Global Core to decrease class sizes

A year after the creation of the Columbia College Global Core requirement, faculty members are evaluating potential classes and looking to downsize large lecture courses to smaller seminars—neither of which have been simple tasks.

The Global Core requirement, which replaced the Major Cultures requirement in 2008—a less Western-centric curriculum was one of the demands of the hunger strikers last fall—is intended to “address several world settings or cultures comparatively,” according to the University Web site. Students will also have the option of taking classes about “a specific culture or civilization, tracing its appearance and/or existence across a significant span of time and sometimes across more than one present-day country or region.”

It is in the process of slowly shifting from large lecture courses to smaller seminars and increasing the number of Global Core courses offered.

Patricia Grieve, the Nancy and Jeffrey Marcus Professor of the Humanities and the chair of the Committee on the Core and the Committee on Major Cultures, said that the process of evaluation for potential future Global Core courses has been “both ... formal and informal.”

Formally, she said, the Committee on Major Cultures, which oversees the Major Cultures requirement and will eventually become the Committee on the Global Core when the official curriculum change is fully implemented, will approve all courses for the College. But she added that “informal discussions” are also taking place among committee members, faculty, and students about the best way to pursue shaping the new requirements.

Specifically, the committee speaks with faculty members in various departments to discuss courses they want to develop or that they think should be removed from the Major Cultures list and placed into the Global Core.

Presently, the classes of 2011 and above may still elect to fulfill the Major Cultures requirement, while the classes of 2012 and younger must complete the Global Core instead.

Even though some of the Major Cultures List B and C classes—specialized courses on major civilizations and its manifestations in the United States of specific cultures—have been cut from Global Core, many of the List A courses, which are broader introductory classes, have carried over with the transition.

But not all students have been enthusiastic about the transition from Major Cultures to Global Core.

Louis Fisher, CC ’11, opted to stick with the Major Cultures requirement and took Theories of Culture: Middle East and South Asia and Colloquium on Major Texts: East Asia last semester. “I had a really good experience in both of them,” Fisher said.

The committee wants student input, Grieve said. But she added that “students have to show patience,” and that there are “good principles undergirding the thinking behind the Global Core.”

Though there are students on the Committee on the Core, the Committee on Major Cultures solicits wider undergraduate opinions on the courses. The students on the Committee on the Core, which oversees all aspects of the Core Curriculum, held a town hall meeting to discuss the requirement last year.

“I think Columbia’s determination to make the Global Core into a more seminar-based requirement will only serve to benefit the students,” Derek Turner, CC ’12, said. He added that, from his experience with Literature Humanities, he has found that “seminars are much better than lectures at engaging the students and making the topic much more personal and applicable.”

But according to Grieve, the main problem has been finding faculty to teach the courses.

“Due to the current climate where many of the hirings have been frozen, we have to think very carefully about how we maintain the curriculum we want for our students,” she said.

And the floundering economy remains a hurdle. “I don’t think that the number of courses will be decreased but I do think that we may have to rethink the process by which we hope to incorporate even more seminars into the Global Core,” she added.

Presently, a new list of Global Core courses has not been posted for the 2009-2010 school year. The current list will remain in place for the 2009 fall semester. Grieve said that a new list will be posted for the November registration for the spring of next year.