Hillsdale College has appointed a committee to review the core curriculum and consider changes such as a possible comprehensive core exam, according to Samuel Negus, director of program review and accreditation. 

“The freshmen who’ve matriculated this year are the 10th class to matriculate into the new core,” Negus said. “We plan to review, look back at what those changes have affected, whether they’ve worked out or not.”

The current core curriculum was the creation of a review committee from the late 2000s, and was implemented in the 2013-14 academic year. The last course implemented by that committee was the senior capstone, which began with the class of 2020. 

“This is essentially a program review process for the core. Now was the right time for two broad reasons,” Negus, the non-voting secretary of the committee, said. “One was that it’s been 10 years since these changes fully came in. And then the other was that Dr. Arnn has an interest in adding some kind of comprehensive exam to the core, in some form or fashion, and he’s spoken about what that might look like in very broad terms. It’s part of the role of this committee to think about what along those lines is actually feasible, and how we would do that.”

The Logic and Rhetoric course requirement, religion and philosophy requirements, and the sequence of the heritage and great books courses were changed with the 2014 core update. The math requirements were also redesigned, according to Lorraine Murphy, associate professor of English and member of the review committee. 

“The core was revised with several things in mind. The first and most fundamental was based on this question,” said David Whalen, associate vice president for curriculum and professor of English. “The answer to this question — what are the essential things that any liberally educated man or woman needs to understand about the fundamental academic disciplines? That’s a pretty broad question, but it does force you to think about what we are actually doing with our liberal education.”

The review committee is considering student and alumni feedback, both from surveys and informal meetings, in their discussions, according to Whalen, who is also a member of the review committee. 

“We’re learning a lot,” Whalen said. “Everybody comes into the room knowing a great deal about what students find frustrating, what they find liberating, what they find convenient or inconvenient, what is complicated because of their major, and what is facilitated. So, there’s a ton of feedback in the room, even on the informal level.”

Whalen said members of the review committee are also using information from their experiences as academic advisers in their deliberations. 

“The primary source of feedback is our experience as advisers,” Whalen said. “The faculty are mixing it up with the students all the time — several times a year with every student on campus. We are going back and forth, and we’re exchanging information.”

Murphy said the committee is reviewing every part of the core, including things like  the sequencing of certain courses or taking four years to complete the core, as opposed to encouraging its completion in a student’s first two years. 

“How can we pursue the good of giving students a common experience at the same time as pursuing the good of giving them the freedom that they need to chart their path through the Bachelor of Science, the Bachelor of Arts, the science majors, the humanities majors?” Murphy said. “It was weighing these goods against one another and deciding what to prioritize. We want to make sure that we’re doing that well because it is a robust core. It asks a lot of students.”

Whalen said the core is meant to give students a “common experience” so that they are able to share ideas, though they major in many different disciplines. 

“It gives you a sense of belonging and identity, such that if you were just kind of doing things on your own and by yourself, and had no one to talk to, you would feel much more isolated, much more alone in the venture,” Whalen said. “So, membership and then friendship, conversation, the common experience, promotes all of that.”

The committee is reviewing the curriculum broadly this fall and will begin reviewing details in the spring, according to Negus. 

“In the spring, we’ll have three meetings in which the committee will start to think about things that they might propose as revisions; somewhat major, perhaps, probably more likely to be a handful of fairly minor things, whatever those might be,” Negus said.