Undergraduates May Be Able to Design Own Gen Ed Concentrations Soon

The Committee on Undergraduate Education will propose to the Faculty later this month that undergraduates be permitted to create their own majors.

The student-Faculty committee, chaired by Dean May, has put forward a plan under which any student may petition for approval of a program not accommodated by any existing concentration. The program would have to be approved by a committee from the senior common room of the student's House (or future House, if he is a Harvard freshman). The program would be available to present upperclassmen.

The plan will be submitted to the Faculty Council May 6. If approved, it will be placed on the ballot for a late May Faculty meeting, so that it could be passed in time to affect students' plans for next year.

The special concentration program would be handled by the Committee on General Education. If the House committee finds a student's program "intellectually coherent," impossible to satisfy within an existing field, and of "adequate depth and diversity of educational experience," it will recommend that the Gen Ed committee approve the program, and then later certify that student for a degree.

A student who wished to graduate with honors would have to include junior and senior tutorials, and a senior thesis or equivalent, in his program. It would be up to the Gen Ed committee to recommend him for honors, high honors, or highest honors in his special field.

This is the first major piece of legislation to emerge from the new CUE. Steven R. Bowman '72, student member and also a member of the New College Group, said the students on the committee are very optimistic about the chance of the plan's being approved.

"We've more or less dropped everything else to assure that we do a good job on formulating this issue," he said. He said the plan was written with the realities of Harvard Faculty politics in mind.

Bowman said that if the special concentration plan goes through this Spring, the student CUE members will work next fall on criminating grades and Gen Ed requirements.