Privilege & Poverty Planning Meeting
Thursday, November 29, 2012
Present: James Davis, Lisa Gates, Robert Lint Sagarena, Marcos Lopez, Sarah McGowen,
Tiffany Sargent, Shawna Shapiro, Michael Sheridan, Jessica Teets, Steven Viner
JCD: Experiential learning program is ahead of curriculum. At the first meeting, it became
clear there is a lot of interest in having this initiative happen. But what kind of time support
do we collectively have? Moral support is of limited use without time support. In our first
meeting, we spent a couple of minutes discussing what this initiative might be, but then we
moved into discussing what a course might look like. This is wise. There are a lot of moving
parts in the curriculum right now. Talking about a minor is premature.
JCD is teaching a course in the spring as a placeholder. It’s heavy on economic, theological,
and political philosophy. It’s a way to jumpstart the effort and buy us time to think about a
gateway course. JCD is overwhelmed by interest. 20-25 spots; 35 on the waitlist. Vast
majority of interest is not in Religion Dept.
SS: How are students finding the course?
JCD: It seems they are stumbling upon it in catalog.
JT: Leti Arroyo Abad and I teach course on poverty. A lot of ECON and PSCI students, but
not a lot of other majors enroll in the course.
JCD: Discussion of privilege and poverty is already happening in a lot of courses. A gateway
course could help highlight that and encourage alliances between courses and
departments.
Handout: Privilege & Poverty Introductory Course – Some Options
JCD notes he is mining this conversation for ideas for his Spring 2013 course. He goes over
the handout and adds the following points:
Option A Challenges: 1. Creating a sense of cohesion. How does it not seem like a survey of
disparate approaches? 2. Organizing guest faculty. Potential Solution: We could use this as
a laboratory for “flipping the classroom.” Several of us could create video presentations for
students to watch and analyze. JCD would be willing to experiment with this model in the
spring.
Option B Challenge: Finding a mutually convenient time for two or more faculty to teach.
Option C: View it through single interdisciplinary lens, like ethics.
Option D: This would give us access to expertise beyond Middlebury.
1
JCD: These are just options I could come up with. Shall we talk about these? Do you have
others to add? We need a course in Spring 2014…what should that class look like?
JT: IGS class uses similar model as Option A, but it’s logistically challenging. It’s hard to ask
a guest to lecture on a specific topic. Student reviews: We don’t know what this class is
about. Option B: ECON/PSCI example. Students like seeing debates on common issues.
Challenge: Have to meet before each class, and meet before grading. It’s a bit more work
than teaching solo. When you’ve done it once, it gets easier. Curriculum Committee Rules:
Two full classes. Enroll up to 60 students.
LG: If the desire is to have this be a regular course offering, it is important to have a small
cadre of faculty who are comfortable teaching it.
SV: Option C is difficult. Faculty members might stretch themselves thin. One option: What
is poverty? Normative and nonnormative approaches, an ethical component. But would one
faculty member might not be comfortable covering all aspects of this?
JCD: I’m oscillating between excitement and terror in advance of spring course. Finding the
line between being a dilettante and exercising the idea that the liberal arts gives you the
tools/skills to analyze other disciplines. I’m comfortable with the philosophical and
theological angles, less so with the historical and economic theory. I suspect I will get to the
normative questions fairly quickly.
MS: Option B: balance of domestic and international perspectives. Are we doing ourselves a
disservice by not saying “privileges” and “poverties”? Include a built-in comparative
component.
TS: Start the course with guests to give everyone a level intellectual/knowledge playing
field, but then have the rest of the course be taught by one faculty member.
ML: Makes more sense to me to focus domestically and have some international
components. There are lots of opportunities to discuss transnational poverty.
RLS: I want to lower our ambitions. Are some of the functions we’re talking about better
served with multiple courses? Giving students tools to understand why they should care.
Perhaps the ethics course is not the gateway course, but is a component of overall
program?
SS: I think that having a clear idea of what conceptual framework students need to apply to
future courses would be useful. I might like to use such a framework to teach a course on
language and social justice and touch on these topics.
JCD: Those of us who do ethics equip students with skill set to do critical moral analysis.
Roberto, are you suggesting that the skill set, rather than content, is the framework?
RLS: Ultimately, it’s about, Why should this matter? Why should I care?
2
ML: Are you talking about political thought?
RLS: Political thought informed by ethics and actions.
ML: Using liberalism to talk about the culture of poverty?
RLS: That could be one part of it.
