of William and Mary. Many of their concerns are legitimate. Funding for a new physical site; the Curriculum Center, is questioned at a time of economic downturn when a raise in staff and faculty salaries might yield better return. Other concerns focus on the rigor of the new curriculum. For example, the new curriculum is based on 24 hours of COLL courses spread over seven courses. It should provide more flexibility in subject concentration and be less rigorous in the junior and senior years. Click for related essays byAndrew R. McRoberts, '81, President, The Society of The CollegeEugene R. Tracy, Interim Dean of Arts and Sciences at William and Mary
||Some of the opposition is based on incomplete information but others express a sincere concern that the faculty committee is really "watering down" the general education requirements. How will the curriculum steering committee handle these external pressures? The characteristics of an open system are playing out here; how will William and Mary adjust, if at all, to the characteristic Katz and Kahn call "information input, negative feedback, and the coding process."|
Stay tuned: this outside pressure also invokes questions concerning governance. Is curriculum review and change strictly an internal concern under faculty governance as stated by Eugene Tracy? Or, considering the college is tied to the donations of alumni and greater college community, should they have more influence? Our March 28 topics expound on this dichotomy and other issues regarding governance.
|Vision Statement/Left-Hand column activity
This activity revealed that many students in our class were not aware of the Mission or Vision statement of The School of Education at William and Mary. However, in broad terms, the activity made our groups realize that we typically identify very general goal statements that are hard to adequately define. Some members of our group over-defined their goals, creating extensive and encompassing visions. However, there were more people that did not "dream big" and thus created easily attainable dreams for the School of Education at William and Mary. Thus, our groups did not have the creative tension that was described by Senge. This lack of creative tension can be linked directly to a disconnect between individuals identity being strongly linked with the College of William and Mary/School of Education. If perhaps, the students would have a strong identification with this SOE there would have been a higher degree of creative tension. This exercise really helped our group see the assumptions that we make regarding the vision statements of WM in comparison with other institutions, departments, and fields.
=William and Mary: Showing Signs of the Learning Organization== =As Bob Dylan once sang, “For the times, they are a changin’." A curriculum change,that is, here at The College of William and Mary. The current general education requirements were established over twenty years ago when the environment was much different. Reduced state funding and a shift in expectations for graduates are just two reasons for the curriculum revision. The current system of “gen. ed.” requirements is unsustainable and ineffective in preparing today’s graduate for the current workforce. In April, 2011, a steering committee started with discussions about what type of Liberal Arts Curriculum the college should have. By February, 2012, we had our first glimpse of the proposed new curriculum, although it is still in a skeletal form with few details. We believe the steering committee employed many of the concepts discussed in this week’s topics of organizational learning, the learning organization and organizations as brains. The table below summarizes some of the observed applications.|
|Steering Committee Actions
||Application of Concepts|
|They initially questioned: “What kind of Liberal Arts Curriculum would we like to create? Will we create something new or adjust what we have?” Focus groups of faculty and students also met to discuss where we see ourselves in relation to the Liberal Arts and what our