Open Curriculum 2.0

Hamilton is known for preparing great writers and communicators who demonstrate mastery in practice across a variety of fields. This starts with preparing students to first listen actively, to be creative and critical thinkers with responsive, compelling, and well-defined ideas, and then teaching them to strategically and persuasively communicate those ideas. We have a robust writing requirement embedded across the curriculum, a top-level oral communication center, a vibrant language center, and a dynamic quantitative and symbolic reasoning center. We are building an Innovation Center that will accelerate the integration of technological mastery in instruction across (all) the disciplines, provide world-class spaces for students to learn while doing, and will expand LITS’ current programming around digital fluency.

Additionally, for the past 25 years, Hamilton has offered its students an open curriculum. Hamilton is one of the few U.S. colleges with an open curriculum, which means students have the freedom to choose courses that reflect their interests, while still fulfilling the faculty’s expectation that they study broadly across the liberal arts. While the Open Curriculum (OC) was partly the result of a lack of agreement among the faculty about the right balance between narrower “distribution requirements” and a broader embrace of exploration and interdisciplinarity, the OC has become a defining part of the Hamilton culture. The majority of students say the OC is one of the primary reasons they chose Hamilton over their second choice. OC also attracts students who are curious, open, and exploratory while giving faculty more flexibility to teach original courses that match students' passions and interests.

Many of Hamilton’s peers also emphasize writing and effective communication. But, what does it mean to have a facility for authentic and effective communication in our current environment; where social media impacts so much of our communication ecosystem, where images and visualizations threaten to overwhelm the senses, and where the competition for attention has grown exponentially? How is storytelling evolving to allow us to share stories using new media? How can we effectively advance ideas? If critical and creative thinking are fundamental to communication, do we start by analyzing how we teach these skills across the curriculum? How do we listen? How do we persuade? How do we prepare our students to use words, data, and visualizations as tools to advance ideas and to reach key audiences? If we aspire to lead the nation in graduating expert communicators, how might we extend and reimagine our current approaches? What evidence might we hold up to demonstrate that every graduate of Hamilton has mastered the art of communication in the current social and technological context?

As we move into the next 25 years of our Open Curriculum, what would it look like to design the open curriculum to purposefully meet learning and experiential needs of students at this moment in history? What does “open” mean, and how do we embrace this concept in our academic offerings and approach? How do we maximize the creative potential of an open curriculum? How do we create more cross-pollination across classes, coursework, and assignments? Can we embrace the importance of failure in our open curriculum? How is our approach to the OC different from Wesleyan or Brown? What is the distinctly Hamilton approach to the idea of an open curriculum? What evolution or refinement of the OC will signal to prospective students and their parents that we are the most important college in America for preparing graduates to “nourish a love of learning, a creative spirit, and an informed and responsible engagement with an ever-changing world?" Furthermore, what if, in crafting the OC 2.0, Hamilton re-instated the Jan term?¹ How would it enhance our current curriculum? How would we use this to expand the horizons and opportunities for our students? Is this where we can create an opportunity for students to take risks? How would we use the Jan term (or a May/June term) to support Hamilton’s unique approach to learning? How would we differentiate our program from our peers and competitors? Is this an opportunity to respond to student demand for career-related training through carefully curated pre-professional mini-courses?

¹ Hamilton once had a three-week January term that former graduates praise as an important part of their education. Winter terms are variously known for interdisciplinary classes, special-interest classes, classes taught by experts beyond the faculty, courses that are shorter and more intense, off-campus field trips, independent study, and multi-generational classes with non-degree-seeking alumni and community members.