Trying to explain University College is like trying to describe the path of a young deer through an early morning clearing in a tangled forest: at once, easy and all but impossible. There are the steps, the movements left to right, north to south, the hesitation, and then the sudden burst of speed. An algebra of description there, but what of the unutterable silence that is its initial appearance, the very solemnity of the occasion, and the quietness and tenderness and intelligence of the animal's gaze as a decision is made? Some things can be described, while others reside in a hint.
"University College" is a name given to a series of related ideas, some inchoate, others already put into practice, along with what philosophers might call an energizing principle, or what religious believers might call a soul. The ideas are easy to describe, while the soul, the grace of the deer's gait, is elusive.
The leading ideas, those that have seminal status, include a commitment to multidisciplinary inquiry, a team-teaching model of classroom practice, and a dialogical way of teaching. Simply put, we think that the university is a place in which scholars from a variety of disciplines come together to formulate, address, and where the fates are kind, solve important problems of everyday life. The basic philosophical questions are: "How should I live my life?" and "What is worthy of belief?" and "How should I treat others?" These questions are best answered, so we believe, when people with different areas of expertise work together in a cooperative and collegial manner.
From those seminal ideas flow a number of others. They include:
(1) Wesleyan Graduate Review - Texas Wesleyan's first international journal of education is a cooperative scholarly endeavor among graduate students and professors which attempts to take a multidisciplinary approach to the posing and solving of educational problems.
(2) University College Day - The first such day was held on campus in April 1997. Representatives from the four campus schools shared their scholarship with the rest of the university. In all, nearly forty presentations from virtually every discipline on campus were given. Preparation has begun on University College Day II which will be held in February 1998 and will focus on good teaching in and across disciplines.
(3) The Interdisciplinary General Education Core (AEGIS)- This is an experimental attempt to meet the competencies mandated by the general education core. The twenty-five or so students who elect this alternate route will study with a group of three to five professors during the academic year 1997-1998 (The Interdisciplinary General Education Core is described more fully in the magazine Wesleyan Summer 1997).
(4) Graduate Education Course - The Practice of Scholarship I and II. The Graduate School approved the creation of graduate level courses which involve students and professors working cooperatively in the creation of articles, essays and reviews. The purpose of the courses are to give students the experience of writing for review and, ultimately, for publication. The courses are also tied to Wesleyan Graduate Review and give students the opportunity to take part in the decision-making procedure that goes into the editing and production of a scholarly journal.
In addition to the above, the Advisory Board for University College ( a group of twenty-five professors drawn from Science and Humanities, Education, Fine Arts and Business) is considering a number of initiatives including an honors program in which students chosen by criterion established within their discipline would take part in a series of multidisciplinary honors courses; an ethics component to existing disciplinary courses which would enable, say, students in business or the natural sciences to deal with the practical and ethical implications of decisions made there; and, finally, in this incomplete list, the possibility of a doctoral program in teaching which would have a multidisciplinary base.
The specific ideas that make up University College, so far, have been fermenting on campus for approximately two years, but the general ideas of faculty and students working across disciplines, teaching and learning from one another, have always been a part of the ideal that is Texas Wesleyan. The walls that separate discipline from discipline, professor from professor, and student from professor have always been relatively porous. Part of the reason for that is simple ie., we are small enough so that most of the departments have fewer than a handful of faculty members: One talks with people outside of one's discipline, or in effect, one talks with oneself.
Still, there are other reasons, reasons having to do with the mission of the University. The first paragraph of the mission statement is telling: "Texas Wesleyan University, founded in 1890 in Fort Worth, Texas, is a United Methodist institution with a tradition of integrating the liberal arts and arts and sciences with professional and career preparation at the undergraduate level and in selected graduate areas." In many ways, University College attempts to do consciously and explicitly the sort of integration which has been implicit in our behavior throughout our history.
University College then is meant to be a sort of spiritual home to scholarship on this campus, a "place" where students and professors could come to learn and to teach, to try out ideas, and to follow their inquiries wherever they might lead.
In the long run, it is hoped that University College would occupy a physical place on campus. Think of a building with human-scale dimensions located at the heart of campus, located near the library, located perhaps at Mulkey Hall. Seven or eight faculty members have offices in the building along with the same number of graduate and undergraduate students. There is a faculty lounge where professors from across campus come on a frequent basis. There is a public space, and a performance area, and seminar rooms and classrooms. Lining the walls are art works produced by members of the campus community. But most important of all, is the intellectual vitality of the place. It is that very vitality that is so hard to describe. University College occurs when the problems of the discipline become alive for us as scholars, when we feel their force and beauty and urgency, and when we feel compelled, somehow, to address them. University College, rather than being a new idea, is an attempt to make concrete the centuries-old ideal of the university - a place where scholars would work together to discover truth and enhance understanding.
Ronald F. Reed, Ph.D.
Bebensee University Scholar
Professor of Philosophy and Education
1997
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