This month I inaugurate a monthly newsletter to keep everyone informed of what’s going on with the “R” initiative.  I’ll have the newsletter come out at the beginning of each month.  

 

We completed the first month of the new initiative with two faculty orientation workshops.  The participants were:

 

Mary Tuominen, Charlie O’Keefe, Isis Nusair, Jill Gillespie, Ruramisai Charumira, Bill Krikpatrick, Toni King, Erin McClellan, Buddy Howells, Christine Armstrong, Kimberly Specht, Brenda Boyle.

 

These workshops became not only orientation sessions but also discussions on the needs of faculty for a vibrant across-the-curriculum program.  I am going to summarize and quote some of the key ideas and proposals that came up in the sessions.  

 

Three themes emerged from the discussions and follow-ups:

 

1.  How do non-Communication faculty actually teach R courses in a way that honors the multiple and sometimes competing teaching obligations?  One participant said it well:  “How does a teacher do justice to the considerable importance of the R requirement, while navigating between the extremes of on the one hand leaving it as an unintegrated add-on to the course material, and on the other hand of having it detract seriously from time to be spent on the course’s other material?”  The workshop itself suggested a variety of answers to this problem, so clearly the workshop and efforts of the same kind are going to be part of an ongoing response.  But the question itself will remain alive and will continue to inform our efforts in this initiative.

 

2.    How do we create an institutional structure that will foster and support the ongoing need for cross-disciplinary participation in the R?  Some participants envisioned a physical staffed center on campus to provide ongoing training and support.  Others saw the issue more as developing a common culture that re-focused attention on the shared goal of a liberal education.  “Who are we as a liberal arts community?  Who do we want to become as a liberal arts community? . . .We have failed to ask and answer the question of what is the foundational purpose and vision that informs our attempts to increase our stature and reputation.”  One participant envisioned a linkage of interdisciplinary ventures such as learning communities, the three competencies, and service-learning as a locus for understanding and renewing out a commitment to a liberal education.  The common theme across these different responses was that we need to develop a more robust “middle place” in between our departments and Doane where the imperatives of a general education can have a voice.  

 

3.  The third theme had to do specifically with the relation between the cultivation of orality and liberal education.  This had several aspects.  The first is that eloquence about a subject matter is not an add-on, but often the finest bloom of understanding.  Students who can stand up on their hind legs in the pressure of the moment and demonstrate knowledge articulately, speak the idioms of the discourse, and extemporize fluently, are far more likely to have achieved mastery of their subject matter.  The second is that communication is not just this ability, but includes as well such things as the ability to work through disagreement, to be open and receptive to others in dialogue, to develop social understandings through genuine conversation, and that these are not marginal abilities but the constituting capacities of a liberal education.  The third is that theory and practice are indissolubly linked in oral education:  Students should be able not just to perform well, but “to theorize, interrogate, and be reflective about communication processes so that they can be fully human and responsive citizens of the world.”