Academic Initiatives

There will be no change to divisional distribution requirements. All students would still need to complete seven credits in each of the three divisions of the college, ensuring that students will encounter disciplinary content and ways of knowing in the Humanities, Social Sciences, and Natural Sciences.

Yes, a dual pathway would allow students to continue to meet the distribution requirements on the existing pathway or through completion of at least two courses designated as Grand Challenge courses by the Curriculum Committee.

No, the dual pathway approach will ensure minimal disruption to existing courses. It also allows the Grand Challenge offerings to gradually expand to meet emerging student interest.

Grand Challenge courses will be at least three credits, and many will be four. Completing two GC courses would require students to take 6-8 credits, making the GC pathway a reduction in required credits, leaving more freedom for students to take courses in other areas of the curriculum.

This historical degree designation is being removed because it is no longer available to students.

Since students taking the Grand Challenge pathway will not need to complete a fixed number of credits, the fixed 30 credits requirement no longer applies.

A multidisciplinary approach is essential for GC courses. Every grand challenge course should draw significantly on the epistemologies and content knowledge of fields in at least two major areas. This might be two separate divisions of the college, or one division and at least one other school or college.

Initially, the five themes captured in the Look to Michigan campaign (which emerged from Vision 2034) will guide GC curricular planning efforts:

1. Life-Changing Education
2. Democracy, Civic, and Global Engagement
3. Human Health and Well-Being
4. Energy, Climate Action, Sustainability and Environmental Equity
5. Advanced Technology

Many grand challenge courses will fit comfortably into one of these five themes, but they are not meant to be exclusive, and we expect GC courses to emerge around other essentially multidisciplinary themes.

Courses which meet a GC requirement should be ambitious in their pedagogy and provide students with opportunities to actively engage with their topics for real world learning. Examples might include civic engagement or dialogue, creative expression, design, analysis of data (including qualitative data), or authentic research. Project-based learning and experiential learning approaches are encouraged, but not the sole or exclusive student-centered methods by which eligibility can be met.

Any level course, introductory or advanced and including capstone courses or projects, that meets content and pedagogical requirements will be able to satisfy the GC requirement. We recommend that grand challenge courses will be allowed to meet both distribution requirements and the so-called “skill” requirements (First-year Writing, Upper-level Writing, Language, Race & Ethnicity, and Quantitative Reasoning).

We are exploring support for one-time co-teaching as a tool to enable two people to teach across disciplinary lines in the future.

Yes! The College is working with the Center for Research on Learning and Teaching (CRLT) to design a year-long Grand Challenge Teaching Academy which would support departments and their faculty in revising existing courses to meet GC criteria and/or the creation of new courses. We expect this academy to run annually for at least 3-5 years, creating a community around the design and delivery of GC courses. We are also exploring models for peer consultation on content beyond instructor expertise: e.g. on climate science, health equity, science and technology studies.