Committee to Float Proposal for New General Undergraduate Curriculum
Four years after the pilot curriculum began offering students a new way to craft their Penn educations, the College of Arts and Sciences is moving into the next phase of curriculum reform. The Committee on Undergraduate Education is investigating how the lessons learned from the pilot can inform a new general education curriculum. It conducted three open forums during the fall semester, two for faculty and one for students, asking them to weigh in on possible facets of a new general requirement.
“There’s been a tremendous consideration of the process by both faculty and students,” says former committee chair Dennis DeTurck, G’78, Gr’80, the Evan C Thompson Professor for Excellence in Teaching. “The discussions have been very productive and civilized,” he continues. “People are really pulling together to make the very best curriculum for the new century.” A part of the curriculum review process since its inception, DeTurck withdrew as chair when he agreed to take over as dean of the College of Arts and Sciences in January.
About 170 faculty members turned out early in the semester for the first forum, while the event on Monday, Dec. 13 drew roughly 150 faculty participants. “To get that kind of turnout during reading week is unprecedented in my experience,” DeTurck says.
The student forum on Tuesday, Nov. 15 brought about 65 undergraduates to Houston Hall. They expressed their desire for a requirement that has both breadth and depth, but disagreed on how much autonomy students should have in creating their own plans of study. “The students told us, ‘Here are some issues that we think are really important to our own intellectual development.’ There were some aspects they didn’t like about the standard and pilot curricula, and there were some aspects they really liked,” he adds.
The committee’s next step is to continue the ongoing discussions and then create a single proposal for a new general education curriculum. “The faculty has heard a lot of points on which we all can agree and some points that will require us to compromise on some deeply held positions,” DeTurck says. When complete, the plan will be voted on at a regular SAS faculty meeting. The result will be a new general requirement for all undergraduates in the College of Arts and Sciences.