The Core
Curriculum Committee was elected in the Fall of 2001 by the Faculty
Senate in response to the President’s challenge to the Senate to
devise a “signature Seton Hall educational experience.” The
Committee embarked on an ambitious project of examining general
education requirements at other institutions, of consultation with
the University community at large, of discussions with all
departments of the University, of surveying the entire faculty.
As a product of all these reflections, the Committee proposed a series of principles on a Core Curriculum to the Faculty Senate in December 2004. At its February 2005 meeting, the Senate adopted the following principles to govern the Core Curriculum:
The Faculty
Senate of Seton Hall University recommends to the Provost and the
Board of Regents the following principles for the development of a
new University Core Curriculum to fulfill the mission of the
University, which will be effective for the entering freshmen in
fall 2007:
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That undergraduate education at Seton Hall University be distinguished by two central elements: a common grounding in the questions central, but not exclusive, to the Catholic intellectual tradition, broadly understood, and the consistent and systematic development of students’ competencies, capabilities, and literacies.
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That undergraduate students take three common courses considering these questions (such as the three-course sequence entitled “Odyssey of the Mind, Heart, and Spirit” in the October 2004 draft report), two first-year writing courses, and the University Life course.
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That the faculties of the individual Schools and Colleges specify the means by which students’ competencies, capabilities, and literacies are to be developed, and that these faculties also specify the means of assessing student performance, understanding that Schools and Colleges may recommend differing approaches and means for development and assessment appropriate to different majors.
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That the effectiveness of the University Core Curriculum be regularly evaluated by the Faculty Senate, through its standing committees, and/or other bodies as it deems appropriate, and that the University Core Curriculum be amended by the Senate as indicated.
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That graduation requirements for undergraduate degree programs be set, as a norm, at 120 academic credits, subject to requirements for accreditation or certification, or demonstrated needs of individual disciplines.
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That undergraduate tuition be charged per semester, and not per academic credit, for full-time undergraduate students taking between 12 and 18 credits.
The Committee has continued its mandate from the Senate to flesh out these principles in practical ways. This report is intended to let all members of the faculty know how far the Committee has progressed in bringing this vision of a better Seton Hall University education to fruition.
The key principle of the revised Core is the two-part “signature” experience: the common grounding of students in the questions central, but not exclusive, to the Catholic intellectual tradition broadly understood, and the systematic development of students’ competencies, capabilities and literacies. The first half of this “signature” experience is the development of courses which will provide this common grounding. A subcommittee of the Core Committee has developed a syllabus for two courses, which have been submitted to the Educational Policy Committee of the College of Arts and Sciences and to the Academic Policies Committee of the Faculty Senate for approval during the coming academic year. This first course is being taught in ten sections as a pilot during the fall 2006 semester, and will be evaluated and revised at the conclusion of this semester. During the 2006-07 academic year, faculty slated to teach the second course will participate in a preparatory seminar. The second course will be piloted in 2007 to the students who took the first pilot course in 2006. Additionally, there will be an expanded pilot of the first course in 2007- 2008 doubling the number of freshmen enrolled.
In the course of this year’s deliberations, serious reservations were voiced by members of the Educational Policy Committee of the College of Arts and Sciences about the ability of the faculty of the College to staff three full “signature” courses, since the majority of sections of this course can be expected to be staffed by the faculty of the College. The Committee was persuaded by this argument, and recommended to the Senate that, for the time being at least, the “signature” course requirement be two courses, with the proviso that a third course devised within individual majors also deal with the questions raised in the first two courses. The Senate adopted this suggestion at its May meeting, in keeping with the fourth principle of continuous revision of the Core.
The other half of the “signature” experience is the systematic development of students’ competencies. In the past year, subcommittees of the Core Committee have been developing methodologies for infusing critical thinking, critical reading and writing, oral communication, information fluency, and numeracy into existing courses. These groups have made great progress in this regard, and to date 123 faculty members have participated in workshops leading to specific development of these proficiencies in their regular courses.
The Proficiency Subcommittee will continue to move forward in 2006-07 with two different processes: large course redesign, in which departments can (if they want to participate) identity a course they would like to infuse with a proficiency of their choosing, and individual course redesign, in which instructors continue the process we began this past year of identifying a course of their own they'd like to infuse. There will be a support mechanism in place, including liaisons to departments and team leaders with expertise in each "proficiency" to help with the infusion process at both levels. The summer institute was used to launch this year's proficiency work.
The fifth and sixth principles of the Core provide for the reduction of graduation requirements to a norm of 120 credits, and for a shift to a per-semester tuition from a per-credit tuition formula. The determination of graduation requirements is specifically a matter of faculty responsibility, exercised ultimately through the Faculty Senate, according to the Faculty Guide. The adoption of a different tuition formula is an essentially administrative matter; the per-semester tuition was a recommendation of the Strategic Planning process of the summer of 2000. The Committee believes that the implementation of the new Core must coincide with the change in graduation requirements and with the new tuition structure; these are three large institutional changes, and it would be extremely difficult to implement them separately. In the months since the beginning of 2005, developments have made it clear that the original implementation date of the Fall 2007 semester is now unrealistic; the Senate, at its May 2006 meeting, moved the date of implementation forward to the freshman class of 2008. The additional year will allow us to refine further the “signature” courses before full rollout, and will allow an additional year of faculty training in proficiency infusion, so that the students arriving that year will find far more courses already revised in that direction. The additional year will also allow for more refinement of graduation requirements in the Colleges and Schools which are still examining those questions, and will allow more time for developing the budgetary model for the new tuition schedule.
The Committee is confident at this point that all these elements will be in place by the new date, and invites all members of the faculty to participate in this enterprise, which will result in a renewed University for us all.