The College's Committee On Instruction voted last Thursday to recommend discontinuing a program that allows undergraduates to spend their senior year at the Amos Tuck School of Business Administration or the Dartmouth Medical School.
Lack of student interest and curriculum changes prompted the recommendation, which will be made to the entire faculty at its meeting this spring. If accepted, the program will be discontinued beginning with the Class of 1998.
Students currently enrolled in the College will not be affected by the decision. There are only two seniors in the program this year.
The professional programs allow seniors who have been accepted by the Medical School or the Tuck School during their junior year and have completed all their graduation requirements except their major to count graduate courses toward their Bachelor's degree.
"The main reason is that almost nobody has been doing these programs in recent years," Registrar Thomas Bickel, a member of the COI, said.
"It doesn't seem to be a big issue in planning an undergraduate program," Gary Johnson, an earth sciences professor and chair of COI, said.
Johnson said the decision to suggest the termination of the program was a logical result of the new curriculum changes, which should be implemented with the Class of 1998.
He said the new curriculum's requirement that all seniors complete a culminating experience project, like a thesis, in their major area makes the professional program "somewhat archaic."
Johnson said the culminating experience offers a much wider range of options and opportunities for seniors during their final year at the College.
The professional programs, which do not require students to complete their major, is against the spirit of the curriculum changes, Johnson said.
"I would not look at [the termination of the professional programs] as an opportunity lost," he said.
Bickel said the only other program that does not require seniors to finish their major is the Senior Fellows program, but he said that is almost a culminating experience in itself.
The only two students in the professional program right now are enrolled in the Tuck School. Only one student applied to the Medical School as a junior last year.
Susan Malin, director of admissions for the Medical School, said the program is basically obsolete because of the difficulty of being admitted to the Medical School as a junior.
Malin said the Medical School receives approximately 6,400 applications for 84 spots, and that seniors have a much better chance than those applying as juniors.
