​Universalizing Duke’s strengths

Last semester, we surveyed the Imagining the Duke Curriculum committee’s first year of reflection. Halfway through this year’s phase of making proposals, the committee released its first iteration of a conceptual framework for our new undergraduate curriculum. We asked that the new curriculum “help enshrine and perpetuate the ethos of the University we see emerging: leadership oriented around thoughtful engagement with issues, incorporating different analytic approaches to solve problems.” The proposal, titled “Experience Duke, Deliberately” is a good first attempt to bring this concept—a crucial next step for our university’s maturation—into reality.

The curriculum calls for a ten-month, first-year Duke Experience course. A combination of flipped lectures, biweekly break-out seminars and programmed events aimed at creating residential learning communities on East Campus will be oriented around broad themes that introduce Duke students to scholarship in the humanities, natural sciences and social sciences. We want to ensure that the biweekly seminars and special events are used to expose students as quickly as possible to Duke’s faculty, breaking the ice for close relationships with future mentors. We also hope the themes are carefully selected to address pressing contemporary challenges that exist at Duke, in Durham and beyond.

The proposal also calls for all students to have a second area beyond their major in a minor, certificate, second major or custom course sequence. This requirement encourages the cross-disciplinary culture among students that makes Duke exciting for faculty. It does so without sacrificing the necessity of disciplinary depth to enable a productive synthesis—rather than a superficial combination—of different analytical modes. We are particularly excited about the chance for students to design their own six-course track to satisfy this requirement, yet we are unsure if it will address or exacerbate the credentialism that motivates too many competitive Duke students—where students feel pressured to maximize the possible combination of majors, minors and certificates. This requirement must be designed in a way that promotes the intellectual creativity that comes with exploring multiple fields.

The curriculum framework includes a mandatory mentored scholarly experience to cohere students’ intellectual development. As envisioned, students will not be confined to producing a thesis. Mentioned are software development, original short stories and policy briefs as viable projects. Without confining students to one mode of knowledge exercise, this requirement provides a common academic experience that adds to a campus-wide culture of intellectualism.

We remain uncertain about the five competency expectations presented by the Committee. It is a smart choice to overhaul the burdensome and bureaucratic Curriculum 2000 model, which inevitably became about checking off Trinity Requirements rather than thinking about developing core competencies. There are many ways for these competencies to be required. Perhaps, they could be further embedded in a Duke Experience class complement in junior or senior year. We want to make sure that these broad competencies are deliberately thought of throughout the Duke experience. Regardless, simpler is better. In combination with the other requirements, from a common first-year course to a universal capstone experience, it will hopefully overcome the superficial nature of the current requirements in the curriculum. The expectations must somehow be embedded into the culture rather than bureaucratized.

At best, this University brings the depths of various disciplines into contact to produce new innovations in the creation of knowledge. This mission attracts faculty. It makes us a university with global reach. It enables Duke to be a unique setting for the project of the academe: the pursuit of truth in a world of persistent and ever-growing complexity. This broad proposal for a new curriculum offers a special opportunity to universalize the very best of this University throughout the undergraduate experience.