Dean seeks College reform

Richard Beeman spent the summer assessing his school's future plans. After spending the summer conducting an in-depth survey on the quality of undergraduate education in the College Of Arts and Sciences, College Dean Richard Beeman's verdict is in: Penn's biggest undergraduate school is doing better than ever but still has a long ways to go. "Things have never been better by any of the standard indices," said Beeman, who took over as dean in January. "The talents of our entering students are getting better and better." Despite the College's overall progress, Beeman has compiled an informal report listing numerous areas for improvement. Among Beeman's goals: Courses aimed at better helping freshman acclimate to Penn; a possible speech requirement; more opportunities for undergraduate research; revamping the General Requirement and offering better career planning for liberal arts graduates. Beeman would like to increase the number of freshman seminars next fall by 35 percent. He hopes to have enough of the classes for every student to take at least one the year after that. The small slate of current offerings makes it impossible for all freshmen to take the classes. According to Beeman, freshman seminars are essential to an undergraduate's education. "The essence of what a learning experience is about is putting bright students in contact with distinguished faculty," he said. In keeping with the focus on introductory programming, Beeman's report stressed the need for the implementation of pre-college distributive learning programs. He hopes to expand on a pilot program administered by English Professor Al Filreis and Classical Studies Professor Jim O'Donnell this past summer in which 30 pre-frosh took a distance learning course about life at Penn. "I am committed to expanding that experiment considerably," Beeman said. "Next year we hope to reach as many as 200 to 300 incoming freshmen before they arrive." This plan to expand the program sits well with the professors involved in the pilot program as well as the students. "I think it's a great idea that the program is being expanded," Filreis said. "The students loved it, and Jim [O'Donnell] and I thought [the program] was great." And assuming the program is a success next year, Beeman hopes to offer an academic course for credit that would teach students explaining what a liberal arts education really is and how they could best take advantage of it. The course would most likely be called "Penn 101." Teaching students public and extemporaneous speaking skills is the second area targeted by Beeman's report. A Speaking Across the University requirement is currently in the brainstorming stages, but is unlikely to be implemented in the near future, he said. The University's first SATU class will be taught next semester. The desire for undergraduates to become more involved in conducting research with faculty members is another area singled out in Beeman's report. Improving undergraduate research was also a major goal of Beeman's predecessor as dean, Psychology Professor Robert Rescorla. "One of the reasons a student might choose Penn is that we have a distinguished research faculty," Beeman said. "We have to be able to link every undergraduate with a faculty member to guide them in research if they do desire." Pilot programs aimed at this goal have already been implemented in five departments: History, Psychology, Sociology, History of Art and Anthropology. In addition, certain University departments have already made research a requirement for undergraduate majors. "For the last two or three years, we've had a research requirement and this has been tremendously effective," Psychology Department Chairperson Robert Seyfarth said. Plans for revamping the General Requirement are also contained in the College report. An 11th requirement in Quantitative Analysis was just added to the General Requirement this year. "Preliminary investigations have found that the General Requirement does not, in the present state, represent a coherent attempt in defining what a general education is," Beeman said. "It's time for another look at what we think are the essential components of the General Requirement." College administrators are currently discussing a plan to exempt a portion of the freshman class of 2002 from the General Requirement and have them follow an an alternative set of requirements instead, he said. Lastly, Beeman's evaluation calls for improving the career advising provided to undergraduates pursuing a liberal-arts education who do not want to find a job in business. "We need ask them what their educational goals are at every stage of their [undergraduate] career so that students are more self-conscious themselves of the connection between education and vocation," he said. Despite the fact that Beeman has seen a steady improvement in the education provided by College over the past few years, the need for the changes targeted in his report stem from the many changes in the outside world. "This is absolutely no time for complacency. We've got to make sure our curriculum reflects the changes going on in the world around us." he said. Three agents, in particular, have spurred interest over improving various aspects of undergraduate education in the College. The information revolution, for one, is changing the way students engage in the learning process. "The model of a professor standing on a podium dispensing knowledge to a student audience is changing in an age where information is so readily available to bright students," Beeman said. "We've got to formulate strategies to create more interactive learning strategies." In addition, the knowledge base is changing dramatically. The content of a liberal-arts education in the 21st century is expected to be different from a comparable education offered 20 years ago. Third, the nation's best institutions are all actively seeking to improve the quality of their undergraduate programs, making them more responsive to the changing times. "None of our competitors are being complacent," Beeman said. "If we want to stay where we are -- not to mention move up -- we have to expend some faculty effort and ingenuity in doing what we all do better. School of Arts and Sciences Dean Samuel Preston, Beeman's immediate supervisor, described his report as "thoughtful and imaginative." "It provides an outstanding basis for planning educational initiatives in the College," Preston said.