Gen Ed Identity Still Emerging

Tariq A. Musa ’10 left three Core classes for his senior spring semester, hoping they would “vanish” if he waited long enough.

Though his requirement tally did diminish by one when he joined the 43 other seniors who chose to make the last-minute leap from the Core to the Program in General Education, Musa says the benefits of switching proved to be more than just quantitative.

“Gen Ed classes seem more fresh,” he says. “The emphasis is more on taking the time to learn this stuff and getting comfortable with it rather than learning for an exam.”

While the Core focused on “ways of knowing” and required final exams in all courses, Gen Ed strives to connect class work to life outside Harvard’s “ivied walls” and to encourage non-traditional, interdisciplinary learning, according to its website.

Although Musa says he perceived a difference between his Core and Gen Ed classes, he says he knows very little about the specific ideology behind the shift in required curriculum.

Because the Gen Ed office’s efforts this year to realize its ideals have tended to occur behind the scenes, it remains unclear whether the undergraduate community has a solid grasp of the practical and philosophical differences between Core and Gen Ed.

HANDS-ON PEDAGOGY

Although the majority of the Gen Ed office’s time over the past year has been spent reworking course titles, merging offices with the Core program, and tackling other logistics of the transition, the office has also tried to nurture a less tangible goal—supporting non-traditional modes of learning.

In keeping with this mission, the office has become an advocate for artistic and creative coursework, according to Administrative Director of the Program in General Education Stephanie H. Kenen.

In February, the office provided space and funding for an open house showcasing Science of the Physical Universe 20, “What is Life? From Quarks to Consciousness” projects, ranging from videos about mitosis to models of the Big Bang.

The office also financed art supplies and sponsored an exhibit for Culture and Belief 12, “For the Love of God and His Prophet: Religion, Literature, and the Arts in Muslim Culture” this month, in which students presented model mosques and creative calligraphic depictions of Allah’s name.

“We use a lot of movies, video clips, and a lot of interaction in class,” says Nur N. Ibrahim ’13, a student in the course. “I feel that that’s the way a class should be, because it helps develop your skills in terms of media and communication and discussion.”

East Asian Studies Professor Shigehisa Kuriyama ’77 worked to incorporate more media assignments into his class, Culture and Belief 11, “Medicine and the Body in East Asia and in Europe,” after it became a Gen Ed course. Each week, students in the course create imovies or podcasts about the reading rather than writing response papers.

Science of the Physical Universe 12, “Natural Disasters” Preceptor Jeff Standish says the Gen Ed office was “instrumental” in supplying financial support as the course’s professor and preceptors designed hands-on labs from scratch, including simulations of volcanoes, landslides, and tornadoes.

“Another goal of how we look at this course—and it’s sort of a goal that Gen Ed has—is to give students the experience of being a scientist—of thinking like a scientist, collecting data like a scientist, and trying to come up with some conclusions,” Standish says.

Statistics Professor Xiao-Li Meng says that his Empirical and Mathematical Reasoning 16, “Real Life Statistics: Your Chance at Happiness (Or Misery)” class, formerly Statistics 105, had always featured a series of speakers who connected the field to various real-world applications, like law or romance. But this year, the Gen Ed office sponsored all the speaker fees and publicized the talks widely, dramatically increasing the turnout for each event.

Associate Director of the Program in General Education Anne Marie E. Calareso says that the office has helped other courses plan trips to see American Repertory Theater performances, screen musicals, and invite performers—such as Salman Ahmad, a Pakistani rock musician—to classes.

“Word is starting to get out and faculty are coming to us with activities—things that they’ve always wanted to do or things they’ve done small scale in a department course,” Kenen says. “A lot of this never could have happened in the Core.”

MORE THAN A CHECKLIST

Next fall, the Gen Ed office wants to take its endeavors to the next level by sponsoring independent events, imbuing Gen Ed with a life beyond the course catalogue.

“We want Gen Ed to be a program and not just a list of requirements students check off as they finish,” Kenen says.

One of the office’s plans is to sponsor a “Versus” series in which two faculty members will discuss the same topic from different angles. The first installment—a debate between English Professor Louis Menand and Psychology Professor Steven Pinker regarding the place of religion in a liberal arts education—was originally planned for last week, but has been postponed until the fall due to scheduling issues.

Several Gen Ed Committee members’ passion for baseball inspired another tentative panel idea: eight faculty members—one from each Gen Ed category—will explain how they would teach a class about some aspect of baseball through the lenses of their respective fields.

Calareso says that a new student advisory group—the General Education Planning Committee—has met twice this semester to discuss what kinds of Gen Ed-sponsored events would be most interesting for students. Andrés Castro Samayoa ’10, a member of the committee, says he thinks the office “is very committed to listening to student perspectives and incorporating them as much as they can.”

But at this point, both Kenen and Calareso acknowledged that there is a major disconnect between the office’s efforts and student awareness of the Gen Ed mission.

“We’re working on how to communicate this new aspect of Gen Ed to students,” Kenen says. “It’s not just ‘how do we promote events?’ but ‘how do we shift how students think about this new part of the curriculum?’”

COMMON MISCONCEPTIONS

This spring, a paper on stem cell research by Paul E. Schied ’13 was awarded the Conant Prize by the Gen Ed office for its interdisciplinary nature and emphasis on real-world applications.

While his paper had clearly mastered the ideals of Gen Ed, Schied himself says he is unsure of the exact differences between Gen Ed and Core.

Even the chair of the Undergraduate Council Education Committee, Kwang Y. “Joseph” Kim ’12 says he is not completely certain about how the overarching philosophy of Gen Ed differed from that of the Core.

Peter Chen ’13, who serves on both the Committee on General Education and the Gen Ed Planning Committee, says that he feels the extent of most students’ understanding of the Gen Ed program is simply that it gives broader category names to what were narrower Core categories.

“I think people understand that there is a difference between Gen Ed and Core, but it doesn’t go beyond that really,” says Chen.

One of the main tasks the Gen Ed Planning Committee has been charged with is developing programs that will resonate with undergraduates and help expand student understanding of Gen Ed’s goals, something Chen says he thinks may be a “hard transition.”

The bottom line, it seems, is that while the switch to Gen Ed may soon be technically complete, the accompanying ideological shift is still a work in progress.

“This is a program that’s in the makes—they’re always working on it, revising it, trying to make it better,” Kim says. “Whatever we have right now, it’s only going to get better.”

—Staff writer Julie R. Barzilay can be reached at jbarzilay13@college.harvard.edu.