SS: Give students the opportunity to apply these tools to case studies. Depth is important
for a course of this kind.
JCD: I do a course on bioethics, in which I’m more comfortable because I’ve spent more
time in the corresponding literature. But there’s a similar strategy to employ here: you
don’t exhaust the issues of bioethics, but rather give an introduction to some issues, but
help them develop skill set for ethical analysis. A lot of science students come with
substantive knowledge depth, and the apply the moral analytical skills to that knowledge
set. Hoping for similar student experiences in this course.
TS: ES, MCSE bring in guest speakers and require students to attend those talks. If anyone
is concerned that there are issues outside of their expertise, we could bring in speakers for
the whole campus and require students in particular courses to attend.
SV: What’s the conception of lowering the bar?
RLS: We need to parse out what might fit. I feel a bit constrained not being able to call this a
major or minor or program.
SV: Three courses or cluster of courses?
RLS: Yes
JCD: There’s a distinction between having a thing and having a name for the thing. We can
call this an “initiative” now, if that helps forestall the automatic question of whether this
will be a minor.
SV: Can we get faculty to volunteer their courses, or see if they can team teach? Rather than
create a new course, do we already have something that meets or could meet our needs?
JCD: In the past, Tiffany has surveyed the course catalog, but such a survey cannot capture
what faculty intend to do in the future. If you have related courses in your department
(current or future), let me know.
SS: Did we see a set of outcomes for P&P courses or syllabi? Are there well articulated
objectives? It would be helpful to know what are the goals of studying privilege and
3
poverty. It would give us guidelines for determining if our courses meet the standard. What
are the goals of the experiential component?
JCD: Many of the goals are value-laden, more value-laden than some in our group would be
comfortable with. We want to be careful about not moving too quickly from P&P to
normative, restrictive vision of social justice. There’s an opportunity to be self-critical and
expansive in a way some programs even here are not.
SS: So, are some programs activist?
JCD: Some students ask for social justice in the curriculum, but they have a very narrow
view of social justice. My question to those students to test the implicit value judgments in
their desire for “social justice” in the curriculum is this: Is there room for a libertarian to
show up in your idea of “social justice” course? The answer is often, no. I think many of us
would want to equip students to make normative judgments, without imparting strong
normative judgments from the outset.
TS: We could glean some of the goals from syllabi JCD circulated and add in things we think
are missing.
JCD: Where are we headed in the short term? I’m doing my course in the Spring, but
departments are doing course planning soon. If we’re offering something next year, we
need to plan in the next couple of weeks. My course could be used in Spring 2014 as
placeholder.
JT: Leti and I will be on leave.
SV: Faculty could email JCD to let them know of their interest and whether they’d be
available in Spring 2014. I might be able to make myself available. It might be good if JCD
could repeat.
JCD: No harm in having two different versions of the course. Homework Assignment:
1. Your relevant courses and others’ courses if you happen to know about them.
2. Would you be willing to participate in team taught/gateway course in 2013-14?
3. Are you available to be a guest this spring or next spring?
4. What should be the learning goals of this initiative?
JCD: May need help to lay groundwork to ask normative questions. The easiest way for me
is to tap expertise of colleagues. So, if you would available, that would be great.
JT: Question about experiential learning. Could we, for example, bring somebody from
World Bank who’s involved in international poverty relief to campus to help students
develop their own plan. Does that count as experiential learning, or is it a speaker?
LG: It’s an interesting way of engaging real world in the classroom. Intriguing integration.
4
SS: What are the goals of the experiential learning component?
ML: It takes privilege to talk about those issues of poverty.
JT: Students could engage with World Bank economist in topics of privilege.
MS: Students may come back from abroad asking for credit for privilege and poverty.
JCD: We don’t have to worry about what counts. This is about satisfying voluntary interest
on part of students and faculty.
TS: When you look at one course, you can’t do everything. If World Bank example were
extent of program, without students going out in the field, that would be a loss.
(JCD’s course does not include experiential learning.)
MS: Where’s History?
JCD: There’s no economic historian here.
MS: Department still has resources/knowledge to talk about economic components.
JT: Leti
JCD: Faculty may be able to identify their entrance once they see what the initiative looks
like. Will send summary of homework with notes and make commitment to meet again in
January.
SM will write press release to Campus to share what we are doing with wider audience
(will collaborate with TS to include internships program). SS suggested student-run
Facebook page similar to linguistics program. There is also a Core & Change in the Liberal
Arts website where information will be shared. (blogs.middlebury.edu/futures)
5