Revitalizaing a Fellowship in Learning: K-Plan for the 21st Century; A proposal from the Distinctiveness Initiative Task Force to enhance what Kalamazoo College already does well

Abstract

The 17-member Distinctiveness Initiative Task Force (DITF; please see Appendix 1 for DITF membership) met frequently, as a whole and in several subcommittees, from April through September 2007, to discern ways of enhancing the many strengths of Kalamazoo College’s curriculum and addressing its weaknesses. While consciously maintaining the centrality of strong majors, academic rigor, high-quality SIPs, and breadth of educational experiences on and off campus as key components of Kalamazoo College’s curriculum, the DITF explored many ways of integrating these components into a well articulated and distinctive whole. As new pieces of the curriculum began to emerge and fit into place with current curricular components, feasibility issues were raised, discussed, but not completely resolved. After developing a proposal that seemed sufficient to share with a broader subset of the Kalamazoo College community, the DITF made a concerted effort to increase the inclusiveness of the discussion about the curriculum. As a result of meeting with faculty individually and in several small groups (including department chairs), at least half of the faculty have learned directly of the DITF proposal and have availed themselves of opportunities to react to it. The proposal arising from these thorough, well-informed, and enlightening deliberations, listed here and developed further in the pages that follow, should serve as a point of departure for further conversations that lead in the near future to a more effective means of educating our students.

This document is the original proposal for the curriculum change adopted in 2009. This document precedes a revised 2008 proposal (K Plan for the 21st Century: Revitalizing a Fellowship in Learning, https://cache.kzoo.edu/handle/10920/25435) and the final 2009 adopted document (K Plan for the 21st Century: General Education Curriculum, https://cache.kzoo.edu/handle/10920/25470).