It will be two or three more years before the College can fully assess the new curriculum and in the meantime students and faculty are continuing to adjust to the College's new distributive requirements -- two years after their implementation.
With 10 specific distributive requirements, the new curriculum, which began with the Class of 1998, asks students to take a broader range of classes than did the previous requirements.
Evaluating the curriculum
Dean of the Faculty James Wright said the new curriculum is still a work in progress.
"It's still a little early to assess what changes need to be made," Wright said. "Everything seems to be moving along well, but I think we have to wait until after the '98s and '99s graduate until we can fully assess it."
Wright said once those classes graduate, he intends to do a survey of students and speak to faculty to see what aspects of the curriculum need to be modified.
Jonathan Crewe, head of the Committee on Instruction, wrote in an e-mail message that the COI "has acceded to Dean Wright's request that the new curriculum be allowed to run through one full student cycle before it undertakes any extensive review or makes significant changes."
Crewe wrote that various questions have arisen, mostly having to do with the appropriateness of current World Culture distributive categories to specific classes, and will be considered as part of a full review.
Dean of First-Year Students Peter Goldsmith said he hopes students will assess the curriculum in the proper context.
"I hope that as students think of the new curriculum, they also think of the impulses behind it," Goldsmith said. "We're not trying to be more controlling, but to help the students acquire knowledge to succeed in rapidly changing world."
Impact on departments
The new curriculum has exerted a significant influence upon the College's departments -- from increasing course enrollments to encouraging new teaching methods.
Dean of the Social Sciences George Wolford said some departments are experiencing increased course enrollments.
He said the geography department, in particular, has seen large increases in enrollments, because many of its courses fulfill lab and technology requirements.
"The social sciences have always been faced with too high enrollments for a long time," he said. "There's no evidence that overall enrollments have increased as a whole, but I have heard that some departments, like geography, are concerned if they can accommodate the huge enrollments in their lab courses."
Wolford said the College was compelled to add several new faculty positions throughout the three divisions.
"Some went to the social sciences -- history, anthropology and psychology in particular," he said. "They received new positions based at least partly on the new curriculum."
Wright said before the curriculum was implemented the College assured the faculty it would make certain it had the incremental resources for any incremental costs.
"The lab requirement requires more resources, as does the interdisciplinary requirement because we have to pay two professors," he said. "We also needed to make sure we had enough staff to facilitate the culminating experience."
Wright said the new curriculum was not initiated with the Class of 1997 because the College was not sure at that time whether the necessary resources would be available.
The College added 15 to 16 tenure-track positions to the faculty to accommodate the new curriculum, Wright said.
Dean of the Humanities Mary Jean Green wrote in an e-mail message "the major effect of the new curriculum on the humanities seems to be the opportunity for faculty to do interdisciplinary teaching."
Green wrote that a number of humanities faculty are involved in the new College courses, and several departments and programs -- Comparative Literature, Russian and Women's Studies -- have developed new team-taught courses that qualify for interdisciplinary credit.
"In general, the interdisciplinary courses seem to be quite popular," Green wrote.
Green wrote that because many humanities departments have classified their courses in several different categories, the new curriculum requirements may serve to encourage departments to diversify their course offerings.
Green wrote, "I have heard no complaints about increased class sizes, nor have I heard complaints about reduced enrollments."
Origins of the new curriculum
The new curriculum grew out of the College's efforts to adapt to its changing curriculum and provide students with more direction.
"We wanted a curriculum that gave students a little more guidance," Dean of Faculty James Wright said. "There's still a fair amount of flexibility."
Wright said the College established a committee in 1990 to review the curriculum. The committee presented a set of recommendations the next year.
Wright said he met with faculty members and student before the committee's recommendations were approved by a set of faculty votes in 1991 and 1992.
"By the time the proposals came in for a vote, most of the students were supportive of the changes, and the faculty were as well," Wright said.
The old curriculum required students to take four classes in the humanities, social sciences and sciences.
The new curriculum requires students to take 10 distributive courses -- one in the arts, one in literature, one in philosophical or historical analysis or religion, one in international or comparative study, two in social analysis, one in quantitative and deductive sciences, two in the natural sciences and one in technology or applied science.
The new curriculum also includes a world culture requirement which requires students to take one course in each of three areas of culture: European, North American and non-Western. Students are also required to take an interdisciplinary class and to have a "culminating experience."
"At the time that the old curriculum was established, the curriculum was smaller, and it made more sense," Wright said. "There were only 15 courses or so to choose from."
Goldsmith said the previous curriculum enabled students to fulfill the social science requirements by taking courses in only one area.
"In the new curriculum, we have much more assurance that students will have more breadth," he said.
But some students said they are not concerned with widening the breadth of education they receive.
Lon Setnik '98 said he believes one of elements of a good education is students being able to select the classes they want to take.
"If you want to broaden yourself and your classes you will," hesaid.
Others said the requirements force students to take courses they dislike.
"I'm not a very math or science oriented person, and I know that inevitably I'm going to have to take a course I'm not going to like," Ebony Jones '98 said.
But some students said they do not mind the the requirements.
"It's good to be exposed to different fields of study," Wes Shelley '99 said.
Interdisciplinary requirement
Chair of the College Course Steering Committee Barry Scherr wrote in an e-mail message that the interdisciplinary requirement serves several purposes.
Interdisciplinary courses expose students to emerging fields of study and allow professors to explore topics which normally would not fit into any of the traditional departments at Dartmouth, Scherr wrote.
Scherr wrote that during the 1994-1995 academic year there were 15 courses that filled the requirement and in the 1995-1996 academic year there were 27 courses over the same three terms.
"This year the number will be slightly higher than last," Scherr wrote. "We expect that the number of available courses will stabilize at about 30 per year."
But some students say the current offerings are insufficient.
"I do not think that the interdisciplinary requirement has a broad enough range of course in terms of those that fulfill it," Shelley said. "I'd like to see more choices. It would make it so much easier to find a class you like and taking it would be more fun."
Scherr wrote that many of the interdisciplinary courses do have limits, and several of last spring's courses were filled to capacity. But he added that the steering committee has not received many complaints about students being turned away.
Out of the 1011 active students in the Class of 1998, 545 have satisfied the interdisciplinary requirement, and 324 out of 1014 active students in the Class of 1999 have satisfied the requirement.
Culminating Experience
Another feature of the new curriculum is the culminating experience, which was designed to increase students' research opportunities.
"We wanted to increase the students' interest in independent and small group work," Wright said. "We decided it was a major opportunity for students to do that within their majors."
Wolford said culminating-type experiences already existed within many of the social science departments, including history, economics and geography.
Setnik said some major classes such as seminars offered within the departments can be used as a way around the culminating experience.
Jones said she thinks the culminating experience is a good idea.
"It is your senior year and you're supposed to be getting ready to leave and wrap things up, and you've been prepared to do this culminating experience," she said. "You finally get a chance to pursue what you want to do, and essentially have total reign over it."
