Category: Featured

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The Once and Future Core Course: Imagining (and Designing) the Exploration Level

Compass on a beach

One major impetus for revitalizing the University Core was to provide more opportunities for creative interdisciplinary courses that could include a wide variety of perspectives, including points where the liberal arts meet professional disciplines. This was of interest to students, faculty, and administration alike, and it resulted in a proposed new “Exploration Level” of courses…Continue Reading The Once and Future Core Course: Imagining (and Designing) the Exploration Level

What Should Our Students Read? An Invitation and Introduction

An old book

At its best, a liberal arts core curriculum engages students and faculty in thinking about big ideas — how is knowledge constructed; how can we make our communities more just and inclusive; how can we balance faith and reason; what can inspire wonder and curiosity. In UP’s revitalized Core, we are hoping to start introducing…Continue Reading What Should Our Students Read? An Invitation and Introduction

The Lesson in Question

As a mid-career academic, I find myself struggling. So much has changed in the time since I was the undergraduate my students are now. After three decades, the texts that were so buzz-worthy then are no longer abuzz. Thinkers and theorists that my field taught me to worship now feel outdated (their underlined pages grow…Continue Reading The Lesson in Question

Teaching the Truth

Small sign saying truth on pavement

In recent weeks, months, and years, amidst a series of difficult political moments, I’ve found myself thinking regularly about the University of Portland motto: Veritas vos liberabit, or “the truth will set us free.” I assume it was originally selected for its overlapping meanings – referring both to religious truth, as in John 8:32 “Ye…Continue Reading Teaching the Truth

Teaching Tips from Ibram X. Kendi’s How to Be an Antiracist

Ibram X. Kendi, our campus’s 2021 Schoenfeldt Distinguished Writer, is a History professor at Boston University, founder of two Antiracist Research Centers, and the youngest-ever winner of the National Book Award for Nonfiction (for Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America). UP has chosen his bestseller How to Be an…Continue Reading Teaching Tips from Ibram X. Kendi’s How to Be an Antiracist