Curriculum: Mission as an educational endeavor

Our academic curriculum and our mission must be closely interlocked. This means that awareness of the changing world and our unique ability to reach out as a place of Christian learning, should galvanize our every activity and choice.

Currently, the range of courses offered is enormous. It testifies to the industry, creativity and intellectual fertility of the faculty. New areas are constantly added.

Despite such range and every good intention, the curriculum (as focused requirement for students in service of the church) is difficult to navigate and without a clear overall strategic purpose.

What we teach and how students may most effectively learn is challenged by our mission, not set by an institution’s previous reputation and the more stable world of yesterday.

Consequently, over the next few years, we will engage in an increasingly deep review of our academic programs and courses. For whom are they intended and for what purpose?

The interrelation of curriculum and mission should encourage us to ask different questions. Overall curriculum strategy should consider:

• Mission relates to how we deal with both plenitude and with shortages. Out of our plenty (instructional and material), we have corresponding blindnesses, so how may we become less blind in the midst of plenty?

• In any place of convictions, passion and faith may develop narrowness. How may we become able more adequately to address diversity? Historically, at least in the developed west, diversity is addressed through increasing tolerance. Yet, mere tolerance tends to evade other explanations of difference and ultimately leads to a shallowness of koinonia (community). This points to the challenge of combining a deepening evaluation of diversity with the ability to maintain a coherent ethos within the trajectory of the Reformed tradition.

Strategic Plan 2006–2009 Home