On Wednesday, Oct. 29, University President Arthur Levine ’70 spoke to a crowd of undergraduates about the Brandeis Plan to Reinvent the Liberal Arts. He touched on the plan’s three major facets: reorganizing the graduate and undergraduate schools, remaking the core curriculum and creating a Center for Careers and Applied Liberal Arts. The event took place in Rapaporte Treasure Hall and featured small presentations from Levine, as well as members of the faculty and administration involved with the project.  

“When I got here,” Levine remarked, describing his own history as a Brandeis student, “Brandeis was 18 years old, and that was a golden era. I think we're about to enter another golden era as we build and think and plan for the future.” Levine claimed that this “golden era” will occur due to the changes he plans to make with the Brandeis Plan, which was approved by the faculty senate last semester. This decision prompted him to pose the rhetorical question: Why do the Liberal Arts need to be reinvented? And what changes are going to be made?

He explained that the liberal arts were initially invented for students living in an “analog, industrial economy.” But students today are going to live their lives in an increasingly globalized, digital world, Levine said, and the education they are receiving should prepare them for it. He talked about the need to constantly update the curriculum, referencing the narrative of Henry Adams, the grandson of President John Quincy Adams, who went to Harvard College in 1850 and expressed his disappointment that he was receiving an 18th century education while preparing to enter a 20th century world. This exemplified, to Levine, how Liberal Arts curriculum has historically already been regarded as out of touch with the modern world. “I thought this marked an occasion … to think about what you need in your education,” Levine said, referencing the three areas of improvement the Brandeis Plan addresses. 

Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs Carol A. Fierke Ph.D. ’84 then rose to the podium to describe the reorganization of the University’s academic schools. “Everyone knows that there is a vast need for education to be transformed,” she stated, “… and Brandeis wants to be a leader.” Fierke explained that the graduate programs and the undergraduate School of Arts and Sciences were now officially divided into the School of Arts, Humanities and Culture; the School of Business and Economics — which will contain the Brandeis International Business School; the School of Science, Engineering and Technology and the School of Social Sciences and Social Policy — which will contain the Heller School for Social Policy and Management. This change took effect on July 1, 2025, leaving some students wondering about the impacts of the reorganization on double majors, interactions between undergraduate and graduate students and the types of classes they can take. Fierke explained that this action was taken to limit barriers to students engaging across varied academic areas, and assured that “undergraduate students should not see a significant difference in their education based on the reorganization, except that there will be additional opportunities for their educational experience.” 

Next to speak was Prof. Jeffrey Lenowitz (POL), the chair of the Faculty Senate. He discussed how faculty have been and continue to be involved with the Brandeis Plan, and how, through conversations with his own students, he is aware of the doubt the student body holds about the changes. However, he stressed that despite any change to curriculum or organization, “this is still a place with a deep, deep commitment to liberal arts in all of its forms, to cutting edge research and to social justice.” Faculty are involved with brainstorming ideas for new majors, microcredentials and possible Masters programs or “four plus one programs”  that they believe students will be interested in. The faculty senate is very interested in student feedback, and Lenowitz extended the invitation to come speak to him and other members of the senate with questions or concerns students may have that they are not comfortable asking administrators directly. “We’re all just trying to make this a better place for you all,” Lenowitz said. 

Next, Vice Provost of Undergraduate Affairs, Jeffrey Shoulson spoke. Shoulson previously served as the Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences, but has transitioned to this new position with the reorganization of the schools. He explained that the “repackaging” of the Brandeis Core will come into effect for the incoming class of 2030 in Fall 2026. Current undergraduates will still be able to graduate based on the Brandeis Core requirements from when they entered the school; however, Shoulson clarified that they will be able to benefit from the new structure should they choose to. Shoulson believes that “one of the most important things that … liberal arts education can provide is a set of competencies and career skills that are agnostic to the kind of work that you do,” or the field you want to go into. The modifications to the Core result from consultation with the National Association of Colleges and Employers, an organization that works with career centers at Universities across the country and collects information about what employers are looking for in graduates. 

NACE has eight career-readiness competencies that the college-educated person entering the workforce should demonstrate. Shoulson explained that five of these competencies are guiding the restructuring of the Brandeis Core, with the remaining three being addressed by the Center for Careers and Applied Liberal Arts. These five competencies are communication, critical thinking, technology, teamwork and “Equity & Inclusion.” These competencies will be tracked on a second transcript in addition to each student's formal academic transcript. Shoulson also explained that beyond building skill in these areas through their coursework, students will have the opportunity to “take an additional assessment that stands outside of any one of these classes and will attest to [their] having achieved a certain degree of skill level in these competencies.” Passing this assessment results in a microcredential, which will be represented by a digital badge that will serve as a “concrete manifestation” of a student’s qualification to a future employer. “It's not that you haven't been learning these things,” Shoulson clarified to the room of current undergraduate students, “We know you have. We just want to be much more intentional in how we record and acknowledge that kind of work that you're doing.”

The final speaker was Lewis Brooks ’80, the founding Director of the Center for Careers and Applied Liberal Arts. In a Sept. 25 email to the community, Levine announced that Brooks would fill this position. Brooks opened by describing his own Brandeis history about how he switched majors multiple times throughout his undergraduate years and still found himself confused on what path to pursue after graduating as a psychology major. By contrast, he and the Center want to ensure that students are on a “path of career preparedness from the moment you're sitting in the parking lot with your parents wondering if your sheets are going to fit on your bed until you graduate and go on.” He described how every student will be assigned both an academic counselor and a career counselor, and will take part in a required career class every year. He explained that his center is focused on the other three NACE competencies, which are professionalism, leadership and “Career & Self-Development.” These competencies will be gained through the required career classes, internships and other experiential learning opportunities. They could also come from extracurricular activities. “I can tell you personally, and I can tell you through the experiences of my daughter and students that I know it's not all about the classroom,” Brooks explained, “there are many things that are learned outside of the classroom, and we want to capture those.” He gave the example of how a student involved in Brandeis Emergency Medical Corps, or the Student Union or the Waltham Group will have gained valuable, quantifiable skills and experiences — these skills should be reflected through an extracurricular-based microcredential on your second transcript. 

Brooks stated, “I am a firm believer in 'if we build it, they may not come,'” explaining how he wants student input and feedback on how best to track career-competency progress and the different “career paths through Brandeis” various students have found themselves on. He explained that there is empirical data that employers are looking for microcredentials and competencies reflected by the second transcript.

The University plans to pilot at least four curricular-based microcredentials and one extracurricular-based microcredential this spring. This is a slow roll-out while many of the other changes are still being worked out for implementation in the fall of 2026. "As we move along this journey,” Brooks concluded, “we're going to be making changes and fixing it, and we will absolutely be including [the undergraduate classes of] ’26, ’27, ’28 and ’29 in these efforts.”