History of the Common Curriculum
Loyola’s Common Curriculum was adopted by faculty vote in the Spring of 1972, first implemented in the Fall, 1972, originally on an experimental basis. The Common Curriculum was intended as an innovative replacement for the general education requirement (core curriculum) that existed prior to that time. That earlier core curriculum required 58 to 68 credit hours (depending on one’s major). It required 12 credit hours each in English, Language, Philosophy, and Theology, 8 credit hours in Science, and 6 credit hours in both history and math. Dissatisfaction with the core curriculum requirements congealed into several specific criticisms: the total number of credit hours required was too high, the requirements were too departmentalized, the courses required had no relationship to one another, the program needed to incorporate more student-oriented forms of teaching, forms that included dialogue and interdisciplinary teaching.
A new curriculum was needed which would encourage students “to grapple with the great ideas and concepts of the present and the past to see where his or her beliefs and commitments fit among them. To see how these great ideas—from books, paintings, films, poetry, from everywhere—challenge his or her beliefs and commitments.” It was further intended “to help one see whether these beliefs and commitments—including the faith-commitment or non-commitment—can stand up under rational discourse.” It was also agreed that the Common Curriculum should reflect Loyola’s status as a Catholic Institution and that it would provide “a liberalizing education,” one which would be “person-centered,” and would call for “critical reflection on values and their context.” It would be a curriculum which, through the religious thought and philosophical discourse it promotes, would free students from “mindless conviction and commitment.” “This value-orientation,” it was said, “is at the heart of the university’s commitment to liberal education.”
The newly established curriculum was given the title “Common” Curriculum not to suggest something about the courses that comprised it, that they all have something in common, but, rather, that, together, they served as the common source from which all students would satisfy what, in previous years, were referred to as general requirements. Initially, all the courses in the new Common Curriculum were either Dialogue courses, consisting of a series of master lectures, each followed by classes devoted exclusively to student discussions of values, against the backdrop of the “great ideas” introduced in the master lecture, augmented by short “position papers” students were assigned to write for, and defend in, each dialogue, or Modes of Thought courses, interdisciplinary courses taught by two or more faculty, preferably from different academic disciplines, intended to give students an exposure to the “great ideas” through the cross ventilation of differing disciplinary viewpoints.
Every student was required to take one Dialogue course every semester, one each in History, Philosophy and Religious Studies, and five electives. Each student was also required to take six Modes of Thought courses sometime during their eight-semester course of study, one each in Philosophy, Religious Studies, Earth or Life Sciences, Social Sciences, Creative Arts, and Humanities.
Original faculty and student response to the Common Curriculum was mixed. Generating an sufficient number of courses to satisfy curriculum needs was a strain. Doubts were raised concerning the educational integrity of Dialogue courses. Students felt buffeted about by the cross-current of viewpoints in Modes of Thought courses and uncertain how to address questions on exams. Some faculty felt intimidated by the constant inter-disciplinary cross-examination to which the Modes of Thought courses exposed them. Student/faculty ratios required that Modes of Thought courses taught by two or three faculty have a correspondingly large enrollment. They needed very large classrooms. A 1973/4 review of the Common Curriculum acknowledged these misgivings and the pains associated with change. The review concluded: “The most judicious assessment of the Common Curriculum’s present status would note several courses of outstanding success, a number of passable offerings, and, frankly, too many failures.” The obvious need for new and improved ways to implement the Common Curriculum and its objectives led, in 1974, to the appointment of Dr. Richard Johnson as the Coordinator of the Common Curriculum, and to the creation of a Task Force to develop a policy statement and guidelines for the knowledge, values, skills and great ideas that were to be conveyed by the Common Curriculum.
