Walter Hutchens’ Blog

This semester I’m part of a group teaching “Core 350,” the third and final course in a series of required classes for all students at Whitworth University, the small private college where I now teach.

I really like some things about being on the “Core 350 team.” Specifically:

1. It’s a great window into Whitworth, helping me better understand the institution and my students here.
2. I like working with faculty from other departments. The team includes scientists, philosophers and theologians, plus me the “business guy.” It’s a fun group. I like my colleagues.
3. The course content is interesting—always at least mildly interesting, sometimes especially interesting. The course is about public policy issues. It is an effort to help students (force students, I suppose, since it’s not an elective course) apply their knowledge about epistemology, ideology and “metaphysics” to contemporary public issues. We discuss, under a complex “world view” edifice, issues about energy and race relations in America. For a middle section of the course (in a small discussion group) that I direct, we study the recent financial crisis and its repercussions. So there is some “brain candy” in the course.
4. The students are great. They’re mostly seniors, and most of the ones in my discussion group are business majors. They seem greatful to have been able to choose a discussion section that is about a business topic, and they don’t seem to blame me for any resentments they may feel towards the general course (complaining about Core is a big ritual at Whitworth, up there with trying to catch a falling pine cone). During our month-long mini-class (our class within the class), we meet three times per week. I am enjoying interacting with them.

That said, there are some downsides:

1. It’s an enormous time sponge. The class meets 3 hours a week in plenary session (with about 160 students in the auditorium), then another hour is spent each week in our discussion session (which consists of only 20 students). The teaching team meets for another hour, so that’s 5 hours of time spent on the course each week before I prep or grade. This one class easily takes up more time than any other class I’m teaching.
2. Despite the time required, we get only 3 credits towards our teaching load for being on the Core 350 team. That is, I could have taught another section of Business Law or International Business (neither of which would be an additional prep, much less an entirely new prep for me) and gotten the same “credit.”
3. The course, like many things created by a committee, is unwieldy and complex. That creates some frustration. I need a program guide for the class. And a glossary. In this first semester of helping teach it I often find myself wondering what’s coming next. I mean, besides learning the material, I am struggling to stay on top of the mechanics of the class. That is surprisingly time consuming; feeling I might miss something produces flashes of anxiety. The students often seem confused, too. I sometimes think the course has been made so complex, with so many moving parts, that it is going to collapse under its own weight and crush us all.

On balance, I’m glad I’ve done it, but I’m not inclined to become a long-term 350′er. The incentives aren’t right, and there are so many other things clamoring for my attention.