OUR NEW CURRICULUM—IHUM and Thinking Matters
In 2012-13, Stanford University will transform the Introduction to Humanities (IHUM) Program to include a broader range of disciplinary areas of study. This new curriculum of IHUM-transition and “Thinking Matters” courses will span such diverse fields as American studies, environmental studies, biological sciences, social psychology, and political philosophy as well as the traditional humanities disciplines. We are now accepting applications for one-year lecturer positions to teach in the new curriculum.
The Introduction to the Humanities program builds on nearly 90 years of undergraduate tradition at Stanford. As did the pioneering “Problems of Citizenship” course in 1919, today’s IHUM courses engage freshmen with significant issues, themes, ideas and values of human identity and existence. Through close study and critical interpretation of important texts from literature, history, philosophy and the dramatic, visual and material arts, IHUM provides all first-year students with a strong foundation in liberal education.
The Stanford commitment to liberal education is reflected in the careful design of the IHUM requirement, enacted by the Faculty Senate in 1996 in the IHUM Legislation. Student choice is a hallmark of the requirement. The dynamic curriculum presents students with an array of course options that maximize the chance of studying a topic of personal and intellectual interest. IHUM balances this flexibility of individual choice with the opportunity to share in the learning community of all first-year students. A broadly representative IHUM Governance Board oversees the quality of courses, instruction, workload equity, and grading policies. Renewal and change are incorporated fully into the IHUM program. Every four years, the Faculty Senate mandates a self-study report and a review by the Senate Committee on Undergraduate Standards and Policies to ensure that IHUM continues to refresh itself and sustain its mission.
IHUM aims to engage students in exploring fundamental and enduring questions about what it means to be human. IHUM also serves as a transition from secondary school into college level learning. Courses are designed to challenge entering students’ conception of knowledge as defined solely by “right answers” or as produced by a single, authoritative source. IHUM instruction focuses on the development of diverse analytical and critical skills for interpretation of primary texts carefully selected for their richness and variety.
Autumn Course + Winter/Spring Course Sequence. The team-taught autumn quarter course lectures provide multiple perspectives on five primary course texts, a number strictly limited in order to support the pedagogical objective of close reading. Offered by Academic Council faculty from different departments, these interdisciplinary courses demonstrate the lively exchange of ideas and productive intellectual tensions generated by different approaches to interpretations of meaning. Over winter and spring quarters, the twenty-week IHUM course sequences promote depth of study in a single department or discipline. Two-quarter IHUM courses set a fast pace of study concentrated in a specific field. Students pair an autumn course with a winter/spring course sequence to complete the three-quarters of IHUM.
Small-group discussions averaging 15 students accompany course lectures. Post-doctoral scholars selected through a competitive national search lead these student-centered sections that encourage critical inquiry and enable students to develop skills of oral and written expression. In building their own interpretations, students analyze texts and sustain open intellectual exchange of different points of view in an all-freshman classroom community.
Click to read the most recent report, released in 2007: IHUM Self Study, 2007.