That was not our intention. The final draft of the proposal is expected to be made public Nov. 16 with some modifications from the first draft that was released last spring, Lange said. The modifications have been made after hearing the concerns of many faculty members and the continued debate could lead to more changes. The proposal includes a foreign language requirement that ensures that all Duke students would take at least one course in foreign language. Currently, the curriculum lists six areas of knowledge, of which students can select one to avoid.
Data indicate that many students use the curriculum to avoid foreign languages.
The purpose of the matrix, committee members said, was to allow for both breadth and depth in study by allowing for interplay between the rows of areas of knowledge and the columns of focused inquiries and competencies. In short, courses that meet areas of knowledge requirements can also fulfill a competency requirement. But what is unique about our proposal is that we are recognizing that exposure to these areas of knowledge and focused inquiries can be found across the entire range of the university, rather than in just one discipline or field. That's what the matrix is about. Ethics can be studied through many different fields.