Any institution that wishes to succeed in its mission over the course of any length of time needs to engage in a continual cycle of self-evaluation, goal-setting, planning, experimentation and assessment. Wesleyan, like most American universities, has undergone a number of cycles of change over the last century. (These are reviewed by Rick Elphick in an article from 1998.) The Curricular Renewal Program at Wesleyan is the product of the most recent process of self-study, undertaken in the mid-1990's, which culminated in faculty legislation of 1998. (The documents that emerged from various stages of this process can be found elsewhere at this website.) Curricular Renewal was institutionalized at this time both as a rubric for implementing the directives of the 1998 faculty legislation, and to keep an open eye towards events and movements in our ever more quickly changing world that may prove to be major shapers of the future of higher education.

There are several main initiatives arising from the 1998 legislation:

• The creation of an on-line advising system that will give students and their advisors immediate access to
  • the student's academic history
  • the Wesleyan curriculum as a whole
  • course offerings for the current and next semesters
• Initiatives designed to increase the coherence of the curriculum
  • identifying existing connections between courses that fall across departmental boundaries by creating organizational entities called clusters and pathways, which group together courses that have some common theme, or study a common time, location, culture of subject matter (e.g., cognitive science, Jewish studies, African studies)
  • encouraging the development of linked courses, which treat a common or related subject matter from different disciplinary perspectives
• identifying courses that teach certain essential capabilities, and fostering the creation of additional strengths in capabilities that are under-represented in the current curriculum:
  • writing
  • speaking
  • quantitative skills
  • "reading" of non-verbal texts
  • ethical reasoning
  • cross-cultural competence
• fostering greater strengths in educational offerings outside the major
  • encouragement of expanded general education offerings, including but not limited to First Year Initiative classes
  • a renewed advising emphasis on study outside the major in the Liberal Arts and Sciences
  • the formation of focused inquiry courses as an alternative to gateway courses to provide introductions to a subject for students who do not intend to pursue it as a major.
• Formation of a Program in Curricular and Pedagogical Renewal, coordinated by a faculty member.

The Program in Curricular and Pedagogical Renewal and the office of Director of Pedagogical Renewal were created by the 1998 faculty legislation in order to place a faculty member in the position to be a catalyst for constructive initiatives in teaching and in the curriculum. The EPC's commentary on this part of the legislation described this role as follows:

A Program for Curricular and Pedagogical Renewal. Organized by a faculty member with course relief and staff support, and housed in a single office with a lounge and small library, the Program would sponsor inter-departmental consultations among faculty on teaching matters, collect information on pedagogical and curricular innovations undertaken elsewhere, and bring speakers to campus. Among its first tasks would be to stimulate discussion on aspects of this legislation that faculty may find hardest to implement, such as, for example, the capability designations "speaking" and "ethical reasoning."

This post was brought into being in the Spring semester of 1999, and I (Steve Horst) am its first occupant. The physical space for the aforementioned lounge and library has not yet been acquired, but we are in the process of accumulating resources, both on paper and online.

My activities in the role of DPR will concentrate on the following:

• Facilitating the implementation of initiatives from the legislation

• Working with groups of faculty to define clusters and pathways that highlight coherences among existing courses in the curriculum.
• Assembling faculty working groups interested in finding ways to further the teaching of essential capabilities, especially the under-represented skills of speaking and ethical reasoning.
• Consulting with Academic Affairs, ITS and the Registrar in the implementation of the Electronic Portfolio and Online Advising.
• Serving as a kind of intellectual midwife of ideas and general factotum within the faculty
  • Consulting with faculty in developing new course initiatives and linking them up with resources from the Fund for Innovation.
  • Sponsoring a series of lectures, both by Wesleyan faculty and by outside speakers, that present models of adressing particular issues in pedagogy and course design, ranging from effective uses of technology in the classroom to models of classes that can serve the needs of diverse constituencies (e.g., majors and general education).
  • Organizing conferences on large-scale issues that will help to shape liberal arts education, such as
    • The effects of technological and demographic change
    • Internationalization and multiculturalism
    • The rapid expansion and specialization of knowledge
    • Displinarity and Interdisciplinarity
• Working with faculty in benchmarking visits to other institutions that are doing things that we might learn from, such as:
  • Programs in speaking
  • Programs in Ethics Across the Curriculum
  • Centers for Teaching and Learning
• Creating venues for faculty discussion of teaching
• Assembling online and paper resources for faculty
  • Links
  • Bibliography
  • WebBoard
  • Library