Articles on this page:
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Core Committee Announces Application Process (September, 2006)
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Pilots on The Journey of Transformation (September, 2006)
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Seminar Held on Teaching in the Core (August, 2006)
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Faculty Senate Approves Change in University Core Courses (July, 2006)
Date Posted: September, 2006
The Core Curriculum Committee of the Faculty Senate invites applications from full-time tenured and tenure track undergraduate faculty interested becoming involved in the implementation of the new core curriculum. Faculty interested in teaching the first Signature Course, "The Journey of Transformation" or the second Signature Course, "Christianity and Culture in Dialogue" are welcome to apply by filling out application form on the Core Curriculum website. Faculty selected to teach these courses will meet six times and participate in a preparatory seminar during the 2006 – 2007 academic year. Successful applicants will teach these courses in the 2007 - 2008 school year.
There are currently two options available for participating in core proficiency infusion: serving as a "liaison" for a department (not necessarily your own) to help infuse a large enrollment course, or infusion of one or more of your own courses. Those who choose to work on large-course redesign should have already gone through the infusion process for a course of their own. The goal is to help a department identify a course for infusion and decide what proficiency to infuse, and then to work with department members to infuse/create a generic course template, update assignments, and otherwise create a focus on the infused proficiency within the course. The goal is to have all sections of the course infused, regardless of who teaches it.
The second option is to infuse a course of your own. The first step in this process for 2007-08 (as it was for 2006-07) will be attendance at the TLTC Summer Institute, scheduled to take place in June 2007. There you will be introduced to the basic premises of infusion, have an opportunity to see the work of prior participants, and begin the hands-on process of course infusion. The actual course infusion will take place over the course of the subsequent academic year under the direction of team leaders and mentors who have successfully infused their own courses.
This year we will also be working on an approval process for those who already have an infused course they would like to make available when the core is launched in fall 2008. Details on this process will be forthcoming.
Date Posted: September, 2006
Two hundred first-year students and eleven full time faculty are piloting the first of the new core’s signature courses, The Journey of Transformation. Flying in formation with variation, pilots are working from a common core syllabus, elaborated individually in each section. It's a text-based discussion course focused on key questions from the Catholic intellectual tradition. Some faculty chose to bring service learning into the journey. Others practice a more traditional “great books” approach. Faculty meetings on Friday at lunch and on Thursday at dinner are times for sharing experiences and strategies. Following the community meals, the course’s film series is screened in Boland Hall’s Pirate’s Cellar. Four film critiques are required, formal writing assignments designed to build proficiency in critical thinking. Another common element of the course is a summative group project developed around a “big question” chosen by each group of three to four students.
The Journey was launched with the Vatican II document nurtured by Seton Hall’s Msgr. Oesterreicher and Sister Rose Thering, Nostra Aetate, that opens with a some of course’s key questions.
People look to their different religions for an answer to the unsolved riddles of human existence. The problems that weigh heavily on people's hearts are the same today as in past ages. What is humanity? What is the meaning and purpose of life? What is upright behavior, and what is sinful? Where does suffering originate, and what end does it serve? How can genuine happiness be found? What happens at death? What is judgment? What reward follows death? And finally, what is the ultimate mystery, beyond human explanation, which embraces our entire existence, from which we take our origin and towards which we tend?
Discussions sometimes take faculty by surprise, as in Juergen Heinrichs’ class. “The class stumbled over the fact that some students didn’t know who or what the ‘Vatican’ is… After some hesitation, it was mentioned, ‘Isn't it the White House of Jesus?’ Well, besides everybody getting a good laugh out of this situation, we all realized that this answer was quite accurate, in a metaphorical sense. Better still, the laughter broke the ice for a more substantial discussion of the text.”
The syllabus calls for a writing assignment for each class meeting. Peter Ahr comments, “I'm very happy with the journal; it rewards them for reading, and it gives me a good look at what they're thinking. I'm going to keep up with it, even though every journal assignment is taking me an hour or two to read and comment on. It's time well spent.” Time well spent, that is what we’re hoping this course will encourage in our students, too.
Date Posted: August, 2006
Over two dozen faculty attended a two day seminar in late August led by Professor Roosevelt Montas from Columbia University’s core curriculum program. The purpose of this seminar was to invite faculty to consider teaching in the "signature courses" and to experience the pedagogy of a text-based discussion course. Professor Roosevelt Montas facilitated the seminar, which included a discussion of several texts both ancient and modern, modeling Columbia University’s methodology for reading and discussion.
Professor Peter Savastano of the Anthropology Department had this positive reaction to the seminar, “Ultimately, along with all of the valuable gems Montas gave us, the one that I feel trumps all of those that have personally affected me … is the importance of teaching from the text and of performing a "close reading" of the texts with our students. This I feel is essential if we are to cultivate critical thinking, or even meaningful thinking in any form, in our students. I hope that we will diligently work toward making this approach central to the Signature Courses and to the new Core Curriculum.”
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Date Posted: July, 2006
At its meeting on June 9, 2006, the Faculty Senate approved two motions to the core curriculum. The first motion revises the proposal for the core to include two signature courses to be taken by all students with the requirement that all students take a course in their junior year (in or outside their major) that is specifically tailored to be a follow-up to the themes developed in the first two courses. In addition, given changes in the core implementation process that were required by the Provost’s Office, the Faculty Senate voted to delay the implementation of the full new core curriculum to the freshmen class of 2008.