Ohio University undergraduates are required to complete a set amount of general courses, but one college is hoping to pique students’ interests by making these classes more tailored to their degrees.
Officials in the College of Arts and Sciences are hoping to instead make “themed” sets of courses that fit with a student’s major and satisfy general education requirements.
The idea, launched last spring by College of Arts and Sciences Dean Robert Frank, is to bring content from the arts, humanities, natural sciences and social sciences together to educate students.
The classes required to complete a theme—which could eventually lead to a certificate or minor—provide coherence to college requirements instead of offering a large number of classes students will have difficulty comprehending, Frank said.
The college’s goal is to rationalize an overwhelming number of choices students have in fulfilling their requirements outside their majors, Frank said.
Faculty completely generated the themes, the first of which could be implemented by next fall, Frank said.
Themes will mostly involve the college’s current classes, though some new courses could be created, some of which might be taught by multiple faculty members.
“It’s not like a major, it’s not like a certificate, it’s more like enhanced advising and cooperation among faculty to make a set of courses and extracurricular activities,” Frank said. “This is like going into a restaurant and seeing a very extensive menu and having someone there, like the waiter, say ‘hi, here’s a set of choices you can make.’ ”
So far, it’s going “so much better than I could have ever imagined,” Frank said.
This grassroots effort, as Frank calls it, to develop a themed curriculum is unlike anything he has heard of at any other university nationwide.
Frank said he hopes to pilot the program in his college and, if it’s successful, launch it university-wide.
“If you can work on a curriculum to give a breadth of perspective to people … you can get people to come together,” Frank said.
The college’s project was presented at Themes Fest in the Nelson Commons Reception Area on Tuesday. OU faculty was invited to give input.
Theresa Moran, a professor of English and a coordinator of the food studies theme, said she believes themes give students a reason to pick classes despite what time they start.
“It gives you the chance to have an intellectual, coherent approach to your requirements,” Moran said. “Your breadth of knowledge actually gives you a set of ideas that you can take and apply to other problems within your major and outside your major.”
The food studies theme, for example, will provide students with a list of courses specific to their College of Arts and Sciences requirements to satisfy part of their general education requirements.
Ariaster Chimeli, a professor of economics and coordinator of the sustainability theme, said he likes the idea because it spans across many disciplines.
“The foundations are fundamentally interdisciplinary by definition it evolves from the overlap from the natural sciences, the social sciences and our ethical and philosophical benchmarks,” Chimeli said.
dd195710@ohiou.edu
@WillDrabold
