University Announces Undergraduate Core Associate Directors

08/11/2020

In March 2020, Saint Louis University formally approved and adopted its first University-wide general education curriculum. Designed to prepare all SLU undergraduates to be intellectually flexible, creative and reflective critical thinkers in the spirit of the Catholic, Jesuit tradition, SLU’s new University Core will begin with a small fall 2021 pilot of the Ignite Seminar and Cura Personalis 1: Self in Community, and then will launch for all incoming SLU undergraduates in the fall 2022 semester.

SLU’s new Core comes with a new development and oversight structure. In addition to the director of the Core, Ellen Crowell, Ph.D., associate professor of English, and the University Undergraduate Core Committee (UUCC), the implementation of the University Core will be spearheaded by a team of associate directors, each tasked with working directly with SLU faculty to develop the courses and experiences that will make up SLU’s common undergraduate curriculum. Each associate director will head a Core curricular subcommittee comprised of faculty from across the University, to begin working on the development of their own Core component area while simultaneously working together to forge connections across the Core as a whole.

On April 1, the UUCC circulated a call for self-nominations to the associate director positions. After a month of conversations with engaged faculty and staff members from across the university, in early June, the UUCC welcomed SLU’s inaugural Core Leadership Team.

Meet the Inaugural Core Leadership Team

• John T. James, Ed.D., associate professor and director of the Institute for Catholic Education housed in the School of Education, is associate director of the Core for the Ignite First Year Seminar. James brings his experience in Jesuit education and Ignatian pedagogy to bear to support faculty in the development of courses for the Ignite Seminar. James said he believes these courses “will unleash our greatest asset: the passion and scholarly commitment of faculty.”
• Bobby Wassel, Ph.D., assistant director in SLU's Center for Service and Community Engagement, serves as associate director for the Core: Cura Personalis. Wassel brings more than 15 years of experience working with college students in the areas of community service, civic engagement and social justice advocacy to the position. His work on the Core Leadership team is motivated, he said, by seeing the tremendous impact that such experiences can have on a student's personal development, clarification of values and vocational discernment.
• Atria Larson, Ph.D., associate director of the Core: Theological and Philosophical Foundations, is associate professor of in the Department of Theological Studies in the College of Arts and Sciences. Larson said she looks forward to creating dynamic classroom contexts in which students can “articulate their own burning questions, the assumptions they bring to the world around them, and the ways in which their understanding of what is shapes who they can and should be – all the while placing their own hearts and minds into reflective conversation with the centuries-long ideas, beliefs, and practices of the Catholic, Jesuit tradition.”

Two associate directors of the Core oversee SLU’s Eloquentia Perfecta sequence.

• Nathaniel Rivers, Ph.D., associate professor of English in the College of Arts and Sciences, is associate director of Eloquentia Perfecta: Written and Visual Communication. Rivers’ commitment to the Core is motivated by how he sees writing working in the world, he said. “Our participation in the world through writing necessarily shapes us as the writers we become,” Rivers said. “To teach writing, even humbly, is to open students up to the worlds they inhabit.”
• Tim Huffman, Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of Communication in the College of Arts and Sciences, also serves as associate director for Eloquentia Perfecta—Oral Communication and Creative Expression. Huffman is a scholar-activist in the area of homelessness and uses community-based inquiry to help build structures that are more equitable and liberating. He said he believes that “oral and visual communication and creative expression are ways to express the depth of our humanity and to help create a world worth sharing.”
• Wynne Moskop, Ph.D., professor in the Department of Political Science in the College of Arts and Sciences, serves as the associate director of the Core: Equity and Global Identities. In addition to her primary appointment in political science, Moskop has additional experience in both women’s and gender studies and American Studies. Moskop focuses on how social systems and structures link all of us in interdependent power relations and shape possibilities for social justice, both locally and globally. According to Moskop, she believes, “that it is important for students to understand social systems to understand themselves, the contexts in which they act, and how their actions affect others.”
• Dannielle Joy Davis, Ph.D., associate professor of higher education and leadership in the School of Education, serves as the associate director of the Core: Reflection in Action. Davis incorporates innovative reflective practices in her teaching, research and parenting. She said she looks forward to applying her long-held commitment to community engagement to this signature Core experience, and that she hopes to prompt the SLU community to hear marginalized voices, address the varied ways in which oppression manifests within institutionalized social structures, and consider how community engagement challenges and dismantles such structural inequities. 
• David Kaplan, Ph.D., chair of the Department of Management in the Richard A. Chaifetz School of Business, will serve as associate director of the Core: Collaborative Inquiry. Kaplan said he was drawn to the role because, “collaborative Inquiry is about diversity of thought and the benefits of bringing multiple perspectives and experiences to bear on an issue.” Kaplan’s own educational experiences have always been interdisciplinary, and he said he looks forward to guiding the creation of seminars where students explore new ideas, build intellectual and personal bridges and weave their individual strands of learning together into a finished cloth of knowledge.
• Anne McCabe, Ph.D., will serve as associate director of the Core for SLU-Madrid. A member of the SLU-Madrid faculty since 1990, McCabe has taught courses across the communication, English, English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) and Spanish departments, and has held appointments involving curricular oversight, assessment and teacher development. McCabe said she is eager to apply her interdisciplinary background and experience to guide the implementation of the University Core at SLU-Madrid to its full potential, building an integrated, flexible and creative array of core courses designed to lead the University’s Spanish campus’ students to a rich embodiment of SLU’s Catholic, Jesuit mission.

“This Core Leadership Team is eager to begin working with faculty and staff from across our University to begin the exciting work of bringing our new SLU Core to vivid life for our exceptional undergraduate students,” Crowell, director of the University Core and head of the Core Leadership Team, said.

Laura Rettig serves as administrative assistant to the Core.

Learn More About SLU’s New Core

Submitted by Ellen Crowell, Ph.D.