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Thomas Falkner became The College of Wooster’s acting Vice President for Academic Affairs on July 1, 2002, after serving as Dean of the Faculty the previous three years. An expert on Greek and Latin language, literature, and culture, as well as ancient mythology, and civilization with a special interest in old age in Greek and Roman worlds, Falkner has been a professor of classical studies at The College of Wooster since 1977. He has also served as department chair. Falkner received his bachelor’s degree from LeMoyne College and his master’s degree and Ph.D. from the State University of New York at Buffalo. After that, he spent a postdoctoral year at the University of Pennsylvania on a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Fellowship-in-Residence and has been the recipient of four other awards from the NEH. The author or editor of four books and many articles on Greek and Latin literature, including The Poetics of Old Age in Greek Epic, Lyric and Tragedy in 1995, and Contextualizing Classics, which he edited with two colleagues in 2000, Falkner is a member of the American Philological Association, the Vergilian Society, the Classical Society of American Academy in Rome, the Ohio Classical Conference, the Classical Association of Middle West and South, and the Archaeological Institute of America. |
The College of Wooster recently completed its first year with a newly implemented curriculum, "A Wooster Education." Thomas Falkner, who became acting Vice President for Academic Affairs (VPAA) July 1, 2002, after serving as Dean of the Faculty for the previous three years, played an integral role in the development of the new curriculum, and he shares his thoughts about its success as well as its future. Why did The College of Wooster change its curriculum? In part, because we had to. The College’s five-year strategic plan required a review of the curriculum, and this is related to a commitment to strengthening the quality of the academic program overall. But the more important point is that it was clearly time to do so. Wooster had last revised its degree and general education requirements in 1982, and there have been important changes in the world, in higher education, and in the College since then. There has been special emphasis in the last two decades on issues of writing, international education, and technology. It is important that faculty take a fresh look at the curriculum from time to time so that they are fully committed to and invested in what they teach. We also wanted to take advantage of the new ideas and perspectives of the many faculty who have come to the College since 1982. What are the significant differences between the old and new curriculum? The two traditional "bookends" of the curriculum have endured with little change. All students will continue to take the First-Year Seminar (FYS) in Critical Inquiry, specially designed courses by faculty across the College that focus on critical thinking, writing, reading, and discussion. And all students will complete "I.S.", Independent Study, the research project that is the center of their efforts in the senior year. Students will still be required to distribute their course work across a number of departments, so that their work has both depth and breadth. But the path "from FYS to I.S." is now more carefully articulated. In addition to courses in their major, all students will take courses in foreign language, cultural difference, religious perspectives, and quantitative reasoning. The curriculum features a rigorous writing program, including special writing-intensive courses that are offered by all departments. In addition to preparing students better for I.S., we think that these requirements will prepare students better to be effective leaders and good citizens. How does a college go about changing its curriculum? It’s a massive undertaking and not the kind of thing a college does lightly. In this case the curricular change was the result of almost five years of discussion and planning. As with most important decisions, the really hard part is identifying goals and principles: we had to ask ourselves what we wanted our graduates to know and what kinds of people we wanted them to become. We argued endlessly about the educational philosophy that should underlie any set of requirements. We wanted to make certain that we could identify the specific learning goals that each requirement sought to accomplish. The most important part of the process was making sure that we had the fullest possible input from the faculty. We had an all-day workshop on the curriculum in which the faculty debated and discussed the philosophy and the content of a new curriculum, and several open meetings where faculty responded to various curricular models. A major role was played by the Educational Policy Committee, which includes faculty, students, and administrators. And we spent three meetings of the full faculty in open discussion before voting approval on May 1, 2000. It was also important to educate ourselves about what was happening at other colleges, so we attended several national conferences and spent a lot of time looking at the programs of other liberal arts institutions. What was the reaction of the first-year class to the new curriculum? Well, they had no experience with the "old curriculum" to compare. I can only say that in the many conversations I have had, formal and informal, with new students and their families, I have heard great support and excitement. Most were impressed, though at times also a little anxious, about the new requirements, and especially about the demands of the new writing regimen. Next year, when the sophomores enter the second year of the program and most take their first writing-intensive course, it will be important to monitor their experience carefully. How did the new curriculum "grade out" in its first year? I would give the institution an ‘A’ for having put in place all the new courses, literature, and advising in record time–we had only a year of turnaround between approving the curriculum and implementing it. But assigning a grade is much more a question of whether the curriculum is achieving its goals. The faculty has also required that we assess the new curriculum carefully and systematically, so the College’s assessment committee is currently hard at work trying to develop a program to measure student learning–we’ve already started to assemble portfolios of student writing and to assess the writing program. In fact, it will take10 years for us to assess fully the effectiveness of the entire program. How does this change reflect what is happening nationally? Wooster has always been a trendsetter educationally. When you look at the program of I.S., which Wooster established in 1948, and the number of colleges today that claim to emphasize undergraduate research, you can see how far ahead of its time the College was. The same is true of our first-year programs–Wooster began those special courses in 1956, and programs like Wooster’s have sprung up at many colleges. The College continues to distinguish itself for the strength and quality of its interdisciplinary programs–our programs in Black Studies and Women’s Studies, for instance, have been national models. The new curriculum includes a new Program in Interdisciplinary Studies, which will offer each year a half-dozen new courses on interdisciplinary subjects team-taught by faculty from different departments. Students and faculty have found team-taught courses to be very worthwhile experiences, and this past year we offered courses on interdisciplinary topics like Marxism, French Colonization, and the Pre-Socratic Philosophers. In your position as acting vice president of academic affairs, will you still be involved in curricular matters? While the Dean of the Faculty plays a leadership role in the development of the College’s curriculum, the VPAA has an equally challenging role–that of ensuring that the College has the resources, especially the faculty, required to implement the curriculum. One of the things we have come to appreciate in planning and delivering this new program to our students is the amount of work involved. Teaching new courses to meet new requirements requires an enormous commitment of time and energy. Wooster has been fortunate in winning external and internal sources of support that have given us some additional staff and some funding to support "A Wooster Education." But it will take a great deal of ongoing effort to keep pace with the additional expectations we have made of ourselves in offering our students this ambitious program of study. |
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