Residences central to U. reform plans

Chodorow unveils details Under the administration's new plans for undergraduate education, residences will be organized based on academic programs, Provost Stanley Chodorow said yesterday. "It creates what is essentially like a college house," he said. "The principle in which you assign or choose housing is an academic principle." Under the plan, which is to be implemented for the Class of 2001 in the fall of 1997, students living together will have something in common academically. The residences can then have programs and activities to reflect their similarities, Chodorow said. Despite the common bond that will hold students who live in a particular residence together, Chodorow said students will still find a variety of peers in their building. "You want your program to bring students together of different fields and different schools," he said, adding that a possibility for the shared characteristic of residences is common core courses. Chodorow said he wanted to create a system where students in a residence are not completely random but are also not locked into a very specific field. One issue that arises from these changes is the role of the current college houses, such as the W.E.B. DuBois College House and the Modern Language House. The latter, the provost said, is academically related and "quite successful." "We probably should maintain some of that," he added. DuBois is a "more specialized case," that Chodorow said will need to be considered within the new system's goals. Chodorow said the goal of the University should be "the integration of society, not its segregation," but added that there are many ways to reach that integration. "DuBois may be an effective one," he said. The issue, he added, is complicated for psychological, social and cultural reasons. Chodorow also brought up the idea of bringing various groups together in an academic setting, such as with course related group projects. The provost also cited two main features of the undergraduate education plan that will be "institutionally distinctive." One is the involvement of the faculty and resources of the professional schools to create cross-disciplinary programs, an idea which Chodorow said is "damn near unique." The other is an increase in community action and volunteerism, making the student involvement with the Philadelphia community "larger in scale and variety." Chodorow said the Provost's Committee on Undergraduate Education and others who will be working on the plan will discuss the ideas in greater detail in order to create a model for the Penn Education of the 21st Century plan. That model will then be considered by a wider variety of University administrators, faculty, staff and students. "Whoever is traditionally involved will continue to be involved," Chodorow said.