The University will establish a new college to oversee changes to the core curriculum, President Jim Davis announced at his State of the University address Wednesday.
Davis described the University College as a “guardian” for the new core curriculum that he proposed in August, which will work with other colleges and schools to ensure core programs and requirements are shared by students across the University in a “common learning experience.” The University College will not support any additional majors, and students will not be admitted directly into the college.
Many of the new college’s logistical details are currently unknown, including what kinds of faculty are needed, where the college will be physically located and what funds are necessary to expand its operations, said Devin Stauffer in a Thursday media availability. Stauffer will become the college’s new dean in 2027.
“It is very much to-be-determined how extensive (hiring) will be,” Stauffer said. “Partly, we need to see as the core begins to unfold what exactly our new teaching needs are (and) how extensive those new teaching needs are. So we’re going to be figuring that out as we go.”
Stauffer said the University is in a “transition period” as pilot programs and courses for the revised core roll out over the next academic year. The new core requirements will officially apply to its first cohort in fall 2028. Students currently pursuing degrees will not be subject to core changes.
The proposed curriculum reduces the number of core hours required from 42 to 36, which needs approval from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. Stauffer said the THECB is in the process of changing the requirement.
“That problem is going to be ironed out, but it’s going to probably be a two- or three-year process,” Stauffer said.
The college will contain three committees based on the three pillars of the core — arts and humanities, social sciences and STEM. Stauffer said these committees, which were formed earlier this week, will review course proposals and clarify course descriptions for new core classes. Stauffer said the pillar committees will begin their work in the coming days.
The college will hire professors from other departments alongside new hires, according to a Thursday press release. Faculty will be able to teach courses in other colleges as well as within the University College, and will be allowed to alter preexisting courses to fit core requirements.
The UT Center for Humanities, a unit focused on interdisciplinary humanities research and education, will now reside within the University College.
“Almost every other college serves a certain intellectual realm,” Stauffer said. “This is meant to be a nexus for the whole University.”
Stauffer joined UT in 2004 as a professor in the government department of the College of Liberal Arts and was previously a co-director of the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Study of Core Texts and Ideas.
Stauffer also served as chair of the 22-person Core Curriculum Task Force, a unit formed last November to gather input from students and faculty to evaluate core requirements and courses available to undergraduates.
The Task Force emerged in May with a revised curriculum prioritizing “balanced” classes designed to give undergraduate students “a broad intellectual foundation” from their studies, according to the core curriculum website.
“We thought that the principle of professor choice to teach whatever they want based on their narrow research interests had gone too far, so we were trying to rein that back in,” Stauffer said. “We’re not trying to exclude any perspectives from it. … We weren’t trying to limit what was taught.”
