The Wabash Commentary

Recently the Academic Policy Committee released the report on All-College Courses.  The discussion of All-College Courses “was part of a wider conversation this semester about the College’s curriculum and how we will offer courses and programs of quality in light of a reduced faculty after 2011.”    For those who haven’t yet read the report, this summary intends to make the main points of it clear and accessible. For those who have, it wouldn’t hurt to refresh what was overwhelming student support in favor of C&T at a time when faculty seem to be ignoring it.

The report revealed that a cardinal virtue of the course was creating a sense of community between students and alumni. Yet this community also serves as a way to connect faculty with students of diverse disciplines and more importantly as a way to  connect faculty with each other.  The cohesion brought about by C&T serves as a way to combat “fragmentation” in increasingly specialized academic disciplines.

In addition, C&T allows the student to develop “certain important competencies.”  Overwhelmingly, the skills identified concerned discussion and argumentation. As identified by students, the ability to discuss and articulate complex arguments is “a hallmark of a Wabash man.”    It is “noteworthy that students view C&T as the principal curricular mechanism for honing these skills.  And for many students, one of the only mechanisms.”

Students identified plentiful and wide-ranging impediments to the course.  They were critical of the amount of reading, disparate grading policies, irrelevant modules, and variability of both instructor competence and enthusiasm.  Particularly revealing was the concern for the lack of relation to students’ majors, especially in math and science.  However, this lack of the direct application to their major did not diminish, but rather, increased the value of C&T for these students.  “That science/math students routinely found the course so disparate from their major fields of study, yet regarded it as the sine qua non of their academic experience, is a good indicator of the high value your students place on the liberal arts.”

Very striking among the student-proposed solutions for C&T was a need for a reinvigoration of faculty interest and dedication to the course.  The implied and at times explicit unwillingness to “teach the course is already a sore spot with many students.”  In the concluding statements, the article revealed, “The dissonance between student perception of C&T as a signature aspect of the Wabash experience and student perception of low faculty investment in the course was striking.”

When asked to address possible changes to the curriculum, a suggestion echoed by numerous students was to reevaluate the efficacy and practicality of distribution requirements.  One student lamented, “There should be more creative and thoughtful possibilities considered instead of just focusing on C&T or Freshman Tutorial.”  The very focus of the study on C&T and Freshman Tutorial reveals the narrow-mindedness of this curriculum reevaluation.    

Perhaps the most alarming aspect of the study was a suggestion some faculty made that the researchers “do [their] best to look behind the ‘veil’ or the ‘façade’ of what students have been socialized to say regarding what they value as Wabash men.”  While there may be a normalized definition of a Wabash man, it should be more expected in an admissions pitch than a voluntary study on the meaning of a Wabash education.  At a liberal arts institution, it is particularly unsettling that faculty would readily dismiss students’ desire to discuss and argue for what they value in their education as a façade.  In contrast, the researchers concluded, “We found these students to be articulate, forthright, and consistently willing to contribute to the discussions in a meaningful, constructive manner.” 

In its discussion of the idea of C&T as study abroad within the classroom, the report reveals the attitude of students towards C&T clearly.  “The term ‘liberal arts’ was pervasive when students spoke of C&T. For these students, the combination of discussion-based pedagogy and addressing essential human questions from the vantage points of different generations and cultures makes C&T the quintessential vehicle for delivering the liberal arts.”