Core Committee Members Encounter Difficulty Keeping Requirements Down to Eight Courses

The Standing Committee on the Core Curriculum is having difficulty determining which portions of the Core students may bypass because of concentration requirements, Edward T. Wilcox, spokesman for the committee, said yesterday.

When the Core is fully implemented in 1982, it will formally require students to take ten half-year courses in the five areas of the Core, but Dean Rosovsky's report on the Core states that undergraduates must take no more than eight half-year Core Courses.

The committee is expected to reduce the requirement to eight half-year courses by exempting students from Core areas adequately covered by their concentration requirements.

Wilcox said yesterday committee members in "hard science" concentrations--including Physics, Mathematics, Statistics, Applied Sciences, and Applied Mathematics--from the required half-year Core course in biological sciences. Because these concentrations do not cover the life-sciences, the committee will only grant concentrators an exemption in the half-year Core course in physical sciences, he said.

"We can't find a reason, on the face of it, to give Mathematics concentrators an exemption in Sciences B (the biological half of the Science Core area)," Wilcox added.

The standing committee members agreed they could grant two half-year course exemptions to History concentrators because concentration requirements overlap the Core area of Historical Studies.

Wilcox said the committee "will try to get two exemptions for everyone," adding it will ask departments to recommend exemptions for their concentrators.

Wilcox said the committee may have to work out exemptions on an individual basis, but added he did not look forward to the "administrators' reaction" to that policy.

Paul C. Martin, professor of Physics and guest member of the committee, said yesterday Physics concentrators should only be allowed one half-year course exemption in the Core Sciences area. Martin said "There are a lot of things they could be exempted from in principle," but he declined to specify possible exemptions.

Andrew M. Gleason, Hollis Professor of Mathematics and chairman of the Core Committee on Mathematics Requirement, said committee members also doubt they will grant more than one half-year course exemption for Philosophy concentrators.

Philosophy concentrators will not have to take the one half-year course required in Moral Reasoning, but "it is not necessarily clear that the concentration covers anything else" that warrents an exemption, Gleason said.

Martin added that despite the "complicated" nature of the exemption policy, he believes no student will have to take more than eight courses. "That certainly is our aim, anyway," he said