In remarks about the search for the next Dean of the College, College President Jim Yong Kim noted that he wanted somebody for the job who will do exciting things with student life. While I look forward to a reinvigorated dean's office that will more effectively serve the needs of student life, I think there is a more fundamental area that screams out for new vitality: the academic experience. For many students I know, real passion and enthusiasm are lacking with respect to their academic careers here.
There is no panacea for the challenges Dartmouth faces in trying to successfully engage the passions of many of its students. Each student is different, and thus innovations in the curriculum will be more or less interesting to each student according to his academic personality. Historically, however, one of the central tenets of a liberal arts education was that there are certain academic experiences that all humans want, even need, to have. It was understood that a liberally educated person was one who had grappled both with what today are called the "big questions" (e.g. What is the best life? What is justice? Why do I suffer?) and with the answers proposed by history's greatest thinkers.
Such an understanding of education is still relevant to liberal arts colleges today. While there may be many possible ways to do this, I think there are two concrete proposals that could offer Dartmouth students the opportunity to critically examine and seek to answer the "big questions" for themselves.
First, Dartmouth should follow the model of Harvard University in offering themed classes. Every year Harvard offers a course entitled "Justice," led by Professor Michael Sandel. It is one of the most popular courses in all of Harvard's history, with nearly a thousand students enrolled each year. Dartmouth should follow Harvard's lead, but expand the offerings beyond a single course, creating a group of classes that examine single concepts like justice, love, friendship, happiness, suffering etc. from an interdisciplinary perspective. As far as I am aware, there is nothing like this offered in our current curriculum some departments offer themed courses from their particular disciplinary perspective and College Courses offer interdisciplinary study of unconventional, highly specific topics such as American Sign Language Poetry, Literature and Performance, a course offered this spring. However, interdisciplinary classes committed to examining a single, central concept do not exist. Such courses would allow students to confront and struggle with the work of brilliant minds who have studied and debated these essential topics throughout the course of human history. The goal would not only be an academic mastery of the subject, but a deeply personal engagement with these concepts.
Second, Dartmouth should look to another peer institution, Yale University, and establish for freshmen an optional year-long program like Yale's Directed Studies. We already have the seeds of such a program in Humanities 1 and 2, two courses offered for freshmen that explore some of the great works of Western literature. This, however, deals only, or mainly, in Western literature. Something like a Directed Studies program, while not imposing a core curriculum on the College, would afford students who desire it the chance to receive a solid grounding in mankind's (both Eastern and Western) intellectual, philosophical, theological, cultural and literary history before sinking into the mercenary morass of specialization and pre-professionalism that often characterizes the Dartmouth academic experience after freshman year. This program would not be a freshman seminar, per se, for it would be a year-long commitment, but each of the terms could count towards fulfilling not only the freshman seminar requirement, but also other distributive requirements.
These two proposals are certainly not the only ways of adding greater meaning to the College's curriculum; they will not engage the passions of every person, especially those who have no interest in thinking about the "big questions." Other proposals must complement the two offered here. However, these two do deserve our attention because of their success at other peer institutions. If President Kim wants to make good on his vocal support for the liberal arts, he should take the time to seriously consider them.