The Arts & Sciences Council discussed the implementation of the first-year Constellations program and updates on the Provost’s 2030 Teaching Excellence & Innovation Initiative — including a project to pilot online courses — during its Thursday meeting.
First-year Constellations
Starting in fall 2025, first-years in the Trinity College of Arts & Sciences will be required to take a set of three interconnected courses to explore a single topic from a variety of perspectives. Students can fulfill this requirement by enrolling in the existing Focus program or participating in a Constellation — a part of the new curriculum changes approved by the council in April.
The Curriculum Implementation Committee (CIC) estimates that Constellations will be able to accommodate between 990 and 1,050 of the incoming first-year class with 87 faculty offering courses within the new program, according to Mine Çetinkaya-Rundel, professor of the practice and the director of undergraduate studies at the department of statistical science, during committee updates.
Çetinkaya-Rundel further reported that 16 Constellations have been formed of the 17 proposed.
Each Constellation will include one first-year writing course and two other related courses, with at least one of these courses involving small-group learning.
“We have achieved our goal of being able to offer first-year writing courses — which will be labeled Writing 120 — starting next year that are thematically connected to each of the constellation sections,” she said.
Çetinkaya-Rundel explained that students admitted to the Class of 2029 will see a list of the Constellation names, which she noted are presented “as questions as opposed to short titles,” along with descriptions of each one over the summer. They will then be able to express preferences, and they will be matched to a Constellation based on their interests before their course registration slot in August.
“It is not perfectly balanced across the schools, but … I hope that we might achieve balance in year two [or] year three of this,” she said.
Since the overarching formation plans for this program have mostly been finalized, Çetinkaya-Rundel explained that the focus is now shifting to answer questions such as, “What does a constellation mean? What does it look like in practice?”
A beginning-of-semester retreat has been planned in January for faculty to get together and discuss collaborative teaching, ethics and civil discourse, connecting assignments and courses, and assessment plans for their Constellations. There will also be workshops for faculty throughout the semester.
CIC also provided a brief update on the Century Courses, another feature of the new Trinity curriculum changes.
Each major will be able to create its own Century Course, which will be designed to encourage multidisciplinary learning beyond a student’s previous academic experiences.
Çetinkaya-Rundel reported that these courses will be offered starting in fall 2026. Stephen Craig, William T. Miller distinguished professor of chemistry, has been tasked with leading this committee.
Provost’s 2030 Teaching Excellence & Innovation Initiative
Three ad-hoc committees — Teaching and Mentoring Excellence (TMEC), Cross-School Teaching Opportunities (CSTOC) and Adaptable Academic Structures (AASC) — have been tasked with developing the plans of the 2030 Teaching Excellence & Innovation Initiative.
Associate Provost Noah Pickus expressed that while previously established groups — such as the Trinity Curriculum Development Committee — have pointed out “a number of important issues,” solutions were never operationalized.
“The idea here is, there's been a lot of discussion,” he said. “Now how can we really drill down and talk about what we want to do?”
TMEC is charged with fostering an environment that promotes and recognizes teaching excellence.
Bridgette Hard, co-chair of TMEC and professor of the practice of psychology and neuroscience, detailed the current progress of the committee, noting that it has “developed a draft definition and a framework for effective teaching at Duke” and a “draft rubric for evaluating teaching effectiveness” to use for self-evaluation.
The committee has set multiple goals for the spring, with one of the main ones being to get input on their definition, framework and rubric for teaching effectiveness from faculty, administrators and students.
“We really need to dig more into developing mentoring definitions and recommendations in general,” Hard said. “We have found so far that the existing literature is much stronger for teaching effectiveness than it is for mentoring effectiveness.”
CSTOC will explore ways to “lower barriers” to allow faculty to teach across multiple schools.
David McAdams, chair of CSTOC and professor of business administration at the Fuqua School of Business, reported that the committee has been working on gathering data, both on faculty teaching courses and students taking courses across the University’s schools.
McAdams also explained that they have been facilitating multiple focus groups to better understand the needs that different groups at Duke have for cross-school teaching and learning.
Ultimately, McAdams hopes that these focus groups will help them “identify priorities for what sorts of policies we want to focus on.”
AASC is exploring new options for educational delivery in an effort to better fit students’ different styles.
Emma Rasiel, co-chair of AASC and Richard Y. Li professor of the practice of economics, revealed that one of the current key considerations for the committee is providing some online course options to students.
Rasiel noted that providing online courses would help increase accessibility for students with disabilities, as well as provide flexibility for students who are either forced to be away from campus for a period of time due to unforeseen circumstances or students who choose to participate in a study abroad program.
According to Jeffrey Glass, co-chair of AASC and professor of electrical and computer engineering, the goal is to pilot ten online courses during the next academic year.
Glass emphasized that there are a number of summer courses that are already taught online, and the committee is working closely with the summer faculty to assess those courses.
Raisel clarified that the goal is not to create “a world in which all of a sudden, half our students are not coming to campus.” Rather, there will be limitations put in place on how many online courses students would be allowed to take.
“This is not just about throwing a bunch of courses online and seeing what happens,” she said. “This is about preparing to teach at [a] … high-quality level in this different modality [and] making sure that we are still delivering incredibly high-quality education for the undergrads.”
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Ananya Pinnamaneni is a Trinity first-year and a staff reporter for the news department.