Stanford University is unveiling on Thursday a set of 55 recommendations to place a priority on teaching undergraduates a set of skills in addition to requiring them to take courses in specific disciplines.
The changes, which were drafted by a 17-member committee (chiefly from the faculty), are in a report that is being presented to the Faculty Senate for review.
It is the first top-to-bottom revision to Stanford’s undergraduate curriculum since the 1993-94 academic year. The focus on core skills in addition to disciplinary content reflects the idea that Stanford should develop students’ abilities to continue learning throughout their lives and adapt to a changing world after their formal education has ended.
The proposed changes, which the committee described as emphasizing “ways of thinking, ways of doing,” are in keeping with a growing emphasis among colleges on core skills instead of specific disciplinary content.
The committee made its recommendations based on site visits to such peer institutions as Duke, Harvard, and Princeton Universities, and the University of Chicago. They did so “not to find some ready-made curriculum we might import to Stanford,” the report’s authors wrote, “but simply to draw on the accumulated knowledge and experience of our peers.”
Stanford’s committee identified seven skill areas as important for students: aesthetic and interpretive inquiry; social inquiry; scientific analysis; formal and quantitative reasoning (two courses in each); as well as one course in engaging difference, one in moral and ethical reasoning, and another in creative expression.
The recommendations also endorse the idea that freshmen should be exposed to a variety of learning environments, including lectures, discussion sessions, and intimate seminars. The recommendations would require first-year students to take seminar courses with senior faculty, which is now optional.
Perhaps a more significant change would add a collection of course offerings called “Thinking Matters” to the freshman curriculum. Some of these courses would be interdisciplinary and created by faculty from different departments, such as the “Art of Living,” which bridges French and philosophy; “Freedom, Equality, Security,” which combines political science and law; and “The Science of MythBusters,” which spans biology and chemistry and would use the television program to teach aspects of the scientific method.
Other courses, such as “Brain, Behavior, and Evolution” and “Everyday Life: How History Happens,” would be situated more squarely in one discipline.
Rosemary Knight, a professor of environmental geophysics and chair of the Faculty Senate, praised the report as “a call to action to find new ways of meeting the needs of our students,” and lauded its focus on undergraduate education.
“It’s really a chance to inspire and engage our faculty to think about new ways of thinking and new courses to teach,” said Ms. Knight, who plans to teach a “Thinking Matters” course on fresh water.