Students in the class of 2020 will be the first to complete the new core curriculum in its entirety.
The addition of at least four more required courses than mandated for the classes of 2017-2019 complete the plan set in motion more than five years ago that attempts to “more perfectly execute the purposes in our mission,” Provost David Whalen said. Students must now take a logic and rhetoric class, as well as both religion and philosophy. The curriculum also separates physics and chemistry and removes a standardized test opt-out for mathematics.
“It’s to make students wiser,” President Larry Arnn said in an email. “These disciplines are all fundamental, which means they are approaches to higher knowledge that make and have long made vital contributions. They are features of the original curricula at Hillsdale College and features of the liberal arts as they have been pursued for centuries.”
Revamped Western Philosophical and Theological Tradition courses, both now mandatory, look to provide a historical timeline of ideas as well as teach students to think in a philosophic and theological way, said Tom Burke, dean of humanities and chairman of religion and philosophy.
“Both have been the main source of ideas that have shaped our country,” Burke said. “All you have to do is look at the difference between ancient Greek philosophy and Renaissance and early modern philosophy and realize something had to happen in the interim. What happened in the interim was Christian theology.”
Additionally, Kirstin Kiledal, professor of rhetoric and public address, and Jeffrey Lehman, assistant professor of education, have reshaped the logic and rhetoric course, a requirement for education minors, to prepare all students with the tools needed to study before they dig deeper into their field, Kiledal said.
Although Kiledal and Benjamin Beier, assistant professor of education, are teaching the four sections of Classical Logic and Rhetoric this semester, they are also instructing 22 other professors of all different disciplines to teach the new COR 150, which is not owned by any one academic department.
“We really do want to make sure it has this liberal arts flare for starting people off, that it really engages the faculty from all across disciplines and that it serves those disciplines individually as well as us universally as students of the liberal arts,” Kiledal said.
The science departments are not exempt from changes, either. The days of taking physics and chemistry in one course as Physical Science for non-science majors are gone. They now must take an entire semester of both fields, though the classes are not required for science majors.
“We separated them, so students can have a more complete picture of the natural universe because that is part of what we are supposed to be doing,” Whalen said.
The three-credit physics and chemistry courses are new. Students can take the new physics course this fall, but the chemistry department is not offering sections until the spring, as it finishes creating its plans for the course.
Matthew Young, dean of chemistry, said in Great Principles of Chemistry, students will have lectures twice a week and alternate between discussion and lab one day every week. The class will connect content with context, addressing the historical circumstances leading to advances in chemistry and science in current events, Young said.
“We’ve tried to make it a course that will make more connections with other courses students are taking,” Young said. “What we’ve tried to do is make it an enjoyable, interesting, and useful course for someone who probably won’t go on and use that content very much in future courses or in their career, but they will hopefully benefit from learning something about the physical reality of our world.”
As for mathematics, a 27 or above on the ACT will no longer exempt students from the Mathematics and Deductive Reasoning requirement.
Students will also have to take a senior capstone course, the details of which have not been finalized.
Beginning with the class of 2017, Hillsdale began making changes to the core, adding Physical Wellness Dynamics, restructuring the schedule of when freshmen and sophomores take the Heritage and Great Books classes, and reducing the required number of Center for Constructive Alternatives seminars from two to one.
Whalen said the changes are to the benefit of students, providing an even better liberal arts education.
“The old core was a good core — noteworthy, outstanding even,” Whalen said. “The new core goes from a good core to an excellent core. We need to serve the purposes of the mission superbly, and this is a step toward that.”
