Dear 2016-ers,
It’s November, with all that the name
entails. I will not get into preparing
for finals, other end of semester tasks/fun, and Winter Break. I think I did a pretty good job expounding
upon them in previous newsletters (November
and December
2012).
I would, instead like to tell you about
something that has been taking up huge amounts of my time this semester. I chair the Trinity University Curriculum
Council. We are responsible for
approving new courses, revisions or deletion of courses, and the general
governance of the curriculum.
For the past two years, Trinity has been
undergoing massive development of a new curriculum. The developmental process sought to maximize
what we already do best as an impressive liberal arts college, while
thoughtfully incorporating innovative, pedagogically sound practices that
haven’t hitherto been an important part of the Trinity landscape. Over half of the faculty has been a part of
the process over that time, participating in ideas labs, sounding boards,
development labs, and working groups.
The UCC is in the process of putting the
final touches on a new general curriculum that represents the culmination of
those years of efforts. In my opinion,
it is something that challenges everyone—students, faculty, and
administration—to really reach deep within themselves, to think about what we
do as scholars and teachers, and to interact with our disciplines on an
unparalleled level.
I have learned two major lessons during
this process and I would like to share them briefly with you. First of all, Trinity faculty members love to
argue. We can spend 45 minutes arguing
the point, punctuation, and implication of a sentence (trust me on this, if you
haven’t already seen it in your classes—I’ve been at meetings where this
happens). I can take a torturously long
period to get anything done because we are wordsmiths, we like to think about
the connotation of a phrase, we like to follow every thought to its ultimate
conclusion, and you cannot rush us through this.
Second of all, this propensity to argue is
because Trinity faculty members care.
The reason that we argue over each learning outcome, student
requirements, and course categorization is because we all want to be a part of
the best course of study possible. The
beauty of it is that we all have dramatically different ideas about what that
looks like. Conversely, the pain of it
is that we all have dramatically different ideas about what that looks
like. It takes us a long time to
gradually refine our ideals and thoughts and principals into something with
which everyone is satisfied (or as close to it as a bunch of irascible
academics can get).
The implementation of this curriculum is
still a while out, and you may not get to benefit from the changes that it
would bring. You can still benefit,
however, from the skills, knowledge, and passion that went into it. Those qualities reside in the professors that
are currently at the front of every classroom on campus. Those abilities to reconstruct an argument,
to extrapolate the results of an unusual combination of chemicals, to guide
students to put aside everything they thought they knew and to attempt to
create a new approach are yours to tap right now.
I am extremely lucky to be a part of the
faculty of Trinity, to learn from my colleagues, and to trust that they want
the same for my students as I do: a
successful, rewarding academic career.
However, I am not as lucky as you are. You get to learn from these people every
single day.
Cheers,
Dr. M
