What about area studies courses?

After distributing our draft learning outcomes, a faculty member writes with a specific concern, that is useful and illustrative... My response is below (both original query and my response have been edited to make a bit more general, and cutting out the specifics). I'll call the original questioner "Sidney" since to my knowledge there is no Sidney on campus and it can be used for either gender...

Hello Michael,
Thank you for your update regarding the CORE revision. Interestingly, we are going through a program review in my Dept. to try and "bring the department into the present." I just wanted to bring your attention to one, oblique dynamic of the CORE and its triangulation with International Programs that is worth keeping on the periphery. As you know, we send students to the country of Sidonia. There are three CORE courses involved in the Sidonia program. The first two satisfy the presentUniversity CORE and the third partially fulfills the A&S Fine Arts requirement.
*Arts and Culture of Sidonia
*Arts of the Sidonian region
*Art of Sidonia Lab
What is the committee thinking about how these course might fit into a revised Core?
Cheers,
Sidney

...and my response...
Sidney,
It might be worthwhile to look at our preliminary core learning outcomes we sent in the document and think about how your current course offerings fit into those. Are they 100% aligned with those learning outcomes? 50% aligned? Alignment is strongest with which learning outcomes? (i.e., might be very high on engagement, collaborative learning, second language, impact of arts, and potentially could pay more attention to intertwined western and world institutions/cultures, just for example- I have never seen your syllabi). You might want to start talking with other area studies world cultures faculty (I myself am one) and start thinking about what the learning outcomes are from our sometimes very narrowly focused area studies courses. Many of us in area studies are very convinced of the value of area studies courses; the question is though, can we articulate what that value is? And is that articulation something like what we already have in our proposed learning outcomes, or is it something subtly different, in which case we want to think about proposing modifications. This is a useful exercise in any case, and sounds like you are already doing it as part of your departmental program review. If we do have a revision, eventually a Core coordinator would be gradually looking at how existing courses aligned (I say gradual because we're talking 2010 at earliest for upper-division courses to be "deployed", depending on transition dynamics) with the possibly new Core learning outcomes.
Best,
Michael