
This year, LMU celebrates the 10th anniversary of the Core Curriculum. Established in its current format in 2013, the Core has since become a signature element of the LMU undergraduate experience, providing students with a rigorous and transformative intellectual foundation that is integral to the university’s commitment to the education of the whole person.
Current Core Curriculum Director and Associate Professor of Theatre History Arnab Banerji sat down with past Core Directors Stella Oh, professor of Women’s and Gender Studies, and Anthony Perron, associate professor of history, to discuss the initial implementation of the Core, key attributes of the curriculum, and how this interdisciplinary education prepares students to ignite a brighter world.
Arnab Banerji: Thank you so much, Stella and Tony, for joining us this afternoon for this conversation as we approach the Core being around for a decade.
Stella, could you tell us a little bit about what intrigued you about this position? What made you step into this role all those years ago, transitioning from the UCCC (University Core Curriculum Committee) co-chair position?
Stella Oh: Sure, and thanks for having this conversation. So, I’ve taken on many hats with the Core Curriculum. I was chair of the University Core Curriculum Committee. But then I also was the co-chair of the Core Implementation Committee with Michael Horan. My role as both chair of UCCC and then as co-chair of the Core Implementation Committee gave me a really wonderful insight into working with colleagues from across the campus, across different colleges. After my work with Michael Horan as the co-chair of the Implementation Committee, and once the Core was launched, another faculty member–my colleague, Jeffrey Siker–took on the role as first Director of the Core Curriculum, and I went on sabbatical. When I came back from sabbatical a year later, Rae Linda Brown, who was then the Associate Provost for Undergraduate Education, approached me and asked whether I would like to continue my work on the University Core Curriculum, but in a different capacity– as the Core Director. I believe I was approached because I had been so familiar with and instrumental in discussions around our Core Curriculum, and how it would really be a signature mark for our students. This curriculum would enable our students to really understand the core values. And here’s the pun, right? The Core Curriculum should reflect the core values of LMU and align with our mission statement. The idea of not just having students take general ed courses and checking off boxes, but rather courses that would actually reflect a meaningful Jesuit and Marymount education, was really compelling for me.
Arnab Banerji: Thank you so much, Stella. I can’t even imagine all those moving pieces, all the puzzling that had to be done and negotiated with in the initial implementation phase. That’s got to be super interesting and challenging at the same time.
Tony, as the third Core director, what were some of the challenges, or what was some of the excitement, built around stabilizing a curriculum that had now been implemented, but that still had to be moved forward?
Anthony Perron: I became Core director in 2018 and it was a transition moment in all sorts of ways. A lot of the challenge was getting new faculty to both know about the Core, but also to embrace what the Core is. LMU has a unique type of Core curriculum, so getting everybody to kind of understand what the Core is involved having more conversations.
I started my tenure as director when there was a new faculty learning community, so I reached out to all the new faculty learning communities. I placed a very high priority on First Year Seminar (FYS) and making sure that faculty who were teaching an FYS all participated in conversations about what FYS is – that was a big challenge.
By 2018, it was becoming clear what parts of the Core were strong and what parts of the Core maybe weren’t so strong. I think that’s when the conversation about the flag requirements started and we came to understand that flag requirements had served a purpose for a period of time, but that that time had passed. By then, we could move into a context where we were making the Core simpler from the students’ perspective, and easier to understand.
And then there was the pandemic and that was that that affected the Core in some specific ways. Current Core Coordinator Jaedyn Baker and I were teaching together, actually, in that in that very semester of spring 2020, so we know that very well. I think those were the biggest things on my mind when I when I took over.
Arnab Banerji: Stella, if there were two attributes of the Core (as it exists today) that you could highlight for the LMU community, what would those be? In other words, which of the 13 Core attributes do you feel best exemplify the work that is done by the Core as a curriculum? What would those be for you, as someone who witnessed the implementation process?
Stella Oh: I think it’s tough to pick out just two components out of our 13, but if you were to ask, perhaps I would pick out three. We’re a Catholic university, let’s go three!
Number one would be the First Year Seminars. Seminars are taught by full-time, tenure-track faculty members, and they allow first year students to actually engage with the research activity or the research subject that a full-time faculty member is interested in. They actually get to interact with a full-time faculty member in their first year. These faculty are really teaching what they love to teach, what their expertise is in, what they’re publishing, what they’re researching, and they are positioned to get students fired up from the very get-go when they come to LMU. And I think that’s fantastic. The First Year Seminar also reinforces writing skills.
The second would be the Rhetorical Arts course. It’s really seeped in the Jesuit rhetorical tradition of eloquentia perfecta, speaking and writing well for the common good. That Jesuit model is really implemented in the learning outcomes of Rhetorical Arts, an essential component of our Core. How do we, regardless of a student’s major, graduate students that can speak toward a common good? That pursuit really resonates with what LMU stands for, what our mission is, and why students pick LMU. It’s part of our identity as Lions. So, I think these two courses, First Year Seminar and Rhetorical Arts, really signify the “core” of the Core. The core of our mission.
The last one I do want to emphasize is Interdisciplinary Connections, which is taken at the Junior or Senior level. This attribute necessitates that a course draws form two different disciplines. Having students take Interdisciplinary Connections as one of their later Core courses once again reflects what it is that we want our students to take away from a LMU education. Yes, you specialize in a certain discipline. But you must also recognize the importance of interdisciplinary connections as you prepare to exit LMU, as you graduate and go on to graduate school or into the professional world. These things all merge together. Interdisciplinary Connections opens up the lens through which students see the world.
