Seven courses for new Gen Req

CUE will vote on the new interdisciplinary courses in February. The Committee on Undergraduate Education has whipped up a list of new courses for the pilot curriculum with enough interesting combinations of academic ingredients to make even a tub of Ben and Jerry's ice cream look plain. According to College of Arts and Sciences Dean Richard Beeman, CUE is in the final stages of its plans to launch seven interdisciplinary courses that will link together subjects as diverse as astrophysics and linguistics; cognitive neuroscience and law; and art history and engineering. "I am very excited about the content and conception of the seven courses the faculty has created," Beeman said. "We're right on schedule, but in the process of creating an administrative structure to go forward." Although CUE has intensely discussed the new courses, the College's chief academic policy-making body is waiting to discuss the classes with the undergraduate and department heads before it decides whether to approve them in early February. CUE is also still receiving course proposals submitted by School of Arts and Sciences faculty members, Assistant College Dean for Academic Affairs Kent Peterman said. The establishment of new courses follows the SAS faculty's December decision to test the experimental requirements next fall on groups of 200 randomly selected incoming freshmen over the next five years. The pilot curriculum reduces the current General Requirement of 10 narrowly focused courses to classes in four broad-based categories. SAS faculty members will vote on whether to expand the program to the entire College in 2005. According to Peterman, all seven of the interdisciplinary courses will be team-taught by groups of faculty -- experts in a wide range of subject matters. "None of us could sit down and spin a list of courses like this," Peterman said. "The pilot [curriculum] has been instrumental in getting faculty to think in ways they haven't thought before." About 50 students are expected to participate in each course, which will include both a lecture and recitation led by a standing faculty member. During the first year, enrollment will be restricted to the freshmen members of the pilot curriculum test group so that CUE can evaluate the new program's impact. "It's not a freshman versus upperclassman matter," explained Philosophy Professor Paul Guyer, a CUE member who will teach one of the courses next spring. "It's a question of experimental design." However, administration officials say they may open the courses up to students other than the freshmen in the future. "If these turn out to be great courses, students will start banging at our door and asking to take them," Peterman said. "And it will be hard to say, 'No.'" During the fall, four of the seven courses will be offered. Psychology Professor Martha Farah, Law Professor Stephen Morse and Philosophy Professor Richard Samuels will lead a course on cognitive neuroscience that will satisfy the "Science, Culture and Society" component of the pilot curriculum. "The basic idea is to first consider the different way people have grappled with the brain," Farah said, adding that the course will combine philosophy and cognitive neuroscience to look at the relationship between brain and mind. In the only course that fulfills the "Earth, Science and Life" sector of the pilot curriculum, Astrophysics Professor David Koerner will join faculty from the Anthropology, Biology and Linguistics departments to examine whether extra-terrestrial life really exists and how humans could communicate with beings from other planets. History Professor Lee Cassanelli, Management Professor Mauro Guillen and Anthropology Professor Brian Spooner will teach a course that explores the historical and cultural roots of globalization as well as its current business implications. That course will fall into the "Human Structures and Value" category of the experimental curriculum. And Chinese and Asian and Middle Eastern Studies Professor Tina Lu will join Art History Professor Susan Sidlauskas and a professor from the German Department to teach a course that explores the self-portrait in art and literature. That course will fulfill the "Imagination, Representation and Reality" sector. In the spring semester, Art History Professor David Brownlee, Architecture Professor David DeLong and Art History professors Holly Pittman and Renata Holod will offer another course in the IRR category. Brownlee said his class on the built environment will look at both the aesthetic and functional characteristics of buildings, using Philadelphia as its model. Also in the spring, Guyer, History Professor Sheldon Hackney and faculty from the Political Science and Economics departments will lead a course that explores a theory of freedom from a variety of perspectives. And Anthropology Professor Alan Mann will teach a course on biology, language and culture with faculty from those disciplines. In addition to approving the new courses, CUE is currently forming committees of SAS faculty, administrators and students to further develop the pilot curriculum as well as evaluate its academic impact. The committee also expects to appoint a SAS faculty member as the pilot curriculum director in the coming weeks.