DRIVING THEM AWAY?

Joseph B. Nadol '95 considered majoring in biology until he took Chemistry 10. Now, he's thinking about concentrating in government.

"The professors of intro science course [at Harvard] aren't satisfactory," Nadol says. "The University doesn't put enough effort into finding good teaching professors for introductory classes."

Nadol is not the only undergraduate who was turned off science at Harvard by early course-work. And though administrators and faculty members says they have stepped up efforts to retain prospective science concentrators, their efforts so far seem on the whole unsuccessful.

Last year, for the first time in Harvard's history, more than 50 percent of 1609 registered first years said they were interested in concentrating in the sciences.

This figure represents and 11 percent increase from 1988, when only 40 percent of admitted first-years indicated an interest in science concentrations on their Harvard applications.

But despite the increase in the number of prospective science concentrators admitted, the number of actual science concentrators has remained relatively constant over the past few years, and has even fallen several percentage points.

In 1986, 27 percent of upperclass students declared that they were concentrating in science or a related field. By 1989, this number had dropped to 23 percent. In 1990, there was a slight increase, to 25 percent.

Students and faculty members attribute Harvard's low retention rate of students in science concentrations to everything from normal attrition factors to problems in course structure.

Harvard is by no means alone in its difficulties. Colleges across the country have reported a decline in the number of science majors of their campuses.

But professors and students say that certain problems may be unique to the University.

Dean of the Division of Applied Sciences Paul C. Martin '52 acknowledges the difficulty of luring students as diverse as those at Harvard to introductory science courses.

"People want different things from each course," he says. "It's hard to make them attractive to people with a wide range of abilities, interests and career goals."

Other problems found in science classes include the high student-to-faculty ratio in some science departments as well as the limited variety of classes offered to students, says Martin.

"It is more difficult and it requires more resources to teach introductory science and math courses to variety of students," Martin says.

Students concur. Jack S. Levy '92 says he changed his major from biochemistry to government after finding introductory biology and chemistry classes "inadequate" and "boring."

"Chem 10 lectures were abysmal," Levy says. "Lab reports were really tedious and not very creative."

Nadol says the attitude of the students themselves was part of what discouraged him from continuing in the sciences at Harvard.

"It's overcompetitive," he says. "People worry more about grades than learning. They just want to get into medical school."

But Martin says such attitudes may have a lot to do with the way the courses are designed.

"The deficiencies are not with the students, but with the courses," Martin says.

Nirav R. Shah '94, a biology major, says he enjoys his science classes but has reservations about the quality of the teaching fellows.

"TF's are often of varying expertise," he says. "One section may be significantly better than another."

Normal Changes

Some administrators say they believe it is only natural for students to realize they have interest outside science the begin taking courses at Harvard.

Assistant Dean of Admissions Marlyn McGrath-Lewis '70 says that approximately one third of Harvard student pick a concentration different from the one indicated in their Harvard application.

"People usually don't change concentrations because of negatives," says McGrath-Lewis. "They are exposed to things they never thought about."

McGrath-Lewis says that students may also be reacting to the discovery that "it takes more time to concentrate in science and it is less flexible."

In addition, said Rotch Professor of Atmospheric Science Michael B. McElroy, harsh grading the sciences in a turn-off for many prospective concentrators.

"Average grades are significantly lower in the sciences," says McElroy.

One area in which administrators say some progress has been made in that of bringing more women into the science at Harvard.

"In Physics, [the number of women concentrators] went up considerably in the late 1970s and early 1980s," says Margaret E. Law, head tutor of the physics department.

From 3 percent in the mid-1970s, the number his risen to around 20 percent in recent years, Law says.

However, there are still many more male than female concentrators in most science departments. And female students are affected as much, if not, more so, by the same factors that turn male students off the sciences.

Minna M. Jarvenpaa '93, co-president of the Radcliffe Union of Students, says that there definitely exists a problem with the number of women science concentrators. "There are very few women in the hard science," she says.

