How a Liberal-Arts College Is Rethinking Its ‘Soul Crushing’ Core Curriculum

Robert Vidaure for The Chronicle

When Art Reyes received a generous scholarship to attend Harvey Mudd College, an elite engineering, science, and math-oriented institution in Claremont, Calif., he and his parents, both immigrants from Mexico, were thrilled. An alum warned him that tackling the intense coursework would be “like trying to drink water from a fire hose,” but the high-school salutatorian felt up to the challenge.

Reality soon caught up with him. With six classes and a lab in his first semester, his days and nights often stretched to 2 or 3 a.m. Sleep-deprived and stressed, he found himself slipping behind his classmates with whom he was wading lockstep through a notoriously challenging core curriculum. By his sophomore year, he had to take a semester off to catch up at a community college. His self-confidence was shattered.

Reyes later learned that he had plenty of company in feeling overwhelmed by the college’s academic requirements. In complaints first to mental-health counselors and then to outside evaluators, students described feeling like they had little time for showers or sleep, much less extracurricular activities or time to reflect.

The problem was particularly acute among the growing number of first-generation and minority students whose frustrations exploded to the surface last year after a leaked report quoted professors complaining that the college’s focus on diversity had caused standards to slip.

Students protested, classes were canceled for two days, and a period of soul-searching began. This year, Harvey Mudd, which is part of the Claremont Colleges consortium, is taking a hard look at its core curriculum and the mental-health and counseling services it offers students.

A curriculum committee is considering how to ease pressure on students without sacrificing rigor. But divisions remain among the faculty about whether this is a good idea, or just pandering to students who lack the work ethic or preparation needed to succeed.

Reyes, who is half a credit away from graduating, was on hand this month to help orient dozens of incoming minority and first-generation students. He wants them to know what they’re in for, that they belong at Harvey Mudd, and that to survive in a challenging academic environment, it’s important “to surround yourself with support as early and often as possible.”

The challenges confronting Harvey Mudd mirror those facing other selective colleges that are welcoming more diverse students who haven’t had the benefit of well-financed schools and highly educated parents. In the 12 years since Maria Klawe became president, Harvey Mudd’s student population has shifted from about 29 percent to 48 percent female, from 1 percent to 4 percent black, and from 8 percent to 18 percent Hispanic. This year’s incoming class is expected to be 52 percent female, 3 percent black, and 20 percent Hispanic.

One former administrator, who left after a disagreement about how to meet the academic and mental-health needs of struggling students, and asked not to be identified, said better faculty training and student counseling would have made the transition to a more diverse student body easier. “We’ve had admissions changes, and no one has helped faculty understand how to deal with a more diverse student population,” the former administrator said.

Concerned by reports that students were stressed about the college’s workload and were violating the honor code more frequently, the college’s Teaching and Learning Committee commissioned a study by Wabash College’s Center of Inquiry, which helps liberal-arts colleges improve teaching and learning.

Their study, which became known as the “Wabash report,” was initially shared with faculty members but not with students, for fear that they might be offended by some of the harsher comments. Klawe argued that the report gave too much weight to what she called a relatively small number of faculty members who complained that students were wed to their phones, underprepared academically, and not committed to the sciences.

A copy of the report was leaked to the Claremont Colleges’ student newspaper, The Student Life, last year and the expected backlash erupted. In the report, faculty members disagreed over the extent to which they should accommodate academically struggling students. Some said they regularly checked in on students to see how they were doing and were more likely to be flexible about deadlines. Others lamented that students were less willing to work hard and that the focus on diversity had caused standards to erode. Students were getting these messages directly from some of their professors, the report said.

“The students had also heard that they weren’t as good as Mudd students in the past because there are more women and underrepresented ethnic minorities at Mudd now,” the report said. “While some students brushed off these comments, others either resented them or took them to heart.”

Last year, representatives of student diversity groups protested, plastered reprints of some of the harshest comments across the campus, and issued a list of demands on the administration. Classes were canceled for two days.

The students wanted more money for mental-health counseling and diversity-group activities, direct student involvement in revamping the core curriculum, and sensitivity training for faculty members.

“Many marginalized students feel tokenized by the school in that it uses us to attract more students and build the image of the school, but does not commit to fully supporting us,” their statement read.

Faculty leaders wrote a letter reassuring the aggrieved students that they deserved to be there.

