Twice a year, Georgetown students register for classes, among them a host of general education requirements. But a select group of students and faculty are working behind the scenes to change these mandated classes.

The last 25 years have seen various attempts to change the core curricula of Georgetown’s four schools, but the current attempt spearheaded by theology professor Fr. Christopher Steck S.J., and Randy Bass, executive director and assistant provost for teaching and learning initiatives with the Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship, is bringing the discussion to the Georgetown community.

The two have partnered to create both a faculty committee on general education and a weekly seminar for seniors, each intended to foster discussion on curricular change. They hope to propose concrete changes by 2014.

Ideas currently under consideration include a series of discussions and lectures for freshmen that would serve as an introduction to Georgetown’s background, its Jesuit identity and the importance of the liberal arts, as well as a general education class for seniors in which they would reflect on their intellectual and personal development during their time at Georgetown. One suggestion well-received by the administration that has been discussed in the seminar proposes that the core curriculum become more interdisciplinary, following the examples of the Liberal Arts Seminar and the Engelhard program.

The LAS previously fulfilled two humanities and writing, two history, one philosophy and one theology requirement in a comprehensive seminar format that has previously been open to freshmen in the College. It is currently on hiatus. Similarly, the Engelhard program works to integrate engaged learning practices in a variety of subjects across the curriculum.

Steck also hopes to incorporate themes including public speaking, diversity and Jesuit identity in a similar manner. He stressed, however, that the discussions on reworking the curriculum do not condemn the current system, but instead are intended to create a greater understanding behind the purpose of the requirements.

“It’s not a criticism of what we’re doing in the courses. I think we’re doing a lot of great things, but part of it is to clarify what the rationale is for these courses, so that we can continue to improve them,” Steck said.

Every Sunday, ten seniors gather for a one-credit seminar to discuss these and other changes. A desire for improvement is what initially led some students to approach Steck and Bass, who decided to use this opportunity to make sure their curriculum improvements spoke to a wider audience than just faculty.

Steck’s seminar is an attempt to combine faculty evaluations with feedback from students who have explored – and sometimes been constrained by – the core curriculum in order to pinpoint the importance of these classes in the average undergraduate’s academic experience and personal growth on the Hilltop.

“What we’re trying to do now is figure out first what the goals are and if there are ways we can develop as alternatives to students to meet these needs,” Steck said in an interview with THE HOYA. “We’re requiring [these courses] for students, so we’re saying there is something here that is so important that the university wants to require every student that goes through the university to take these kinds of courses.”

In the seminar, the seniors discuss much more than concrete changes by debating the value of varying approaches of advisers, pedagogy, and extracurricular and curricular activities, according to Fitz Lufkin (COL ’11), a student in the course. At the end of the semester, the students will help construct a document that details the strengths and weaknesses of Georgetown’s curriculum and suggest changes.

The faculty committee is also working to help students better understand the relationship among the subjects that make up the core curriculum. The committee crafted a survey earlier this year that was distributed to all university juniors and seniors in early November in order to gauge students’ experiences, both positive and negative, with the core curriculum.

As of Thursday, approximately 900 students – 25 percent of those contacted – had responded to the survey, which will remain open through the second week of December, according to a CNDLS blog post.

“With the general education survey that has gone out to upperclassmen, it is exciting to see that student feedback and opinion is being given equal weight,” Lufkin said. “After all, we students are the consumers of a Georgetown education, and what we have to say should be taken seriously.”

The survey results are being used as a basis for discussion in focus groups during the past five days. Each focus group is being led by the students in the seminar and the input gleaned will be used together with the questionnaire and the class discussions to draft the final outline of the new core curriculum.

“Conversations have ranged from general education to class size and everything in between,” Lufkin said. “In general, participants have been frustrated [by] large and disengaging classes, requirements that aren’t flexible enough and the desire for some common educational experience and more interdisciplinary opportunities.”

Student frustration with the curriculum presents a significant challenge for the university in its evaluation of the general education requirements. Students bemoaned problems that range from difficulties grappling with the wide breadth of material presented in a general, introductory course to a lack of understanding of a class’ importance. Students often view requirements as a necessary evil.

“As a bio major, to lighten the load, they let us out of the social studies requirement, but out of all five [areas of study], that is the one I am most interested to take,” Jennifer Purks (COL ’14) said. “I wish they would let us choose what we [have] to drop. I don’t think [the general education requirements are] unnecessary. I’m just not looking forward to taking them.”

Steck said that he was aware of such concerns, which prompting his campaign.

“One of the frustrations with students is that they express over and over again, is that they don’t know why they’re taking these courses,” Steck said. “[Students] experience these courses as these discrete hoops to jump through that don’t always have as much connection as you’d think.”

Katie Ryba (MSB ’13) echoed Steck’s concerns and said she lacked guidance.

“I haven’t enjoyed [general education requirements] that much. I didn’t know what classes would be good, what classes would be bad,” she said.

As a result of Ryba’s and other students’ stories, the committee and seminar have developed a variety of methods to combat the student challenges and stigma associated with the core curriculum. Most importantly, the university is working to diversify how it defines the general education requirements.

“All these things are trying to do something important to the discipline they are representing, but the question is [if] there [is] some rationale that is broader than one discipline,” Steck said.

For Steck, the key to Georgetown’s core curriculum is its ability to foster the university’s Jesuit identity. He hopes that the Georgetown Catholic foundation can be addressed in a variety of disciplines in the curriculum.

“There’s something richer about the Jesuit educational tradition, the Catholic intellectual tradition than what can simply be approached in the theology courses,” he said. “Theology courses are important for that, but there are issues that the Jesuit educational tradition is concerned about, issues of justice, of ethics, of formation, of growth. It would be a shame to have them limited to just theology and philosophy.”

The current core of the general education requirements for all of Georgetown’s schools – two humanities, two philosophy and two theology courses – has been in place since 1985. Changes to the core curriculum have been discussed every two to three years since 1994, yet little progress has been made.

An outline draft of ideas resulted from the latest conversation, “A Call to Action: Curriculum and Learning At Georgetown,” in March 2009, although no further steps were taken. Thus far, all changes to the general education requirements have been internal through restructuring of the classes themselves.

Steck hopes that the conclusions of his seminar, the focus groups and the survey can be discussed within the next two years and tested and reformed within the next three to four.

“Whatever happens is going to be incremental,” he said. “There will not be any revolutionary thing in the next few years where we come up with a new program, set of requirements, that everyone needs to go through. What we’ll see is a set of creative alternatives, and we’ll see whether those work.”

But Steck’s drive for change lies not in revolutionizing the curriculum, but in his passion to determine what is best for Georgetown’s undergraduate students and the university on the whole.

“One time a colleague of mine asked me, `What’s wrong with the present curriculum?’ and my response was `To know what’s wrong with the present curriculum, we would have to know what the right version is,'” he said. “We can’t really know what’s wrong with it until we know what it should be doing.”