Faculty votes to test new College Gen Req

The pilot curriculum, which will be implemented on a trial basis, was overwhelmingly approved at yesterday's meeting. Taking the first step toward a dramatic redesign of undergraduate education at Penn, School of Arts and Sciences faculty yesterday voted overwhelmingly in favor of an experimental core curriculum program to be implemented this fall. The pilot program -- which will be tested on 200 students a year for the next five years -- will reduce the current General Requirement from 10 narrowly focused classes to four broader, interdisciplinary ones. After the test period, faculty will vote again on whether to institute the change for all College students. The major overhaul, the fruits of at least 14 months of plans and proposals, represents the first of its kind in at least a decade, and comes at the heels of liberal curricular reforms that are sweeping universities across the nation. SAS professors convened yesterday at one of the largest faculty meetings in years with 66 members in attendance, according to SAS Dean Samuel Preston. There are about 450 standing faculty members in the school. After approving an amendment -- proposed by Political Science Department Chairperson Ian Lustick -- stipulating more evaluation of the curriculum's impact on faculty, 54 faculty members supported the program, eight faculty members voted against it and four abstained. Before the amendment was passed, however, there was an intense and gripping discussion among several faculty members over implementing and expanding the experimental curriculum in the future, according to several faculty members present at the meeting. "Given the tenor of the discussion, I was thinking it could be a close vote," Preston said. Before approving the program, the 14-member Committee on Undergraduate Education -- which originally proposed the overhaul last April -- accepted Lustick's amendment. He suggested that over the next five years, CUE and appropriate faculty members evaluate not only the pilot program but also its impact on departments -- including graduate education, the quality of the major and freshman seminars. College of Arts and Sciences Dean Richard Beeman, who had fully endorsed the pilot proposal, bubbled over with enthusiasm after yesterday's vote. "I'm delighted and frankly relieved," he said, adding that development of the proposal spanned over the past 14 months. Beeman said that some faculty still have doubts about the experiment, citing a particular fear that the curriculum, once passed, would automatically become permanent and that four courses would not satisfy the aims of a general education. "I myself do not know whether four courses is enough," Beeman noted. "That's why it's an experiment." In September, more than 60 faculty member brainstormed course topics for the pilot curriculum. Courses will fall under four categories -- Structure and Value in Human Societies; Science, Culture and Society; Earth, Space and Life; and Imagination, Representation and Reality. Beeman also said SAS will provide money for departments that lose faculty members to the new courses. He added that the school will have to ultimately reconfigure its faculty should the pilot expand. "We've decided to mount two curricula at the same time," Beeman said. "There is an additional cost to the faculty." When the alternative curriculum was first debated at a faculty meeting last April, 33 SAS professors supported the idea of the pilot program, stipulating that CUE return this month with a more precise plan. This revised version of the plan was mailed to all SAS professors last month. CUE Chairperson Frank Warner was pleased with both yesterday's vote and the discussion leading up to it. "It was a good discussion," Warner said, adding that faculty members debated whether the pilot courses would be offered to non-pilot students and addressed the "electives" section of the curriculum. A few professors leaving yesterday's meeting said that some departments might have trouble participating in the new curriculum. "It becomes more difficult to implement when you are in small departments [with limited faculty]," a humanities professor said. Beeman said the pilot program will help smaller departments, allowing them to introduce their offerings to a large number of undergraduates. After the meeting, Beeman said he was eager to move forward, citing the need for a pilot curriculum director to help in selecting courses within the next few months. Students have long criticized the existing General Requirement for being too stringent, and those at yesterday's meeting called the vote a step in the right direction. Student Committee on Undergraduate Education member Hanny Hindi, also a student representative on CUE, said that while yesterday's discussion focused too much on the "politics" of departmental resources, discussions held throughout the past semester show a positive effort on behalf of the faculty to revise the College's requirements. "I am very optimistic about it," the College sophomore said.