More Departmental Alternatives Approved for Core

As the new General Education program slowly renders the Core Curriculum obsolete, professors are approving a greater variety of departmental courses for Core credit.

The Gen Ed program will be fully implemented in fall 2009 and will be required for incoming freshmen in the Class of 2013.

Seminars and foreign literature classes are among the 44 department alternates that have been approved since this year’s course catalog was printed in August.

Students who have submitted course petitions in recent months say that they have had a good experience with the Core subcommittees.

“It seems they’ve become very flexible,” said Jesse M. Kaplan ’09, a History and Science concentrator in Leverett House. “It was not a very difficult process as long as you’re sort of prepared ahead of time.”

Kaplan’s petition to receive Literature and Arts B credit for pro-seminar History of Art and Architecture 120n: “Art of the Timurids in Greater Iran and Central Asia” was approved earlier this fall. The final grade for the course is based on class participation, a presentation, and a final paper.

In past years, all classes approved for Core credit were required to have midterm and final exams. The requirements for Core credit were loosened in the 2006-2007 academic year, allowing for a broader array of classes to count.

Paul T. Mumma ’09, a Classics concentrator in Eliot House who successfullly petitioned to get Literature and Arts B credit for Classical Archaeology 131: “Introduction to Greek Art and Archaeology,” had a similarly positive experience.

“They were friendly and seemed optimistic about it counting,” Mumma said. “It made my life easier, and it meant that I could take a very good class for a Core.”

But despite loosened requirements for Core credit, submitting course petitions remains up to student initiative.

“There’s no way we can go through the online syllabi course by course in the first week of term,” said Director of the Core Program Susan W. Lewis.

Subcommittee chairs maintain that their standards have not grown too lax.

“I don’t think we’re becoming more lenient,” said W. James Simpson, chair of the Literature and Arts subcommittee. “We are just looking at courses that come our way, and we judge them according to the criteria of Literature and Arts A, B, and C.”

While the Literature and Arts subcommittee has approved the vast majority of petitions—23 since August—Simpson said they have rejected three or four.

“We are interpreting the guidelines in a liberal or flexible spirit, I believe,” wrote Andrew D. Gordon ’74, chair of the Historical Study committee, in an e-mail from Japan. “But still, it is not the case that every course which treats a subject from the past, or which is labeled a ‘history’ course, fits the guidelines even when interpreted flexibly.”

While the humanities categories have seen an influx of petitions and course approvals, neither Science A nor Science B have approved any department alternates. Quantitative Reasoning received one petition—Applied Mathematics 21b—which the subcommittee approved over e-mail within two days.

Since the Core Standing Committee was dissolved on July 1, the Core subcommittees fall under the Gen Ed committee but approve classes internally, Lewis said.

100 Core courses are being offered this academic year, down from 113 last year.

—Staff writer Bonnie J. Kavoussi can be reached at kavoussi@fas.harvard.edu.