Question and Methods

Introduction

After researching the history of the Great Books program in general and its specific implementation at Mercer, I was ready to begin collecting qualitative results through surveys, interviews, and data collection.

I began by interviewing Mercer professors to get more information about the program’s development and future goals. In my interviews, I learned that the Great Books Program already had plans to update its curriculum by slowly incorporating new texts into the reading list and focusing on adding female and authors of color. I likewise examined the past and current enrollment of the program, as seen below.

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Mercer's GBK Demographics

This graph shows the change in racial demographics of Mercer's Great Books program from Fall 2010 to Fall 2020. The data comes from Mercer's Office of Institutional Effectiveness. As this graph highlights, the Great Books program has grown more diverse as Mercer’s student body has, decreasing from 82% white students in Fall 2010 to 72% white students in Fall 2020. However, the program still consists overwhelmingly of white students.

The above graphs compare Mercer's Fall 2020 Great Books enrollment to the overall College of Liberal Arts and Sciences enrollment. The data is from Mercer's Office of Institutional Effectiveness. As these pie charts highlight, although Mercer's Great Books program has become more diverse over the past decade, it is still disproportionately white. 72% of GBK students are white, while only 49% of CLAS students are.

Assessing Student Perspectives

After collecting the above data, I felt I had confirmed my own anecdotal experience as a student and preceptor (embedded writing tutor) in almost entirely white Great Books classes. My experience was not an anomaly; unlike the university as a whole, Mercer’s Great Books Program was indeed overwhelmingly white.

Having found concrete support for the anecdotal experience that inspired this project, I then wanted to confirm my anecdotal experience talking with students about this issue. From my own informal conversations, I suspected most Great Books and INT students agreed with me that the Great Books curriculum was too European and male-centered. To collect qualitative results for this purpose, I obtained IRB Approval to survey Mercer students in both the Great Books and INT programs. I hoped to assess student attitudes towards the existing Great Books curriculum from both within and outside the program.

Screenshot of the survey given to Great Books students.

Surveying

I designed three surveys and distributed them to the appropriate groups. First, I asked INT students questions assessing why they chose not to enroll in the Great Books Program, what they thought of the Great Books curriculum, if they thought it should be more diverse, and if a more diverse curriculum would have prompted them to choose Great Books over INT. Next, I asked Great Books students what they thought of the curriculum, if they thought it should be more diverse, if a more diverse curriculum would have changed their decision to join the program, and if they felt the lack of diversity had negatively impacted their experience in the program.

Finally, I had a specific survey for students currently enrolled in GBK 305 Sections 002 and 003. I chose to use their classes as a case study because the professor for these courses, Dr. Thomas Bullington, included several diverse voices in the reading list for the course. I asked this specific group of students how this more diverse reading list had impacted their experience in the course and if they believed the Great Books Program as a whole should implement a more diverse reading list

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