Dear Friends,

I am later than I had hoped in getting out this second “Reflection” of the academic year—and you all know that the semester is flying by! So before I offer a few thoughts on some of the work we are engaged in, let me make one request of the faculty members who may be reading this. I encourage all faculty to continue to submit your accomplishments on a regular basis. You will see here, the latest Faculty News blog post, which includes the most recent entries. Scholarly work that comes to fruition between Jan. 1, 2014 and Dec. 31, 2014 will be collected and published in our second annual “Scholarship at Simmons” booklet, to be shared with the community this spring. Please don’t wait to send in your entries here.

During the last several months, the Simmons faculty has been in extensive discussion about changing the required undergraduate core curriculum. During this time, I, too, have been thinking about what the curriculum and co-curriculum at the heart of every student’s experience should accomplish or enable.

The goals are multiple, of course, and we’ve spent a great deal of time on details. But ultimately, I hope we offer an experience (at both the undergraduate and the graduate levels!) that engages students from the moment they arrive on campus, challenges them at a higher level than their previous experiences, and inspires them to take responsibility for what we might think of as “writing the story that is their life.”

It’s November now, and most new students are in a comfort zone at the College, but those of us who work closely with them recognize that many experienced a sense of dislocation as they began. We dedicate a number of days, first in the summer and again in the fall, to “orienting” new students. It is important that we assist students during that transition, but I would argue that we ought to think as much about disorientation as about orientation. Being transported, disoriented, dislocated, unsettled allows people to encounter both the familiar and the unfamiliar in new ways. It allows them to encounter other people in different ways than they would if they were settled. And it allows them to encounter themselves in deeper and more profound ways. Some students are frightened of these encounters; some are anxious for them. When we are intentional about what we build into the curriculum and the overall student experience, we can help them to help each other—and to make the most of what they find here.

Given this context, as I sat down to write a “reflection,” I found myself thinking about the numerous kinds of reflections we encounter in a day—and how disquieting a reflection can sometimes be. I mused on how the various identities we “try on” in our intellectual and personal growth can feel a bit like funhouse mirrors: comical (or sometimes frightening) exaggerations of particular aspects of ourselves. Anyone who has ever seen him or herself stretched out or blown-up or curiously reduced in a funhouse mirror knows that it’s only partly fun: it is both fascinating and a bit scary to recognize yourself in the warp, twist, and buckle that looks back at you.

That thought led me back to a story I read years ago in graduate school—the title story for a collection by John Barth called Lost in the Funhouse. Some of you may have read it; on the surface it seems like the innocent tale of a young boy named Ambrose who travels to the beach one day with his family and a girl named Magda that both Ambrose and his brother secretly have a crush on. The day is filled with unexpected surprises—some pleasant and some unpleasant. They can’t swim at the beach because of an oil spill. So they decide to go through the funhouse, and the story proceeds to explore the question: “For whom is the funhouse fun?” And we might further ask—what is the funhouse? It is literature? Is it love? Is it all of life? Is it very much not fun at one point in life and very much fun at another? Certainly Ambrose experiences the funhouse as thrilling, but also disquieting. And I found myself thinking that a course of study—and maybe especially a shared core curriculum—should be a funhouse of sorts (in the most serious sense!) where students are open to both the thrill and the vertigo of learning.

Interestingly, Barth’s collection begins with a story called “Frame Story.” The reader is instructed to cut out a strip of paper—actually to cut it out of the book! The slip of paper says on one side “Once upon a time,” and on the other side, “there was a story that began.” The instructions go on to show the reader how to twist and connect the paper to create what we know as a Mobius strip—a one-sided surface named for its inventor, August Ferdinand Möbius, in 1858. You might also be interested, given my comments on orientation, that the Mobius strip is a non-orientable surface—a twisted cylinder that has no beginning and no end, no top or bottom. Thus, when Barth’s words are connected on the Mobius strip, he creates the shortest and longest story ever written: “Once upon a time there was a story that began once upon a time there was a story that began once upon a time. . . .” 

I hope the Mobius strip might work as a metaphor for what we aspire to in our intellectual and personal discovery: an integrated and seamless continuum, a one-sided surface in three dimensions, a story of oneself that may circle backward but also ceaselessly circles forward, a unifying image for a self that may seem only partially captured by one-dimensional mirrors and photographs.

So, as we move forward with our efforts on the undergraduate curriculum, let’s help students to write this kind of story of themselves. Let’s model our own commitment to lifelong learning by showing them that, while we may have expertise, we are open to discovering new things ourselves—that our own stories are still unfolding. Let’s respect the kind of disorientation that increases a sense of wonder: for the natural world; for words, stories, and histories; for mathematical, social, linguistic, and scientific puzzles; for human cultures; and for the self! Let’s build in expectations for “global” experiences that might give students an intense appreciation for another culture, and “practical” experiences such as internships that will allow them to recognize, even before they choose a career, the ways their liberal education has prepared them for a variety of possible careers.

I hope the Simmons experience will offer a funhouse in which students will see many permutations and angles of themselves and develop a sort of internal three-way mirror of possibilities. I hope, in short, that they will see the strange become familiar and the familiar become strange. If we can offer those kinds of encounters in the undergraduate years—and if they feel prepared to leave us to embrace further encounters—we will certainly have succeeded in our curriculum design and our “disorientation.” We will have succeeded, in other words, in helping students to be the kind of adaptable, responsible citizens who can make meaningful contributions to a constantly changing world. And that kind of funhouse could be fun for all of us!

All best,