Principle 6. Disciplinary Excellence: Summary and Rationale
Create and deliver a coherent course of study with activities and assessment strategies that are consonant with current best thinking in the discipline.
Design and deliver courses that encourage students to connect to the disciplinary material with a sense of expansiveness and rigor. At the core of the teaching enterprise is a commitment to discipline: to the questions that animate scholars and connect the discipline to the world. At Montclair State, faculty and departments retain a lifelong relationship to their disciplines, seeking ways to make relevant the disciplinary waves and shifts in emphasis and thinking to all students, from general education to graduate level. The challenge for instructors is to find the right pitch for students, advancing student thinking and knowledge as much as is possible, right to the edge of capacity. With an emphasis on curiosity, critical thinking, and capacity building, instructors seek to have students recognize courses as rigorous and impactful.
Courses designed with disciplinary excellence in mind allow students to make connections among themselves, their disciplines, and the systems that impact the world around them. It prepares students for rich lives, strong careers, and develops their ability to be able to think innovatively about the future. Instructors retain disciplinary excellence through engagement in their fields of study, through research and reading, and also through attending professional activities with other instructors to develop discipline-specific pedagogical strategies and course materials.
Last Modified: Tuesday, January 28, 2025 4:39 pm
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