RE Log - Fall 2023

FALL 2023 Ransom Everglades LOG 19 N ew courses are added to the RE Course of Study every year, reflecting the evolving needs of students as well as the passions of RE faculty. But there’s something a little different about this year’s crop. Advanced African Politics. Biology and Ecology of Sharks. Advanced Machine Learning. Virtual Reality. In a “self-study” report examining RE’s offerings in 2022, the faculty determined that the school’s top academic priority would be moving student “inquiry” into “new intellectual spaces.” These courses seem to be fulfilling that promise, moving students into “intellectual spaces” that require them to confront some of the challenges that will define the world in the coming decades. “When we look at curriculum, we need to be thoughtful about where our world is going,” said Head of School Rachel Rodriguez. “We have to look at the research and ask, ‘What are we going to design for our kids that goes with our core values, but also has a relevancy and interest to them that may be different from what we thought about in years past?’” The new courses aim for that “relevancy” – that ability to capture students’ imaginations in the age of information overload. “In all of them, the emphasis is on something very contemporary,” said Associate Head of School John A. King Jr. “There’s a strong sense of immediacy to them.” These have a sense of “immediacy” partly because they’re about things that high school courses didn’t use to be about. “Machine learning” was once a term reserved for the esoteric upper reaches of computer science; now, in the age of algorithms and AI, it’s a concept that runs the world. Sharks are “ancient, of course,” as King reflected – but the idea of their precarity isn’t. “I think the idea of understanding a species whose existence we’re threatening – that’s very timely,” he said. And yet, King and the faculty members who teach these courses would put the matter another way. What makes them bold new offerings is not just the information they promise to give to students, but the ways of thinking they promise to cultivate. “I think it’s skills, but I don’t want ‘skills’ to be limited to, ‘Can I add or subtract? Can I write an argument in an essay?’” King said. “I think it’s bigger than that. [These courses] don’t fit neatly into these very traditional disciplines. They’re about developing habits of mind from many perspectives.” Photos by Suzanne Kores By Matt Margini Humanities Department Faculty