SAS profs vote in support of Gen Req plan

An amendment to the plan will make officials look more closely at the new requirement. Thirty-three faculty members voted yesterday in favor of the Committee on Undergraduate Education's proposal to test a revision of the existing curriculum of the College of Arts and Sciences -- including an experimental overhaul of the General Requirement -- under the condition that some specific revisions to the plan be made by December. Approximately 65 professors in the School of Arts and Sciences attended yesterday's weekly meeting, but only 44 faculty members voted, with 11 voting against the implementation of the proposal and several others leaving the meeting before the vote occurred. Political Science Professor Will Harris proposed an amendment suggesting that CUE re-examine the specific content of the four required courses that could be offered under the pilot curriculum. In his proposal, Harris said CUE needs to ensure the four proposed course categories offer as much diverse material as does the current General Requirement, which includes 10 courses. Although yesterday's vote does not ensure that the pilot curriculum will be implemented exactly as it now stands, it does represent a major step forward for the 18-member CUE, which created the proposal. College administrators said they were very pleased with the results, noting that the vote was anything but a foregone conclusion. "I made a decision that I would walk in the faculty meeting and let them decide," College Dean Richard Beeman said. "I had no idea what was going to happen." Beeman added that he was "delighted" that the majority of faculty members in attendance were receptive to CUE's proposal and he acknowledged that dissension in the faculty ranks is inevitable, even necessary, at such a meeting. "The faculty wants, appropriately, to continue to say that this is our curriculum," Beeman said. And SAS Dean Samuel Preston said he "didn't really know what to expect. It was hard to know what the outcome would be." The most striking aspect of the proposal is the recommendation that 200 students -- beginning in the fall of 2000 -- be exempted from fulfilling the College's existing General Requirement. Instead, randomly selected members of the Class of 2004 who express interest in participating will participate in a "pilot curriculum" requiring them to take one course in each of four specified categories, one per semester during their freshman and sophomore years. The proposed categories -- which are tentatively titled "Freedom, Equality and Community," "Science, Culture and Society," "Earth, Space and Life" and "Imagination, Representation and Reality" -- are broad-based and interdisciplinary in nature, though the actual course content will be further considered. Sociology Professor Ivar Berg, who spoke in favor of the proposal and helped design the current General Requirement in 1987, said he thinks the faculty is "on the right path" with the proposal, adding that the curriculum is "due for change." But Biology Professor Eric Weinberg, one of the more outspoken opponents of the new curriculum, explained that he is "not convinced that any of these courses will be any better than the good, discipline-based courses that we have now [in the General Requirement]." Harris also said he considered some of the course descriptions too vague to fully analyze them at this point but added that he was pleased both the amendment and the proposal passed. "Since we don't have great detail at this point? it seemed appropriate for us to say that we wanted to look at the proposal again after it had been developed," Harris said. Preston called Harris' suggestion "perfectly sensible," and Beeman agreed, claiming that he "leapt to his feet to embrace [the amendment]." Student Committee on Undergraduate Education Chairperson Aaron Fidler, a Wharton junior, said Harris' suggestion was a critical part of the meeting, encouraging "a lot of people who were somewhat iffy" to side with the proposal.

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