SLU Community Engages in Core Curriculum Planning

A capacity crowd of 60 faculty, staff and students participated in a hands-on Imagining Core Structures Workshop on Sept. 21.

Future sessions are scheduled on Oct. 5 and Oct. 26, with pre-registration required. SLU’s Madrid’s campus will host a workshop on Oct. 19.

“The Oct. 5 workshop already is close to capacity,” said Ellen Crowell, Ph.D., director of the University Core. “This cross-campus enthusiasm shows that across our university, faculty, staff and students are deeply committed to transformative approaches to undergraduate education.”

The format at the fast-paced, hands-on workshops is lively with participants working together in six-person, cross-college teams to generate collaborative draft designs for a future SLU Common Core.

“The University Undergraduate Core Committee hopes that this focused engagement with our SLU colleagues on core curricular design will yield a range of viable architectural models for a new SLU Core,” Crowell said.

The workshops are among a range of events planned for the 2018-19 academic year to engage the wider University community in collaborative translation of SLU’s new Core Student Learning Outcomes into draft Core architectures.

Earlier in September, Dr. Paul Hanstedt, a national core curriculum expert, presented a lecture on 21st century trends in undergraduate educational design. More than 125 members of the SLU community attended the talk.

For more information about the University Undergraduate Core, visit the University Core website.