2) A related question: what is the greatest weakness one sees in new faculty emerging from graduate school? Is command of the languages what it once was? Is the young faculty member able to feel conversant with the wider concerns and discussions of the university community? (Answers....)
3) What should we be doing in our undergraduate curricula to make it easier for good people we know should succeed to in fact succeed? Presumably changes made to a small language-intensive program in a prestigious liberal arts college will not be the same as those made to a larger program that tends to the needs of a large proportion of "civilization" as well as language majors. What particular adjustments should each of these kinds of programs make? (Answers....)
4) How do you see the nexus of problems associated with graduate and undergraduate education relating to the general state of the discipline? Where is the future of Classics most at risk and how could coordinated objectives at the two levels of higher ed in Classics begin to address that risk? (Answers....)
A number of people responded immediately to these questions. First, there was a strong critical response to the casually-phrased premise that "undergraduate programs prepare young women and men for graduate school" in the organizers' opening remarks. M. Williams: "I'd personally be very unhappy if that were the primary focus of undergraduate education.... If we limit our attention to those who are learning to read both languages with the aim of going on to grad school, we'll deserve the continuing slide in enrollments that we will probably experience." MW went on to outline his own broadly ranging Classical Civilization program at Calvin, "a pretty good major in the traditional humanities." His remarks were endorsed and qualified by B. Cape ("But those of us who teach in small programs are in a double-bind... how do we increase our appeal through the myth/lit-in-trans/civ courses and at the same time not diminish both the attractiveness and viability of the language side of the program..."). N. Sultan talked about positive practical outcomes of a broad, undergraduate degree in the classical humanities.
Other areas for further talk, as distilled from the summary above:
--Other measures to strengthen "teacher training" in grad school? Comments on the detailed suggestions of Bob Cape in this regard?
--More discussion on the relative roles of language preparation and the "big" issues in currency among the other humanities (bearing in mind that it need not be an either/or proposition)?
--Here's a(n irresponsibly) big one: Does the discipline as a whole need a thorough rethinking? If we say, as we so often do, that we are worried about "coverage" of traditional and linguistic material and "coverage" of new ideas reflecting changes in the university and the wider world, are we in effect trapped by past definitions of our field(s)? Does the disciplinary model need some fundamental modification, some newer, more sufficient conception of what "doing Classics" is? How might that be reflected in, particularly, now, a grad program that bears in mind the realities of life beyond?
To go on to section 2, click here.