She suggests that Harvard attempt to address this issue by increasing the number of women faculty members in the sciences. "We need women professors as role models," she says.

Strengths and Misconceptions

Administrators says there is still a great deal of work to be done, not only in keeping students in Harvard's science department but in attracting them there in the first place.

Dean of Admissions William R. Fitzsimmons '67 says that misconceptions about Harvard's science department have discouraged a number of highly qualified science students from enrolling at Harvard.

"Most people are not aware of the strength of our science department," says Fitzsimmons. "We need a constant outreach to inform them."

But Fitzsimmons says the rising number of intended science concentrators has not been the result of any preferential treatment on the part of the admissions office.

"We have the luxury of not admitting people on concentration quotas," he says.

McGrath-Lewis says she believes it is "a reasonable hypothesis" that if not for the admissions office's attempt to recruit more science concentrators, the percentage of students concentrating in science fields might have declined rather than remained steady.

Experimenting With Solutions

Faculty members say they believe that the provision of solid curricula and programs that attract students may be the key to the University's future in the sciences.

"For quite some time, the University considered critical the role science played in the role science played in the future strength of the country," McGrath-Lewis says. "If we were not able to offer competitive science programs, we would be at a severe disadvantage."

Though no standardized University-wide reforms are being instituted at the moment, a number of professors are trying out new techniques of teaching and material presentation. For instance, Martin says, the teachers of Physics 11 are trying to encourage greater class participation and more peer discussion during lectures.

And several science department are making changes of their own, say administrators.

Professor of the Practice in the Teaching of Mathematics Deborah Huges Hallett says that the math department has adopted a new focus for its introductory classes.

"There has been a lot of unhappiness in the way that calculus has been taught in the past, not only at Harvard, but also at other colleges," Hallett says.

In Math 1a and 1b, for instance, the new stress in on methods of incorporating calculators and computers into the material, Hallett says.

"You want people to learn enough of the basic ideas so that they can see how they work and apply them, rather than teaching more abstract math," she says.

Many concentrations, including biology, economics and the physical science require a minimum of one year of calculus for concentrators.

"Not all of the calculus is relevant to all of the students taking the course," she says. "The new way of doing the course has been more applicable to other fields."

One such course, Hallett says, is Math 20.

"Math 20 is designed mainly for people going into the social sciences, for economics concentrators, for people who would not have taken multivariable calculus otherwise," she says.

This new approach to the teaching of math is not unique to Harvard, Hallett says.

"Within the next few years they are going to change the high school [Advanced Placement] exams to incorporate these changes," she says.

Hallett recently coauthored a book on the new calculus curriculum.

Professor of Chemistry David A. Evans has a different focus in the new approach to teaching. Evans says he believes it is important for professors to pay more attention to the teaching of undergraduate in order to win them over to the sciences.

"All we have to do our job well and the student will fall in love," says Evans, who teaches Chemistry 30. "We are trying to introduce more advanced concepts into the introductory sequence."

"The [Chemistry} 20/30 sequence is experimental. We are teaching advanced stereochemistry and frontier molecular orbital theory," he says. "We have a seen a nice increase in course enrollment over the last half dozen years."

Evans says that in his first year teaching the course, 1987, there were 70 students in the class. By 1991, enrollment had risen to 150 .

The Earth and Planetary Science (EPS) department has experienced trends similar to those of the chemistry department.

"The enrollment of one of our key courses at the 100 level has doubled," says McElroy, who chairs the department, "and the number of people taking introductory courses has certainly increased."

McElroy says that recent changes in admissions are not immediately reflected in concentration membership. "It will probably take time to see [the effects]. We will have to wait until next year," he says.

McElroy suggests that students try using the Freshman Seminar program to sample the sciences while avoiding the large introductory courses.

"When you are a freshman in the Yard it is hard of find your niche," he says. "The difficulty with findings a concentration is that they often to not seem particularly accessible."

Whatever formulas faculty members and administrators try out to improve Harvard's science departments, they agree that students are the key to success.

"The important issue is, what do we do to keep students interested? McElroy says.