Scenic Routes to A Concentration

Valerie M. Hastings ’07 is, to say the least, undecided on her concentration choice.

With the May 10, 2004, declaration deadline looming, Hastings has no fewer than seven possibilities on her mind.

“I’m looking at biology, chemistry, earth and planetary sciences, biological anthropology, English, linguistics and psychology,” she says.

But if many of the faculty and students involved in the College’s ongoing curricular review have their way, future generations of first-years will not have problems similar to those confronting Hastings and her classmates.

The proposal for a new curriculum, which will go before the Faculty next month, will recommend moving the timing of concentration choice back nearly a full year to some time during sophomore year, possibly between the fall and spring terms.

Associate Dean of the College Jeffrey Wolcowitz is currently writing the curricular review’s report, which will include specific recommendations and broad proposals from the four working groups that have been reviewing the curriculum since spring 2003.

Pushing back concentration choice gets to the heart of one of the main themes that Dean of the Faculty William C. Kirby has articulated in the review: increased student choice.

In his annual letter to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) last February, Kirby also suggested the importance of faculty-student interaction, internationalization of the curriculum and scientific literacy.

The report will call for more College sponsorship of study abroad opportunities. This proposal would further increase financial resources for students going abroad, and would force the College to accept more credits earned by Harvard undergraduates studying outside the United States.

An increased focus on interdisciplinary study between and within departments is likely to be a dominant theme in the report, while other recommendations will include improving scientific literacy and the creation of a January term between the first and second semesters (see sidebars, pages 6-7).

Far from being minor administrative changes, increased support for study abroad and the potential move in the time of concentration declaration—in addition to a proposed elimination of the Core Curriculum—could reshape a Harvard education and free students to pursue a curriculum more of their own design.

BACKING IT UP

One of the greatest potential boons to student choice would be to knock off a semester of work in a concentration.

And this significant proposal is also one of the most likely to be recommended to the Faculty in its May 4 meeting.

“I think the strong consensus in the Steering Committee is to have concentration declarations be sometime in the sophomore year,” says Jay M. Harris, Wolfson professor of Jewish studies and co-chair of the Working Group on Students’ Overall Academic Experience.

Harris’ committee is charged with, among other things, examining the timing of concentration choice and study abroad opportunities.

Belfer Professor of International Affairs at the Kennedy School of Government Stephen M. Walt, a member of the Working Group of Concentrations, alluded to the impending recommendation.

“Certainly the question of timing of concentration choice has been widely discussed, and I suspect is going to be part of the recommendations,” he says. “We’ve spent enough time on this issue that I’d be surprised if it doesn’t get mentioned.”

Kirby said last month that Harvard’s three-year-long concentrations are longer, and have substantially more requirements, than those at most of Harvard’s peer schools.

Most Ivy League schools ask students to declare their majors during sophomore year—and some, such as Cornell University, give students until the beginning of junior year.

“If you have to declare your concentration in the spring of your freshman year, you basically have one semester of unfettered choice and even that semester’s not entirely unfettered,” Kirby says. “[What] I hope will emerge...is a curriculum in which students can explore deeply not just one, but several areas, and change their minds about what they are interested in doing.”

But Harris and Walt say it is too early to tell precisely what the review will recommend, although it will suggest that students declare their concentrations some time during sophomore year.

The proposal is likely to spur contentious debate.

Walt describes a debate between faculty who prefer an early concentration decision to ensure adequate time for completing concentration requirements, and faculty who favor a later choice because they believe that, given additional time, students will make a better informed decision.

A later concentration choice will likely affect the number of courses a concentration can require, as well as the structure of departments’ tutorial programs.

Harris says he is strongly in favor of the proposed move in concentration choice timing.

“I think the benefits are substantial for those students who don’t come in with a clear sense of what it is they want to do,” he says. “There are departments here and areas of study students don’t know anything about, and it would be nice if they had an opportunity to sample some of it.”

According to Harris and Kirby, while departments with one-semester tutorial programs would likely be unaffected by the move—they can simply offer their tutorial in the spring semester of sophomore year—those with full-year tutorials will have to rethink the nature of their program.

Harris says such changes are probably not something the review will examine in great detail and that “each department is going to have to look at this on its own.”

