Southern Illinois University–Carbondale, a comprehensive public university, enrolls more than twenty thousand students each year in its eight colleges and schools.

“Curriculum 21” Raises Awareness of Liberal Education at Southern Illinois University–Carbondale

Since last fall, students in the College of Liberal Arts at Southern Illinois University–Carbondale (SIUC) have had the opportunity to explore the possibilities of a liberal education through a program called “Curriculum 21.” Designed to complement the college’s existing general education requirements, Curriculum 21 challenges students to pursue further study in key areas of liberal education.

The Curriculum 21 program was created to address a perceived lack of awareness about the purposes of liberal education, according to Shirley Clay Scott, dean of SIUC’s College of Liberal Arts. “Our students needed more understanding of what a liberal education entails, what we mean by that term, and what would be some common academic values that people in the liberal arts recognize as belonging to the tradition,” she says.

The program addresses these needs by encouraging students to “reflect upon what it is they’re striving to achieve intellectually and academically,” says Scott. Inspired in part by AAC&U’s recommendations in the Greater Expectations report, Curriculum 21 compels students to create a “road map” that can guide them through their education—and help them find their way, personally and professionally, in the world beyond college.

Core Objectives

All students in SIUC’s College of Liberal Arts who are in good standing and have declared a major are eligible to participate in Curriculum 21. The program is ideally suited to students who are at an early stage in their academic career, but to accommodate the school’s large number of transfer students, it is open to applications from any student who plans to complete at least two semesters at SIUC. Students who complete Curriculum 21 receive a special certificate upon graduation.

The program itself is built around six “intellectual objectives” of a liberal education. These objectives, as they have been defined by SIUC, include

• advanced writing proficiency;
• familiarity with the arts and their capacity to provoke thought, question normative experience, renew perception of the world and the human beings in it, and refresh the mind and spirit;
• enhanced facility in a language other than one’s native language;
• awareness of the world and other cultures;
• understanding and application of the methodologies and practices of research, scholarship, or creative work;
• significant application and development of disciplinary knowledge in public service or professional venues external to the university and development of an ethos of service.  

Curriculum 21 students select four of these six objectives to pursue in depth. (With faculty approval, a student can substitute advanced proficiency in a scientific field for one of the objectives.) They then work toward their objectives by taking courses and completing projects that go beyond standard general education and major requirements.

Students can demonstrate achievement of the selected objectives in a variety of ways. Those who pursue advanced writing proficiency, for example, may publish a scholarly or creative writing project in a student publication, write an honor’s thesis, take an advanced, writing-intensive English course, or submit an approved portfolio of their writing. Students seeking to demonstrate knowledge and experience of service, meanwhile, may complete an approved service-learning course, internship, or independent service project.

All Curriculum 21 students also deliver an oral presentation, a requirement that is typically fulfilled by participating in a year-end colloquium sponsored by the College of Liberal Arts. In addition to giving students valuable experience with public speaking, oral presentations delivered for the colloquium provide opportunities for synthesizing, summarizing, and publicly celebrating the work undertaken for Curriculum 21.

The skills and knowledge students develop through Curriculum 21 will serve them throughout their lives and careers.

Communicating the Value of a Liberal Education

With its focus on the objectives of a liberal education, Curriculum 21 encourages students to be intentional in selecting courses and planning their education. The program also helps them understand how skills and knowledge developed through liberal arts and sciences courses can serve them in their future lives.  

One way that Curriculum 21 does this is by highlighting the practical value of liberal education outcomes in the workplace. "The most durable kinds of work skills," Dean Scott says, "are those that aren’t tied to a specific task that you can do but to qualities of mind and qualities of thought that can transfer from situation to situation.” Recent studies suggest that many employers understand this: “they’re concerned about writing skills and communication skills, they’re concerned about interpersonal and intercultural knowledge and . . . problem-solving skills,” Scott says.

A liberal education is ideally suited to develop such durable and transferable skills, but it provides less tangible benefits as well. Efforts to communicate the value of liberal education, Scott says, thus also should convey how such an education enriches students’ lives—by exposing them to the fine arts, by helping them contextualize current events, and by fostering the kinds of creative and critical thinking abilities that will enable them to resolve problems of all sorts.

Although Curriculum 21 is not meant to serve purely instrumental ends, it is targeted specifically at students in the liberal arts in part because those students are more likely to have concerns about future employability than students in professional fields. Stephen Dollinger, a professor of psychology at SIUC who was involved in the development of Curriculum 21, says that the “indirect and complex relationships” between career outcomes and liberal arts disciplines are a persistent obstacle when communicating with skeptical students (and parents). “Earning a BA in English, history, or sociology may not lead directly to a career,” as Dollinger notes, “but the breadth of knowledge acquired in a liberal education can make a huge difference when graduates encounter the unexpected in their lives or careers.” Even with a program like Curriculum 21 in place, however, making such a nuanced case for the relevance of liberal education outcomes can be difficult.

Curriculum 21 faces other challenges as well. The program currently is limited in scope: it focuses on raising awareness of the benefits of liberal education within the liberal arts and sciences, but not on the importance of providing a liberal education to students in other fields. It has also seen only modest levels of participation in its first year, although Dean Scott expects the program to gain momentum as more students become aware of it.

In the meantime, SIUC continues to raise awareness of the value of liberal education in other ways. Programs like the “Alumni Recognition and Liberal Arts Futures Day,” an annual event that highlights the work of successful alumni, are making clear the many career possibilities that are open to graduates with a liberal education. SIUC has also begun encouraging faculty, especially those teaching introductory courses, to talk more about how their courses contribute to a liberal education. As Professor Dollinger points out, faculty who “discuss the values and goals of a liberal education” at the outset of the semester can help all students better understand why a liberal education matters—to their chosen major as well as to life after graduation.

More information about Curriculum 21 is available on Southern Illinois University–Carbondale’s Web site.

The 2002 AAC&U report that informed the development of Curriculum 21, Greater Expectations: A New Vision for Learning as a Nation Goes to College, is available online and for purchase. AAC&U’s current decade-long campaign to champion the value of a liberal education, Liberal Education and America’s Promise (LEAP), builds upon the work of Greater Expectations. Visit AAC&U’s Web site to learn more about the LEAP campaign and to get involved.