New Course Catalogue Just Dropped

Students met in advisory groups to submit their class requests for next fall. In the days prior they’ve had a chance to browse the recently released 2025 - 2026 Course Catalogue and compose their shortlists. The catalogue is linked here. 

The course catalogue is a living document that evolves each year, accounting for curricular requirements and preparedness for continuing education while always also accounting for student interests in any given year. Earlier this spring, for example, Matthew Saveliev (Physics) asked for student input on which physics courses they would like to take so that he could tailor offerings accordingly. More broadly, the academic deans asked Junior Class Reps. to circulate a survey calling upon students to weigh in on which areas of academic inquiry they would like expanded in the coming year. These formal feedback channels are perhaps the more minor vehicle for input, supplementary to the innumerable dialogues between faculty and students that occur in the classroom, continue on bus rides, and ultimately plant the seeds of future curricular developments. 

The catalogue is also an opportunity for our faculty to show off. It’s a mammoth document. Viewing it, you’re stunned by the breadth of academic life at this school and the dynamism of our faculty who develop these courses. 

Associate Head of School for Academics Sarah Doenmez marvels at Dublin’s community of educators. 

“The repertoire of our faculty and their willingness to just run with new ideas. That's something that is amazing at this school. I don't think other schools have the expectation that faculty will just develop new courses or run a course that has not been fully developed at the outset. It's really truly inspiring”

In the English department, Liz Peyton-Levine has developed a new course called On Friendship, and Mary Stewart will be offering a Shakespeare intensive; the English elective “Murder, Madness, and Mayhem,” will introduce students to gothic fiction and psychologically intense literatures, while creative writing courses will give students a chance to develop these types of stories themselves, to highlight just a few offerings. 

In the science world, Katri Jackson will be offering Comparative Anatomy as a companion to her popular course on Evolutionary Biology: Organ Systems.

For the first time ever, Rodrigo Villaamil will be offering an art history course that will explore the nineteenth and twentieth centuries through visual analysis, a method of historical inquiry that has been central to his approach in other history courses. Sarah Doenmez will be offering a history course on Native Studies for the first time in several years. 

Even where courses are core curriculum, offered each year, they’re constantly being reimagined. Sophie Luxmoore has done a broad overhaul of the technology curriculum to account for developments in AI. In the Spanish department, Nico and Meg are always experimenting, finding novel and unique ways of introducing students to foreign languages inside of the classroom and through classroom-adjacent projects like the recently opened Cafe Patagonia.