THE WORK OF THE REVIEW COMMITTEE: GUIDING PRINCIPLES

Over the past year, the Arts and Sciences Curriculum Review Committee, under the leadership of Professor Peter Lange, has met weekly. Throughout its deliberations, members unanimously affirmed their basic commitment to the view that the curriculum should be shaped by a vision of what a Duke graduate in the next century should carry into life beyond college. This required addressing several questions. What are the intellectual qualities that should be shared by all Duke undergraduates? What skills and experiences best prepare our students for a successful and satisfying future? What are the intellectual and educational values that should represent Duke University and serve as common coin?

The result of these discussions is embodied in the proposal that follows. The proposal reflects our belief that to serve our undergraduates better, Trinity College must educate its undergraduates differently, with a view to the skills and experiences that students will need when they graduate from Duke. To do so, we propose that the College adopt a new liberal arts curriculum, Curriculum 2000. While this title may evoke images of science fiction movies or state-of-the art software, it has been chosen quite deliberately, signaling a curriculum which represents a new beginning intended to be well adapted to the turn of the century and the coming age with its opportunities and challenges.

Curriculum 2000 is an ambitious curriculum, one that seeks to make the most of the kind of university Duke is and strives to become. Building on structure and choice and breadth and depth (the themes of Duke's past two curriculum reviews), it provides a template for how faculty in Arts and Sciences can better prepare Duke undergraduates for the new century. It provides definition for the types of issues with which we hope students and faculty will engage and for the type of educational leadership that Duke as a premier educational institution will provide. It also provides a basis for ongoing development of courses and curricula adapted to the preparation of students for a challenging and rapidly changing environment.

Curriculum 2000 challenges not only students but also faculty and departments. It prompts us to think further about how we teach our areas of expertise and makes it our collective responsibility to convey what excites us in our disciplines. Furthermore, we must be able to pass on that excitement not only to those to whom our subject matter comes easily or who have powerful pre-professional reasons for working hard and wanting to master what we teach, but also to those who are wary of our disciplines and the knowledge they embody.

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