Research Proposal

Research questions:

How has distribution requirements changed over time at Trinity College ? When and how did Trinity College shift from highly unified to a more individualized curriculum? What factors did contribute to the changes?

 

Relevance:

Distribution requirements are what schools require all students to fulfill. It means that they are something that schools want all students to learn and experience while they are attending colleges. Because they indicate schools’ mission and value, each school has different general requirements. Even in liberal arts colleges, each has unique general requirements and emphasize different discipline.

For this research, I am planning to study how Trinity has shaped current distribution requirements (Arts, Humanities, Natural Sciences, Numerical & Symbolic Reasoning, Social Sciences, Quantitative Literacy, Writing Proficiency, Global Engagement, First Year Seminar, Writing Emphasis Part1, Part2, Second Language Requirements). As I found through the College Bulletins from 1800s, Trinity used to not have general requirements, and, rather, each class has the same schedule to follow and there was no registration for courses. As fields were specialized, schools let students to choose either Bachelor’s of Arts or Science, further to groups, and majors like what we have now.

In general, majors and general requirements have been more specific and narrowed since this college was established, and students got more choices to choose what to learn than students in 1800s. We take our general requirements granted, and students are just busy to fulfill these requirements. However, knowing the history of general requirements will enable students to understand better about where they are and what goals they have to pursue at Trinity College.

Research Strategy

I will mainly search the College Bulletin from the first to current one by ten years to compare differences and find how they changed. There are two books that I have Helen Lefkowitz’s Campus Life and Peter Knapp’s Trinity College in the Twentieth Century. These two books will help me to understand what has happened on campus from both students’s perspective and school administrators’ perspective. Depending on needs, I will search some sources the JSTOR and the New York Times, but I will mainly focus on the College Bulletins and those two books.

 

 

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Relevance:

As a student at Trinity College, a prestigious liberal arts college, I realize that I should know what a liberal arts college is and what kinds of goals I want to pursue here. Personally, before coming to America, I did not know what a liberal arts college was. The fact that they have relatively small size classes and provide more interaction with professors was all that I knew, and it was good enough to bring me to Trinity.  However, as I have spent my first semester at Trinity as a transfer student, I could see the uniqueness of liberal arts colleges besides the small size. Because I spent three semesters in a community college, where classes were mainly lecture-based, I could clearly see differences between liberal arts colleges and regular colleges. These differences interest me in exploring more about liberal arts college.

In the media, liberal arts colleges have been introduced as an alternative of higher education or colleges that produce individuals exactly who employers are looking for. Instead of focusing on vocationism and specialization, liberal arts colleges aim at strengthening students’ critical thinking skills and exposing students to a broad range of knowledge while allowing them to study one field in depth.  However, as our society has developed, there are many changes that liberal arts colleges have gone through. As more schools take liberal arts education as their main pedagogies, the concept of liberal arts colleges seem to be watered down as institutions where students can guarantee their jobs simply by attending these schools. Some liberal arts colleges confront financial difficulties in keeping traditional liberal arts education because students and the job market want schools to teach specific skills or knowledge students can use when they are employed. Meanwhile, many have questioned how technologies in liberal arts education should be in responses to demand of employers.

By tracing back the history of liberal arts colleges, we can understand what has been transformed and what has been preserved as well as how uniquely this education has affected students’ lives. It will help us to know what values liberal arts colleges should pursue today. In addition, I want to observe Trinity College based on the research results and see in what ways Trinity College provides a liberal arts education.

Research Strategies:

My research will be mostly based on online sources. Using ERIC and JSTOR, I found some interesting sources. The American Council of Learn Societies’ book Liberal Arts Colleges in American Higher Education, provides overall views about the liberal arts colleges’ past, present, and future in depth and in length. Charles Blaich’s Defining Liberal Arts Education tries to define liberal arts education in various perspectives and relates the definitions to empirical applications. Among the papers I found in ERIC, some are data-based research articles, which can be useful evidence to see how well liberal arts colleges have performed. Also, I will look for how American colleges in general appreciate liberal arts colleges through the website of the Association of American Colleges and Universities and through the New York Times. As many educators have discussed the liberal arts education, there are many articles and columns related to this topic. Also, in order to compare these research results to Trinity College, I will use Trinity College’s handbook and website.

While exploring the webs about liberal arts education, I found a case from the University of Chicago on how it changed its curriculum focusing on liberal arts education, led by a former president, Robert Hutchinson in the 1940s. He changed general requirements and required all students to read and discuss Classics and Greek literatures. Despite a strong opposition at that point, the University of Chicago is now well known for building students’ strong foundation for success. Related to my topic, I will find more information about Mr. Hutchinson and the University of Chicago. In this case, I am planning to use WayBack Machine to see how its curriculum and general requirements have changed over time.

Source:

• Blaich, Charles, Anne Bost, Ed Chan, and Richard Lynch. “Defining Liberal Arts Education.” Center of Inquiry in the Liberal Arts, 2004.
• Eckles, James E. “Evaluating the Efficiency of Top Liberal Arts Colleges.” Research in Higher Education 51.3 (2010): 266–293. CrossRef. Web. 4 Apr. 2014. “Https://www.aacu.org/leap/what_is_liberal_education.cfm.” n. pag. Print.
• Societies, American Council of Learned. Liberal Arts Colleges in American Higher Education: Challenges and Opportunities. American Council of Learned Societies, 2005. Print. 59.
• Zernike, Kate. “Making College ‘Relevant.’” The New York Times 3 Jan. 2010. NYTimes.com. Web. 4 Apr. 2014.

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