ABSTRACT
Coherence in the liberal arts curriculum is a long-standing problem with increasing urgency. Higher education scholar Robert Zemsky painted a bleak future for higher education in general and the liberal arts in particular unless a tripartite goal was achieved. He then proposed his checklist for a "competent curriculum". This chapter applies Network Clustering through Ranked and Interpreted Connection Strengths (N-CRIX) model to 530 dimensions of development of liberal arts from 81 interviews of faculty in 26 programs and 5 divisions of Virginia Wesleyan College. The clusters were examined for organization by division and program. The research cluster was divided between natural and social sciences and the creativity cluster was divided between artists, performance directors, and scientists. Besides Modern Foreign Languages, only Psychology and Business were represented in one cluster each. The sequence in Appendix G-2 for five dimensions involved in language learning were derived from the N-CRIX algorithm, which depended on how well the keywords discriminated them from other clusters.
