A broad series of revisions to the undergraduate curriculum has begun to take shape amid animated discussion by faculty and students. In March, the Faculty Senate took the first step, dropping the requirement of the three-quarter Introduction to the Humanities (IHUM) course sequence for freshmen and substituting a single course to be chosen from the rubric Thinking Matters. The change begins in the fall; a freshman writing class requirement remains. Thinking Matters courses, which aim to immerse students in university-level thinking, are among the proposals in the Study of Undergraduate Education at Stanford University, a 128-page report presented to the Faculty Senate in January. Fifty-five SUES recommendations, spanning areas that include residential learning, overseas studies and community-based programs, reflect four stated goals of a Stanford education: owning knowledge, honing skills and capacities, cultivating personal and social responsibility, and adaptive learning (the latter generating notable attention because of the increasing importance of lifelong learning). The study is a road map for a changing environment in teaching and learning, says Harry Elam, vice provost for undergraduate education. "If the emphasis before was on professors thinking about content they put in the curriculum," he notes, the new focus will be on "what students are going to get out of it. . . . How are we going to empower them in a way to really be proactive in their education?" Citing a variety of reservations about IHUM's effectiveness, including "a troubling pattern of student alienation" from the courses, the SUES committee proposes that Thinking Matters courses use specific questions or problems as a way to apply university-level analysis and knowledge. Hypothetical courses cited by faculty include Evil, Sustainability and Collapse and The Poet Remaking the World.
The Faculty Senate rejected recommendations for a freshman seminar requirement in favor of reviewing the new freshman structure and reconsidering a mandatory seminar in four years.
Representatives of student groups have raised concerns including complaints about a lack of organized opportunity for public feedback about the report after its publication. During the March Faculty Senate session, Elam pledged to meet with students to discuss the implementation of curriculum changes. Debate about other prominent recommendations, such as a new system for breadth requirements, will come in future Faculty Senate sessions. On the table is a model the SUES committee calls Ways of Thinking, Ways of Doing. It eschews requirements divided among particular disciplines and advocates for matching courses that develop "seven essential capacities": aesthetic and interpretive inquiry; social inquiry; scientific analysis; formal and quantitative reasoning; engaging difference; moral and ethical reasoning; and creative expression. A number of student groups critical of how the SUES report addresses identity and diversity have formed a coalition, the ASSU Community Action Board, and outlined their concerns in a lengthy letter to Faculty Senate members, hoping to influence coming debate.
"We feel as if the proposed recommendations fail to address what it truly means to have a diverse Stanford community," they write. Most of the letter suggests solutions, some of which highlight disagreements with the framework of Ways of Thinking, Ways of Doing. The writers raise a variety of objections to the "engaging difference" capacity, which entails the development of "abilities to live, work, and communicate with people whose experiences and perspectives are different from their own." The students, who suggest "engaging identity" as a more appropriate name, contend the recommended requirement is underemphasized compared to others, as well as being based on perceiving and defining "difference" from the viewpoint of straight, white, affluent males. "The word identity," they argue, "levels the playing field where no particular vantage point is promoted above another."
