As Fall term draws near, the College is ironing out the kinks created by the its first major curriculum change in 40 years.
The administration, Committee on Instruction, faculty and various other groups are now in the final stages of planning for next year before the course guide and members of the Class of 1998 arrive.
The new curriculum requires students to take courses in 10 narrowly defined fields, including a multidisciplinary course, two lab sciences, a literature course, an arts course and a non-Western course. The students are also required to have a culminating experience, like a seminar or a thesis.
But its implementation was not as easy as the flick of a pen . New professors, new courses, more money and more teaching assistants are some of the many complications of the new curriculum.
Sweeping changes
From the top down, things will change with the new curriculum.
The sweeping changes will be reflected most in next year's Organization, Regulations and Courses guidebook. Two or three-letter codes will be listed next to courses to indicate what distributive requirements they satisfy, Registrar Thomas Bickel said.
The ORC will specify both the distributive requirement of courses for the old curriculum and the new curriculum, he said.
The complexity of the new curriculum has forced the College to create new courses to satisfy its requirements. The new courses will be open to all students once it is determined under which distributive division they lie.
Economics
In a letter to the faculty, Wright wrote that the cost of implementation would lead to "some deficit years in this area in 1996 through 1998, but in steady-state the revenue for the purpose of the new curriculum is projected to exceed the cost by nearly half-a-million dollars."
Wright said a reserve fund will be able to cover the initial deficit.
Wright added that a separate budget category for the curriculum will provide funds for recruitment of new faculty, a sabbatical reserve fund, departmental expenses, classroom renovations and an amortization fund to replace outgoing faculty.
The COI is also ready to approve and establish minors in various departments. The COI will make suggestions and adjustments to the curriculum before the new ORC goes to print, Johnson said.
Multidisciplinary courses
One of the major concerns regarding the implementation of the new curriculum is the multi-disciplinary requirement's added costs and the additional faculty that will be hired.
Johnson said the multi-disciplinary requirement will have a significant monetary impact since it requires hiring two more professors.
The COI would have to investigate whether a particular course could be designated as multidisciplinary, Johnson said. The COI and the Subcommittee on Priorities have established a five-member College Course Steering Committee to oversee the requirement and the courses.
Wright wrote in the letter that up to six new College Courses will be created.
A multidisciplinary course can be created by two or more professors from different departments who submit a proposal to the Dean of Faculty and the various committees, Anthropology Chair Deborah Nichols said.
Russian Professor Barry Scherr, the College Course Steering Committee chair, said the committee sent out a letter to the faculty urging professors to submit proposals for new College Courses for consideration by May 9.
"It is assumed that the full incremental impact of the multidisciplinary course will not be felt until 1996-97. We are aiming to have 24 such courses in place during that year," Wright wrote. "This will represent an increase of 10 or 12 courses, including six College Courses, from the current projection."
English Professor Thomas Luxon, who is involved with the Early Modern Studies University Seminar -- covering the cultural, political historical and intellectual changes from about 1450 to 1700 -- said it should not be necessary to have two professors teach one course for it to labeled multidisciplinary.
Luxon said the cost of hiring the additional faculty should encourage the College to look into the prospect of having one professor teach the course from two different approaches with an interdisciplinary slant.
Changes
The multidisciplanary courses are among a host of changes that must be made to accommodate the new curriculum.
Johnson said lab sciences will be expanded to cover both the natural sciences and the applied sciences.
Wright said a major grant from the Pew Foundation will assist the College in equipping undergraduate laboratories to handle the influx of students taking laboratory sciences to fulfill the requirement.
The College is also putting aside money to hire more graduate students to be teaching assistants.
"Right now, we have laboratory courses which could take more students, but there are also some which we've had to close," Biology Chair Edward Berger said.
Culminating experience
Johnson said the COI is approving culminating experience courses as the departments fine-tune their curricula.
But Johnson said the culminating experience requirement is currently not the most critical issue because the College has four years before the actual courses must be ready.
"We're still in the process of working out the details of the culminating experience. Some departments have them already. That'll be the goal the year after the next -- to get the [culminating experience classes] ready for when the '98s are picking their majors," Bickel said.
New positions
The creation of multi-disciplinary courses under the new curriculum requires the College to hire new professors to teach the them.
The culminating major activity will entail the further expense of expanding the tenure-track faculty, Wright wrote.
Johnson said the College's Board of Trustees and Wright will assist in hiring 10 to 15 "full-time equivalent" professors who will provide added flexibility to the faculty when the multidisciplinary courses are offered.
He said 16 positions will be added over three years beginning in 1995 under the College's plan.
Wright added that he and the Divisional Associate Deans have reviewed the departmental plans and will allocate the new positions for the culminating experience requirement.
He urged all department and program chairs to discuss their plans, especially the financial requirements, over the next few months.
Johnson said other changes within each department need not go before the general faculty, such as proposing new courses or minors, which would be reviewed by the COI.
Not set from beginning
From the get-go, the curriculum was not set.
Only a year after the College's Faculty of Arts and Sciences approved the most comprehensive overhaul of the curriculum in more than 40 years, Dean of Faculty James Wright estimated the new curriculum requirements would cost the College an additional $2.4 million a year.
The slow growth of the endowment section of the College's $425-million capital campaign forced a delay.
But an $8-million donation last fall by the wife of the late Harvey Hood '18 enabled the College to go ahead with the implementation.
