New Courses Added to Catalogue for 2018-2019

Every spring, Exonians pore over an extensive selection of courses, consult possibilities with older students and advisers, finalize their specialized schedules and click through the online course registration. This year, they look forward to Apr. 24, when course registration opens and students can sign up for courses in the 2018-19 curriculum.

According to Dean of Studies and Academic Affairs Brooks Moriarty, academic departments begin to review course offerings each fall and explore changes for the following academic year. By winter break, departments submit changes to the courses of instruction for the following year. The faculty are the final approving body for course changes every January.

“The non-Western requirement, over the years, has led to a decline in enrollment in European history and a rise in some of the more global courses,” he said.

Chair of the Religion Department Peter Vorkink described the success of courses depending on the workload being “academically responsible” and that the courses “fit within the goals and mission of the department and school,” while also being attractive to students.

The new courses come as a reflection of changing student needs. For example, the religion department has recently noticed a trend in students gravitating towards courses concerning identity.

“Over the years, Exeter students are coming with less and less formal knowledge about institutionalized religion, but with a more basic sense of their own spirituality, so our department has tried to offer a greater variety of courses to meet more students where they are in their own spiritual journey,” Vorkink said.

As a result, the Religion Department has reshaped the 550 class The Emerging Self into Soul Searching: Self, Identity and Meaning in Religion, Psychology and Literature. Religion Instructor Jennifer Marx Asch thinks the revised course will “create a space for students to read, discuss and write about these core questions,” and noted how “students have been gravitating towards religion classes that are more centered on the ‘existential questions.’”

Another change from the Religion Department is Religion Instructor Hannah Hofheinz’s revision proposal for the course Criticizing Religion. The course focuses on “many historical and contemporary commentaries on the nature and purpose of religion, its uses and misuses, its constructive and destructive sides,” Vorkink said.

“It is meant to be a course that allows students free reign to read through and discuss numerous critiques of religion, to help each student form his or her own opinion about the value and efficacy of a system and institution which have broadly shaped culture since the beginning of time,” Vorkink said.

Silicon Valley Ethics: Issues in the World of High Tech, is a course entirely new to the Religion Department. Vorkink says that this course is groundbreaking because it will pair current students with Exeter alumni to work on a project of mutual interest. The project will grapple with ethical issues in the world of high tech.

“Given all the stories in the news recently, especially about alumnus Mark Zuckerberg and social media, this should be a timely offering to assist students in understanding the complex issues the new technologies raise for all of us, issues such as free speech, privacy and the nature of interpersonal relations,” Vorkink says.

Both Criticizing Religion and Silicon Valley Ethics are open to both upper and seniors and run winter term only.

History Department Chair William Jordan noticed other trends in student course interest. “The non-Western requirement, over the years, has led to a decline in enrollment in European history and a rise in some of the more global courses,” he said.

For example, the History Department has recently made a change to the senior elective, Modern Africa. Originally, the instructors had centered the class around the whole of the continent. “Instead, now we focus on one country–South Africa– and really try to dig deep into that country, use it as a lens to look at the whole continent as well,” Jordan said.