Rodin unveils new strategy fr education

Implementation date set for '97 University President Judith Rodin and Provost Stanley Chodorow yesterday announced their general plans to revamp undergraduate education at the University. The proposal included broad and sweeping changes to the University's current system of undergraduate education. The new plans will be in place by 1997, affecting members of the Class of 2001 in their freshman year. Although Rodin had no final price tag on her proposals, she did announce that the University is a beneficiary of an outside trust of $8 million by John Merriam, a class of 1931 Wharton graduate. Out of that money, $1 million is going to be used immediately on current undergraduates in testing policies and models. The proposal includes creating connections between curriculum and academic issues, research, university life and the residences. Rodin said the curriculum will undergo changes, but she hopes to "improve the process of learning" by making undergraduate life a "more seamless experience." Rodin outlined the proposal, beginning with her hope to make the University "institutionally distinctive." She said the plans will reflect the University's diversity, urban location, values, research strengths and academic commitments. "Penn is an unusual place in what it is able to provide," she said. Rodin said the new undergraduate education proposal should be faculty-centered and intellectually engaging as well. The initiative also includes changes in the role of research and the residences in undergraduate education. "Penn's faculty is a research faculty," Rodin said, explaining that students should have direct access to research opportunities, and undergraduate teaching should better reflect the ideas and information discovered through the faculty's research. Although no specific program for the integration of undergraduate education and residences has been developed, Rodin said the academic community will be "supported" by Residential Living and its facilities in "different and new ways." "We intend for this to be a residentially integrated program," Rodin said. "It has to define academic communities of students." Rodin also said the plan will include opportunities for "fluid interaction across a wide variety of disciplines," to include all University resources and to go beyond the University. "It should prepare students to live in a diverse community at Penn and beyond," Rodin said in a statement, emphasizing education on a global, international level. Rodin plans to send her ideas to the Provost's Council on Undergraduate Education, the chairperson of the Faculty Senate Committee on Students and Educational Policy, a trustee representative, a student representative from each school and a faculty member from a professional school that does not have an undergraduate program. Rodin said a committee representative of the entire University community will develop a model for an undergraduate education based on her ideas, and will design programs needed to implement the model. Rodin said the University has been "extraordinarily successful in many of our activities?and [in] the strength and leadership that the schools have shown." But Rodin added that she has heard "this widely characterized as an institution that may not yet provide the fullest range of experiences for its undergraduate population." "We think that Penn can even be better," she said. "This is the moment in which we really need to think about the 21st century and the Penn undergraduate experience in the 21st century." "We intend to use some of those funds for testing innovations," she said. "We want our current undergraduates to benefit from the exchanges and thinking as [the plan] is developing." Rodin said the final tally depends on the "breadth of the program." "Ultimately it will be enormous," she said, adding that she believed new residences would most likely be needed to fulfill the residential component of the program. Undergraduate deans, administrators and students said they were excited and impressed by Rodin's bold initiatives. "I think it is terrific," said Wharton Dean Thomas Gerrity. "It will be good for the Wharton School and will allow us to march forward as a university." Faculty Senate Chairperson Barbara Lowery voiced similar sentiments, saying that the project "will engage faculty in the schools to work together." "It's a combination of the strengths we all have," she added. Student Committee on Undergraduate Education Chairperson Matthew Kratter said the president's initial charge is "very comprehensive and touched on just about all areas of innovative possibilities." "It is right along the lines that I would like to see," he said. "I don't foresee any problems." University spokesperson Barbara Beck said Rodin will also discuss her plans for undergraduate education during her inaugural address on Friday.