Ongoing discussions about curriculum reform at Northeastern have opened the door to campus-wide reflection on whether current course requirements reflect today’s cultural, political and environmental realities. At the heart of the conversation are course requirements for every Northeastern undergraduate known as NUpath.
NUpath, Northeastern’s set of general education requirements, is designed to allow students to integrate “essential, broad-based knowledge and skills” into their specific field of study. Undergraduates must fulfill a total of 11 requirements — known as “attributes” — before graduating.
Since NUpath’s introduction in 2016, the formal review process to assess its effectiveness has been “limited,” according to the faculty senate’s NUpath Ad Hoc Committee’s final report. The committee, created in fall 2024, was charged with reviewing the current requirements, developing a process for review and recommending a revised set of NUpath attributes and a course approval process. After carrying out its charges throughout the 2024-25 academic year, the committee presented its final report at the March 26 faculty senate meeting, establishing a foundation for potential revisions to the curriculum.
“The university is committed to maintaining the highest standard of excellence across the academic enterprise,” Northeastern’s Vice President for Communications Renata Nyul wrote in a statement to The Huntington News. “We always welcome feedback from the university’s various stakeholder groups.”
The committee presented evidence to show that many NUpath attributes may overlap, namely the Interpreting Culture and Differences and Diversity attributes, or IC and DD, respectively. The IC attribute is designed to help students “learn critical reading and observation strategies” by analyzing and interpreting various cultural norms, artifacts and media. DD teaches students “theories and perspectives of human difference” and how to compare theories while applying them to their own lives.
Some faculty senators debated the purpose of these attributes, finding it difficult to distinguish between some NUpath requirements like IC and DD. This raised the question of whether updates should involve “merging, restructuring or refining attributes.”
According to Northeastern’s NUpath attributes dashboard, there are currently 79 courses that simultaneously meet the DD and IC requirements. Brian O’Connell, chair of the NUPath Ad Hoc Committee and an associate teaching professor in the College of Engineering, said in a March 26 presentation to the senate that the Understanding Societies and Institutions, DD and IC attributes have potential overlaps, suggesting that they could be potentially merged.
Shuishan Yu, an associate professor of architecture, teaches a course that fulfills both the DD and IC requirement: Buildings and Cities, A Global History. During the fall 2024 semester, Yu taught one section of the class on the Boston campus, which had 125 seats. He said that, while they may seem similar, the IC and DD attributes often address different aspects of cultural competency.
“A lot of the conflicts in the current world [are] the result of lack of understanding of difference and diversity,” he said. “Interpreting Culture and understanding Differences and Diversity, these two aspects, these two NUpaths, to me, are very connected.”
However, Yu acknowledged the subtle variations between the attributes, which may not be as noticeable outside of the classroom context.
“Interpreting culture is mainly about the understanding of the integration of our practice and activity,” Yu said. “[Differences and] Diversity highlight more on the comparison among these different cases.”
John Wihbey, an associate professor in the College of Arts, Media and Design, teaches courses like Understanding Today’s News and Digital Storytelling and Social Media, which fulfill the DD and Creative Expression/Innovation attributes, respectively. Wihbey said his course that fulfills the DD attribute focuses on exposing students to a wide range of ideas, as opposed to IC-focused courses, which he described as using a more interpretive and method-driven approach.
“Collapsing categories allows for a kind of simplicity of choice among students,” Wihbey said. “You could also argue that trying to preserve some distinctions, in this instance, like between Interpreting Culture and engaging Differences [and] Diversity, that that might be a distinction worth keeping.”
Some senators argued that modifying the IC and DD requirements would be a perilous choice at a moment marked by political turmoil, including Laney Strange, a teaching professor at Khoury College of Computer Sciences. To Strange, any shift away from diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility, or DEIA, efforts could indicate a shift in the university’s educational mission. This follows a recent change in Northeastern’s messaging, when it rebranded all DEIA initiatives under the term “belonging.”
“In our current situation where we have ‘belonging’ as more of a focus rather than DEIA, does that mean that NUpath attribute is going to change?” Strange said in an interview with The News.
Strange voiced curiosity and some concern about how shifting institutional priorities might reshape existing curriculum requirements. While she said she does not have issues with courses that fulfill two attributes, she said merging attributes may be a way of “diluting” the critical social aspects they are meant to highlight, making them easier to overlook. Collapsing attributes tied to social justice might pit them against each other, a dynamic she said undermines the shared goals these courses are meant to promote.
Wihbey also cautioned against altering the IC and DD requirements.
“I think we want to be very careful about the messaging if we’re going to start changing categories that are particularly politically salient,” he said, adding that, even still, curricula “shouldn’t be static.”
The faculty senate also discussed potentially adding a new NUpath requirement focusing on sustainability, part of a student-led initiative called “SustaiNUbility.” According to the NUPath Ad Hoc Committee’s report, the initiative is supported by a year-long petition that collected 1,482 student signatures, in addition to a Student Government Association referendum where 66% of more than 7,500 students voted in favor of adding the attribute.
Tyler Brogan, an environmental and sustainability sciences and economics combined major and Class of 2025 graduate, founded the SustaiNUbility campaign. He was inspired by a class he took called The Economics of Sustainability with Madhavi Venkatesan, an associate teaching professor at the College of Social Sciences and Humanities.
“This is my realm of study, and I’m learning things that I don’t even know about that have real impacts on the world,” Brogan said. “How are people who are studying things that aren’t related to the environment supposed to know this type of information?”
While he feels a sustainability requirement is important, Brogan acknowledged the long list of requirements Northeastern students have to meet already.
In the report, the committee mentioned multiple options for implementation, one of which would be to combine the IC and DD requirements as they “share many overlapping courses.” Further, it recommends that the faculty senate “consider replacing, merging or adding a NUPath attribute to include sustainability without increasing overall requirements.”
Brogan added that the Natural and Designed World, or ND, requirement is not currently sustainability-focused. There are many courses that fulfill the ND requirement that “are not even closely related to the environment.”
Despite the unfolding debate, Yu emphasized the value of NUpath as a unifying force across disciplines.
“It kind of brings students from different majors together, which brings diversity to the course,” Yu said. “If the proposal is to make adjustments to the NUpath or add some new NUpath, I’m totally for it, depending on what is proposed. But a NUpath in general, I think, is a huge benefit for student education.”
