Contribute to the Discussion


Jim Hatton, Southern Oregon University

 

“I would like to suggest that the undergraduate curriculum be built around the idea that by graduation a student will have done a series of complex activities. A list of these activities or better yet a portfolio of evidence would be more impressive to employers and to professional and grad schools than a student’s overall GPA and a transcript of courses taken.

By graduation, the student will have:

Students need a breadth of active experiences and they need to explore other aspects of the human endeavor other than the purely academic. Most importantly an undergraduate education needs to ensure that students have done a set of challenging tasks and grown thereby.”

 Back to Previous Page

 

Robin Blackwood, B.A. Human Biology ’85, M.A. Education ’86

 

“In addition to decisions about classes, majors, and careers, and making sure young people acquire the skill set to succeed in today’s world, I believe one of the most important decisions we make –often during college — is who we want to spend the rest of our lives with. Over and over, some of the “smartest” people around have difficulty making informed decisions about who to pick that will stand the test of time. From early on, we are told that if we do well in school, we’ll get into college and eventually, hopefully, have a rewarding career and make a difference in the world, but we don’t teach much about another significant ingredient of happiness—the people we surround ourselves with and our personal relationships. Along the way, we seem to assume this sort of learning has been or will be figured out on its own.

So along these lines I have written a curriculum – called the Pursuit of Happiness – designed to help young people make more informed decisions about who to bring into their lives… The course takes a closer look at human behavior and personality through discussion, creative assignments, role-playing, quizzes, a few movies, and a final exam. Topics include love, happiness, cognitive dissonance, birth order, parenting styles, and character traits such as kindness, responsibility and courage. Independent thinking, increasing self-awareness, conflict-resolution skills, listening, and how to stay put for difficult conversations are practiced throughout the course.”

 Back to Previous Page

 

Craig

 

"Most everyone agrees that introductions to the humanities are important as is improving students' abilities to read, write, and discuss.  However, are the current IHUM courses and PWR courses the best way of accomplishing these ends?  

In thinking about this problem, I see some guiding principles that I think should be considered in coming up with a solution:


1.  Let's not worry anymore about "common experience" --- we left that behind long ago, and as Ralph pointed out, there are lots of common experiences for the students.
2.  We should strive to have as many freshman courses taught by regular faculty as possible.  If we have to hire teachers to carry out what we think should be our educational mission, something is wrong.
3.  Students should get their instruction and experience in reading, writing, discussing within the context of specific disciplines that also introduces them to a body of knowledge and a tradition of inquiry.  Critical reading is not the same in history and in biology.  Neither is writing or inquiry the same.

My suggestion would be to abandon PWR and IHUM in their current form.  In their place we should invite departments to offer courses taught by faculty that introduce students to their discipline in a way that is enriched by incorporating the elements of PWR courses. These courses could be in the humanities, the social sciences, and the natural sciences, and students could be required to take 2 of each sometime during their undergraduate years.  These would take the place of IHUM, PWR, and distribution requirements.

 Back to Previous Page

 

 

Taylor Phillips, Psychology and Human Biology ’10

 

Despite the large amount of diversity our student body holds, not many of us get the chance to consider important racial and cultural understandings outside of somewhat sporadic and simplistic freshman dorm events (unless of course we actively seek out such coursework & related activities). In many of my classes, I have heard students describe the ease with which they and their fellow students end up self segregating and generally interacting with people of their own background (SES, race, and otherwise). Race relations and other relations involving differing socio-cultural standpoints still are not ideal on our campus… I think this is a problem clearly for minority (racially, and otherwise) students on our campus, but also for the white students! Do we want to be churning out students that, although not necessarily racist in an old fashioned sense, demonstrate modern racism in that they are ignorant of the multicultural issues still present in our society (and how to talk about them / address them), ignorant of their own role in those relations, and ignorant of the fact that "color-blind" is in fact a myth the covers up inequality we still have today? Not to forget that students that predominantly have the same-background friends and do not meaningfully engage with students different from themselves.


IHUM seems like the perfect opportunity to provide meaningful education in multi-cultural (both domestic and global) issues to all students on this campus, but in a more consistent and pointed way than it currently stands…In a more uniform diversity education scheme instead, sections would allow the candid discussion necessary to engage with these quite personal topics, while lecture would give students a framework for thinking about the topics more generally. IHUM as it stands is met with much criticism from students who feel it isn't really meeting their liberal arts desires, and so ends up wasting time instead, especially for those not entering the humanities later on. But I think its ability to reach all students makes it the perfect vehicle for diversity education - a topic that easily incorporates much of the liberal arts that is the goal of IHUM.

 Back to Previous Page

 

Tom Black, Associate Vice Provost for Student Affairs and University Registrar

 

"The students who will take the curriculum of 2020 will be 9/11 babies — coined “the Homeland generation” — born to a world that has a global economy, a profound fear of terrorism, an urgent need to act to combat global warming, exaggerated disparities of wealth, a business atmosphere that belies secular and spiritual ethical traditions, and a crumbling nation-state system which lapses between chauvinism and global cooperation beset by sectarian factions. 

