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	For our Alumni, Parents and Friends
Fall 2006	Table of Contents

Photo © Ian Bradshaw.

Changes in liberal learning

CNU’s increasingly able students motivated a team of faculty and staff members to design the new curriculum with more breadth and challenge

By Jane S. Hill

Stunning new buildings are the visible face of change at Christopher Newport University, but equally dramatic, high-impact changes are happening inside the classrooms this fall.

As lead architect of the new curriculum, Dr. Douglas Gordon, dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, has worked for four years to see it take shape. He and a team of faculty and staff members carefully revamped the “liberal learning” requirements for the incoming freshmen class, adding offerings “designed to excite their imaginations, challenge their intellect and prepare them to be thoughtful citizens in a society that desperately needs them,” he said.

Among the features of the revised curriculum are First-Year Seminars that allow students to choose from an extensive menu of subjects, as varied as cinema or spirituality, Capt. John Smith or Beethoven. Working in small groups, they will explore the topic in depth while honing skills such as critical thinking, analytical reading, effective writing and speaking, problem solving and research methods, Dr. Gordon said.

The Class of 2010 will be the first to take a heavier math load and a required foreign language. In addition, they must take one course in each of six broadly defined “areas of inquiry”: Western Traditions; Global and Multicultural Perspectives; Investigating the Natural World; Identity, Institutions, and Societies; Creative Expressions; and Formal and Informal Reasoning. According to Dr. Gordon, under these rules, no one will graduate, for example, without at least a familiarity with art – a necessary part of a liberal education.

Dr. Bobbye Bartels, assistant dean for Liberal Learning Studies, was responsible for mining appropriate course offerings in each area of inquiry.

“Once we had approval for the skeleton categories, we asked faculty to propose ideas that met the objectives,” said Dr. Bartels. Some existing courses fit neatly into the new areas of inquiry; others were created. Science faculty members, for example, came up with course content, including a lab component for each, that explores “everyday science” in fields such as ecology or medicine and health, Dr. Bartels said. In the past, students had to take two courses in the same science subject. Now, they can tackle any two, from astronomy to zoology.

Students in the pioneering Class of 2010 will become not only proficient in their individual majors but also versed in another field of interest. Under the new requirements, students must take two courses in a single field unrelated to their major, including one upper-level course in their secondary field. Hypothetically, a theater major will find herself investigating the Sociology of Aging (Soc. 305), or a Spanish major will examine Money and Banking (Econ 301).

The decision to reexamine the curriculum was prompted by “an increasingly able student body,” Dr. Gordon said. Entrance requirements at CNU have become more competitive, therefore students needed a curriculum to provide greater breadth and challenge.

To develop an appropriate curriculum for the 21st century, the task force looked to other colleges nationwide that “actively promote liberal learning,” Dr. Gordon said. “This is the first wholesale change in the general education requirement since we were a colony of the College of William and Mary in 1960-61,” he said. “We wanted to understand where we might benefit from what others have done.”

Though the team will have to wait years to evaluate officially the overall success of the curriculum changes, Dr. Gordon is convinced the results will be profound. He has become expert, almost evangelical, at explaining the virtues of a liberal arts education. He recognizes that many parents focus on a “pragmatic career path” for their child rather than a strong liberal arts foundation, but he’s passionate and persuasive about its lifelong value.

“Liberal learning is designed to train students to solve problems and to make a difference in their community, which is characteristic of a democratic society,” he says. “It’s tied in its origins to a Latin term meaning ‘free.’ In a world that cries out for responsible leadership, we feel it’s important to supply leaders who know history, philosophy and the ideals that are embedded in Western culture, in the Bill of Rights. That’s tall-order stuff. These are the courses that will shape lives. It sounds noble, but I believe it.”

For more information on the changes to the liberal learning curriculum, go to http://liberallearning.cnu.edu/core.html.

CNU Alumni Magazine Fall 2006 | ©2006 Christopher Newport University