Having worked on the letter from (some of) my cohort of faculty, I don’t
have much else to say. But I would like to tell a story that underscores
the issues that were raised in that letter. I have a number of new freshman
advisees this term, but also three new majors, one of whom is a
junior. She came in to see me a few days into the term, being short a
course due to a mistake of her own. We talked through her progression
through the major, and I asked her about her GERs; she had only one left,
the Asia-Africa, but of course, most of those courses are full at that
point.
When it became clear that she had come to Furman with AP credit, and had
taken summer school courses at her home state university and in Europe both
summers since entering Furman, I suggested that perhaps she did not need to
meet her Asia-Africa requirement this term, and could consider
underloading, without worry. She admitted that she was
“tired,” not having had a break from school in two years.
I encouraged her to take a dance class, or an art class at Furman or in
Greenville. Suddenly she remembered that she had always wanted to take
photography, and that she had enjoyed a yoga class in high school. Then
she talked about how much fun she had had the one time she went to
Jones Gap State Park, and that her friends have always talked about
returning, but
they have never found the time. I sent her off to comb the Greenville
Yellow Pages, with an assignment to find some things she wanted to do and
to arrange a group hike to Jones Gap sometime that term.
The next day she appeared in my office again, having signed up for yoga, but also saying, “Well, I went home and I decided to look in the course catalogue, since I could take two classes and if I took one pass/fail, I could still do some other activities.” She’d found an art history class that she was thrilled to take, and confessed that she’d never looked in the course catalogue just to see if there was a course she wanted to take, just because she was interested in it.
This student may be an extreme case; I haven’t been here long enough to
know. But this story seems enough in keeping with some of the others I’ve
heard that I am concerned. I find it incomprehensible that a student who
has been here two years is not looking in the course catalogue for courses they
would want to take. It seems they are juniors before this is even an option
for them!
Students should be barraged with possibility from the minute they arrive.
They should be overwhelmed with a vast array of ways to become educated
and informed. They should be encouraged and nurtured to become
passionate
about learning.
Please take this letter as an endorsement of flexible distribution
requirements. I believe that the approaches outlined in the group
letter sent by members of my cohort would represent a substantial
improvement of
our curriculum.