Locally, by 2030 we’ll be a nation with no ethnic majority.  The politics resulting from demographic changes will have an effect.  Where the wealth is, as well as and who has it, will have an effect.  How this country perceives itself in the world will have an effect.  Furthermore, currently, we are a nation that possesses a 70% service economy.  What will be manufactured, marketed, and consumed — by whom and where — will have an effect.  Who holds our nation’s debt and whether our currency remains dominant will have an effect.  And if this were not enough, what is happening within the disciplines, particularly in research, will change how our students, faculties and our stakeholders view what constitutes a liberally educated person.  What our educated students do, are expected to do, and what we believe that we (at Stanford) are called to do, will have an effect. 

I believe that we need to give students the tools to be liberally educated leaders in a changing world.  This means people with adaptable skills who have the ability to meet and embrace creatively the changes that our students will face in their future. The curriculum then would emphasize leadership skills, their acquisition and development.  There aren’t many institutions of this caliber— just as there aren’t that many military academies—that focus on a type of leadership.  We produce de facto leadership in many areas but would our curriculum be the same if we selected and educated for leadership in a changing world?  I wonder if we would recruit the same individuals or depend on the same measures in the admissions process if our emphasis is on eventual leadership. 

Second, I believe we should require all students to study abroad, preferably sometime during first their four quarters in school. We should select for people who are willing and capable. I don’t mean screening for disabilities but the kind of incapability that manifests itself in a lack of desire or motivation.  We have evidence that we have an experienced student body before they reach Stanford.  If, however, we integrate an experience abroad with their studies it would enhance their overall education and may shape in a meaningful way what they eventually pursue at Stanford. 

Finally, I think we should engage our students in developing personal portfolios (aka e-portfolios nowadays) that are coupled with an expanded juried record of their work.  I would look to a cooperative effort of our advising support and career development staffs to help our students work towards developing characters that are fully aware and reflective of the entire four-year or sometimes five-year experience."

 Back to Previous Page

 

Eric Roberts

 

"The implicit assumption underlying this paragraph in the charge letter is that the purpose of an undergraduate education is to prepare students for “local, national, and global citizenship.” If that is indeed the goal—which I would heartily endorse — the success of Stanford’s undergraduate program cannot be judged by the specific skills or knowledge that students manage to acquire during their time here, but instead by the general habits of thought and problem-solving strategies they can use in the years to come.

How well, then, is Stanford currently serving that goal? For me, as I expect is true for many of my colleagues across the university, the answer to that question is complicated by the fact that the success of Stanford’s educational program seems to vary greatly from student to student. Every year, I encounter quite a few students whose lives Stanford has changed, moving them in precisely the directions one would want future citizens to go. Sometimes that change happens in a seminar or a course; sometimes that change comes entirely from extracurricular sources. The problem, however, is that many students never seem to take full advantage — and sometimes fail even to recognize — the enormous resources that Stanford has to offer them. Without coming to see what they can gain from the educational resources the university offers, without taking ownership of the educational process, those students remain adrift, and nothing we do in the structure of our requirements or our curriculum has much hope of setting their course aright.

For me, therefore, the important issue is how we can maximize the fraction of students who at some point in their time at Stanford, ideally early enough for them to benefit from that experience, have the epiphany that allows them to take responsibility for their own education and to get the most out of it. To answer that question, we need to understand how and why those attitudinal changes occur. Although I have no formal training for making such studies and can offer no conclusive evidence to back up my intuition, I’ve been teaching long enough to recognize that many such changes happen when students are touched in a personal way by individual contact that enables them to dispel their impression of Stanford as the overwhelming, impersonal institution it seems to be when they arrive. That sense of personal contact is extremely difficult to achieve in the large courses that have traditionally characterized the first few years of the undergraduate curriculum. It is much easier in seminars and easier still in intensive, focused interaction of the sort one has in Sophomore College. The changes that were instituted in response to the Commission on Undergraduate Education report in 1994 have made Stanford a much more effective undergraduate institution in which many more students experience the profound transformation that enables real learning. That revolution — like all revolutions perhaps — is unfinished. The real task facing SUES is not to tinker with the details of curricular requirements but rather to think creatively about how to ensure that more people can take full benefit of all that Stanford has to offer.

In many ways, it is much easier to see how one can build such wonderfully transformative personal connections in the smaller, more intimate environments of seminars or the many special programs that Stanford runs."

 Back to Previous Page

 

To submit your comments, criticisms, and suggestions, email

undergradstudy@stanford.edu


or send to:

Study of Undergraduate Education at Stanford
427 Sweet Hall
590 EScondido Mall
Stanford, CA 94305-3082

Letters will be considered equivalent to a letter to the editor, and excerpts may be featured on this website or in the SUES report. If you prefer that your comment not be featured, please indicate this in your submission.

 

Back to Top