The Fundamentals: Issues and Texts major admitted 32 students this past fall for its second-year cohort, more than doubling its third-year cohort of 14. The fourth-year cohort has 19 students.
The major, which allows students to design their own curriculum guided by a research question of their choosing, requires students to apply in fall quarter of their second year. The application process entails participating in interviews and submitting a form that outlines the desired research question and any relevant texts.
The large cohort size is due to an increased number of applicants to the major, according to Fundamentals Program Director Ryan Coyne. “We at least doubled the number of applicants, and so we did accept double the number of students,” he said.
For Coyne, the increased interest in the major is a sign that the intellectual tradition is alive and well at UChicago. “What I see is a hunger for the kind of engagement with books that Fundamentals offers, and I think we’re seeing that in the numbers,” he said.
Fundamentals courses focus on the close reading of a specific text or author, which “cultivates spaces where you can actually get to the bottom of your texts,” according to fourth-year Fundamentals major Gabriel Brumberg.
This uniquely deep investigation of texts has historically fostered a close relationship between students and professors. Initially, the program was meant to be an “apprenticeship program,” Coyne said, offering students “a chance to work with prestigious faculty in the humanities and the social sciences.”
Coyne emphasized the importance of this student-professor relationship as the program sees increased interest. “Advising is a very important part of the program. If we were to continue to grow, that would be wonderful, and it would also change the nature of the program. It really is meant to give students a chance to work with faculty,” he said.
He noted that Fundamentals hired three additional faculty this fall but said that decision was unrelated to the increased class size.
Brumberg suggested that the apprenticeship aspect of the program stems from a student’s drive to engage with professors one-on-one, motivated by their specific research question, rather than something like class size or student-faculty ratio. “You feel you have this question that isn’t always covered in lecture…. If you stumble upon something where you think ‘this is good for my research [question],’ it’s in your best interest to reach out to the professor,” he said. “I’m not sure that there being more Fundamentals students is going to change that.”
Even before the increase in interest, the Fundamentals program was planning to diversify and increase event programming, Coyne said. They currently host the Issues and Texts Dinner series, where faculty are invited to talk about a text important to them and lead seminar conversation over a meal. In the future, Coyne plans to expand programming to include debates, reading groups, and student presentations, hoping to encourage more discussion and engagement among students.
“When you have a program with individualized curricula, it might seem like a solitary affair,” Coyne said. “But that’s not the case—in Fundamentals, you have a vibrant community of like-minded people, in the sense that they’re all committed to reading and thinking seriously and to doing that in dialogue with one another.”
Brumberg emphasized the importance of events for the social component of the program since Fundamentals has fewer required classes which often give a major its structure. “The way you get some structure [in Fundamentals] is by feeling like you’re really part of a cohort—having events with them and meeting people in the cohort outside of class. I’ve spent a lot of time the last couple of years with people in Fundamentals,” he said.
When asked if he had seen any change in the events since the admission of the new cohort, Brumberg said, “Already I went to one dinner that was in a larger space than we’re usually in, because there were more people attending. But the vibe didn’t feel any different—you still sit down around a table, listen to a lecture, and then have an open seminar conversation.”
For Coyne, increasing the Fundamentals cohort size means “increasing the diversity of viewpoints,” though he added that whether the program will continue to grow in the future is uncertain.
