Should Trinity adapt a “core” curriculum of courses required of all students? Is too much, or too little, emphasis being placed on the major? How should students be evaluated? What do students need from a liberal arts education? These are just some of the questions addressed in a 183-page report of the Curricular Review Committee’s findings, which was released in September.

Central to the report is an outline of the committee’s desired goals and outcomes for students, general and specific, which should guide future faculty action. Students’ primary goals during the next four years, the report says, “must be cultivating their powers of discrimination, analysis, judgment, and creativity, powers which, along with developing their cognitive and moral faculties, will enhance both their intellectual and ethical growth.”

“I believe there will be a lot of support for our goals,” says Miller Brown, dean of faculty and chair of the committee. “There may be differences in opinion about the means to achieve them, and that’s okay. I don’t think there’s any one way or any uniquely best way to achieve those goals.”

Brown says he looks forward to discussing the committee’s report and findings with members of the faculty in the coming months. Two open discussions on the report are scheduled this month, the first on October 10, followed by a session on October 16, following a first meeting on September 30. Brown says other meetings with faculty members may also be planned for the end of the fall semester or early next semester.

Says Brown, “If all goes well and we push ourselves, we ought to be able to arrive at some consensus by early in the spring semester.”

If that pace is maintained, he says, the remainder of the spring semester could be spent discussing how best to implement the agreed-upon goals with the possibility of implementing some of the committee’s recommendations by the following fall.