Astronomy Dept. Revises Tutorial

The Astronomy Department has decided to offer tutorial for credit and to require it of all honors candidates.

The junior tutorial, which will run as a half course throughout the year, will meet weekly during the Fall term to hear lectures by senior members of the department. In the Spring, students will begin work on their senior theses.

It will make Astronomy one of the few sciences with credit tutorial.

A small, non-credit pilot program, directed by David R. Layzer '46, professor of Astronomy, will begin this spring.

The credit tutorial program will be open to concentrators in other natural sciences, particularly physics. Under this program, students in sciences which do not offer senior tutorial will be able to write theses in Astronomy.

Dr. Eugene Avrett, lecturer on Astronomy, said that physics majors in particular were being invited into the program because research at Harvard "is weighted considerably toward astro-physics rather than observational astronomy."

Astronomy 30, "Introduction to Research in Astronomy for Undergraduates," a half course which gives credit for work on a senior thesis, is the closest thing to credit tutorial previously offered by the department.

"We are finally getting around--and I think it's about time--to making the tutorial program more formal," commented William Liller '48, Robert Wheeler Willson Professor of Applied Astronomy, and former chairman of the department.