Independent Study Gets a Boost

The Committee on Educational Policy agreed yesterday to recommend that Independent Study should be opened to sophomores and non-honors students.

This decision will be drafted into a formal proposal at the CEP's next meeting April 17 and sent on to the Faculty for approval. By next Fall the Independent Study program, now restricted to honors juniors and seniors, will probably be open to everyone in the College except freshmen.

The CEP also agreed that a student should not have to get his Independent Study project approved by the head tutor in his field. Under the revised rules he would only need two signatures--his supervisor's and that of a senior official in the department. His own department would have veto power over the project only if he were asking concentration credit for it.

Mechanism

Dean Ford, chairman of the CEP, said last night that the Committee quickly decided to revise the rules when they realized how much Independent Study has changed over the years. Originally Independent Study was to be a mechanism for students to chop their course load from four to three and pursue--or not pursue--a special project with little supervision. Actually most Independent Studies resemble tutorials--carefully supervised one-man courses.

"In fact," Ford said, "Independent Study has turned into individual supervised study and there is no reason to exclude sophomores and non-honors students from that."

The CEP considered the Independent Study question briefly in January and decided then to take no action on the HPC's recommendations. Ford said that the question was brought back to the CEP floor "because the HPC became much more specific in their suggestions" and because Edward T. Wilcox, CEP secretary and director of the Office of Advanced Standing, which originated the program, "sorted out a set of specific issues on which he wanted the CEP's advice."

Two of the HPC recommendations did not win support from the CEP. "We did not accept the notion that Independent Study should be used to generate new courses," Ford said yesterday.

The CEP also took no action on the HPC's recommendation that Independent Study be better advertised. Ford said however that a few sentences on Independent Study will probably be included in the preliminary section of the course catalogue next year.