Dean of Faculty James Wright told a committee of department chairs yesterday that the College now has sufficient funds to implement a broad new curriculum and that the changes will be in place for the Class of 1998.
The Committee of Chairs, which meets once a term and is headed by College President James Freedman, also passed a recommendation to terminate the College's Budapest foreign study program and briefly discussed several committee reports dealing with admissions, financial aid and the College's honor principle before adjourning into a closed-door executive session.
Although the faculty adopted the new degree requirements in April 1992, the plan's implementation was contingent on the Dean of Faculty's affirmation that the College had enough money to finance the changes.
Wright said an $8 million donation last term by the wife of the late Harvey Hood '18 provided the College with sufficient funds for the new curriculum, which Wright estimated will cost the College an additional $2.4 million a year.
"I'm very pleased to see us at this point," Wright said. "It will be very exciting for the Class of 1998."
The College had hoped to implement the new curriculum for the Class of 1997, but was forced to postpone the changes last April because the endowment portion of the $425 million Will to Excel Capital Campaign was not growing fast enough to accommodate the increased costs.
"I was eager to implement it then, but it certainly is not a time for us to be taking risks," Wright said. "I would certify that the resources are available for us to implement the new degree requirement and we will do that with the Class of 1998."
The College could not guarantee the implementation of the new curriculum until it was sure it would be able to bear its costs, he said.
Much of the additional expenses for the curriculum stem from the need to hire 16 more tenure-track professors and develop new courses, Wright said.
Wright said an extensive study predicted that incremental costs for the new curriculum will be greater than incremental revenue for several years in the late 1990s but that a reserve fund will be able to cover the deficit.
"We've certified that the money is here and it will not draw any money out of the current operating budget," Wright said. "I think its time to implement the new degree requirement and I feel comfortable saying it."
Several department chairs questioned which departments would get new faculty members.
"Not many times does an institution have an opportunity to think about expanding the faculty," Wright said. "It's time for all of us to think about how we can enrich our faculty and our offerings."
This will be the College's first overhaul of the curriculum in more than 70 years.
The new curriculum will change the College's distributive requirement, create a more structured education and require students to complete a "culminating experience," such as a thesis, in their major.
Students will also be required to take an interdisciplinary course that analyzes subject matter from a variety of different viewpoints plus take 10 distributive courses in narrowly defined fields like technology, literature, arts and a laboratory science.
With almost no discussion, the Committee yesterday also unanimously approved the termination of the College's exchange program with the Budapest University of Economic Sciences.
The program, which is not sponsored by any department, allowed students to spend a term in Hungary studying history, government and economics. Seventeen students went to Budapest last term.
Last fall, the co-chairs of the Budapest program recommended that the College cancel the program because of complications arising from the lack of a departmental base and difficulties finding professors to lead the exchange.
History Department Chair Gene Garthwaite, who said he supported the program's cancellation, said if the History department had an Eastern European specialist they would not have canceled the program.
The Committee also discussed several College reports at yesterday's meeting.
Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid Karl Furstenberg answered questions about a report by the Committee on Admissions and Financial Aid.
The discussion focused on a recommendation to cut financial aid for international students and recommendations to increase diversity but did the Committee did not take any action regarding these issues.
The Committee also discussed the possibility of examining the academic honor code because of a perceived increase in cheating at the College.
