This is the heart of this talk – an urgent call to action.

We propose a new program DAC – Modeling for High Stakes, Often Controversial, Personal and Public Policy Decision-Making Across the Curriculum. This program builds on our experience with WAC – Writing Across the Curriculum Programs. It is fundamentally trans-disciplinary and its goal is to develop our students as decision-makers who make decisions that will improve our world.

WAC programs do not teach students what to say or write. They do develop students’ ability to express themselves verbally and to listen or read, critically, understanding how others use words sometimes to mislead. Similarly, our proposed DAC program does not advocate particular decisions. Rather it develops students’ abilities to participate in the decision-making process and to understand how others use this process sometimes to mislead.

Our proposed DAC program begins with a first semester, freshman foundational course taken by all students. The purpose of this course is to develop a framework and skills that they can use to make better personal and public policy decisions. This course will be developed and taught by teams of artists, humanists and scientists. Subsequent courses and projects will build on this foundation.

DAC will be implemented differently at different colleges and universities. In the next slide, for example, we will look at some ideas for the foundational course but these are only ideas. Institutional and individual members of SENCER can participate in various ways. If you are fortunate enough to teach at a nimble college or university you can work with your colleagues to develop the foundational course now and teach it in the fall of 2024 – yes, 2024. Individual SENCER members can work on materials and practices for the foundational course or for subsequent courses that build on the foundational course.

Both our country and our colleges and universities are very fragile. For this reason many have suggested that we need to wait until things calm down but this very fragility and the urgency of coming decisions is exactly why we cannot wait. Every voter, for example, will need to make a particularly consequential decision on November 5, 2024. We have already seen how business as usual left colleges and universities totally unprepared for the unrest following October 7. A college or university with DAC in place would have been ready.

Dire straits are also a time of opportunity. We need to seize that opportunity now.

Next and Last Slide