent Rosivach, chairperson of the Task Force on Integration in the Core Curriculum, remained optimistic. “This is a process of gradual transformation,” he said. “If this meeting served any purpose, it is going to get the faculty thinking about the issue, and that is a step in the right direction.”
Leave a Reply