By the end of their first week working at the College (if not sooner), every staff member knows of the existence of the Core Curriculum. For more than a century, every Lion undergraduate has taken the cornerstone set of courses; now College staff can have the experience as well.

Last fall, the Center for the Core Curriculum, in partnership with Jonathon Kahn GSAS’03, senior associate dean of community and culture, kicked off a yearlong series, The Core as Community. The special class sessions create opportunity for College staff to engage with Core faculty and encounter the texts, ideas and methods behind the curriculum.

“The Core’s purpose is to create a vibrant intellectual community by getting people to think out loud about the questions posed by enduring works of literature, philosophy, art and music, as well as groundbreaking scientific discoveries,” says Core Director Larry Jackson. “We want everyone at Columbia College to be a part of this conversation, which enriches lives and strengthens social bonds.

“The excitement that we have seen among the staff who have participated, and the enthusiasm of the faculty who have volunteered to lead these sessions, are testaments to the power of the Core experience.”

The sessions are linked by a common theme: time. After two pilot sessions last summer — a Contemporary Civilization class in June led by Jackson, and a Lit Hum conversation led by Dean of Academic Affairs Lisa Hollibaugh — the series began on Oct. 27 with an Art Hum discussion helmed by Noam M. Elcott CC’00, associate professor of art history and archaeology.

Before the class, Elcott asked attendees to walk a specified route from Morningside Park to Low Library and note what they saw. He then related visual features of the walk to the Athenian Acropolis and led a conversation about how elements of the Parthenon’s architecture pertained to ideas of cosmic, mythic and earthly time.

Elcott said he enjoyed the opportunity to expand his Art Hum teaching beyond the undergraduate seminar. “We too often forget what an enormous privilege it is to teach and learn in a liberal arts setting like the Core,” Elcott says. “Teaching and learning with those who make the Core possible — the Columbia College staff — is a unique pleasure and honor.”

For Music Hum, course chair and associate professor of music Benjamin Steege CC’00 related the theme of time to rhythm: His Dec. 3 presentation included conversation about the origins of musical notation and how poetry was first “scored” in the 12th century. He also shared material from the unit his undergraduates were currently engaging with, including a video performance of November Steps, a 1967 work by Japanese composer Tōru Takemitsu.

Two more classes are upcoming this semester: On Thursday, March 5, Nicholas Dames, the Theodore Kahan Professor of Humanities and Paul Brooke Program Chair for Literature Humanities, will lead a Lit Hum class about the perception of time in literature. (It’s a subject Dames has considered deeply; it was the topic of his 2023 book, The Chapter: A Segmented History from Antiquity to the Twenty-First Century.)

And on Wednesday, April 15, iconic astronomy professor David J. Helfand will lead a Frontiers of Science class. Helfand, who introduced Frontiers to the Core in 2004, will discuss Einstein and the theory of relativity.

Further details and registration information will be shared with staff this month.