Living in the 21st Century Core Course Series Program Description
Program Description: The "Living in the 21st Century" core course series program is an exciting new pilot project aimed at offering general education courses that emphasize the necessity for integrative learning, collaboration, and cross-disciplinary communication in the investigation of 21st century "messy, real-world" issues. Unlike traditional core curriculum courses that can fulfill only one or, at most, two core requirements, these course series are intended to be truly interdisciplinary, integrative learning experiences offered in serial over multiple semesters in which core objectives for several areas can be met.
Because a course series will develop a theme over several semesters, students will have the opportunity to experience, model, and exercise those habits of mind that will support them when critically examining tough interdisciplinary issues from multi-disciplinary perspectives. Designed initially to augment existing core curriculum courses, this new course series will allow faculty to test not only a more integrative curricular framework, but also explore instructional strategies that aggressively promote student intellectual development and critical thinking capacity.
Discussions for developing pilot programs to test the series concept began in earnest in May 2003. Currently, several themes have been identified that could be developed into pilot series, but any number of themes are possible. CEUT is offering to sponsor the initial development of course sequences that thus far have been conceptualized under several different themes of interest. Themes that have received initial support for development include Earth Sustainability, Mind and Body, Communities, and Aesthetics, Society, and Values. The goal is to work toward fall 2004 implementation of two multi-semester course series.
Series Coordinators:
Barbara Bekken, program coordinator — “Earth Sustainability,” bekken@vt.edu
Valerie Hardcastle — “Mind and Body,” valerie@vt.edu
Rebecca Scheckler — “Communities,” rebecca@vt.edu
Michael Saffle — “Aesthetics, Society, and Values,” msaffle@vt.edu