Second Class of College Fellows Selected
A new cohort of Arts & Sciences faculty members has accepted appointments to take up the work begun last semester by the inaugural class of College Fellows. The second class of Fellows, featuring a dozen faculty representing the arts and humanities, the social sciences and the natural sciences, will join their colleagues from the first cohort in preparing the new undergraduate curriculum pilot.
The following faculty members have accepted invitations to serve in the second class of College Fellows:
- Hanadi Al-Samman, Middle Eastern and South Asian Languages and Cultures
- Sylvia Chong, English/American Studies
- Ted Coffey, Music
- Sarah Corse, Sociology
- Claire Cronmiller, Biology
- Robert Fatton, Politics
- Gertrude Fraser, Anthropology
- Grace Hale, American Studies/History
- Kelsey Johnson, Astronomy
- Mona Kasra, Drama
- Charles Mathewes, Religious Studies
- Rebecca Stangl, Philosophy
The two cohorts of College Fellows convened for the first time together on January 20 at Morven Farms for the UVA Summit on Liberal Arts & Sciences Education for the 21st Century. The daylong event featured a panel of academic leaders from Harvard University, Stanford University, The College of William & Mary, Barnard College and Duke University who have led – or are leading – similar undergraduate curricular reform initiatives at their institutions.
Arts & Sciences faculty voted last May to pilot the first comprehensive changes to the College’s general education requirements for undergraduates in more than 40 years. Building on the work of the General Education Committee, College Fellows are spending this academic year designing the Engagement courses that will be introduced to a cohort of first-year students in next year’s entering class (2017-18).
The College’s proposed Engagements – Aesthetic Engagement; Empirical and Scientific Engagement; Engaging Difference; and Ethical Engagement – will serve as the first series of courses in the new curriculum. They will serve to orient first-year students to foundational habits of mind and intellectual sensibilities that cut across disciplinary specialization.
Each selected class of College Fellows serves for three years, with some overlap between cohorts. The inaugural class of College Fellows will return to the classroom this fall to teach the new Engagement courses currently under design. Each Fellow’s work is supported with a stipend of $10,000 for every year in which they devote 100 percent of their instructional effort to the Engagement courses, and a stipend of $5,000 during the years in which their instructional time is divided between the Engagements and their home departments.
The call for faculty interested in joining the third cohort of College Fellows will go out in October.