Draft Gen Ed Legislation Released

The Faculty of Arts and Sciences took another step toward abolishing the Core Curriculum yesterday, releasing a draft of legislation that calls for the committee that administers the Core to be dissolved when the next academic year concludes.

Passage of the legislation, which could occur as early as the May 1 Faculty meeting, would set in motion a process to create a new family of courses based on the real-world philosophy of general education that was put forward in February by a group of students and professors.

The legislation largely mirrors February’s Report of the Task Force on General Education, proposing the creation of a standing committee for the next academic year to draft a detailed plan on how to implement the new curriculum of eight required course categories. It would go into effect no sooner than the 2008-2009 academic year.

The legislation does not, however, mention a second committee called for in the February report that would “develop an initiative in activity-based learning.” It is unclear why the legislation makes no note of the activity-based learning initiative, and the professors who wrote the legislation could not be reached late yesterday.

“I think students would really benefit from an activity-based learning component, so I hope that the faculty will still consider it in future legislation,” Undergraduate Council President Ryan A. Petersen ’08, a member of the task force that authored the February report, said in an interview yesterday evening.

The legislation, which was e-mailed to professors yesterday morning and obtained by The Crimson last night, was drafted by three senior Faculty members distinct from the nine-person Task Force on General Education. The authors of the legislation were Weary Professor of German and Comparative Literature Judith L. Ryan, Professor of History Peter E. Gordon, and Emery Professor of Chemistry Eric N. Jacobsen.

The legislation was not intended to alter the suggestions of the original proposal, Ryan said in an interview last month. Instead the committee was charged with “translating” it into a form to be voted on by the full Faculty.

The next Faculty meeting, on April 10, will not see a final vote on the legislation, Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles said in an interview last week. Instead, professors will discuss and likely propose changes to the bill.

“I imagine people will have amendments—I don’t know who but it would be rather rare if there weren’t,” 300th Anniversary University Professor Laurel Thatcher Ulrich said last night. Ulrich, a member of the Docket Committee that oversees the agenda at Faculty meetings, said the legislation is the main item on the agenda for April 10.

A final vote could come at the remaining two regular meetings of the year, on May 1 and May 15.

Questions also remain about the timetable for implementation. While the legislation calls for the Standing Committee on the Core Program to be abolished and replaced by the Standing Committee on General Education in the 2008-2009 academic year, it does not say when the Core Curriculum itself should cease to exist.

“I should be nervous if the timetable becomes too ambitious. We do not want this to result in, as it were, mandated failure,” Knowles said.

According to the proposed legislation, the administrative structure of the new general education program would be different from the Core. In particular, the program’s director would be a senior member of the Faculty—not an administrator, as is the case with the Core.

The eight categories of required courses outlined in the legislation are identical to those in the February report. They are Aesthetic and Interpretive Understanding, Culture and Belief, Empirical Reasoning, Ethical Reasoning, Science of Living Systems, Science of the Physical Universe, Societies of the World, and the United States and the World.

The legislation emphasizes the real-world philosophy for a general education that was set out in the February report. The legislation says that students in general education courses should “strive to apply the basic concepts and principles to the solution of concrete problems, the accomplishment of specific tasks, and the creation of actual objects and out-of-classroom experiences”—a passage that appears, in nearly identical form, in the February report.

—Johannah S. Cornblatt, Samuel P. Jacobs, Daniel J. T. Schuker, and Anton S. Troianovski contributed to the reporting of this story.
—Staff writer Alexandra Hiatt can be reached at ahiatt@fas.harvard.edu.