CURRICULAR STRUCTURE AND ITS INTERRELATEDNESS

Curriculum 2000 emphasizes various dimensions to learning: the direct substantive knowledge one receives in a discipline or area, the ways of learning and knowing how to express and use knowledge, and the thematic connections of knowledge across disciplines. It, thereby, underlines the integrative, rather than disparate, features of an education appropriate for a Duke undergraduate at the outset of the next century.

As noted earlier, for General Education requirements, students are required to take a minimum of three courses in each Area of Knowledge. In addition, students will be required to have 2 exposures to each of the Modes of Inquiry, Focused Inquiries, and Competencies through courses they take in any of the Areas of Knowledge. The only exceptions are with regard to foreign language and writing for which the requirement is more flexible, depending on student proficiency upon Duke matriculation.

Each of the courses in the areas of knowledge may (but need not) also provide exposure to one or two of the modes of inquiry, focused inquiries, and/or competencies. For example, an Anthropology course on comparative ethnicity would carry a Social Science (SS) area designation with a Cross Cultural Inquiry (CCI) exposure. If it required a sustained research exercise due at the end of the semester, it would also carry a Research Intensive (RI) designation. Hence it would count toward fulfillment of the Social Science (SS) area and the Cross Cultural Inquiry (CCI), and Research Intensive (RI) requirements. Courses may carry up to two Modes of Inquiry, Focused Inquiries or Competencies. As noted above, while area requirements represent individual courses in departments and programs, Modes of Inquiry, Competencies, and Focused Inquiries will be exposures, and courses can embody up to two exposures per course.

Benefits of the curricular structure for general education requirements include the fact that it provides incentives for departments to develop courses offering exposures in the various fields and competencies. Over time, students' choices about how to gain these exposures should increase. This will be especially important in some fields of inquiry, such as Science, Technology, and Society, in which there may not currently be sufficient courses. If this is the case, we will need to encourage departments to develop such courses in ways beyond the incentives that the curriculum itself generates.

Another benefit is the fact that using an integrative structure for the curriculum provides a representation of Duke's core educational values. It emphasizes the institutional priority placed upon breadth and depth of disciplinary and cross-disciplinary teaching and learning. The curricular framework. by its very nature, encourages interaction among courses, departments and divisions. For example, a students might fulfill one QIDR exposure in an upper-level Economics course that used quantitative methods or complete one Foreign Language exposure in a History or Literature course taught in French.

Finally, Curriculum 2000 preserves the strength of student choice in the general education curriculum. Rather than presenting a common course or common core that every student takes, students have freedom to choose exposures through courses they themselves select and which faculty members have designed to meet the requisite criteria. Moreover, despite preserving student and faculty choice, Curriculum 2000 achieves another important goal: it provides communality as students share a common framework for their educational experiences.

Next: RELATION OF GENERAL EDUCATION TO THE MAJOR