Carpenter urges academic reform at Oxford convocation

English Professor Lucas Carpenter, Oxford College's opening convocation speaker, urged his colleagues at Oxford and at institutions of higher education across the country to examine and amend academic curricula as often as necessary. "Rather than view the core curriculum as something chiseled in stone and revised only at long intervals and with great effort," he said, "it makes more sense to see the curriculum as always undergoing a process of review; in short, as perpetually in flux."

It is a tradition at Oxford College that the person who was promoted most recently to full professor is invited to deliver the convocation address, which was given Aug. 23 in Allen Memorial Auditorium. Carpenter's remarks were titled "The Challenge of Curriculum Reform, or Getting Ready for the 21st Century."

Carpenter, a southern literature scholar who joined the faculty in 1985, leads the faculty committee that is reviewing Oxford's core curriculum. The committee has determined several "possible candidates for reform," such as:

* introducing interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary instruction into each academic discipline;

* incorporating a foreign language requirement in the core curriculum; and

* improving the quality of student writing by having students complete writing assignments in all departments, not just in English classes.

"I want to remind those opposed to reform that a college is defined by its curriculum and is only as good as its curriculum," Carpenter said. "And if Oxford College is to remain a viable institution of higher education as we enter the 21st century, we must see to it that our curriculum accurately reflects the state of human knowledge and inquiry."

Curriculum reform is one element of the growing identity crisis facing American institutions as the 21st century approaches, Carpenter said. The crisis is a consequence of the tremendous breakthroughs in science and technology combined with the "profound paradigm shifts in other modes of human inquiry" that threaten to make the traditional university structure obsolete. The crisis is aggravated by the additional threat of loss of financial and human resources. "In other words, higher education faces the Herculean task of reconfiguring, or reinventing itself, while at the same time preparing for budgetary cuts and possible downsizing," he said.

Preparations for the next century will force academicians of various disciplines to work together for "pedagogical continuity," Carpenter said. "We can no longer afford to remain insulated within the false security of our respective academic disciplines," he said. "Human knowledge doesn't work that way anymore, if it ever did."

-- Lori Boyer