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Texas Christian University Revises Core Curriculum, Sets 2005 Goal for It

Posted on: Monday, 29 September 2003, 06:00 CDT

Sep. 29--FORT WORTH, Texas--The next generation of students at Texas Christian University will be more culturally diverse, have better leadership skills and be better writers under a revised core curriculum that school officials hope to have in place by 2005.

Administrators will also be better equipped to determine if those students are learning what they are being taught under the revised core.

And, for the first time in recent history, students won't be required to take physical education classes.

TCU's core curriculum, which faculty members have been working on revising since 2000, is a set of college courses that all undergraduate students must take, in addition to the classes in their major. The university's core curriculum hasn't been changed since 1988.

"We're just tweaking it," said TCU Chancellor Victor Boschini Jr.

"But it is important that the faculty keep reviewing the curriculum to make sure it is keeping up with students of today instead of the students of the 1960s."

The additions of cultural and global studies, and of leadership, represents TCU's efforts to make its undergraduate education unique to its mission of educating individuals to think and act as ethical leaders and responsible citizens.

In the revised core, an undergraduate would be required to take at least one three-hour course in cultural awareness, global awareness, and citizenship and social values. Under cultural awareness, for example, an undergraduate would have to take a class like minority or women's studies.

There is no such requirement in the curriculum now.

"We hope students here become more aware that the reality they face isn't necessarily the reality of everyone else," said Natalie Lahutsky, chair of the TCU Faculty Senate, which is making the revisions.

The revised core will also put measures in place to gauge what students are learning. A panel in each of TCU's eight colleges will periodically review student progress, and make recommendations that could help professors become better teachers.

In the current core, like that of many other universities, TCU professors were given the academic freedom to teach whatever they wanted, however they wanted.

"The old model says, 'Here's what we are teaching.' And in that model, some pass and some don't," Lahutsky said. "The new model asks, 'What are the students learning?' Now, there won't be a file that says, 'Lahutsky's [student] papers don't pass muster.' It'll be more of an aggregate listing of how each college is doing."

The revised core will take about 51 semester hours to complete -- and not one of those semester hours is required to come from a physical education class.

"The thinking was that if you want to encourage students to be physically fit, having them take one tennis class or one weight-lifting class is not going to have an affect on whether they have a healthy lifestyle," said Mary Volcansek, dean of the Addran college of humanities and social sciences. "I'd be surprised if other universities have retained that requirement in their curriculum. P.E. has just faded away."

The core will, however, feature classroom staples such as humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, fine arts, math, oral and written communication, religion, history and literature.

In some form or another, all of these classes are part of the current core curriculum, although TCU's academic officials hope to put in new wrinkles to help students excel.

For example, TCU officials want their students to be better equipped to express themselves through written communication. They have hired a tenure-track writing professor to head a writing center in the English department. Any student from any department can go to the center to learn how to become a better writer. Two writing-emphasis classes will ensure that undergraduates can write clearly about the particular discipline they are studying.

"Colleges and universities across the board have struggled with the challenge of making their students better writers," said Daryl Schmidt, chairman of the religion department and a representative of TCU's core implementation committee.

To create more consistency in administering core curriculum class work, TCU is considering having more of its tenured faculty members teach core classes, whittling down the number of core classes taught by adjunct faculty. Usually, adjunct faculty are part-time teachers who don't hold office hours and are not required to meet with students individually.

To meet this goal, TCU may have to hire more tenure-track faculty, or increase the load of the current faculty.

"It's not a bad thing, having part-time teachers teach anything," Boschini said. "But if the goal is to increase the number of full-time professors teaching the curriculum, I agree with that."

The revised core, voted on in a faculty senate meeting last April, is being reviewed by the department heads of each of TCU's eight colleges. Next semester, officials will determine which classes will meet the revised core curriculum requirements.

"We will be asking questions like, 'What is it about this particular course that meets the qualifications of this core?' " Schmidt said.

By fall 2004, officials hope to work the revised core into each of the undergraduate degree plans, and the registrar's office would be ready to enroll its new freshmen students by June 2005.

"It's been a lot of work," Schmidt said. "But I think we've learned more about who we are and where we are going just by studying our current core."

ONLINE: www.tcu.edu

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(c) 2003, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Texas. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

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