The work of revising the University Core Curriculum at Ball State University continued during the summer and will pick up speed again as the 2005-06 school year begins.
At the end of Spring Semester, the University Core Curriculum Task Force II got together and considered all the comments made by faculty and students about the changes they would like to see made in the curriculum, Juli Eflin, chairwoman of the department of philosophy and religious studies and chairwoman of the task force, said.
Using those comments, the task force was able to modify its plan to better fit the new model of courses that might be added as core curriculum classes.
There is a new draft of this model that the task force will continue to work on during the fall, and that the work will be done in stages, Eflin said.
Aside from just figuring out what classes will be included, there is also the task of creating the criteria by which courses will be admitted to the core curriculum, she said.
The task force accepted comments from chairs of departments, faculty, students and community leaders about what courses they felt should be added to the new curriculum.
"I must say that some of the best input came from students," Eflin said.
She said the students were very clear about new parts they wanted added to the core and some that should be taken away.
Some of those new courses would be in the areas of interdisciplinary work, diversity, civic engagement and environmental sustainability.
Community leaders were contacted to give their input because Eflin didn't want to overwhelm the community if courses in civic engagement were added.
The students who came to the task force also said that some of the core curriculum overlapped with what they had learned in high school as part of Indiana's core 40 program, but students were still highly supportive of the direction in which the task force was moving.
One such course that will be proposed for the 2008 catalog is a course in financial literacy, or responsibility.
Srinivasan Sundaram, associate professor of finance and insurance, has been working on this proposal and hopes that the course will be much more than just a business or finance course.
"The question we asked is, 'As a core course, how can we make this a collaborative teaching effort?'" Sundaram said.
"We [Department of Finance and Insurance professors] don't want to hog this," he said because that would defeat the whole focus. He eventually wants to be able to say that graduates of Ball State are not going to be in financial trouble because of this course, he said.
He said that most schools do have a personal financial planning course that deals with checkbooks and taxes, but there aren't a lot of courses out there looking at the larger picture of things.
It will also be good to get everyone involved, even if that means having professors outside of the Miller College of Business get involved to help get the message across that this is something that will help and affect everyone.
"Hearing the same thing from a nonbusiness professor could have more effect than just business professors," Sundaram said, but there will be business professors on hand in the classrooms to help if a question arises that can't be answered by a guest professor.
As with the proposed changes that Eflin and the task force are working on, Sundaram's proposal will be one for the 2008 through 2010 course catalog.
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