Program Overview

The Integrated Program in Humane Studies (IPHS), founded in 1975, is the oldest of Kenyon’s interdisciplinary programs. IPHS integrates the humanities, social sciences, and interdisciplinary study of AI and its implications for culture, society, and human flourishing, combining critical analysis with genuine technical competence in computational methods and AI development. In 2016, IPHS established the world’s first human-centered AI curriculum.

The program is distinctive in three ways. First, its collaborative, team-taught structure: core courses, including the foundational Odyssey sequence and upper-division AI courses, are co-taught by faculty whose expertise spans political philosophy, literature, history of science, and computational methods. Students observe faculty with genuinely different perspectives engaging the same material, and that modeling of intellectual disagreement and collaboration is itself part of what IPHS teaches. Second, its cumulative curriculum: courses build on each other in sequence, and students develop both humanistic depth and genuine technical competence over time. Third, its position at the frontier of AI development informs course content, faculty engagement, and the pace at which curricular guidelines are reviewed and updated.

Learning Goals

Students completing a course of study in IPHS, which spans the humanities, social sciences, history of ideas, and the critical and technical study of AI and emerging technology, will:

  • Develop a framework for the history of ideas arising from diverse global traditions, situating these ideas within their historical, cultural, and political contexts.
  • Move fluently between qualitative and quantitative modes of analysis, understanding each as essential to humanistic inquiry.
  • Develop practical competence in programming and computational methods, including data analysis, visualization, and machine learning applications for humanistic and social scientific research.
  • Understand the rise of artificial intelligence and computation as part of a larger historical and intellectual trajectory, interrogating these developments from a humanist perspective.
  • Formulate ideas rigorously and communicate them effectively in multiple modes: written prose, oral presentation, visual design, and data-driven forms.
  • Engage with ethical questions concerning technology, creativity, labor, and human flourishing, developing informed positions grounded in interdisciplinary understanding.
  • Identify meaningful research questions, select appropriate methods (humanistic, computational, or both), and execute sustained independent inquiry, demonstrating that technical capability is one tool among many available to a well-rounded IPHS student.

Measures

IPHS assesses student achievement of learning goals through the following primary measures. Each measure indicates which learning goals it most directly assesses.

Senior Seminar Projects

The senior seminar is the program’s primary capstone assessment. Each concentrator designs and executes an original research project that demonstrates conceptual depth and the ability to identify meaningful questions and apply appropriate methods. Projects may draw on computational methods, traditional humanistic analysis, or both; IPHS students develop the capability to work computationally but are not required to do so for every project. The program’s goal is well-rounded students who can choose the right tools for the questions they are asking. Projects are reviewed collectively by IPHS faculty as part of the annual end-of-year program review. Senior projects are archived on Digital Kenyon, providing a body of student work available for collective faculty review and external benchmarking.

Learning goals assessed: all goals; the senior seminar is the integrative capstone.

Course-Embedded Assessment

Each course in the IPHS sequence includes written, oral, and where appropriate computational assignments that directly assess stated learning goals. Faculty review these collectively as part of the annual program review, paying particular attention to whether students are developing the cross-modal fluency, moving between humanistic and computational analysis, that is central to the program’s mission.

Learning goals assessed: history of ideas; qualitative and quantitative fluency; programming and computational methods; AI as historical and intellectual trajectory; rigorous formulation and communication; ethical engagement.

Curriculum Progression

Student progression through the cumulative curriculum sequence, from Odyssey through the 200- and 300-level courses to the senior seminar, is tracked annually. Progression rates indicate the degree to which the program retains and develops students across its full intellectual arc, and identify any points in the sequence where students encounter barriers to continued engagement.

Learning goals assessed: indirect; progression data indicates whether the cumulative curriculum is enabling sustained engagement across all learning goals, with particular sensitivity to cross-modal fluency, which depends on completing the sequence.

Enrollment and Concentration Pipeline

IPHS tracks enrollment and student progression as a measure of program health and curricular effectiveness. Students enter the concentration through different paths: some begin with the Odyssey sequence, others come to it after completing upper-division courses, and some take additional courses beyond the core sequence. The program accommodates this flexibility while tracking whether each course and section is drawing students into deeper engagement with IPHS as a whole. The more meaningful metric is not raw enrollment but the degree to which students in any given course continue into the concentration.

Specific pipeline metrics tracked annually include: the percentage of students in each course who continue into the concentration sequence; the percentage of students in each Odyssey section who proceed to the 200-level; the number of students completing the full curricular arc through the senior seminar; and overall enrollment relative to faculty FTE. This data informs annual faculty review of the curriculum and guides decisions about which courses and arrangements best serve the program’s concentrators and mission. Courses or sections that consistently fail to feed the concentration pipeline are reviewed for curricular fit and resource allocation.

Learning goals assessed: indirect; pipeline data indicates whether the structure of the curriculum is enabling students to complete the sequence required to achieve learning goals that depend on cumulative engagement.

Post-Graduation Outcomes

IPHS tracks student outcomes after graduation as a long-term measure of the program’s preparation goals. These outcomes reflect the program’s distinctive goal of developing students who can contribute meaningfully at the intersection of humanistic and social scientific understanding, critical analysis, and genuine technical capability.

Learning goals assessed: indirect; post-graduation trajectories serve as a long-term indicator of the program’s preparation of students for sustained intellectual work.

Feedback

IPHS uses the following mechanisms to examine measures, understand the degree to which learning goals are being met, and develop or modify practices to improve student achievement.

Annual Program Review

Consistent with Faculty Handbook Section 1.1, which authorizes departments and programs to “develop and administer their own systems of discursive course evaluation,” IPHS faculty collectively review the program’s teaching and curriculum at the end of each academic year. This review encompasses senior seminar projects, course-embedded assessment artifacts, student progression data, and discursive course evaluation materials developed by the program. Collective rather than siloed review is required by the program’s team-taught structure: Odyssey and core upper-division sequences are co-taught and depend on coordinated pedagogical practice across instructors, and the program cannot fulfill its responsibility for the integrity of the cumulative curriculum without knowing how each course is being taught. Faculty identify patterns, discuss what is working well, and develop specific modifications to teaching practice or curriculum design for the following year.

Learning goals assessed: all goals, through integrated review of senior projects, course-embedded artifacts, progression data, and pedagogical practice.

Curriculum and Course Development Review

IPHS maintains curriculum and upper-division course development guidelines (last updated Spring 2024, with updates at a minimum every three years) that provide a framework for evaluating curricular coherence and fit. Given the rapid pace of AI development, the program monitors developments in the field continuously and updates guidelines more frequently when significant shifts in the landscape warrant it. Any proposed new course or modification to the curriculum is reviewed against these guidelines before implementation, ensuring that changes serve learning goals across the full program arc, not only within a single course.

Onboarding and First-Year Check-In

IPHS has established formal onboarding procedures for faculty joining the program and end-of-semester check-ins for faculty in their first year. These processes serve an assessment function: they allow the program to identify early whether pedagogical expectations are being met, whether students are experiencing the program as coherent, and whether collaborative teaching relationships are functioning as intended. Feedback from these conversations is incorporated into the following year’s planning.

Learning goals assessed: indirect; onboarding and check-in conversations surface early signals about whether new instruction is aligned with the program’s pedagogical model and learning goals.

rev. May 2026