During the faculty meeting earlier this month, Dickinson faculty voted to approve curriculum changes to four departments across the college: Spanish & Portuguese Studies, Art & Art History, Classical Studies, and Computer Science.
Chair of the Academic Program and Standards Committee (APSC) Evan Young, also Associate Professor of History, shared that almost all of the changes were prompted by departments’ periodic reviews. It was a group effort to analyze the curriculum with two external evaluators from other institutions, a self-study process that every department on campus undergoes every 10 years.
The departments send any proposed curricular changes to APSC, who reviews them and may give feedback before recommending the changes before the faculty meeting for a full vote. Young said that APSC was happy to see departments adapt because of their self studies and see the fruits of those evaluations to improve students’ experiences.
The department with the greatest overhaul is Spanish and Portuguese Studies, chaired by Associate Professor of Spanish Angela DeLutis-Eichenberger. Coming out of their ten-year review a year ago, the department faculty sought to provide “strong scaffolds so that students hit specific course objectives and reach new ones.”
At the end of last spring, the department held faculty retreats in May and August, the former led by outside reviewer Luciano Martinez of Swarthmore College. They aimed to create the framework for the new major structure and fine-tune it and have been adjusting details at department meetings this school year. During their review, it was pointed out that under the existing framework, some students were taking majority English-language classes.
Instead, faculty hope to prioritize language proficiency and understanding as a main goal of study. By graduation, Spanish & Portuguese Studies majors should be able to research, analyze, and write in Spanish, and the new requirements bring that priority to the forefront.
Under the new requirements, students can only take one of two English-language courses to count towards the Spanish & Portuguese Studies major. The department has also created several new courses and chosen new textbooks, “Vistas” and “Intrigas” that will enable students to “learn Spanish in a very real way,” said DeLutis. The new courses include SPAN 215 and 245, a set of two-part Writing in the Discipline courses that will teach students how to read, write, and analyze materials. SPAN 225 and 325 will be the only English-language classes offered and, as topics courses, will provide students with a more cultural education. SPAN 280 and 380, the new intermediate and advanced topics Spanish-language classes, will allow professors and students to explore interesting elective subjects. The first SPAN 280, Salsa & Literature, will be offered in Fall 2026 by Visiting Instructor of Spanish & Portuguese Allen Zegarra.
DeLutis shared that it will take a few years to fully transition to the new system, but anticipates positive changes, growth, and benefit for students.
The Art & Art History department strove to make “structural changes” that would streamline the Studio Art concentration for current majors.
Professor of Studio Art Anthony Cervino remarked that formal art school programs often offer a “foundation experience” that allows students to try out various categories of art, including drawing, painting, technological use, sculpture, and ceramics before focusing on one specifically. With the new requirements, the department hopes to encourage students to experiment widely.
“We don’t want majors to feel siloed,” said Cervino, and emphasized their focus on “breadth and depth.”
The art history requirement for Studio Art majors has also been reduced from three to two, and upper level courses have been made repeatable, creating cohorts of students interested in the same topics and reducing the need for many independent studies, while enabling students to create a larger, more deliberately focused body of work.
The changes are also aimed to enable students to be better prepared for graduate programs and related fields. He also remarked that, though some peer institutions have been cutting their arts programs, Dickinson seeks to make best use of its facilities, including the Goodyear studio space that majors and professors share, and those in Weiss, including the Trout Gallery.
The Classical Studies department also fixed an issue with their last major revision a year ago. The Classical Studies major now requires 11 courses for the Greek, Latin, and Ancient Civilizations tracks according to Associate Professor of Classical Studies Scott Farrington. Two new courses will also be offered, including Roman Civilization and Rise and Fall: Political History in the Ancient Mediterranean, which will be cross listed with the new Law, Justice, and Society major.
The changes will allow for a clearer progression throughout the major from introductory to intermediate and upper-level courses. For non-majors, the changes will also allow for more humanities-credit options and allow students to better explore their interest in Classical Studies.
The final recent curricular change was the removal of MATH 170: Single Variable Calculus from the requirements for Dickinson’s Computer Science degree. The Association for Computing Machinery, the foremost computer science organization, included the change in its most recent curriculum recommendations.
According to Professor of Computer Science John MacCormick, the change is intended to encourage majors to take a broader array of computational classes, which might include Statistics, Data Analytics, or other math classes aligned with their interest. The change also keeps the degree in line with what is most useful for graduates to know.
