Making Sense of the College Curriculum: Faculty Stories of Change, Conflict, and Accommodation

Contributors share personal, humorous, powerful, and poignant stories about their experiences in a life that is more a calling than a profession. Collectively, these accounts help to answer the question of why developing a coherent undergraduate curriculum is so vexing to colleges and universities.

Preface:  An Exercise in Sense Making 
Section I: Defining the Task
Introduction:  It's a Riddle After All 
Faculty Voice:  Hard Conversations

Section II:   Passions
1    I Am a Bridge 
Faculty Voice:  Taking Ownership
2     Why We Do What We Do 
Faculty Voice:  Hidden among the Artifacts 
Faculty Voice:  An Experiment in Experiential Learning 

Section III:  Adaptations
3           Flying Solo
Faculty Voice:  Practice Makes Perfect 
Faculty Voice:  Being a Doula 
4     Change Is All About Us 
Faculty Voice:  Nope, Too Busy 
5      Losses and the Calculus of Subtraction 
Faculty Voice:  Look, It’s a Course…It’s a Major…No, It’s SUPERMAJOR! 

Section IV:  Frustrations

6     The Cost Conundrum 
Faculty Voice:  Forty Years in the Desert 
Faculty Voice:  Touching the Third Rail 
7     Barriers
Faculty Voice:  Stepping into the Fray 

Section V:  Conclusions
8     The Road Not Traveled 

References