University Course requires balance

This coming Spring, Duke students will find themselves with a brand new academic opportunity—the University Course. This pilot project, convened by Dean of Arts and Sciences Laurie Patton, is titled “Food Studies: Interdisciplinary Approaches to How, Why and What We Eat.” Open to all Duke students, from freshmen to law students to Ph.D. candidates, the course will span the disciplines of cultural anthropology, documentary studies and women’s studies.

The University Course should prove a positive experiment in integrating the student population. It unites, in a very direct way, students from all the schools and departments on Duke’s campus, include many that traditionally do not have much interaction. A University Course blurs the boundaries between undergraduate and graduate students, fostering community between groups that rub elbows only infrequently.

In particular, the course provides all undergraduates an opportunity to take a class with graduate students. Although some majors lend themselves to undergraduate participation in graduate-level classes, the curriculums of other departments do not so readily lend themselves to coursework that brings undergraduates and graduates together. The University Course could fill this niche.

Of course, the University Course will become an empty gesture if students from across years and disciplines do not take advantage of it. With 75 open spots in a lecture-format class on ACES, this class setting may not be ideal for student-to-student interaction, but we hope students will take the opportunity to foster relationships with their classmates. An imbalanced class composition may scuttle the course’s goals before they get off the ground.

The University has selected a subject matter that it is well-equipped to deal with. Food can be addressed through a variety of disciplines and appeals to a wide variety of students. Food studies also encompasses many issues Duke has examined through other programs. The Class of 2015 read Jonathan Safran Foer’s “Eating Animals” over the summer, ostensibly to promote dialogue about sustainable eating. Likewise, the recently established Duke Campus Farm has begun to provide food to some on-campus eateries.

The University Course will bring these efforts into a single classroom, allowing Duke’s many experts on food issues to unite under one roof in a focused discourse. This topic is one that Duke is well-suited to present in a class and will likely be a useful topic for students from many departments.

Certainly, the course has some potential pitfalls. The University has no way of guaranteeing who will enroll, so we can only remain optimistic that the course will include students across years and disciplines. Additionally, we hope the course can mediate potential skill and knowledge differences between more advanced students and their younger counterparts. For instance, freshmen are likely to become deadweights in graduate-level discourse. The course’s continued appeal will depend on the instructor’s ability to balance approachable discourse with depth of discussion. Course planners need to avoid scaring off undergraduates and boring graduate students.

The University Course is a positive step toward bringing together various student communities in a single academic setting. This trial class seems well-formed and promising, and we are optimistic for its success. We hope it will soon develop into a larger program with more class offerings, potentially including some small seminars.