Ishita Jayadev ’26 and Belén Yudess ’25
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On Sept. 17, it was determined that psychology professor Jennifer Groscup would serve as the Core director for the restructured 2025-2027 Core cycle. In addition to Groscup, assistant professor of music, YouYoung Kang, was named the assistant director. The Core restructuring committee, led by current Core director Corey Tazarra, granted these appointments.
In the Spring of 2022, the Core restructuring committee was established to address issues with the curriculum that students and faculty had previously identified, mainly concerning Core I. The committee consisted of 14 representatives, including previous Core faculty and staff, along with student representatives. The student subcommittee was led by writing professor Adam Novy.
Following the removal of Writing 160 from the curriculum in 2019, Core has consisted of a three-semester program composed of Core I, Core II, and Core III, with a new overarching theme every three years. This current Core cycle, entitled Crossroads, will serve as the final Core cycle structured in this state.
The decision to restructure Core came at the behest of numerous members of the Scripps community who believed the highly publicized program needed to provide the interdisciplinary and community-based experiences promised by Scripps College.
“A signature program like Core periodically undergoes a restructuring process, so part of the answer as to why we restructured Core is simply because it was time – time to think about how well the program was serving our students,” Professor Groscup said via email. “We also knew that both students and faculty were at least partly dissatisfied with their experiences in the Program. Many had serious concerns about students having very negative experiences, particularly in Core I.”
Current Core director and history professor Corey Tazzara also pinpointed Core I as the root of the problem for many students and faculty. “Core I suffered from several problems: a perennial lack of coherence, weak faculty interest in the program, and (most of all) requiring faculty to teach outside their expertise, sometimes far outside their expertise,” Tazzara said via email. “With some material, this lack of expertise was merely unfortunate; with other material, such as that having to do with race, gender, or class, the results were sometimes disastrous. Scripps students deserve better than having their first course at college be taught by amateurs.”
This sentiment was shared by Laila Hannum ’26 regarding her Core II and III experiences, as she believed her professors in these courses did not seem equipped to discuss matters of race and sexuality integral to the class. “As a historically women’s college and in an inherently political space, the way that we have professors teaching about certain political topics is extremely problematic,” she said.
Hannum detailed a specific incident from her Core II class, Art and Activism, that made her feel uncomfortable as a queer student in the space. “I don’t know that [my professor] ever had to facilitate class discussion and that led to discussions in class that made me uncomfortable,” she said. “My identity as a queer student was not really protected in that class, which is kind of surprising because Scripps is supposed to be this amazing queer space.”
Hannum continued, “They definitely need professors who are trained in Socratic seminars, who are trained in having uncomfortable conversations and how to navigate these conversations and how to navigate when your students say [inappropriate] things in class.”
Groscup explained how the Restructuring Committee aimed to resolve some of these issues based on community input. “The ultimate goal of the Restructuring Committee was to generate a proposal for a new Core based on student and faculty opinions about what Core should look like in the future,” she said. “That proposal worked its way through the curriculum development process last year, and the resulting final version of the new Core Program was approved by the full faculty in May.”
After two years of deliberations, the committee decided to change the program’s fundamental structure and academic approach.
“The Core Program starting in the Fall 2025 semester will be a two-course sequence. There will not be a course like the current Core I where the content is the same for the entire first-year class. All Core sections will be taught on different topics determined by the faculty teaching each section,” Groscup said. “In the fall, all students in Core will have a common summer reading and will attend a common invited speaker event, so they will do some things all together. Individual sections of Core in the fall will also be collaborating with each other on some common content or activities. The spring semester will end with a celebratory event presenting [class-driven] projects, like a mega-amplified Core III Tea.”
Regarding the decision to lessen Core to a two-semester series, Tazzara touched upon how the Core Steering Committee, who worked tangentially with the Core Restructuring Committee, supported this update to the program. “Speaking for Core Steering, our central goal was to eliminate the longstanding problems with Core 1, as well as to bring the Core program down to two semesters – on the premise that the extensive GE requirements already do an excellent job of introducing students to the crucial intellectual problems,” he said.
Groscup emphasized the value of the Core program in providing students a holistic liberal arts education, “[Core] serves as one of the signature bookends to a Scripps education, the other being senior thesis,” she said. “It aligns with the Scripps academic mission by ideally providing a space for academic community, exposure to multiple disciplines, and providing academic experiences that serve as the foundation for any major.”
Scripps writing tutor Tess Frazer ’26 shared this sentiment, recognizing the value of this approach while also highlighting the importance of making the Core goals transparent to students, especially in regard to writing.
“I think there’s a lot to be said for Core in that it exposes students to all of the disciplines and allows students to dip their toes in, but with that said, I think that oftentimes students get frustrated because they can’t see the bigger picture and the way that Core is [currently] presented can create what we like to call structural writer’s block,” she said. “They’re frustrated with the assignment because they don’t understand the purpose of the assignment, and therefore they have a hard time doing it. I think if we could frame Core as an opportunity to get exposure to a bunch of different subjects and explore your voice as a writer, students would have a more positive experience.”
For this past cycle, Core has been surmised to consist of three major writing assignments: a brief summary, a lens paper, and an analysis essay. Core is meant to introduce first-years to different styles of college-level writing and support them as they gain a greater understanding of the writing process. Although it is unclear how writing will be integrated into this new cycle, Frazer hopes there will be more opportunities for students to share their personal narratives to form a greater connection to their writing.
“I’ve heard little bits and pieces about what Writing 50 was, and that it had a little bit more flexibility in topics and students were able to establish themself in their writing,” Frazer said. “I think one of the big differences between high school and college writing is that high school writing is very formulaic, whereas in college writing you have an opportunity to express your voice, your argument and your perspective, and do it in a more creative way with more liberties taken. Often the best writing is deeply personal, when you can understand and see the writer’s thoughts and their personhood in what they produce.”
As the restructured Core undergoes development for the Class of 2028, Tazzara reflects on his tenure as Director and how his experience has informed his perspective on the future of Core.
“My biggest takeaway is that everybody loves Core in theory, whereas in practice, many students as well as faculty have grave doubts about its utility,” he said. “I would wish for the future either to see the entire elimination of Core (which seems to me based on an outdated model of education) or the development of a Core program that in some sense everyone can be committed to. Hopefully, we will begin to see that emerge with the work that Core Restructuring has done and during the tenure of Professor Groscup as the inaugural director of the new program.”
