Signature for all courses

This fall, Trinity College of Arts and Sciences debuted a new initiative featuring courses designed to confront students with the key and complex issues of our times—“signature courses.” This selection of specially designed classes seeks to engage students from all academic spheres and diverse niches on campus because, according to Trinity Dean Laurie Patton, “it’s focusing on a big question that can help [students] find a place in the world.” Beginning with two trial courses this semester—one on world history and the other on Italian art masterpieces—the program will expand to offer four new "signature courses" this upcoming spring term.

We applaud the spirit of the "signature courses" and the intellectual pursuits they embody. Ranging from “Soccer Politics”—where students will engage in the history and economics of soccer and the World Cup to examine the sport’s power to transform geopolitics in Europe, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East—to “The Novel, Live!”—where students engage with “terrifyingly alive” novels in Socratic fashion and reconstruct the novel as a story connecting the future with the past—these courses challenge academic boundaries and delve into complex issues. They offer a framework of critical thinking and normative analysis that extends beyond simply learning facts and concepts and, instead, grapples with deeper, nonmaterial questions.

Exemplary of this challenging introspection are the other two courses, “The University: what it is and why it matters,” and “Democracy: ancient and modern.” By wrestling with existential questions about the value and evolution of a university education and central aspects of democracy—freedom, citizenship, religion and hope—these courses embody the values that a university education ought to provide. Students connecting the past with the present within the walls of these classrooms will foster skills and integral inquisitiveness that they will take beyond the walls of Duke University.

Yet, while we support the initiative and commend the "signature courses" as a worthwhile endeavor for all undergraduate students on campus, we question the need to design a specialized program to achieve its worthy objectives. On the one hand, we are wary that these “signature courses” are yet another titled initiative—like Bass Connections and University Courses—that further embellishes the Duke brand. Even more, however, should not all courses offered at Duke strive to address “large, enduring themes” and foster “habits of mind and intellectual practices for lifelong learning”? We recognize that some skills-based courses may be less amenable to these thematic questions. It is understandable that an introductory course to calculus, for example, does not engage in questions of life’s enduring themes. Yet, by setting these courses apart from others offered, the University implies that other offered courses do not fully achieve these fundamental values and do not always challenge students to partake in deeper analysis.

The "signature courses" initiative is a worthwhile pursuit that embodies the University’s academic mission, and we urge its incorporation into the broader selection of Duke classes. As a new curriculum is currently being discussed, particular emphasis should be placed on the intersection of self-reflection and critical analysis, as discussed in a previous editorial; and enduring themes and questions like “what is the meaning of love and death?” as mentioned in "The Novel, Live!" description. Such critical questions ought to be explored and encouraged in an undergraduate education, regardless of one’s academic focus.