Graduate Education in CLASSICS
a continuing conversation....

Report of the Task Force on the Relationship between Graduate Education and the Undergraduate Curriculum

Prepared by Dan Hooley, University of Missouri, and Jim May, St. Olaf College

Contents

Introduction

This is a radically abridged paraphrase. As such it does no justice to the often eloquent and insightful contributions of members of this group. In one very real sense, the virtue of this kind of exercise comes from listening to others say what they think and (in their own words) why, rather than from any summarizable "conclusions" that can be easily passed on. But there is good, too, in trying to bring the various ruminations into some reasonably concise and communicable form, and so make the various progresses this group has made a contributing part of a larger dialogue. To that end, we've prepared the following provisional summary and hope in it to communicate some of the major themes of discussion as well as points of general agreement and disagreement. It should be noted, with respect to the latter, that sometimes fundamental differences of views did not, as they might have, result in hardening of perspectives: people in this group listened to one another and responded in productive ways. Encouraging.

General Terms of the Discussion:

At the outset we sought to focus discussion on perceived difficulties at the two-way intersections between undergraduate programs and graduate schools, that is, problems facing undergraduate students moving into graduate study and problems facing fresh PhDs returning to undergraduate institutions. Our discussion group was fortunate in representing a wide range of teaching situations from which to approach these issues: several teach at small, relatively selective liberal arts colleges, others in larger settings, ranging in mission from notable research institutions to large, land- grant universities. We've broken the discussion into three sections to reflect something of how the responses interrelated.
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