August 2000
Fourteen-member Task Force appointed to conduct a Comprehensive Curricular Review.

May 2003
New Curriculum, including the CAC initiative, approved by the faculty, with a 90% majority. The Curriculum Review Task Force (CRTF) offered the following rationale for CAC:

Communication is at the heart of a liberal arts education, if not at the heart of human enterprise.  Without effective reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills we are isolated from each other, and from the information that we might otherwise gather and share.

CAC is designed to integrate these essential communication skills at many points in a student's education in order to reinforce the necessity of clear communication. Because written and oral communication are essential in all aspects of life--and because effective communication skills are a hallmark characteristic of every Monmouth College graduate--students must come to understand and master these foundational skills of communication.