How’s your core strength? New core curriculum comes to NGU
Keely Lyons, Staff Writer
A home with no foundation is as good as a skeleton with no spine: there is nothing to support it. This is why North Greenville University has made significant changes to the general education requirements for all majors, effective 2023.
The first change made by the university staff included changing the name from general education to core curriculum. Nathan Finn, provost and chief academic officer of NGU, said, “The reason we adopted the language of the core curriculum is a philosophical reason. We want to communicate to every undergraduate at North Greenville that what is often called general education requirements are not just hoops to jump through–they are not just classes you knock out your first year or two as a student. They really provide the academic core of everything that is studied at NGU.”
NGU hopes to send strong leaders out into the world being proficient not only in their main area of study, but in important subjects such as science, math, and many other core subjects. NGU plans to equip students with skills they will be able to transfer into all walks of life. Finn said, “We are building NGU graduates in general in our core curriculum and then in our specific majors, tracks, and other upper-level programs, we are building NGU graduates who are experts in English or communication professionals, or future entrepreneurs or whatever the case might be.”
How, then, will the core curriculum change and why is it changing now? Finn said, “It is no longer specific for each major. North Greenville became a four-year institution about 30 years ago, and it took about 18-20 years for most of our current majors to develop because they all came of age at different times. All of them, as they were started, created their own general education requirements. There was not a whole lot of rhyme or reason to it, other than all of them met the minimum accreditation standards, at least.”
“There was never a time in the university’s history where we stepped back, took a 30,000-foot view of all the gen. ed. courses and said, ‘What do we want almost every NGU student to experience in the classroom and who is with us for almost all of their four years?” Finn said.
The new core curriculum institutes a change that will create some common ground across all areas of study. Finn said, “For some of our academic programs, there are very minimal changes. For others, there are significant changes and that’s because our gen. ed. requirements currently range from about 36 hours to as much as 66 hours, so this will create a common experience of 43 hours for all of our programs.”
The process of advocating for these changes began briefly in the spring of 2020, but COVID-19 brought the process to a hault until December of the same year, but strictly speaking, the process took around 14-15 months to complete, Finn said.
An NGU task force was also assigned to oversee the process. Finn said, “I think it is important for students and everyone in our community to know that it was a faculty-driven process, rather than a top-down process. From my standpoint, while Ied the faculty to embrace the need for a new core curriculum, there was a task-force that represented all of our major academic units, as well as major key staff offices.”
As the task force met with increased frequency and the months passed, the faculty finally came to the final curtain of the proposal. Fin said, “That task force, which was chaired by Dr. Rick Martinez who is our associate dean of undergraduate studies in business, accessed all of our current gen. ed. offerings and came up with a direction that they wanted the core to go and those representatives engaged with their various departments, getting various ideas and feedback. They are the ones who came up with the proposal, which was eventually adopted by 84% of our faculty.”
One of the most common complaints about the current curriculum among faculty was not only transfer issues, but major changes. Finn said, “It creates hurdles for students who change their majors, especially if they change their major to something very different than what they are doing. And again, students know that is a potential consequence no matter what they do. But they felt like creating a common core experience would make it easier for at least many students to change their majors without losing progress they are making toward graduation.”
It is also the top priority for students to develop a love for the Bible and their personal relationship with Christ through revisions of the core Christian studies curriculum. Finn said, “Remember, our goal for the core curriculum is ‘What do we want to be true of every student who has been with us for 4 years, regardless of her major?’ One of those things we want to be true is we want them to appreciate the scriptures. We want them to love the scriptures and to know how to understand and apply the scriptures to all of life, not just her major.”