One great obstacle to the success of the Common Curriculum, according to general sentiment at this time, was the fact that students were not prepared to dialogue on the great ideas or to weigh competing faculty views on these things without intellectual preparation. A need was also felt for creating order from the confusion of offerings that comprised the Common Curriculum schedule of courses. To address these concerns, in the Spring of 1975, Common Curriculum course offerings were separated into upper and lower divisions. Courses offered in the upper division were also to fit one of three distinct modes of thought: Speculative, Aesthetic, and Decisional. Lower division requirements consisted of 6 courses, one course each in Philosophy, Religious Studies, English Composition, World History, Mathematics, and Hard Science (Biology, Chemistry, Physics). These courses were still to be value-oriented and not courses that would be more appropriate as introductions to the disciplines themselves. Eight Upper division courses were required, two each in Philosophy and Religious Studies, and four electives, with a distribution requirement that two courses must be taken in each of the modes of thought—Speculative, Aesthetic, and Decisional—areas, and two courses must be selected from those designated in the course offerings as pre-modern. Gradually, enforcement of the original requirement that all Common Curriculum courses be taught in either the Dialogue or Modes of Thought format slipped slowly, quietly away. Total credit hours required by the Common Curriculum were 42.
At the very end of the 1970’s a curricular alternative to the Common Curriculum, called Option Two, was introduced. It amounted to a kind-of elective honors program. Three-course interdisciplinary groupings were created for each of the three thought areas—Speculative, Aesthetic, and Decisional. The courses were to be “tracked,” each course syllabus created with the consultation and cooperation of the other faculty in one’s three-course grouping, each course serving as an introduction, of sorts, to the next. Students who opted for the program were obligated to the entire tracking. With the appearance of special funding, the program was eventually split off and reorganized as the present-day Honors Program.
Loyola received a major development grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to innovate its curriculum with the previously mentioned changes, which made possible providing faculty with “released time” to create new courses for the new curriculum. In 1980, the position formerly designated as Coordinator, then Director, of the Common Curriculum, was redesigned and given the status of Assistant Dean of Arts and Sciences. Ongoing reviews of the Common Curriculum, through the work of a faculty task force, external evaluations, and student interviews led, in the Fall of 1981, to abandonment of the Speculative, Aesthetic, Decisional structure, and its replacement with the now existing distinction between Behavioral/Social Sciences, Humanities/Arts, and Natural Sciences. Requirements were increased to 7 courses in the lower division (with the addition of English 125—The Emerging Self), and 9 courses in the upper division, (two each in Philosophy and Religious Studies, one from the Behavioral/Social Studies offerings, one from Humanities/Arts, one from the Natural Sciences, and two electives. The credit hour requirement was now set at 48, up from the previous 42. Eventually, in the Fall, 1995, one of the upper division electives was dropped, and a second lower division requirement in History, the second half of World Civilization, was added, making the total Common Curriculum requirement 8 lower division and 8 upper division courses.
Early on in the history of the program, the need for finding convenient ways to integrate transfer students into the Common Curriculum requirements pointed to the need for criteria and perhaps a formula for identifying suitable course substitutions, so that advanced transfer students would not be forced into courses inappropriate for them, and would not be required to meet the entire Common Curriculum obligation as a prerequisite of graduation. Guidelines were created that allowed for waiver of requirements proportionate to the number of hours and kinds of courses transferred.
Since the early 1980’s, the structure of the Common Curriculum has remained fundamentally the same. The SCAP Task Force of 1984/85 introduced no significant structural changes. Likewise the Common Curriculum Committee’s reflections in 1991 on the structure of the Common Curriculum, and the conclusions, in 1994-95, of the Common Curriculum In-Depth Review Committee. Proposals have been entertained to add foreign language requirements and other discipline requirements; questions have been raised regarding the place of “skills” courses in the lower division of the Common Curriculum (if not there, then where?), the possibility of increasing the overall Common Curriculum requirement beyond the 48 credit hours now required, and numerous other matters, such as computer literacy. Questions have been raised about the original buffet character of the upper division offerings in the Common Curriculum, and reservations expressed about the fact that they have nothing “in common,” (not a requirement, originally, of the Common Curriculum), and that they do not lead to any depth of development. Those questions have been countered by concerns that call for increased variety of courses that offer greater choice for students. No significant changes have recently been adopted or implemented.