Arnab Banerji: Fantastic. Thank you, Stella. Those are definitely some of my favorite things about the Core Curriculum as well. Well, I teach in two of these attributes myself, and it’s been really fun and gratifying to just kind of track the journey of students who had enrolled in my FYS during their first year and then ended up in my Interdisciplinary Connections course in a later year. You can kind of see an arc of their journey. And it’s really wonderful when you think about the papers they wrote and the ways that they were thinking, and then to see where that journey has taken them. There really are some signature aspects to the Core.
Tony, between you and Stella, the Core was brought to life and then stabilized. If you were to imagine a future trajectory for the Core, what would that look like, given your understanding of the goals and purposes of the current Core? What are your aspirations surrounding the Core?
Anthony Perron: I think one of the things that the Core really does well is give a common framework for all students’ education. Everybody goes through the Core – different pathways through the Core, to be sure. But Core courses are really one of the places where students meet students from other majors. The fact that that happens at different levels throughout the students’ entire curriculum, literally from semester one to semester eight, is a really wonderful thing about the about the Core.
Ideally, there would be an increase in conversation among faculty teaching in different areas of the Core. I think the Academy of the Core is a good step in that direction. I’m really pleased to be part of that Faculty Learning Community, really thrilled to be participating in that that phase of it.
More broadly, I would just hope in the future that students say, “Hey, I came here because of the Core Curriculum.” I think that many students who come to LMU find the Core to be a wonderful thing and they have a great experience with it, but I also think if students come in having chosen LMU for that reason, all the better.
Arnab Banerji: Thank you! You know, when I occasionally get the time to daydream, I try brainstorming a slogan for the Core Curriculum, and I always go back to a Gold’s Gym, or a L.A. Fitness sort of tagline. I like to call it “Strength in the Core.” It’s such a wonderful thing to think, that the Core is really the signature aspect of what people are getting from this University.
Stella, in the interest of time, last question for you. You’ve mentioned the several hats that you’ve worn at the University, including some that are heavier on the service side. We were also talking earlier about a Strategic Plan and the Core revision, as well as the ways in which this current project of revitalizing and recommitting ourselves to the University Core Curriculum overlaps with the most recent Strategic Plan initiative that the University has adopted.
Could you just speak a little more about that?
Stella Oh: Reflecting on who we are and our identity as a Jesuit and Marymount institution, and thinking about our values and what we can offer students, really shaped the Strategic Plan from 10 years ago and was vital in shaping the Core Curriculum and the 13 different Core area requirements.
I think it’s very opportune that we’re having this conversation now in 2023, 10 years from when the Core was implemented. I’m on the Strategic Planning Advisory Council for the plan that’s rolling out right now. We’re re-envisioning how best to improve and strengthen the Core at this juncture, which really reflects our recommitment to Engaged Learning. It’s compatible with one of the key themes of our current Strategic Plan: engaging our students with the world around them. This is the same reason why we’re doing career pathways. The same reason why we want students to have hands-on experiences, internships, and research opportunities.
It’s important to think about the relationship between LMU’s Strategic Plan and the Core Curriculum in the context of the world we live in today. How do we help students make sense of the world? There’s so much hardship and darkness and tension in all aspects of the world. How does LMU and the Core give students the tools they need to navigate that? It’s the institution’s responsibility to think about how it can best shape tomorrow’s leaders, which will help ignite our students forward.
Arnab Banerji: Right. Thank you. You know one of the many things that I find really interesting about the Core Curriculum is the fact that, yes, the Core Curriculum is what distinguishes the LMU education from other institutions, like you mentioned Stella, but it’s also the one thing that connects us with larger concerns outside of LMU. It is both the thing that makes us unique and what makes us a part of that larger whole our students are eventually going to find themselves in, to ignite a better future, to set the world on fire – however we want to characterize that aspect of it. And so, Tony, last question of the afternoon for you – how does our signature, unique curriculum put us in shared conversation with other AJCU (Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities) institutions or the intellectual community at large?
Anthony Perron: Changes in the Core are for the purpose of what Stella was talking about–this is how we’re responding to a changing world, and this is how we’re meeting the needs of students in ways that make sense within the context that we’re living in right now. Studies in American Diversity is a great example of that.
Studies in American Diversity really came out of the American Cultures program, which I believe was established at LMU in the early 1990s. Even from that point, we think about diversity, we think about ethnicity and race in different ways, so I think it makes sense that the Studies in American Diversity category should change in 2023. Knowledge is always changing. The fact that our Core is something that faculty are talking about and debating, something that they get passionate about, is part of the LMU signature.
I think the Core carries out something that Jesuit universities do very well, and that Jesuit universities are always focused on, which is to both provide skills that are useful for employment and that help students in the work world, but also to open student minds to different ways of asking questions within the world, different ways of being an empathetic citizen in the world. I think that’s very important. The Core Curriculum recognizes that your college education isn’t just about what job you’re going to get when you come out of the university. It’s about the conversations that you have with people along the way. It’s about the curiosity that you’re inspired to have.
It’s especially important, I think, that the Core carries a student through their entire time at LMU. It’s not just this thing that you do in your first year. Obviously, by the fourth year, students are a little more engaged in their majors, but they are still taking Integrations courses at that point. So, they are still in a space where they’re able to talk to students who are outside their own program. That’s incredibly valuable.
Arnab Banerji: Absolutely. I’ve always said as I’ve transitioned into this role that I was standing on the shoulders of giants, and that my job was therefore made significantly easier because of the work that you, Stella and Tony, did in those initial years, both in terms of introducing the Core to the community and then stabilizing it so that this is a fully-functional, well-oiled machine. It’s always crucial that we that we remember the people who came before and laid out fabulous groundwork for us to build upon.
To learn more about the Core Curriculum, visit the Core website at: https://academics.lmu.edu/corecurriculum/