“We also acknowledge fully that teaching a more gender and ethnically diverse student body requires reflection and re-examination of our pedagogy, course materials, and syllabi, and we will continue and expand on the work already in progress in these areas,” the letter said.

The report was leaked at a sensitive time for the college. Shortly before it was published, a popular first-generation Hispanic student died of an opioid overdose, and a black student at neighboring Scripps College committed suicide.

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“The meme going around was that the Claremont Colleges are so toxic to students of color you have to kill yourselves to get attention,” Klawe said in an interview with The Chronicle. The college went into crisis mode, she told an NPR reporter. “Administrators had a list of 60 students who other students said were at risk of suicide or a severe mental breakdown.” They spent the rest of the semester trying to keep all of their students safe.

“That stretch of about three months was the hardest of my career, but it brought the community together,” Klawe told The Chronicle.

Since then, Harvey Mudd has created a multidisciplinary care team that anyone can report to anonymously if they’re concerned about a student. The team provides confidential help to students who are struggling with personal or academic issues. The college also created a new position as assistant dean for academic affairs, an additional part-time counselor, and increased financial support for student diversity groups.

Meanwhile, faculty members are working on proposals to revise the core curriculum, a one-and-a-half-year sequence that combines STEM disciplines with writing and critical inquiry.

Harvey Mudd promotes itself as a liberal-arts college that focuses on math, science, and engineering, but some students have complained that the curriculum leaves no time for the kind of reflection a liberal-arts college requires.

Currently the core, which must be completed in the first three semesters, includes one course each in computer science and engineering, one in biology, three semesters of math, two and half of physics, and one and a half semesters of chemistry. Biology, physics, and chemistry all have associated labs. In addition, students take a half semester of college writing and a course in critical inquiry. Students have to take a course from each department before declaring a major — a requirement not shared by peer institutions.

After last year’s unrest, the curriculum committee introduced a new goal for the core: nurturing a “joy of learning.”

“This emphasis on students’ joy of learning is a shift in the way we talk about our aspirations for our students’ experience in the core,” Tom Donnelly, a professor of physics and former core-curriculum director wrote in an email.

“We expect that this shift will lead to a core that maintains our traditions of excellence and rigor while rooting out the assumption that an increased quantity of assigned work always leads to increased learning.”

Despite such progress, the controversy that erupted last year may have given some minority students and their families pause. The percentage of black students in the incoming class dropped from 5 percent to 3 percent — the result of fewer applications and a lower yield from that population, Klawe said. The percentage of Hispanic students slipped slightly from 21 percent to 20 percent of the incoming class.

Given the competition for strong minority students in STEM-focused programs, “it could be that other institutions have upped their game.” Or, Klawe said, the publicity surrounding last year’s protests could have made students and their parents wonder whether Harvey Mudd would crush, rather than support them.

In addition to the Wabash report, the college commissioned an external review of its core curriculum. In a report released in December, the team concluded that “there is general agreement that the core is an exhausting and dispiriting slog for too many students.”

Among the suggestions for relieving the “culture of overwork and academic stress” are giving students extra credit for particularly intensive courses, spreading the core over four years rather than front-loading all the requirements in the first three semesters, and offering online modules or tutorials the summer before freshman year to help “level the playing field.”

The challenge in revamping the core is to maintain rigor while providing enough support that the result is “intellectually and socially fulfilling” without being “soul crushing,” they said.

The reviewers included professors from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Worcester Polytechnic Institute, both known for their demanding engineering curricula.

In 2015, MIT took steps to temporarily ease the workload and beef up support after six students there committed suicide over a 14-month period. It also introduced a course in which students offered suggestions for overhauling the first year

and created a coalition made up of students, faculty, and staff members that brainstorms ideas for improving mental health and well-being and for reducing the risk of suicide.

Other prestigious colleges known for their heavy workloads and perfectionist students have added more mental-health counseling.

Klawe believes the changes underway at Harvey Mudd will make the college stronger.

“There are people who say ‘don’t waste a good crisis,’ and academic 16-17 was just awful,” she says. “I’m usually an optimistic person, but I’m feeling particularly optimistic about the coming year.”

Katherine Mangan writes about community colleges, completion efforts, and job training, as well as other topics in daily news. Follow her on Twitter @KatherineMangan, or email her at katherine.mangan@chronicle.com.