Professors in the sciences tend to be more firmly against a move in concentration choice timing than their colleagues in the humanities because the sciences rely much more heavily on prerequisites.

“The people in the sciences say there are [drawbacks],” Harris says. “But in fairness, there are lots of prerequisites to doing science well now.”

But Goldman Professor of Computer Science Steven J. Gortler says that he thinks science professors would not be opposed to pushing concentration choice back into the sophomore year if concentration advising would take place in the freshman year, rather than after students declare a concentration.

“I don’t think anybody really cares that much about when there is a declaration,” he says. “The real question the sciences have is how early students come in to talk to someone.”

Dean of the College Benedict H. Gross ’71 also says that an improved advising system must accompany the recommended shift.

Without proper advising, students in their first two years might not be taking the necessary prerequisites to study higher-level material.

“It is really a question of getting good advising,” he says. “If we have better freshman advising, people may be more sympathetic to delaying concentration choice.”

Students, even those who have already made their decision, are overwhelmingly in favor of a move in concentration choice timing.

Jordan C. Jones ’07, who plans to concentrate in economics and government, says he feels the May 2004 declaration deadline he faces is too early.

“It’s really unnecessary to put that much pressure on freshmen,” he said. “I think pushing it back to...sophomore year would be very beneficial to our students.”

CROSSING FIELDS

University President Lawrence H. Summers and Kirby have long stressed the importance of interdisciplinary work, which Kirby outlined as one of the themes of the review in his 2002-2003 Annual Letter to the Faculty.

“I think interdisciplinary work is very much a focus of the review and I think opportunities for it definitely will emerge as a recommendation,” Harris says. “One can say that with confidence.”

But while Harris says that interdisciplinary work has been discussed in the review, he declined to say which specific recommendations may be included in the report.

Gross has suggested that one way the curriculum may offer more interdisciplinary opportunities is through broad-based Harvard College courses—lecture courses that may be used to fulfill the distribution requirement that the proposal will suggest replaces the Core.

“To cover broad topics well, the Harvard College courses may be co-taught by faculty,” he says.

But Walt, a member of the Working Group on Concentrations, says he is less certain that the proposal will concretely endorse interdisciplinary study.

“The question of interdisciplinary work always gets discussed in one form or another,” he says. “But I don’t think the thrust of our work has been on ways of actively promoting that.”

Despite the focus on interdisciplinary work, Professor of Anthropology and of African and African American Studies J. Lorand Matory says interdisciplinary study at Harvard can be complicated by bureaucratic difficulties.

“There are lots of interdisciplinary committees...and they are great if enough faculty have time to participate in them and hear from their colleagues in other disciplines,” he says. “But there is such administrative overload here it’s hard to take advantage of all those possibilities.”

Homi K. Bhabha, Rothenberg professor of English and American literature and language, says that even connecting faculty members between departments can be difficult.

“It’s not just a question of departments linking together, you have to have people that link departments together as well as curricular initiatives that foster rigorous interdisciplinary thinking,” he says.

CROSSING OCEANS

While the Faculty endorsed easing the barriers to study abroad in spring 2002, examining the value of an out-of-Cambridge experience has been an additional focus of this review.

The review’s recommendations will include yet another push for study abroad.

“There will be a strong push to promote it and also to look for sources of funding because you can’t promote it without being able to help students pay for it,” Harris says. “Having not heard a word of dissent yet, I can’t imagine that it won’t be a recommendation to expand opportunities for study abroad.”

Harris adds that other kinds of international experiences, including summer internship and educational programs, should also be expected to surface in the recommendation to the faculty.

But not all faculty members share the sentiment that the College ought to do more to actively promote study abroad. Professor of Psychology Daniel M. Wegner says he feels Harvard needs only ensure that students who wish to go abroad are able to do so, not that it actively converts students to the idea of study abroad.

“I’m not sure it’s a key part of a college career,” he says. “Given the intellectual opportunities at Harvard, I’d be disappointed to have to go abroad and study in France.”

Gross, however, has expressed strong support for providing more international experiences for students.

He says students should have the expectation of partaking in “a significant international experience, whether it’s an internship; a language, maybe taken during the J-term; or an experience abroad” during their undergraduate years.

“We want to train our students to become citizens of the world...a world that has grown smaller in the last 30 years,” he says.

