Making Sense of the College Curriculum Faculty Stories of Change, Conflict, and Accommodation

Readers of Making Sense of the College Curriculum expecting a traditional academic publication full of numeric and related data will likely be disappointed with this volume, which is based on stories rather than numbers. The contributors include over 185 faculty members from eleven colleges and universities, representing all sectors of higher education, who share personal, humorous, powerful, and poignant stories about their experiences in a life that is more a calling than a profession. Collectively, these accounts help to answer the question of why developing a coherent undergraduate curriculum is so vexing to colleges and universities. Their stories also belie the public’s and policymakers’ belief that faculty members care more about their scholarship and research than their students and work far less than most people.  

ROBERT ZEMSKY currently serves as the chair of the Learning Alliance and was a member of the U.S. Secretary of Education’s Commission on The Future of Higher Education. He is the author of several books, including Checklist for Change: Making American Higher Education a Sustainable Enterprise (Rutgers University Press). 

GREGORY R. WEGNER is the director of program development at the Great Lakes Colleges Association. 

ANN J. DUFFIELD is a strategic planning and communications consultant to colleges and universities and serves on the board of trustees of The Sage Colleges in Troy and Albany, New York.