Gen Ed Committee To Unveil Preliminary Report This Month; Final Report To Follow

The committee charged with replacing the Core Curriculum with a new plan of general education hopes to unveil its preliminary proposals before the end of the month, one of the committee’s co-chairs said Friday.

But the soon-to-be-released General Education proposals will not be “set in stone,” co-chair and Bass Professor of English and American Literature and Language Louis Menand added. The six-member committee intends to consult extensively with faculty members before formally presenting the proposals to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

Menand said the committee hopes to present its revised proposals at the November Faculty meeting, but noted, “I think everybody’s aware that there’s no sense in rushing things.”

The committee has also invited two students to join the committee and provide input into the proposals that the six faculty members have drafted, Menand said.

Interim President Derek C. Bok and Interim Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles have both said that they hope to finish the four-year-old review of undergraduate education before their terms expire at the end of the academic year. Passing the General Education proposals would be the main step toward achieving that goal.

“The curricular review is basically over except for this piece, the gen ed piece,” Menand said. “I think people feel this is the centerpiece around which everything has to fit.”

The Faculty voted last spring to push back the concentration choice deadline to sophomore year and to allow undergraduates to declare secondary fields, similar to minors. Previous General Education proposals, however, have been sent back to the drawing board after meeting tepid receptions from the Faculty.

The six faculty members on the committee, appointed by former Dean of the Faculty William C. Kirby in May, have spent the summer working out the upcoming report. Besides Menand, the committee’s members include Professor of Philosophy and committee co-chair Alison Simmons, Lindsley Professor of Psychology Stephen M. Kosslyn, Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology David R. Liu ’94, Ford Professor of Human Evolution David Pilbeam, and Professor of Sociology Mary C. Waters.