Many professors agree that to prepare a student adequately for today’s world, the College must strongly encourage some sort of international experience.

“It’s not enough for the world to come digitally or technologically to you. You’ve got to go out and meet the world,” Bhabha says.

Lecturer on the Study of Religion Brian C.W. Palmer ’86 challenges Harvard to provide more funds to facilitate study abroad.

“It’s worrisome that the numbers for study abroad are so low, even though the financial aid resources are clearly not lacking,” he says. “I think it would be good if living in a different society became a norm as much as possible.”

SIZE MATTERS

In an attempt to increase student-faculty interaction, curricular review members have also examined class size at Harvard.

But while administrators stress the importance of student-faculty interaction, the review is unlikely to recommend a major change in the structure of classes at Harvard.

In fact, some faculty say they believe students are largely indifferent to class size.

“Class size is obviously an issue, and we’re obviously aware of the fact,” Harris says. “But you have this peculiar paradox where students complain about these big classes [but still take them].”

Harris cites Moral Reasoning 22, “Justice,” which enrolled over 900 students in the fall semester, as evidence.

“I’m guessing that no matter what we do, there are going to be courses with multiple hundred students—unless you just cap everything, in which case you’ll have a lot of angry students,” he said.

In lieu of increasing the number of smaller classes, a move some say will unreasonably tax the Faculty, the report will recommend that the new curriculum provide students with a variety of pedagogical experiences.

“[Class size is] subject specific, topic specific and theme specific,” Bhabha says. “I think the nature of the class should reflect the nature of the particular subject or theme that is being taught, so it should reflect the intellectual and scholarly content.”

Bhabha says survey courses are better suited to a larger lecture class, while more focused classes are more effective in a smaller setting.

“I would say quite categorically that if somebody gets most of their teaching through large classes where there is limited interaction, then that could be a problem,” he says.

Bhabha says that one solution may be the possibility of small seminar classes that act as satellites to larger lecture classes.

Biology concentrator Erica L. Mitchell ’05 says class size is not an essential factor in her course choices.

“As long as there is the section with the TF, I find no problem with the large lecture classes,” she says. “I would actually prefer the large lecture classes if it means they will be taped [and put on the internet] and as long as you can always ask questions in section if you need.”

Instead of focusing on class size, some professors look towards the ongoing expansion of the Faculty as a better alternative.

Kirby has repeatedly expressed his goal of increasing the size of the Faculty from its current 650 professors to 700.

Matory says that professors are overburdened, and the Faculty’s expansion would more evenly distribute some of their responsibilities, while also increasing the resources available to students.

Matory says he doubted a reduction in class size would have that same effect, and says it would instead be likely to increase professors’ workload.

“It’s a little bit easier for me [to teach a large lecture course] because I have more TFs to do the grading and explaining again to students and that sort of thing. I just get up there and talk for two hours a week,” he says. “But when the class is small, you end up narrating less and engaging in less monologue, but you have to be prepared for a lot more dialogue.”

He adds that though smaller classes are more difficult to teach, they may be desirable because smaller-group interaction is “better for everybody involved.”

OUT OF THEIR HANDS

Concentration choice, class and faculty size, interdisciplinary work and promotion of international experience are only a fraction of the ideas that have been discussed in the curricular review meetings this year.

The official recommendations will undoubtedly touch upon numerous facets of the education—perhaps posing suggestions few students and professors had ever considered.

But Harris also says that while the review is poised to significantly change the way students learn at Harvard, the recommendations can only do so much.

He says the changes must be realized by the students who do the learning, not the faculty currently setting the agenda.

“I think the recommendation will be to shift the culture, to make more opportunities [for intellectual exploration], but in the end students are going to be a very, very active group in deciding how much things actually change,” he says. “Their actual behavior is going to determine how much things generally change.”

Harris illustrates this point by saying that if the proposal for a concentration choice in sophomore year becomes policy, students must use their free semesters wisely.

“If students resist the opportunity to explore, if they use their electives in their concentration, as some might, so be it.”

—Staff writer Joshua D. Gottlieb can be reached at jdgottl@fas.harvard.edu.

—Staff writer William C. Marra can be reached at wmarra@fas.harvard.edu.