Departments and programs may have a number of reasons for contemplating an overhaul of their undergraduate or graduate curricula. While enrollment statistics are one of the primary drivers of such reforms, faculty may also choose to rewrite their curricula to bring them more closely into alignment with the intellectual priorities of the department's faculty and/or new trends emerging in the teaching or scholarship of their field or discipline at large. As one department chair—veteran of several successful curricular reforms—has noted, curricular reform is often spurred by faculty hiring. As new faculty bring new approaches and new subfields into their departments, it is natural to make sure that those approaches and fields are represented in the curriculum made available to students.

Faculty and departments interested in pursuing curricular reform are welcome to contact the Bok Center for advice; our team would be happy to help you develop a better understanding of how your concentration currently works for students, and to work with you and your colleagues to identify your shared objectives for students and to design courses which are in alignment with those goals.

We recommend that faculty contemplating a curricular reform also contact the Standing Committee on Undergraduate Educational Policy (EPC) early in the process; see the Office of Undergraduate Education's “Resources for Concentrations” for more information. The Chronicle of Higher Education's March 2018 special report on “How to Sell a Curricular Revamp” may also be a useful resource in thinking through how to build consensus among colleagues.