Department Chairmen Hold Key to Tutorial Program

Although the Masters this week approved Dean Monro's tentative plan for non-Honors tutorial, it is the departmental chairman, rather than the masters, who will make or break the proposed program. The Departments are already short of manpower, and it will be difficult to find the additional teaching hours required for a non-Honors program.

Furthermore, before such a program can begin it must be submitted to the Committee on Educational Policy, perhaps to the Committee on General Education, and finally to the entire Faculty. In the deliberations, the key factor will be the ability, and willingness, of the Departments to supply the necessary instructors.

The uncertainty over non-Honors arose in February of 1958, when the CEP concluded that non-Honors junior tutorial had proved "disappointing," and suggested that it be discontinued "as a required operation." At the same time, the CEP drew up a program to strengthen Honors tutorial, leaving an even wider split between Honors and non-Honors programs.

Among the non-Honors students, however, the CEP found a "significant group" whose interest the Departments ought to "engage." While such students "typically aim neither at scholarly study nor at later professional accomplishment in their field of concentration," said the CEP report, Departments can interest them in aspects of their field which "touch them as men and as members of a community."

Report Omits Details

But the report failed to specify the details of such a program, and did not outline how it could be effected. Instead, it simply said that "each Department shall endeavor to provide a program of courses particularly suited to the needs and interests of the non-Honors concentrator, in terms of both subject matter and mode of instruction."

When the Faculty voted on May 6, the CEP had eliminated even this pious hope, and its final report stated that "no department is required to provide tutorial instruction" for non-Honors juniors. This fall, however, Dean Monro took an active concern "on behalf of the whole College," and suggested a voluntary, graded half-course running throughout the year "as part of the communications network between the student and his House."