Michigan’s oldest college newspaper
Vol. 142 Issue 5 - September 27, 2018
www.hillsdalecollegian.com
The Hillsdale County Fair runs through Saturday, Sept. 29. Josephine Von Dohlen | Collegian
For coverage of the Hillsdale County Fair, see A6.
College prepares capstone course Class of 2020 will be the first to fulfill senior year requirement
By | Nolan Ryan News Editor Hillsdale College will soon introduce a new Senior Capstone course to its core curriculum, with the Class of 2020 becoming the first to take it during its senior year. The course will be from one to three credits and last either one semester or a full year, according to Professor of History and Dean of Social Sciences Paul Moreno. “You often say the purpose of a liberal arts education is to spend four years thinking about what it means to be a human being,” Moreno said. “This course should be a culmination of that.” President Larry Arnn envisions a one-credit, seminar-style class taught by professors from all of the departments, who will relate the core principles to their specific discipline. Moreno said Arnn might also have a hand in teaching part of the course, perhaps on moral philosophy. Provost David Whalen and the academic deans — representing the social sciences, the humanities, and the natural sciences — will create a plan for the course and present it
to the faculty for feedback and approval. Since the core curriculum standards were planned in 2011, Hillsdale has gradually introduced and taught new core classes. The Senior Capstone class is the final addition. “I may give some number of lectures to the whole senior class,” Arnn said. “We would probably study Aristotle some. We might study the Bible some. I’ll think up themes for each of them that will tell us something we need to know about the core. My job would be to speak explicitly and solely to the unity of the core.” While faculty are still working out details, the central ideas for the course have remained constant since its inception. “You can’t put the roof on the building until you’ve got the building,” Arnn said. “The core is not a list of courses. Something has to give it definition as a core. The definition that it has is that it is the fundamental things a person needs to know to call himself educated. If you’re going to have that idea, then you need something to rehearse it and bring unity to it at the end.”
As an attempt to integrate the core in a single course, Moreno said, the class will also attempt to relate the core to a student’s major. The deans and the provost, Moreno said, have been working on a proposal for the capstone course. This proposal will go before the Education Policies Committee, consisting of the academic deans and other elected professors from the divisions. The EPC will then present a proposal to the general faculty assembly. This is the same process for the development of all core classes, according to Moreno. Once the official proposal has been introduced to the EPC, Associate Professor of Education and Dean of Faculty Daniel Coupland said approval for the final version of the course will take at least two months. Everything will be finished by May, when the faculty have their last meeting of the school year. “The Senior Capstone will address broad questions. What is education? What does it mean to be human?” Coupland said. “It is not just an effort to expand the core. There are reasons for adding this course. It will provide an
experience where it brings things back together.” Arnn said the core exists to show parts of a whole, and the Senior Capstone will give students a view of that whole. “Students have two kinds of experiences here,” Arnn said. “They take core courses, and they have a major and minor — or both of those, or more than that — and the major and the minor are things to focus on. But the core courses themselves, each one takes up some aspect of the whole. You get plenty of that; what about the whole?” In the 19th Century, and part of the 20th, all American universities had some kind of capstone course, according to Moreno. However, the goal of the Senior Capstone is not to emulate the liberal arts tradition of the past for its own sake, Coupland said. Instead, the deans have asked why schools used to do this. The approach to education which included a capstone course was supported by thinkers such as John Henry Newman, according to Arnn, and that this approach to education has informed the planning of the Senior Capstone.
Simpson Residence took first place in last week’s Homecoming competitions, followed by the Off-Campus Coalition in second and the New Dorm in third.
By | Alex Nester Assistant Editor Protests erupted Monday when Arizona’s superintendent of public instruction proposed a draft of science and history education standards modeled off of Hillsdale’s Barney Charter School Scope and Sequence standards to the Arizona Department of Education. Teachers, parents, and the Secular Coalition of Arizona rallied to protest the drafts, expressing concern that the standards would exclude evolution and climate change from the science curriculum, should they be approved. If approved, the standards would apply to kindergarten through 12th grade students in Arizona public schools. Diane Douglas, the superintendent who proposed the standards, said she does not believe the state’s department of education will pass the newly-drafted standards, but she said proposing them was “the right thing to do.” “I don’t have a lot of time left in office, and I’m at the point where I need to start telling tough truths and leave our kids in a good place,” Douglas said. Douglas said the protesters criticized “what they incorrectly believed I put into our science standards draft.” Though the Barney Charter Schools are not private religious schools, Douglas said protesters were also leary about the standards because
Hillsdale is a private Christian school. But evolution and climate change are included in the drafted standards, Douglas said. Though Douglas has subscribed to Hillsdale College’s Imprimis publication for more than a decade, she only became aware of the Barney Charter School Initiative when the faculty of Lake Havasu City District Schools in Arizona sent her a copy of the Barney Initiative’s Scope and Sequence science education standards. After reading over the standards, Douglas said she knew she wanted to use them as a basis for Arizona’s statewide standards for kindergarten through 12th grade public school curriculum. “I thought, ‘This is phenomenal, this is what children need to be learning,’” Douglas said. “Education standards shouldn’t be written in words that only teachers understand.” Last December, Douglas called Phil Kilgore, director of the Barney Charter Schools Initiative, and asked if she could use the Scope and Sequence standards as a basis for standards in the state of Arizona. Kilgore said he was happy to share it. “When I first started looking at the standards and speaking with Kilgore, I was surprised that evolution was in the curriculum;
See Arizona A3
Penny’s open for coffee and treats
Seniors Alexander Green and Kendra Lantis were crowned king and queen at the homecoming football game on Sept. 22. Ashlyn Landherr | Courtesy
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Arizona considers using college’s charter standards
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By | Carmel Kookogey Assistant Editor The new dorm coffee shop opened over the Homecoming weekend, serving up biscotti and its own house blend of espresso. After having to push off its opening date several times, Penny’s opened for business in the New Dorm on Friday, Sept. 21. The coffee shop was met with enthusiasm from several students who visited and drank coffee in the open lobby space. “We’re just really excited to try things out, and we’re taking a lot of suggestions,” said Emily Barnum ‘18, Penny’s manager. “We want to make sure people get exactly what they want.” One of the things Penny’s is trying out is their own house
blend of espresso. Barnum explained that at the beginning of each shift, employees will pull multiple shots to find the sweet spot between a coarser espresso taste, which happens when the water passes through the grounds quickly, and a more sour taste, when the water passes through for a longer time. “Every single time we open, our baristas check the espresso grinders, sample, and taste to make sure they hit the sweet spot,” Barnum said. “We have to do that every shift because environment and temperature changes the flavor, so we re-calibrate every time. It’s kind of fun, it’s like a science and an art.” Student Manager sophomore Caroline Hennekes said
See Coffee A2
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