Monro Supports Chalmers' Plan For Distribution

Bruce Chalmers, Master of Winthrop House and one of 22 contributors to a set of alternatives to the Doty report, has elaborated upon his plan for a more liberal distribution plan, and gained support from Dean Monro, a member of the Doty Committee.

The Chalmers plan would allow any undergraduate who so desires to "write his own ticket" for the course program used to fulfill the distribution requirements outside his field.

Within the basic numerical and area guidelines that emerge from the Faculty debate on Gen Ed, a student would choose a set of courses following his particular interests, the only restriction being that the program would have to "make sense."

Each student's plan would be developed in consultation with a "Gen Ed adviser" concerned specifically with the distribution part of his College Program. The courses within his field of concentration would still be approved by a tutor or adviser in his department.

Dean Monro last week endorsed the Chalmers proposal and said that he would like to see it attempted, with the reservation that "it might be administratively unmanageable." Monro suggested that his distribution system "does not connect with anything in the Doty Report."

Chalmers has conjectured that only about half of the College would elect to plan their own program and that the other half "would prefer to be told what to do." But many people feel to tied-town by the current rules, he said, and such a system would "provide the greatest flexibility for those who want to use it."

A student who elected the plan would have the broadest possible range of choices. Chalmers speculated that distribution programs might include "even the lower-level Gen Ed courses or a sequence of difficult physics courses."