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Dartmouth and other Ivy League schools have a long tradition of using general education requirements to ground students in the liberal arts tradition.
Recent decisions by the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard University to institute major revisions of their general education requirements put in perspective the process by which Dartmouth evaluates its own set of distribution requirements.
The College aims to provide students with a well rounded educational experience that exposes them to many different methods of social analysis through a set of broad requirements, according to Associate Dean Lindsay Whaley, former chairman of the Committee on Instruction.
The College institutes major changes in the requirements when it believes that there might be a better way to fulfill these goals, Whaley said.
"You want to make sure that you are giving your student body guidance in terms of course selections that maximize the benefits of a liberal arts education," Whaley said.
The current set of requirements, first effective for the class of 1998, were instituted in 1994.
Significant changes usually occur only after a formal review generally initiated by the dean of the faculty or the president of the College.
There have been two such reviews of the current system, Whaley said.
Dartmouth might also reexamine its requirements when another institution pioneers a new system, Whaley said.
"Anytime schools that we recognize as competent try innovative approaches to education, we want to see why are they doing it, and how is that working, and is there something that we could learn from their efforts," Whaley said.
Minor modifications are made to the requirements every few years based on proposals submitted to the Committee on Instruction, according to Robert Drysdale, the committee's current chairman.
These proposals originate from various sources, including Student Assembly, professors, or members of the committee itself.
