Vol. 24., No. 10	November 20, 1998

Professors Tayler and Bloom Are Honored for Distinguished Service to the Core Curriculum

By Jane White

The Sixth Annual Distinguished Service to the Core Curriculum Award was presented on Nov. 12 at the Heyman Center for the Humanities to Professors Edward "Ted" Tayler and Irene Bloom.

Dean Austin Quigley, who presented the award with David Cohen, vice president for arts and sciences, and Professor Wm. Theodore de Bary, director of the Heyman Center and provost emeritus of the University, said that Columbia College's influence and attraction to students is due to the strength of the Core Curriculum.

"The Core provides a link not only between students and students, but also between students and faculty and between faculty and faculty," Quigley said. Cohen said that as a relative newcomer to Columbia, the Core seemed a bit daunting, but he believes it provides an "uncommon contribution to the very essence of undergraduate education."

Tayler, who is the Lionel Trilling Professor in the Humanities, developed the writing component of the Core Curriculum, logic and rhetoric, and has been teaching and guiding the course since 1986.

Carol Gluck, George Sansom Professor of Japanese History, commended the service that Irene Bloom, the chair of the University Committee on Asia and the Middle East, has given to the Core. "Professor Irene Bloom is Confucian both out of the classroom as well as in it; her approach is companionate, where student and teacher learn together," Gluck said.

Award recipients, selected by the Administrative Committee of the Heyman Center, are honored for their service to the Core by chairing one of the Core courses, serving on Core committees, giving lectures and seminars or publishing articles describing the nature of the Core.