Blog

GK Chesterton notes that the problem with heretics is not that they get everything wrong but that they take one small piece of the truth and blow it up to be the whole truth. Perhaps nowhere is...

For one thing, when students try to study all of these subjects together, they don’t have much time to study them in depth. Students and professors find themselves racing through the Odyssey in...

Freshmen are working on their Literary Tradition annotated essays about the Divine Comedy or Paradise Lost, and starting perhaps to dream about Rome. Sophomores are consolidating their Core...

I want to tell two stories from my time teaching at other institutions, two tales that, in their negative valences, highlight what is for me one of the most powerful positive aspects of the Core...

Last time, I wrote about Dr. Alvis’ two questions of a liberal education. I have tried this idea on some of my colleagues, and some of them responded that they do something similar in their...

It’s crunch time. There’s no other way to say it. Students came back from turkey and stuffing to find something entirely different on their UD plates: the final push, the last texts to read,...

We were once discussing the Core Curriculum in a faculty meeting when Dr. John Alvis, always a clear-headed thinker who pierced to the heart of every question, stood up and said, “There are only...

I can remember it like it was yesterday. I was home from my first year of graduate school, and my younger brother David, four years behind me, was home from his first year of college. Thanksgiving...

Freshmen in Literary Tradition I are leaving behind the shifty, crafty Odysseus for the more solid, pious, dutiful Aeneas as he leaves burning Troy and heads off to found Rome. It’s a...

Since the Core Curriculum is such a crucial part of a UD education, in this section of each newsletter we will present a thought about what the Core Curriculum is about, or perhaps briefly...