Called faculty meeting addresses curricular issues

At a specially called faculty meeting of Lenoir-Rhyne College, hosted by a number of the Liberal Arts Schools of the College, convened on Wednesday afternoon, October 12, 2005, to discuss the administratively appointed core committee's proposed revision of the College's liberal arts core. The School of History, Philosophy, and Religion, of which I am a member, presented a position paper, entitled "A Critical Look at the Proposed New Core Curriculum." Larry Yoder, Lowell Ashman, Karen Dill, Marsha Fanning, Charles Cooke, Eric Schramm, Andrew Weisner, Paul Custer, and many others spoke to the issue -- most of them offering unqualified endorsements of the indispensability of a strong liberal arts core in the Lenoir-Rhyne curriculum. Lowell Ashman was blunt: "Why are we messing around with the core?" he asked, repeatedly. "And who's idea was it to mess around with the core?" he pontedly inquired. Dr. John Sorenson, Academic Dean, took responsiblity for initiating the core committee on this score. Toward the end of the meeting, however, Dr. Wayne Powell, President of the College, took the floor and gave a brief speech in which he recounted the importance of the liberal arts tradition to education and a ringing endoresement of the centrality and importance of the liberal arts in our curriculum at Lenoir-Rhyne College. At one point, he rhetorically suggested that he couldn't imagine a single person in the assembly being opposed to the liberal arts and dramatically asked anybody present who favored doing away with liberal arts in the curriculum to stand. Of course nobody did. However -- and this may be a trifle naughty -- I couldn't help noticing that at that moment both he and Dr. Sorenson were the only members present, apart from Kathy Ivey who was moderating, who were standing. In any case, the discrepancy between the President's endoresement and the core committee's evisceration of the liberal arts in the core is hard to ignore. And so the core wars continue ...

Those interested in following the discussion can check in from time-to-time at "The Internet discussion."