Peter Lange, Chair of the Curriculum Review Committee Printable Acrobat file (.pdf) of this Letter MEMORANDUM Date: November 20, 1998 To: Arts and Sciences Faculty From: Professor Peter Lange, Chair Arts and Sciences Curriculum Review Committee, on behalf of the Committee Subject: Curriculum 2000 Final Proposal I am pleased, on behalf of the Curriculum Review Committee, to submit to the Arts and Science’s faculty and to the Arts and Sciences Council the final draft of the Curriculum 2000 proposal. The proposal is available to all faculty members at http://www.aas.duke.edu/admin/curriculum2000/ and hard copies are being distributed to all Arts and Sciences Council members and Department Chairs. The proposal will be evaluated at three Arts and Sciences Council meetings, scheduled to take place at 3:45 PM on December 1, December 10 and January 14 in 139 Social Sciences. In submitting Curriculum 2000, the Committee wishes to thank the many colleagues who have contributed to a vigorous and most useful discussion that has gone on since September when our earlier draft was circulated. The careful evaluation of our proposal in numerous settings has enabled the committee to make a number of revisions that substantially improve our initial recommendations. The most important of these include: retaining the current 34 course requirement for graduation, requiring students to take three courses in each of four Areas of Knowledge (rather than our initial proposal of four in each Area), requiring students to have exposure to Interpretive and Aesthetic Approaches to understanding, and assuring that students have exposure to the natural sciences as well as mathematics. There are also a number of smaller changes that reflect more specific issues raised by our colleagues, including adjustments to the Research criteria and changes in the presentation of the Cross Cultural Inquiry and Ethical Inquiry Focused Inquiries. The proposal retains, nonetheless, the vision of a more rigorous, structured and integrative curriculum that the committee has been developing over the last year. It also continues to combine that structure with extensive opportunities for choice and for depth of learning, especially through the major. Our vision is based on our conviction that the current curriculum no longer serves our students as well as it should. Too many students omit one of the basic areas of knowledge. Moreover, many students are not being exposed ways of analysis and understanding that characterize various disciplines. And too many students are not exposed to major integrative and interdisciplinary issues that increasingly have a deep impact on the world into which they are entering and in which we expect them to assume leadership roles. Curriculum 2000 addresses each of these issues while retaining substantial choice in general education for students, and maintaining the commitment to depth in the major. We urge all our colleagues to examine the curriculum. We have sought to be ambitious and farsighted in developing a curriculum appropriate to our students needs in the first decade of the coming century. We anticipate with high expectations, and some relief, the deliberations of the Council and, we hope, passage of Curriculum 2000.   Copyright © 1998, Duke University